by Lionel Fenn
Though he doubted seriously such a search would succeed.
An hour later he suspected he had made a mistake.
Though he followed as best he could the invisible trail she had been using, keeping the sun at his back and trying to walk a reasonably straight line, he realized that there were a number of rather vital things she hadn't told him about her world, among a great number of other things. Like how to distinguish between the edible and the poisonous plants and berries he saw occasionally, like how to find water because his throat was filling rapidly with sand every time he took a breath, and like what to do once he got where he was going.
He rested more frequently than he knew was necessary.
He spent as much time looking up and behind him as he did ahead.
And nothing he did, from counting the trees to counting his footsteps, could keep him from remembering the screams he had heard in his dream. Each time they returned they were more horrifying; each time they returned he was less able to tell if they were screams of anger or fear; they were screams, and they forced his expression into a perpetual wince of guilt—if he had awakened, if he had been more alert, if he had driven himself on as she had wanted...
Too many ifs.
Too many things he did not understand.
And too often, in spite of the oddness of his surroundings, he found himself thinking he was only hiking through some little used national park in some remote western state. Any minute now he was going to come across a ranger who would caution him about forest fires and not feeding the bears; or he would stumble upon a twenty-foot camper filled with midwestern tourists roughing it in the wilderness as they watched their portable televisions, listened to their portable radios and tape decks, and cooked their canned food on portable gas ranges. They would offer him a beer, he'd accept with a smile, and they would trade harrowing stories of their adventures, how the traffic was getting worse every year, how the park fees were unpatriotically going up until they could scarcely afford them, and how it was getting increasingly difficult to find a place truly cut off from civilization so that they could get back to nature and feel the atavistic pull of the land their ancestors had settled the century before.
Then he'd remember the screams.
And he'd take a close look at the trees and remember the lamps, the ekklers, and the face of the black beast.
He played word and history games in an effort to test the reach of his sanity and decided that he was too crazy to know if he was crazy or not.
When the sun was almost directly overhead, he stopped at each bush to test their leaves, pinching them in hopes of getting a dab of moisture onto his tongue. He figured that if he had a meadow filled with them, he just might be able to get a mouthful, if he were lucky.
Then, suddenly, he stopped.
He looked at the brush to his right, to his left, and realized that the trees were now much farther apart and the underbrush was growing thicker, forming itself into red- and cobalt-blossomed hedgerows that almost too patly defined paths for him to follow. Though the forest continued, he could see by looking only slightly up that the mountains were much nearer and much higher than he'd estimated. The slopes, what glimpses of them he could get, were not as precipitous and were streaked with green and what may have been running water—streams or small rivers spilling out of creeks midway toward the peaks.
By midday, he remembered Glorian saying by midday they were supposed to be where they were going. Wherever that was.
He sat crossed-legged where he stood and stared at the winding path ahead. Being a somewhat reluctant tourist in this place, he decided he would have to have some sort of plan, some way of greeting these others—if others there were—so that they didn't think he was the one who had... The word wouldn't come. He substituted "lost" instead and hoped they would understand that he was new at this game, that he was less a babe in the woods than a babe in someone's arms, and sooner or later, and preferably the former, he was going to need a patient tutor who bordered on the genius for dealing with strangers.
A plan, then.
But he couldn't think of one.
It did cross his mind to return to the meadow, wait until dawn, and then cross in a hurry. When he reached the other side, he might be able to figure out how to locate the Bridge and get back to his own house. Explaining the damage to the kitchen and pantry would be a minor consideration when he had someone in to fix them—the fact that he would be there and not here would be sufficient incentive to lie through his teeth.
On the other hand, there was Glorian.
Or rather, there wasn't Glorian. And he finally decided that if the people she knew were as open-minded as she had been about his presence, he would have a much better chance not turning back. A decision that did not ease his mind a whit but at least severed another option.
He sat until the sun nearly shone directly in his face, and he couldn't think of a damned thing to do finally but get up, stretch, shift the pack to a more comfortable position, and move on. Sitting wasn't getting him anything but a damp rump, and when he heard the first faint cries of ekklers swooping above the trees, he decided that the best plan was to get where he was going before they got him, too.
Maybe, he thought, he would be able to get some food. His stomach was embarrassingly loud, and the hunger had become close to a physical ache. He didn't fear starving to death, but when he stumbled over nothing and the weight of the pack almost dumped him on his face, he worried. As the hedgerows grew taller, then, he was more inclined to examine them more closely and saw, nestled in the center of the cobalt-and-red blossoms, clutches of berries the size of his thumbnail; they were round, though not perfectly so, and of a deep purple he imagined would leave a stain like blueberry juice. They also looked inviting.
His step slowed.
He glanced behind him, glanced ahead, and licked his lips. The leaves surrounding the flowers were deeply serrated and prickly, but a quick snatch had a bloom in his hand without more than a small scratch on a knuckle. He held it close to his face, sniffed, admired the somewhat pungent perfume for almost a full second before plucking the berry from its stem and popping it into his mouth.
