He saw Enge again strictly by chance. He was near the ambesed, where Vaintè had dismissed him from her presence, when there was a stirring of excitement among the fargi. They were asking questions of each other and all hurrying in the same direction. Curious, he followed after them just in time to see four Yilanè go by, carrying a fifth one. He could not get close in the press and decided not to draw any attention by ordering them aside. He was about to leave when the same four Yilanè returned, walking slowly now, mouths agape. Their skins were splotched with dirt, their legs caked with red mud. Then Kerrick saw that one of them was Enge. He called out and she turned to face him. She was attentive, but did not speak.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I have not seen you.”
“My language skills are no longer needed, so my meetings with you are ended. I work now in the new fields.”
“You?” There was astonishment, even dismay, lack of understanding with the word.
“I.” The other three had stopped when she did and she signaled them to continue on, asking Kerrick to do the same. “I must return to work.”
She turned away and he hurried up beside her. There was a mystery here that he dearly wanted to solve, but he did not know how to begin.
“The one that you carried here. What happened?”
“A serpent bite. There are many where we work.”
“Why you?” They were not overheard now as they walked; the plodding Inlènu* did not count. “You talk to the Eistaa as one equal to another. Yet you now do work better done by the lowest fargi. Why?”
“The reason is not easy to tell. And I have been forbidden by the Eistaa to speak of it to any Yilanè.”
Even as she spoke the words Enge realized the ambiguity of meaning that they contained. Kerrick was not a Yilanè. She indicated Inlènu*. “Order that one to walk ahead of us, to follow those three.” As soon as this had been done Enge turned to Kerrick and spoke with an intensity he had never seen before.
“I am here, these others are here, because we have strong personal beliefs that those who rule do not agree with. We have been ordered to abandon them—but we cannot. For once you have discovered the truth you cannot turn away from it.”
“What truth are you talking about?” Kerrick asked in puzzlement.
“The burning, disturbing truth that the world and all things in it contain more than can be easily seen. Do you ever think of these things?”
“No,” he answered quite honestly.
“You should. But you are young—and not a Yilanè. I have puzzled about you since you first started to speak, and your existence is still a puzzle to me. You are not a Yilanè, yet you are not a bestial ustuzou since you can speak. I don’t know what you are or how you fit into the scheme of greater things.”
Kerrick was beginning to be sorry that he had found Enge. Little of what she said made any sense to him. But now that she was speaking, for her own benefit more than his, she could not be stopped.
“Our belief must be true because there is a power in it that passes the comprehension of the nonbeliever. It was Ugunenapsa who came first to this understanding, spent her life ordering her mind, forcing herself to understand. To bring a new thing into the world where none had been before. She talked to others about her belief and they laughed at her. Word reached the Eistaa of her city about her strange ways and she was called before the Eistaa who commanded her to speak. And she did. She spoke of the thing within all of us that cannot be seen, the thing that enables us to speak and separates us from the unthinking animals. Animals do not have the thing within which is why they cannot speak. Therefore speaking is the voice of the thing within and that thing within is life and the knowledge of death. Animals have no knowledge of life or death. They are, then they aren’t. But the Yilanè know—and now you know. Which is the great puzzle that I must grapple with. Who are you? What are you? Where do you fit into the design?”