Gabriel's Road

by Laura Anne Gilman

  Despite a reasonable certainty that the tree would do him no harm, Gabriel had wanted to pack up and ride out immediately, to get as far from its unnerving appearance as possible, but the simple act of walking around the campfire had made his legs quiver with exhaustion and sweat break out on his skin. There was no way he'd be able to stay in the saddle for any length of time, even at a walk.

  "Looks like we're here for a bit," he told Steady, who had moved cautiously closer to the tree, cropping at the dry grass with vague interest. "And you." Gabriel looked up at the tree, telling himself the tree was not looking back at him. "Don't... do anything."

  He told himself that he only imagined the sound of slithering laughter, rising from the grass.

  It took two more days for the fever to wear off and his strength to come back. Gabriel dozed and woke, eating a little each time, sipping from the canteen enough to keep his mouth wet and his urine regular, staggering away from the messy nest he'd made of his bedroll to relieve himself and then staggering back, checking on Steady each time. The horse drank the rest and, somehow, the canteen never quite ran dry. Gabriel was careful not to question it.

  Graciendo was there occasionally, sometimes human, often not. Gabriel was reasonably certain it was a fever-dream, but it might not have been.

  "I should have killed you," Old Bear said one night, casually, holding his scarred hands out over the fire as though to warm them.

  "Probably." He might even have been looking to die at that point; the memory of it, like so much of that year, was hazed to Gabriel still.

  "Do you know why I did not?"

  "Amusement."

  The expected growl of laughter did not come. "Because the end comes soon enough, and it comes for us all. Even me, some day. Even the devil, curse his faces. I've brought the end to many who asked for it, and more who did not, and never regretted it. But it has never not been a waste."

  The heavy head swung to look at him, eyes flickering red in the firelight, and despite himself, Gabriel shivered.

  "When your end comes, let it not be a waste."

  When Gabriel woke the next morning, Graciendo was gone, but another shape sat at his fire. Human, female, and for a moment his memory failed him again. "Izzy?"

  But when she turned, it was a stranger.

  "You've been careless," the woman said with a smirk. "You forgot to ward your fire."

  "No." He had, he knew that, remembered clearly one of the last things he'd done the very first night, dragging himself out of the bedroll to spread salt in a wide circle around the small camp. He remembered the feel of the grains sticking to his sweat-slicked hand, the taste of it bitter-sharp on his tongue.

  It was possible, in his fever, he'd broken it somehow, but Graciendo would not have left him unprotected. Not without warning.

  He thought of the last conversation they'd had and wondered if that had been the warning. But why?

  The woman shrugged as though his denial was of no matter to her. "Figured you wouldn't mind if I borrowed your fire for a bit." There was the smell of coffee, sharp and bitter, in the air; she'd been there a while, while he slept.

  He managed to sit up, the blanket falling into his lap, and noted that her knife lay on a rock by her knee, within easy reach, and a bow, unstrung, and quiver rested behind her. There was no sign of a firearm, but from the easy assurance with which she knelt at his fire, comfortable turning her back to him, he suspected she would not need one to be dangerous.

  Despite her attire, she wasn't a Rider; no Rider would use another's fire without first gaining permission, no matter how feverish he might have been. She wasn't native either, from the look of her; dark hair curling in wisps around her ears and neck, visible skin rose-tinted and slightly burnt from the sun.

  "You going to rob me?"

  "You have anything worth taking?"

  "Not particularly, no."

  "Then I'll just use your fire and be on my way," she said.

  Gabriel considered his options, found them limited, and lay back down again, pulling the blanket back over his shoulder. "Wake me before you go," he said, and closed his eyes again, the tree a reassuring shadow over him.

  He did not quite sleep but dozed peacefully and without dreams until he felt the harp sting of pebbles glancing off his body. He started, his hand reaching for his blade even as he struggled to his feet.

  "Whoa, whoa." She held up her hands, dropping the remaining pebbles back to the ground. "Easy there, Rider. I'm on my way now."

