What Zan Took for a Monument

The records do not say how the stampede ended. The next page finds the party further on, at the edge of the jungle, and it is short enough that the order tells it as the Fragments do.

And the herd was behind them, and no telling says how it was left there.
And they came to the place where the grass gives way to the green,
and a stone stood there, fifteen feet across, and the plants had climbed it and kept it.
And among the plants was one that was not like the others.
And it was large, and it had a sweetness to it that called the eye and the foot,
and it breathed a scent, and the scent made the limbs forget themselves.
And poison did not touch it, nor sleep, nor the blow that stuns.
And there was no mind in it for a mind to strike, and Kopalo knew it.
And it was hard to wound, and a bolt that was aimed at it went wide.
And the telling does not say whose hand brought it down, or how, only that it was brought down.
And when it was still, they turned an instrument upon the stone, and the stone answered.
And the stone was of the elves, from before the Gap, from before memory was broken.
And within it was drawn a tower of wire in three dimensions, a tower made for watching.
And Zan, who came before them, had called the stone a thing of custom and worship.
And Zan was wrong.
And it was a watch-post, and it marked where the jungle begins.
And on it was written, in the tongue of the elves, a warning to whoever came:
You are approaching the Loskialua Monastery of Star Song,
the Embassy of the Spheres, the Temple of the Twelve.
And in other places on the stone, apart from one another, other words were written:
of paying respect, and of messengers from beyond,
and of an academy, and of those who interpret the beacon.
And the telling does not join these words together, and neither should we.
And the companions stood before it and asked one another: should we search?
And here the telling does not give the answer.
And it is said that in that place Kopalo felt the green answer him more readily than it had,
as a river finds the channel it has been cutting all along.
And she who kept the record asked whether this belonged in the telling,
and the one who taught him said: It was written in his own hand, and with more than one mark of joy.
And so it is kept.

— Fragments of the Keepers, the Kopalo cycle, as it is usually told

The Fragments are fond of "Zan was wrong", and novitiates like to repeat it. In his notes it is four words and a reason: Zan assumed cultural. I don't count it as a victory over the dead explorer. It is what happens when someone comes back with better instruments and checks the earlier work.

Note the flower that is brighter than the meadow needs.
Do not go to it because it is bright.

— the Observances, from the Readings on Lure