Vah awoke beside the Wellspring pool. At some point, he must have lain down. He heard a murmuring of voices; they must have woken him. Standing at the edge of the trees atop the rim above the vale was a group of Vien, and Findel was with them. The sun was descending toward evening in the west, the bottom of the vale already shadowed, but the figures stood out in the slanting sunlight. Vah was surprised to see them; Findel had forbidden anyone else from coming here long ago. Only Vah ignored the command and ventured into the vale. Findel led the group down the slope of the hill. Using his budded staff for supported, Vah rose to meet them. The buds had not yet begun to wither.

Eleven figures followed behind Findel, five vienu and six vien. Though Vah knew that all were mated, none of them were mated to each other. He even knew their names, but why Findel had chosen these, or what their purpose was, he did not know. Each of them carried a carved wooden bowl held in both hands. Without audible direction, the Vien stopped in a semicircle near the edge of pool and Findel walked up alone to stand beside Vah.

"I will show you," Findel whispered to him, and then turned to the others.

"Fill your basins," he said. Each of the eleven stepped toward the water with their bowls. They knelt and dipped the bowls by their edges so that their fingers did not touch the water. Nevertheless, droplets of the water ran down the sides of the bowls as they lifted them, touching their hands. They gasped and color sprang onto their skin. Still without direction, they stepped back into their semi-circle. Raising his voice and extending his hands toward them, Findel sang out in a loud voice:

"I have chosen you to be the will of our people. I pass my responsibility to you. Decide for the good of our people. Do not contend with violence against each other, but wrestle in your wills, that no one may have mastery alone. This doom I lay upon you, and it will pass to the firstborn of your children from this day, and to their children and their children's children until the end. This doom I mark upon your blood by the power of the Wellspring."

"What are you doing?" Vah asked.

"I will prove to you I am not a monster," Findel said, turning to him,"though I may look it, now. I never wished to harm Isecan. Or anyone."

"Why not set everyone free? Why this?"

"Because there is power, brother. You can't understand. You haven't felt it. But I do. I understand." Turning back to those assembled, he stretched out his hands again and commanded:

"Drink it now. Drink it all."

As they raised their bowls, Findel sang. High and clear and fell it was, his voice resonant like Vah had never heard before.

As one, the eleven drank and fell to the ground, lying as if dead while the change came upon their bodies and the iridescence marked their lips and faces. Their hair grew, springing from their scalps in new colors of greens and blues.

Findel's song rang above the pool like the keening of gulls and the growing of roots.

When the song ended, the eleven still lay unmoving, just as Findel had when first he drank of the waters.

"So it is done," he said. "They are bound. They and their generations." He smiled at Vah. It was strange, for even his teeth had changed. Despite the smile, sorrow showed through. A year ago, if Vah had seen this creature standing with him, he would not have recognized Findel. He would not have even suspected it was a vien. "There is one last thing more," Findel said.

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"What is that?"

"I will embrace this whole land."

"What do you mean?"

"In my embrace, this whole land will flower and grow."

"The entire land?"

Findel smiled again.

"And you will know my good will."

Turning toward the water, Findel knelt. He gazed over the disturbed surface of the pool and took a deep breath.

"Findel, do not harm yourself," Vah said.

"Don't remember me this way," his brother replied. "Do you remember how we used to swim naked in the sea? Remember us as we were, then. Beneath the stars in the warm sea."

"Stop talking like this."

Findel bent over and cupped his hands, scooping water up to his lips. His fingers elongated like sprouts even as he lifted his hands to his mouth and drank. Reeling back from the water's edge, he shouted so that Vah covered his ears, as if he did not produce the sound so much as the sound escaped by force, a piercing note that vibrated the bones. Trees shook and seabirds that had taken shelter in the warmth of the embrace fled skyward.

Findel's body twisted. His features melded, stretched, and grew. His legs plunged down, and his torso reached upward. Vah stepped away, not just in horror at the sight, but to keep from being enveloped by whatever was growing before him. The water of the pool bubbled up in the center, and a creaking and groaning came from whatever rose in the place of his brother. Roots stretched down into the waters.

And then it was over. For a moment, he thought he saw the form of his brother, sitting with his knees drawn up beneath his chin and his arms wrapped around them, but no. That was an illusion. He stared, trying to make sense of the mass of wood and vine and leaf that was not quite a tree. The thing before him was twenty feet tall, and at least five feet in diameter. Its roots had shattered and heaved rock, sinking deep.

The water resumed its slow rippling. The world fell into the kind of silence that only follows a great noise when all else is hushed, but Vah wasn't sure exactly what the noise had been. Wind? A scream? Still holding his staff, Vah slid to the ground.

He had failed. Isecan had asked him to stop his brother, somehow. There must have been a way. If Vah had chosen right, then his brothers would be alive, not as enemies but as brothers. What had that choice been? When had he made the fatal mistake that resulted in this? Where had he gone wrong? How could he have stopped it?

He did not weep. There were no tears left, just questions and silence. The eleven lay nearby, contorted into various positions. Their chests rose and fell, their faces marred by the power of the Wellspring. Vah was thirsty, and he didn't care to pretend the water was anything to him besides water, so he drank. It was hot, it quenched his thirst, and no more.

The eleven slowly awoke over the next day and night. They sat looking at each other, at the pool, and at the massive growth that had been Findel, until the last of them fluttered her eyes open. Then, without a word or sparing a glance for Vah, they left the vale all together, heading back toward the tir. Vah stayed behind beside the pool.

Vah did not think about hunger, though he hadn't eaten in days. Where his thoughts did wander, he hardly knew, except the questions that plagued him again and again. What cared he for the future? What part did he have with this people, anymore? All the members of his Tree were gone. He was the last of their people, for whatever the others had become, he did not know. As he had so often seen Findel, now he stared into the depths of the pool, lost in his thoughts.

From whence did such power come? What incomprehensible reservoir lay below? Perhaps the world had fissured there, and like a leak this curse flowed upward. The pool bubbled in the center, sending ripples outward. If it bubbled in the center, surely that meant the channel leading below was smaller than the whole of the pool. If only it could be corked like a drinking gourd.

The sides of the pool barely sloped, plunging steeply down. Nearby lay a stone about the size of Vah's belly. It had become dislodged by Findel's transformation, pushed aside as his legs—or whatever they had become—pierced down into the ground. Vah squatted and wrapped his arms around it, first lifting it onto his knees, then groaning and straining to stand. He felt the scabs at the ends of his fingers burst, but he didn't care. Clutching the stone against his stomach, he shuffled to the edge of the pool.

He hardly gasped for breath before he threw himself in.

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