  Despite her earlier words, he cast a glance at his pack, still leaning against the tree, but it looked undisturbed.

  "I told you I wouldn't." She sounded almost hurt that he'd doubted her.

  "You're a bandit," he said. "I'd be a fool to assume you didn't at least look."

  She grinned at that, and her face went sharp as a fox. "Oh, I did. You were right, you've nothing particularly worth stealing. Except maybe your horse, but I thought trying that might not be worth the blood."

  Steady would not have gone gently, she was right in that.

  He glanced at the sky, gauging from the sun's light that it was just past mid-day. He tested his body, felt a lingering dizziness that told him likely should sit down again before he fell. He shifted closer to the fire and folded his legs under him in what he hoped was a graceful collapse.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Why do you care?"

  He shrugged, sliding his knife out of its sheath at his thigh and using the tip of it to poke at the fire. She'd banked it, but warmth still rose from the glowing embers. "Always good to know what's up ahead." Bandits rarely ran alone; if she was heading to a nearby camp, he wanted to make sure to go the other direction.

  "Even less ahead than there was behind. Not even the Tua spend time out here they don't have to. Too many ghosts."

  Tua. He was in Tua lands. Gabriel filed that information in a corner of his mind before flicking a quick look around, as though expecting the uneasy dead to appear at the fire. "Haints?"

  She pursed her lips, eyes narrowing. "Ghosts, haunts, spirits of the dead, it's all much the same, innit?"

  No. It decidedly wasn't. And much depended on whose ghosts they were. But he'd no desire to argue with a bandit, however polite she'd been so far. Instead he gave her a tight, bright smile, showing all of his teeth. "Then I'll be sure not to linger, thank you."

  He waited until the bandit had gone on her way and then waited a little while longer, knife resting at his knee until he was reasonably certain she had not brought friends back around with her. He occasionally checked the silver set into his knife and belt buckle for tarnish, but there was no indication of the metal blackening any since he'd last polished them, the visible sign that power was gathering around him.

  That did not mean something did not lurk just beyond notice, however. Magicians and whatnot, the pooling of power at a crossroads? Silver could be trusted on those things. The lurking of things of power, such as spirit animals or haints? Less certain, he'd learned that the hard way.

  And if Graciendo had been keeping them at bay, that protection had clearly ended.

  Gabriel glanced up at the tree again, wondering if it was the reason he remained unmolested. Better not to trust it. Better not to trust anything save himself.

  Reaching over, he pulled his pack to him and removed the small leather sack of coins, pouring them out on a nearby flat rock. Hilts and buckles were well and fine, but coins were of purer stuff. If anything stronger than a dust-devil stirred nearby, he'd know.

  Reassured, he moved to the fire to start his own breakfast. The bandit had finished her coffee, but left a pan—his own pan, he noted with dry amusement—to the side of the fire, bits of cooked meat resting in it.

  "I'd be a poor host, to refuse a guest-price," he told Steady, who had wandered a little closer now that the stranger was gone, dropping his head and twitching his tail in what passed for an equine slouch. Gabriel ate the meal, and let the fire die down, placing the new coals
tone into the stone circle instead and pressing down on it just enough to bring up a gentle warmth as the afternoon faded away.

  Every now and again he stirred the handful of silver, checking for tarnish.

  He should be moving on. Even if she had been lying about this place being haunted, even if the tree was protecting him, there was no source of fresh water once the canteen ran out, and little grazing for Steady. His earlier dizziness was nearly gone. One more night, and then they would ride.

  "If there are haints here," he said, stirring the coins again with one finger, "you should know I've seen worse than you before, and not blinked."

  A haint was restless, but not vicious, not without cause. And he'd had no cause in any deaths here, nor had he killed anything recently. They'd no reason to attack him.

  Ghosts, on the other hand... you could never tell with ghosts.

