Malum went out of the city with the rest of the squad and took off his hood. Once again, he looked at the children, who were two heads shorter than him. Strange that no one said a word about it. All around him was an endless desert, lit only by small torches held by a few young boys. There was a deathly silence. No one said anything. Malum found himself lost in his own thoughts. Finally, he had time to think about what was happening. His thoughts leaped from one to the another one, creating an incoherent confusion in his head. Here he was thinking about why the sphere teleports him every time to the wrong place, and a second later in his head was a desire to meet Krugis on Kulungan. A few minutes later, he stared at the huge horseman leading the party and couldn't understand how he managed to teleport inside the planet so often. He appeared in Tuhinmua, and the next minute he disappeared. Do some spheres have no time restrictions on teleportation within the planet?

At the beginning of the journey, it was difficult to move, his feet sank under the fesh-fesh sand, but a couple of kilometers later the surface changed to a relatively hard brick-red sand. A little to the East, the first rays of the sun appeared, highlighting the ridges of sand dunes covered with fog, which looked like mountains in the night. His feet kept slipping on brownanthus or arthraerua leubnitziae. The high humidity level in the air made it difficult to breathe and made the hair wet and swollen. Unbeknownst to everyone, Malum took out the inhaler and took several injections, inhaling through his mouth and exhaling through his nose a few seconds later. He felt that the medicine will soon run out.

An hour later, the desert dunes gave way to a series of red butte and table mountains. The sun was half-way over the horizon, immediately giving the travelers its warmth. The darkness began to leave this world, reluctantly going west and dissolving into the expanses of the firmament. To the west was a very small oasis, surrounded by a narrow strip of gallery forest, consisting of mesquite and acacias, near which was a small herd of gemsboks. They raised their heads and looked at the group for a long time. When they were all gone, they started drinking water again.

Pitris looked at the group, slightly quickened his pace and shouted to Perun that it was time for everyone to rest, to take a break for an hour or two. The stately rider stopped his horse by pulling on the reins, turned, and nodded. The children fell on the same spot and began to sigh and groan with fatigue. Malum stood on his feet and looked at them. He accidentally caught the eye of the girl, who at the same moment turned her head in the other direction.

Perun sat on his horse and watched the sunrise without moving or looking back at the group. Pitris approached Malum and offered to sit down and rest.

"Okay," he said, and plopped down.

Malum saw the girl's gaze again. But she quickly averted it. Pitris noticed this, but didn’t react.

"Hey, Pitris!" said Malum softly.

"What?"

"Can we talk?"

“Sure.”

"Will this rider understand us?"

"We'll find out."

Pitris got to his feet and shouted a couple of expletives at Perun accompanied by the phrase "on a horse" at the end. There was silence. Malum stared at him and prepared for the worst. The horse suddenly snorted and shook its head. The children froze slightly, waiting to see what would happen next. For a moment, it felt like the time stopped.

“In this silence my inner genius is heard,” commented Pitris.

And then there was the first burst of childish laughter that could no longer be contained, followed by another. The children giggled. It helped to lift the mood a little.

“Look, everyone liked it. Learn, children, while I’m still alive.”

"Yes, sir," several of them replied.

“Not scared?”

“Nope. Do you think they sit there in their throne rooms and learn the language of the common people?”

“Spheres allow you to learn a language in a minute.”

"And they didn't even do that."

"But they can make your body shatter into a million atoms."

"A million what?"

“Pieces.”

“Oh, well, they're welcome. So what did you want to talk about?”

“Your language… I've studied it.”

“Studied?”

“Yes. This is medu neter, the ancient language of the Egyptians who lived on my planet about five and a half thousand years ago. At that time, it was divided into two parts: the first – sacred, and the second – folk. There, as here, the supreme authority could not always find a common language with its subjects. This is strange, because right now I'm not even close to that universe and that time, but the language sounds almost exactly the same, even the grammar is the same. Well. You mentioned stories of his grandfather about the fact that the population of Tuhinmua – are people from another world. It seems to me more and more that this is not such a crazy hypothesis as it may seem. Could you tell me a little more about it?”

