"Every streak is incident with at least three distinct ords."

-- The Cosmogon Codex, Leaf 1, Branch 1, Verse 15.

I gave a restricted cry and pointed to the door. My fellows might have thought I was betokening the red line of light, so I declared the presence of another wight; but by the time they moved their eyes, the figure was gone.

They were rather dismissive of my claim, saying, in effect, so what if someone else was in the outer passage? Their heed quickly turned back to the wondrous red light.

I became spellbound by the intricacy of the glowing diagram before our feet, and kindled witfire about its meaning. I touched another point in the pattern.

One of the cones drifted downward, but the red light was always maintained between the cone-tips. A different symbol glowed on the side of each cone. The same symbols appeared on the ledge diagram. Both symbols had three smaller symbols below them; these appeared to me to be written in a different language than the larger symbols. Below the first small symbol was a vertical line; below the second, a horizontal line; and below the third, a circle. I tried touching one of the circles.

As soon as I did so, one of the cones slid along the surface of the shaft to another position, and the small symbol above the circle changed; the large symbol above these and on the moved cone also changed.

Drum Storm pushed me aside and touched the horizontal line below the second small symbol. The cone floated toward the central axis of the shaft.

Dune Song touched the vertical line: the cone floated upward, halting below the dome.

By playing with the diagrams below the other triplet, I moved the other cone likewise.

Drum Storm declared that we must immediately inform the Grand Suggester of the place; Dune Song said talking to any megaschema will do--they might already know what it is.

I asked what they thought it was; but I was met with blank stares and a shrug. I wanted to stay and examine this arrangement more thoroughly, but the other two were in agreement that we go now, so we left.

We traced our steps back to the hall in which we started, meeting no one else along the way. Dune Song hummed to himself a gleestaff with no sleuthable pattern, claiming that he was trying to compose a hymn to the second-order emanations.

The Grand Suggester was in conference, so we marched to a ward where megaschemas tended to congregate. Finally, we arrived at the base of a watchtower, and Drum Storm insisted there was likely to be a megaschema occupying the perch right then. I agreed to trudge up the spiral stairs with them.

As soon as we entered the perch at the pinnacle, I was disappointed to see Night Ice at the desk, poring over his over-sized Codex. Dune Song eagerly stepped forward and explained our discovery to him.

Night Ice waved a hand. He said that there were many such old machines of the heathens from the time before the Disarray, and that they were entirely uninteresting: water filters, air filters, and the like, now totally unusable.

His hands emerged from his robe to smooth a turned page of The Codex. Given his wrinkled face, his hands were unexpectedly youthful. And then I saw the mole. It was the same size and shape as the one on my attacker, which I had heedfastly etched into my memory. It felt as if the skin on my face and upper body were tightening. I must have had a strange look upon my face, for Night Ice frowned at me, and Dune Song was staring at me.

I forced myself to calm. It had never occurred to me that my athletic attacker could be so old--nor that he could be as exulted as a megaschema. I straightened my spine and announced that I had been physically assaulted in a dark tunnel whilst searching for Hearsome Cloud, and that this had spurred me to perform more pathfindings of the unknown ways rather than the attacker's stated intention of deterring me. I continued, announcing that we would continue to explore in honor of the Triad.

Night Ice leaned back in his chair and eyed the three of us. He said that the unused halls of the bedestow are off-limits to all brethren and sistren. I asked why, and he said the reasons need not worry me if I do not venture there. And besides, since we have all taken vows, our time should be spent studying what we know of the Monad and Its emanations.

Dune Song echoed my earlier reminder that the bedestow and all its wight-stuff is integral in the Triad. Night Ice responded that he has already stated the rule clearly, and that we should stop wasting his time with more of this foolishness.

On these last words he stood in anger. We backed toward the door, apologizing for our intrusion.

We wound down to the ground level, and began to head out of the megaschema ward. I reminded my companions that megaschemas cannot invent rules for the bedestow. They asked if I would again seek audience with the Grand Suggester.

I responded that I would not at this time. Now I would pray to The Mouth. Their faces darkened.

~ Path Dust

Upon the Hour of the Serpent, Sandstorm Day, First Moon, in this the 17,622nd Year A.R. ~