  He turned to look at the tree, rising up against the afternoon sky, reddish winter sunlight shining through its bare branches. A spirit-snake, and a world-tree. When he'd ridden with the Devil's Hand, he might have expected some such thing to happen on any given third day. Isobel had reached deeper into the bones than he'd thought possible, become as much one with the Territory as human flesh could, and not lose her way. The tree would have made sense, had she been there.

  Nothing makes sense. Another memory: Graciendo sitting crosslegged on his cot, in the cottage half-hidden in the high foothills of the Mother's Knife. You tell yourself it does, you look for patterns and make up stories. But there's no sense to it at all.

  After the well-meant brutality of Old Woman Who Never Dies, Graciendo's almost nonchalant words had been soothing, calming. But in the years since, he'd come to realize that taking life advice from a being as old as Graciendo likely was had its own flaws. "Keep your distance from civilization." Graciendo had said that, more than once. Had told him that the only way to stay clear of the Territory's snares was to be as small and insignificant on its flanks as a fly, neither biting nor stinging.

  And it had worked, until Gabriel had been fool enough to ride into Flood, and offer his hand to a young girl with an interesting face.

  Graciendo had not wanted anything to do with Isobel, had refused them shelter, when Gabriel brought them 'round. Admittedly, the presence of the magician Farron Easterly had influenced that, but the curl of Old Bear's lip had been for Isobel herself—or, more accurately, for her master.

  Graciendo said he’d healed, but all Gabriel could feel was a yawning, aching emptiness. Not worse than what had driven him before, but he was no longer half-mad. Or perhaps he was all mad, now. That would explain much.

  "What would Isobel do," Gabriel wondered out loud, surprised at how rough and crackling his voice sounded.

  Isobel would pack up the gifts given to her, and ride on.

  Ride where, was the question. Where, and to what?

  He couldn’t go back.

  He looked back at the tree, watching as the sunlight cast a shadow from it, like a grotesquely elongated sun dial. Driven by some resonant instinct, he reached for the sensation of water below ground, thinking to trace them to the tree’s root, get some sense of it that way. But he'd no sooner begun than he stopped with an almost physical jolt, dry nausea surging in his throat, every gut nerve he owned snapping like dry wood in a storm.

  If he touched the tree, it would find him.

  His body recoiled in reaction, and he dropped to his knees, panting heavily. "Mother of a backward mule!"

  His left hand reached for his knife, fingers of his right hand twitching in tradesign gestures he'd not used since he was a child, to deter malign intent.

  For a moment, just a moment, he was that boy again, half-drowned and terrified, broken and alone, starting at every touch of power, hiding from the medicine in his own bones.

  Slowly, he unclenched his fingers, pulled his hand away from the knife. His breathing slowed, although his heart still beat too quickly for comfort, and his skin was soaked in cold, stinking sweat.

  The tree did not move, the branches still, the faint budding knobs a pale, unassuming green.

  There was no reason to be afraid. For years, the River had left him alone, had waited until he came close enough to reach out again, and now he was far away, and riding further. The echoes of the Mudwater had faded. The most he might find here would be smaller tributaries, ones that had no awareness of him, no awareness of anything save themselves. There should be no threat, at least. But Gabriel had learned to trust his instincts, had learned to protect himself.

  The River would ignore him? Then he would ignore it, as well. It, and the devil, and Graciendo, too, if the old bear wasn’t going to be useful.

  "Not as though folk don't muddle along perfectly well without the Touch," he told Steady, laying the gift—blanket on top of his bedroll and packing it up into its usual place on the saddle. "I've gotten lazy, relying on it."

  The horse snorted at him, unimpressed.

  He slept deeply, with no dreams, and the next morning, as he’d expected, he felt confident in riding on.

  It took Gabriel a moment to determine the best way to add the new pack, which lacked the familiar straps, to the saddle as well, but he was able to rig it using a spare lash of leather to make sure it hung securely. Hopefully not even Steady's ground-eating gallop would dislodge it, and hopefully they would have no need of galloping.

