There was a subtle, nearly soundless sigh from those who watched. Or perhaps it was a moan from her servants who could worry about the termination of their lives if the Progenitor died.          Only Vryyh moved. I had expected Pennbaston to step to me with her questions, her judgments and her accusations.          Vryyh stood close to me between Fion and myself. Her hands were clasped before the golden belt which held her silken shirt in soft folds about her. The cloth held her scent and the faintest pattern of browns, tans, creams, like the sand beneath our feet. "Ince, rider," her voice revealed her concern, "should not you have accompanied the Progenitor?"
"No."
	"Could you not have escorted her to where you have been inside the rock?"
I looked from the jagged shadow of the entrance slit into Vryyh's blue eyes. Her worry was more apparent there. "The Progenitor would not have accepted that. She will accept nothing except that she go 1st. She alone must see."
	"She protects us."
"She does not because she is ignorant of what she does."
	Fion stepped forward abruptly. "You will not speak of the Progenitor in such fashion."
"I will speak my truth, as I always do."
	"The Progenitor---"
"Can err, as can all mortals. I know more here than she though I do not know enough. She should have known this but her eagerness to be 1st has eaten all that away from her mind."
	Vryyh spoke again quietly and by the slightest altering of 1 hand required a silence from Fion. "What is your opinion of what should have been done, rider?"
"You mean, if I pretend that you are the Progenitor and have asked my opinion, for which she will pay whether she avails herself of it or not?"
	"That is what I mean."
"Then I would say that I need to enter alone again. I need to test further the numbers and alliances of lines, their power, their interactions. I need to merge with them. I had only reached them. They will expect a rider. They will not allow interference and any who are ignorant cannot help but interfere. Unriders do not know lines nor have any living riders experience with source lines."
Vryyh raised her eyes to the crack briefly before returning them to me.
Pennbaston came to stand at my side. "What did you see in there, rider? What did you find?"