This time the pebble landed squarely in the ripple with a satisfying plop. As he had known it would, nothing happened apart from a few bubbles drifting to the surface and floating away. The ripple would only change if the rock that was causing it was moved, and then another would form elsewhere. Until that happened, the ripple would remain unchanged while changing constantly; indeed, it could not exist without that change – who could shapestill water thus? From his sunny vantage, Andawyr could see many such ripples in the stream. And other parts, which, though fed by smooth, untroubled waters, were turbulent and disordered, never settling into any single pattern.

This stream’s cleverer than I am, he thought. Without a moment’s thought it knows how to form strange and complex shapes that I couldn’t predict if I did calculations for a year. The idea amused him. It was the kind of example he delighted in slapping his students’ faces with when they became either too involved in something or too sure of themselves.

Forget it, he reminded himself, putting his hands behind his head and lying back on the soft turf. Get on with your wandering.

And wander he did. But though he assiduously avoided the concerns that had sent him out of the Cadwanen for relief, the thoughts that came to him were scarcely lighter as he found himself pondering the Second Coming of Sumeral and all the changes that had happened since His defeat.

The Orthlundyn, for example, were now like a people awakened from a long sleep. They travelled far and wide and had a seemingly insatiable thirst for knowledge. They had become very much the guiding spirit of the Congress that followed the war. The Fyordyn, by contrast, were less steady, less confident than they had been; cruelly hurt by the civil war that had followed Oklar’s murder of their king and his near-success in seizing power for his Master.