  The beast in question, unused to a rider who fumbled so much with their gear, craned its neck to watch what he was doing. Gabriel kept one eye on the whiskered muzzle and square, blunt teeth. Unlike the mule, Steady was not prone to nipping at unprotected backsides, but Gabriel knew better than to assume, or to think that his horse did not have a sense of humor that occasionally showed itself in painful ways.

  "There. All set and tidy."

  After gathering up the coins and dropping them into his pocket, he settled his hat firmly on his head and took another moment to survey the campsite. The tree, standing tall in the midst of the drylands, would doubtless draw the attention of any travelers to follow, so he left the stones of the fire circle as they were rather than breaking it down. For the rest, only the piled-over hole where he'd relieved himself and the flattened earth where his bedroll had been, remained as evidence that anyone had been there, much less lingered for several days.

  If this place was haunted, as the bandit had claimed, the haints did not seem to have minded his presence. But still, it would only be good caution to acknowledge his unintended guest-debt.

  Reaching into his pocket, his fingers found the smoothed-over edges of a quarter-coin and pulled it out. Placing it back on the smoothed stone, he made the tradesign for 'thank you,' and then 'let us be done.'

  The wind remained calm, the ground still, no indication that anything within miles was paying attention. With a shrug, Gabriel swung up into the saddle, pausing a moment to allow a faint dizziness to pass. Years of habit and training made him press down into the saddle, leg tightening around Steady's bulk, even as he settled himself into the stirrups.

  His stomach was tight against his spine, his bladder empty as the landscape, and the remnants of the fever yet drifted around his ears, but he still felt better on horseback than he had sitting on the ground.

  And then there was no more reason to delay. He scanned the area around him and then with a shrug, laid the reins against Steady's neck, put the sun to his forehead, and headed west again.

  passim

  Before Man shaped mud in his own image, before any creatures burrowed, crawled, or flew, before demon or spirit struck mischief in the world, there was bone, and there was wind, and there was water. And they did not speak to one another, for what purpose was there in that?

  That is where the story began. In the not-speaking, in the not-touching. In the emptiness between.

  That is where the story always begins. When the pieces touch, and the speaking begins.

  5

  Gabriel had forgotten how annoying demons were. Annoying, irr
itating, obnoxious, plaguey…. He was running out of words to describe it, but the demon kept talking.

  "Worthless, useless human. Bits of bone and piss, dusty dust drifting down into the road to be ridden on, peed on, forgotten."

  The demon had shown up a few hours after he’d broken camp and ridden out, appearing and then disappearing again like a ghost-cat stalking it prey, its dark-mottled skin blending nearly perfectly with the rocks and cacti every time Gabriel tried to get a clear glimpse of it, only the swirl of colors when it moved giving it away. The chanting had only started an hour or so back, but already, Gabriel was heartily tired of it.

  "Better dust than a madcake of mud like you," he shot back, then cursed himself again for even acknowledging the thing. Demon were annoyances, problematic creatures more intelligent than they seemed, but less a threat to the wary traveler than they wished. That was not to say that they weren't dangerous, but a little caution cut the risk significantly. There might be others, waiting for Gabriel to be caught distracted, but he doubted it. Demons rarely clumped together, more likely to attack each other than to conspire. And this one seemed determined to announce its presence every step of the way, eliminating any possible sneak attack.

  Unless it meant to kill him through sheer vexation, always a possibility.

  "Pisswater and bone-meal. These roads are ground from the bones of your kind," the demon sneered, finally varying its chant. Gabriel rolled his eyes, using the kerchief looped around his neck to wipe sweat off his face.

  "Yeah, that's why we call 'em the Dust Roads," he said in return, injecting just the right amount of bored lecturer into his tone. The nickname had come from Riders originally, a wry acknowledgment of their eventual fate; did the demon think its words were somehow startling or discouraging?

  "I should have gone toward the bandit’s camp," he muttered, shoving a hand through his sweat-sticky hair before replacing his hat. "At least they’d have whisky to go with the taunting."