“Speak to us!” Maulkin commanded him. “Just one word. Just your name and we will let you go. Reach for it, reach back for it. You have it. We know you do. We can smell the thickness of your memories.”

He battered wildly at the prophet. His mouth gaped and stretched with his sounds, but no sense came out of him. Then he suddenly went still. His eyes, small and brown, went wide. His mouth gaped once, twice. Then he suddenly relaxed in Maulkin's grasp. Shreever lidded her eyes. The silver-gray creature was dead. They had killed him, to no good end.

Then he suddenly spoke. Shreever's attention snapped back to him. His voice was thin, almost bodiless. His puny forelimbs tried to encircle Maulkin's thick body in an embrace. “I was Draquius. I am no more. I am a dead thing, speaking with the mouth of memories.” His trumpet was shrill and weak, barely audible.

The tangle grew still, gathering closer in awe. Draquius spoke on. “It was the time of the change. We had swum far up the river, to where the memory silt was fine and thick. We had spun our cocoons, encasing ourselves in thread woven of memory. Our parents laved us with the silt of memories, gave us our names and their memories to share. They watched us, our old friends. They celebrated our time of change, under the blue skies. They cheered as we wallowed from the river to the sunny banks, to let the light and the heat dry our cases while we transformed ourselves. Layer upon layer of memories and silt they wrapped us in. It was a season of joy. Our parents filled the skies with their colors and songs. We would rest through the time of cold, to awaken and emerge when the days turned hot and long.” He closed his small eyes, as if pained. He clung to Maulkin as if he were part of his own tangle.

“Then the whole world went wrong. The earth shook and split. The very mountains were shattered and oozed hot red blood. The sun dimmed; even within our cases, we felt it fade. Hot winds blew over us, and we heard the cries of our friends as it snatched the breath from their lungs. Yet even as they fell, gasping, they did not forsake us. They dragged us into shelter, many lives ago. They could not save many of us, but they tried. I give them that, they tried. It was only for a time, they promised. Only until the dust stopped raining down, only until the skies shone blue again. Only until the earth stopped quaking. But it did not stop. The earth trembled daily and the mountains burst into fire. The forest burned and the ash fell down over all, stifling everything. The river flowed thicker than blood with it. The air was choked with it, and where it settled, it covered all life in a layer of ash. We called out to them from inside our cocoons, but after a time, they did not answer. Without the sun, we could not hatch. We lay in the deep darkness, wrapped in our memories, and waited.”

The tangle and its followers were silent. They remained as they were, draped on his stiff limbs and wings, wrapped over his bulky body. Maulkin breathed out a thin cloud of toxin in his face. “Speak on,” he commanded him gently. “We do not understand, but we listen.”

“You do not understand?” He laughed thinly. “I do not understand. After a very long time, another people came. They were like and not like those who had sought to save us. We called out to them joyously, sure they had come at last to deliver us from the darkness. But they would not hear us. They brushed our airy voices away, dismissing us as less than dreams. Then they killed us.”

Shreever felt hope grow tiny within her.

“I heard the screams of Tereea. I could not grasp what was happening. She was with us; then she was gone. A time passed. Then they attacked me. Tools bit into my cocoon, splitting it open while it was still thick and heavy, strong with my memories. Then . . .” He became perplexed. “They threw my soul out onto the cold stone. It died there. But the memories remained, trapped in the layers of the cocoon. They sawed me into planks and from them created a new body. They made me anew in their own image, gouging away until they had shaped me a face and head and body such as they wear. And they drenched me in their own memories, until one day I awoke as someone else. Ringsgold they named me, and so I became. A liveship. A slave.”

A silence flowed through them all when he was still. He had used words that Shreever did not know, spoken of things she could not grasp. A terrible dread flowed chill over her. She knew that his tale was a monumental one, a tale of an ending of all her kind, but she did not know why. She was almost glad she could not comprehend the tragedy. Maulkin, still wrapped around him, had lidded his eyes. His colors had gone pale and sick.

“I will mourn you, Draquius. Your name conjures echoes of memories in my soul. Once, I think, we knew one another. But now we must part as unremembered strangers. We will let you go.”