“Even before the Panic War, these guys,” - Pitris made a nod towards Perun, - “brought about a thousand people to Rety. Where exactly they found them, I don’t know, oh yes, and it is hardly known to anyone other than themselves, if sometime in the future you suddenly become friends, you could ask them over a cup of tea. Rod built a city for them, and then set Avoneru to lead the whole thing. He was a very cheerful and sociable guy. People, in gratitude for his kindness, taught him their language, which, in fact, was passed down from generation to generation and became the official language of the city.”

“How does the authority know the “sacred” part? After all, someone also had to teach them.”

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“I don't know anything about it.”

“They probably learned it while living on my planet for a while. But why did they take a thousand people here?”

“Maybe they just liked them? Who cares?”

Malum pondered, sat down in a Turkish fashion, and propped his head with his elbows on his legs. He began to look ahead, completely lost in his thoughts.

“I just want to figure it out.”

“The less you think, the better you sleep. That's what my grandfather told me. He was a smart guy.”

“Who taught him?”

“What?”

“The language, to communicate with supreme authority.”

“The one who ruled before Ismila, of course. Previously, only her family knew both dialects. Now it's mine too. And her ancestor's name was ... Let me think ... Hmm ... Ah yes! Ravon'o'Pitris. He became good friends with my grandfather and gave us the family name Pitris, and my grandfather, may he rest in peace, wasn’t against it, he was even glad.”

"How long has he been dead? Ravon, I mean.”

"I was very small then. I don't really remember. My father said that he had vanished. Lived, lived, and disappeared, leaving behind an heiress, Ismila.”

Malum looked at the children again and caught the girl's eye. This time she got up and walked timidly over to them and sat down. She held out her hand palm out and introduced herself:

"I haven't seen you anywhere before? You look very familiar to me."

“Unlikely.”

“My name is Lily White. Not to be confused with Lily Orange.”

“Hi, I'm uh...”

"Malum is his name.”

The girl giggled. They shook hands.

“What are you,” she asked in an angelic and pure voice, “don't you remember your name?”

Malum scratched the back of his head with his hand, and Pitris answered again.

“You just captivated him with your beauty.”

The girl clapped her hands and slyly said "woo".

"I'm a hereditary fortune teller, by the way. Did you know, Mr. Pitris?”

"I didn't know.”

"Do you want me to tell you the fortune?"

"I'm afraid if there's something sad, my heart will break. And then who will pinch the Lily White?” Pitris replied, and pinched her.

The girl laughed and offered the same to Malum, who shrugged and said:

“Well, okay.”

He reached out. The girl grabbed his wrist and began running her index finger along the inside of his palm, exploring every line. Her face grew more serious. Sometimes she looked up at him from under her brows and then down again. She turned and looked at Pitris, and then said:

"You aren't destined to triumph over the essence of the world order".

“Good prediction,” Pitris said quickly.

“And what does it mean?” Malum asked. “I don't quite understand.”

“Me neither. But it says so. Essence will probably defeat you.”

Malum didn't know what to say. But then Perun suddenly turned to the group, jumped off his horse and glared at them all. The children froze and stopped communicating. Lily White had moved up to Pitris, but he did not pay any heed to it.

"I've been feeling primordial, eternal, evil power here for a long time. Who pretends to be someone they aren't?”

Everyone was silent. Malum's heart beat faster, and his right eye twitched involuntarily. Perun continued to stare at the group. Pitris calm voice translated the sentence to the children. They looked at each other. And then he translated the next sentence, which said that if this person does not confess now, otherwise, when everything becomes clear, the culprit will be executed. Malum took a deep breath and held it in his lungs. He was about to start a conversation that he was putting off until later, but Pitris noticed and grabbed his hand by the wrist, hinting that it was too early.

"Time's up. There will be no more breaks.”

Perun effortlessly jumped into the saddle, took the reins and moved forward. The children got up and followed him, still looking at each other.

