Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“But this place isn’t all that old—there won’t be stools,” said Rigg.

“But if our butts remain in this time,” said Loaf, “then we won’t fall into the swamp or whatever.”

Rigg nodded. “All right, Umbo. I’m going to concentrate on a particular path . . . I’ve got it. Slow me down—and yourself and Loaf too.” All three of them held on to their noodle bowls, as Rigg stared into the distance, and somewhat downward, apparently concentrating on a path.

Umbo had never tried to slow down two people besides himself. It took some real concentration on his part. And it felt as if Rigg was pulling him just as much as he pulled Loaf. Rigg was taking him farther back than Umbo had ever gone. Like the time Umbo’s father had set him up on a peddler’s horse and the beast had taken off with him for a few rods. Umbo almost lost the connection a few times, and could hardly hold on to Loaf at the same time. But after a while he was able to hold it all together.

He could no longer see the noodle bar—though he was still sitting down on something. There was no town at all, nor any building. Just a man poling a boat slowly along a bayou among tall reeds in the dusky light of evening.

The man and the boat were much lower than Umbo, as if Umbo were on the top of a hill instead of on a stool on the floor of a noodle bar. They must have raised the ground level of Aressa Sessamo very high above the original delta.

Rigg whispered, “Can you see him? The boat? The reeds, the water?”

The man might have heard him, for it was nearly silent in the marshland in mid-day. He looked up from the boat and saw them; they must have been quite a vision, a man and two teenage boys sitting in the air, holding bowls of noodles.

The man staggered in surprise, which overbalanced the boat and sent the man toppling backward into the water.

Umbo mentally let go of Rigg and Loaf, and eased himself back into the present. He felt dizzy. Mentally exhausted.

“A time before Aressa Sessamo even existed,” whispered Loaf.

“This isn’t the oldest city in the wallfold,” said Rigg. “And anyway, it was first built up about six miles from here. Floods have forced a lot of relocations over the years.”

“I feel sorry for the boatman,” said Umbo.

“He got a soaking—he’ll recover,” said Loaf.

“A vision of three men in the air, eating noodles,” said Rigg, and then chuckled. “What could the saints have possibly meant by

that! Do you think somebody built a shrine there? The ‘Three Noodle Eaters.’” Rigg laughed a little louder. The bargirl glared at him.

“He was so far below us,” said Umbo.

“At the original level of the delta,” said Loaf.

“So the builders of the city brought all that dirt to build up such a high mound?” asked Rigg.

“They didn’t have to,” said Loaf. “The river brings down silt every year. You just start building up a higher island, and then after each flood season, you dredge out the silted-up channels so boats can pass, and what do you do with the silt? You pile it up, extend the edges of the island the city is built on. A few thousand years and you have a very large and fairly high island.”

“Which is why there can be so many tunnels and sewers under the city,” said Rigg, “even though we’re in the midst of the delta.”

Umbo looked up and saw something on the wall. He reached out and touched Rigg’s hand and then looked up again at a shelf high on the wall of the noodle bar. A statue of a man and two boys, holding noodle bowls.

Rigg murmured, “Ram’s left elbow.”

Loaf covered his face. “We were the origin of the Noodle-eaters.”

“I don’t know that story,” said Umbo.

“Why didn’t I recognize what was happening when the boatman looked at us?” asked Loaf.

“Because it hadn’t happened yet,” said Rigg. “I still don’t remember any such legend, but—it seems like whenever we do something that changes things in the past, there’s a new hero story.”

“The fertility of the land,” murmured Umbo, as the “memory” of the legend of the Noodle-eaters came to him. Just like the “memory” of the legend of the Wandering Saint had come to him at the shrine when he and Rigg were just setting out on their journey. “They symbolize a plentiful harvest, I remember now,” said Umbo.

“And it was us,” said Loaf. “How many of these legends were just . . . us!”

“If we’re not careful,” said Rigg, “all of them. But I had to know that we could do it.”