Elis waited for his angry breathing to calm. "Mijok, do you remember?
In the old days I couldn't even have been your friend. Remember how
angry _I_ was--only a year ago? You stepping over the border of my
territory, telling me--I've wondered how you did it with our few
stumbling words--telling me every being should be free to go as he
pleased anywhere in the world? You were in danger, Mijok. I am older,
bigger, heavier--I nearly went for your throat. Long ago. So--don't be
angry with these two."
Tejron sat by Wright, holding the Vestoian like a nursing baby.
"Maybe," she said, "maybe they will take some of what you teach us to
others. Maybe it will be like the thing you showed us, how a little
seed no bigger than the eye of illuama can become a tree...."
Pakriaa had watched indifferently; Paul hoped he was right, that her
face was not quite so tightly set in lines of rejection and despair.
Wright came stiffly to his feet, a hand on Tejron's shoulder, the
other wandering into his gray beard. "Abro Brodaa, interpret for
me--some of them have no English. Tell them we turn west soon, then
south through bad country--swamp, heat, uskaran, marsh reptiles maybe,
maybe the kaksmas swarm on the west side of the hills. Tell them we go
through that. When we reach a river we have seen from the air--it has
no falls and flows southwest--we shall make boats."
Brodaa put it into the high music of the pygmy tongue. Paul could see
no change in the saddened faces; by rumor, most of them would already
know this much. But the thin witch was muttering to his gross
colleague, and some soldier faces turned to overhear that instead of
attending to Brodaa.
"Tell them, Brodaa, this river will take us to Big-Water. We go south
along the coast, to the island where our friends are, where we believe
Spearman has gone in the winged boat. Tell them, on this island there
are no kaksmas, the omasha never come, nor the lake boats of Lantis.
There is game, good ground, room for all. Tell them--No, wait.... Oh,
Brodaa, tell them in your own way that we hope to live there in
peace."
The lean witch interrupted Brodaa's translation with a wailing
diatribe, twitching his twigs of arms, lashing the battered soldiers
with his oratory. Brodaa turned to Wright in misery: "He says--he saw
Ismar change Spearman back to a marsh lizard and the boat to an
omasha."