After a few hours of travel, the desert was replaced by tundra. The air became better at saturating the body with oxygen. Small vegetation and dwarf trees lined the sides. The group turned west and a few minutes later came to a road of mud and sand that appeared to have been formed by traveling merchants and led from North to South-East. There were traces of wheels and hooves left by carts. It became more difficult to walk, many continued to move along the edges of the road so that their feet would not get stuck. Malum noticed that Perun's horse moved surprisingly easy, and when he looked more closely, he noticed that the horse did not leave any traces behind, although dirt flew out from under the hooves after each step. For the first two minutes, Pitris walked with difficulty, but somehow, he got a solid stick to lean on while walking, that allowed him to move faster. The children looked at it and also found similar sticks along the way. When the mud was gone and the ground on the road was hard, everyone relaxed and started talking again.

Malum looked at the time: 11:28.

"We'll be there in two or three hours," said Pitris.

The girl approached Malum and asked what he was dreaming of.

“I don’t know, I need to think about it,” he replied, put his hand to his chin and continued ten seconds later. “To be remembered. Then perhaps I will not live my life in vain.”

“How many people do you need to make your dream come true?

“In terms of?”

“Amount.”

“I never even thought about that. Probably about a hundred million.”

“Then I will remember you. And you will be one step closer to your dream.”

Malum laughed and said:

“Thanks for that too! What are you dreaming about?”

“I dream of freedom. My dream is to walk between cities, explore different historical places, enjoy beautiful views. And in the evenings, run away into the heart of nature and lie on the grass all night and look at the stars. I also dream of a long life. We on Tuhinmua rarely live even up to forty years. My grandmother died at thirty-eight, just a little before my birth, and my mother died at twenty-three, a day ago.”

“Your dream will soon come true.”

Pitris cleared his throat.

“Yes. You can't imagine how glad I was when Ismila said my name. My mother often said that I was special, and there was no doubt in her mind that one day I would be chosen for Irin-Ajo. She would be the happiest mom in the world right now.”

Malum said nothing and continued walking, once again lost in his own thoughts.

The tundra zone of the North-Eastern Strota plain abruptly changed to red sands and a long mountain range. The road turned into a small gorge, where the sides of the steep slopes hid the group in their vast shadows. The wind began to blow, lifting up the sand, creating a kind of sand-storm, as if nature itself didn’t want the group to see what they should not. Everyone put their heads down and tried to cover their eyes with their elbows.

The road to the gorge was full of twists and turns, and it became more and more difficult to see Perun, not because the sand and dust cut into his eyes, although that was also a cause, but also because his black horse did not slow down, completely unaware of the headwind. Malum didn’t understand how he magically managed to do all this, from instant teleportation to small invisible tricks for others.

The wind surged with new force, plunging the road into impenetrable darkness, in which only somewhere in the sky the halo of the sun shone through, acting as a kind of guiding star. The children moved very close to each other; Pitris was at the end of the column, making sure that no one was lost. In addition to the strong gust of wind and sand that scratched his face, Malum could feel his weakened lungs struggling for air due to the caked dust that had risen from the ground. He slightly raised his head and squinted, and on the horizon, he saw the faint outline of a huge castle located on one of the mountains ahead, and also, he accidentally noticed a black silhouette standing on the mountain to the right, directly opposite to the sun, and a second later, there appeared a second silhouette. Malum lowered his head and covered his mouth with his sleeve as he inhaled. When he looked up again, there was no one there.

A few minutes later, the group emerged from the gorge, the wind stopped, and the storm was left behind. Ahead was a sandy plain, like an arena, surrounded by walls in the form of steep slopes. At the opposite end, the mountains formed a narrow canyon, which was closed by a huge door. The castle in the distance shone in the sun, slightly hidden behind a cloud of dust and haze. He was at the top of Table Mountain and riveted the eyes of the entire group until one of the children shouted:

“Where is the Lord of Perun?”

Everyone suddenly looked around and realized that they were alone.