Free Earthborn (Homecoming) by Orson Scott Card

it. We’ll do it.”
    “That quickly?” Shedemei knew the Oversoul was a computer, but it still surprised her how much the old machine could do in the time it took a human to say a single word.
    “I made a test run and found that nothing in my programming interferes. I can do it. So we’ll give it a try when Monush gets to the right place, and find out how much the Keeper will put up with before deigning to make contact with me.”
    Shedemei laughed. “Why can’t you admit it, you old fake?”
    “Admit what?”
    “You’re really pissed off at the Keeper.”
    “I am not,” said the Oversoul. “I’m worried about what might be happening on Harmony.”
    “Relax,” said Shedemei. “Your otherself is there, as the angels would say.”
    “I’m not an angel,” said the Oversoul.
    “Neither am I, my friend,” said Shedemei.
    “You sound wistful.”
    “I’m a gardener. I miss the feel of earth under my feet.”
    “Time for another trip to the surface?”
    “No,” said Shedemei. “No point in it. Nothing I planted last time will be ready for measurement. It would be a waste and a risk.”
    “You are allowed to have fun,” said the Oversoul. “Even the one who wears the cloak of the starmaster is allowed to do a few things simply because of the joy of doing them.”
    “Yes, and I’ll do it. When the time comes.”
    “You have a will of steel,” said the Oversoul.
    “And a heart of glass,” said Shedemei. “Brittle and cold. I’m going to take a nap. Why don’t you use the time to design a dream?”
    “Don’t you have dreams enough on your own?”
    “Not for me,” said Shedemei. “For Monush.”
    “I was making a joke,” said the Oversoul.
    “Well next time wink at me or something so I know.” Shedemei got up from the terminal and padded off to bed.
    Monush and his men slept yet another night on yet another narrow shelf of rock high above the valley floor. The torches in the digger village far below burned late; Monush’s fifteen companions watched most of them until they guttered and winked out. It was hard to sleep, weary as they were, for if they rolled over in the night they would plunge twenty rods before so much as a knob of stone would break their fall—and, no doubt, the first of many bones. They all pushed sharp stakes into the rock or, if there was no slight crevice to hold them, they piled them so they might feel them if they started to roll toward the edge in their sleep. But all in all, it was a precarious slumber indeed, and there was probably no moment when more than half the men were asleep.
    Despite all this, tonight Monush slept well enough to dream, and when he awoke, he knew the path that he had to take in order to find the Zenifi. This high path would widen and slope downward, but at a certain place, if he should climb, he would come to a pass over these mountains and down into another valley. There he would see a large lake, and by passing down the valley of the river that flowed from it, in due time he would come to the place that Edhadeya had dreamed of.
    He awoke from the dream just as the sky was beginning to lighten overhead. Carefully he pulled out the stakes he had pushed by hand into the stone and put them back into his bag. Then he gnawed on the cold maizecake that would be his only meal of the day, unless they found food somewhere on the journey—unlikely on such steep cliffs, and so high in thin air. This was the region called “Crown of the Gornaya,” the highest region of the great massif of mountain ranges that had long harbored earth people, middle people, and sky people. It was here that the sevenlakes had formed, all of them holy, but none holier than Sidonod, the pure source of the Tsidorek, the sacred river that flowed through the heart of Darakemba. Some of the men had hoped to set eyes on Sidonod itself, but now Monush knew that they would not. The pass would come too soon. Within the first hour.
    Wordlessly—for sound carried far in the