It was sweet, its juice thick, its meat pulpy. He held it on his tongue, waiting for the stabs of poisonous agony to course through his system and leave him dead where he stood; when it didn't happen, he swallowed it with a loud gulp and froze. Waiting again. Looking heavenward in preparation for a swift final confession just in case. When still nothing happened, he narrowed one eye and took another. The worst he could feel was his stomach demanding that he stop sending such paltry amounts down when, as if he didn't know, it was starving.
"Well," he said, pleased with himself, and silently blessing the land for bringing some luck at last; and he renewed his walking, reaching out to pluck a berry, to stuff a berry, to admire the way the hedgerow thickened until, after several miles, it was nearly impenetrable.
Then the path, the brush, and the forest ended.
He halted and slowly brought the pack off his shoulders to dangle from one hand.
Ahead, perhaps two or three days' walk at the rate he was going, was the slope of the nearest mountain, gentle, covered with grass and what appeared to be grazing animals moving across it. A scattering of trees unlike those he had just passed under. A line of low, intensely green brush that marked the course of a stream. A narrow band of deep red, which, when he stared at it long enough, he decided might well be a road that left the valley floor and climbed in a gentle switchback toward a notch in the mountain's side, just to the east.
And directly in front of him, a village.
He corrected himself. It was much too small to be a village, more like a compound without walls. The path resumed after a hundred yards of low grass that encircled the colony like a wind-rippled moat, passing between a row of grey-stone, two-story houses whose slate or stone roofs were only slightly peaked. There were, as best he could count, four on either side, the windows he could see paned
in glass and circular, the walls untouched by paint and weathered smooth. A low stone wall surrounded each one, and though he could see nothing in any of the yards, he could hear the sounds of bleating and barking.
People, he thought with a grin; my god, there are people.
Without regard for the niceties of approach, he broke into a run across the grass, dragging the pack at his side and readying himself for a friendly wave as soon as the first man or woman showed a face to him.
He managed only twenty yards before the ground opened up and he plunged flailing into a pit.
CHAPTER SEVEN
His first reaction as he fell windmilling and kicking was one of extreme disappointment; his second was one of only slightly less pain when he slammed shoulder first into the pit's far wall and rebounded to its bottom, striking the other shoulder just as hard. His elbow felt split in half as it filled his arm with a tracing of fire. The pack landed on his right leg. A clot of dirt broke across the small of his back. A shower of dirt and dust greyed his hair and got into his mouth. He spat and rolled to his knees, shook his head to clear it, and looked up.
"I'll be damned," he said.
The hole was easily six feet deep and twice that on a side; a trap, he imagined as he pushed himself shakily to his feet, for something as large as... not the black beast by any means, but perhaps a smaller cousin, or a band of stupid marauders. A cursory look around, however, showed him no scattering of bones, no fragments of rotted clothing, no feathers or fur that would vindicate his theory. Maybe, he thought, the people who dug it clean it out every night.
Noting that the top of his head was not two inches from ground level, he raised himself up on his toes, his hands gripping the edge.
There was no one in sight, no alarm given, no guard to see that unknowing strangers didn't fall into the trap. The distant bleating and barking continued. The sun was already teasing the top of the mountain. He glanced around the pit, grunted, and fetched his pack, threw it out, and hauled himself out behind it. After dusting off his shirt and jeans, and stretching his legs to be sure they still worked, he tried to imagine, if there was no one immediately on hand to render the trapped unconscious or dead, what possible use it might have. A dog could jump out of it. So could a determined rabbit.
He took another dozen steps and fell into another one.
"There's got to be a trick to this," he muttered as he pulled himself and his pack out a second time, but nothing on the grass betrayed what he knew had to be the next line of defense. Yet he couldn't keep walking and falling like this, or one of these times he was going to break a leg; then he wouldn't be able to get out, and he would have to spend the night in one.
Oh, he thought.
Immediately, he lowered himself by stages to his hands and knees, hooked the pack around one ankle, and began a cautious, probing advance, slanting to his right and glaring at the ground to find seams, the telltale rims, the slightly discolored blades that would keep him from falling again.
When he found the next one, only his arm dropped, the ground coming up to give him a fair clip to the chin that stunned him for several seconds and made him check his tongue to be sure he still had it. A test for the pit's perimeter, and he moved on, more confident but no more rapidly—he didn't want to take the chance. A fourth pit was discovered, and a fifth he nearly tumbled into on his own when he heard a faint skreeing over the forest that spun him around in a panic. The hunting ekklers were out again, and though he was sorely tempted to leap to his feet and run like hell, he only looked up, saw them flocking above the trees, apparently not able or willing to leave their meadow sanctuary. Being thankful for small favors, then, he continued crawling until he had reached the path's smooth cobbles again.
He stood.
He waited.
He didn't expect a band, but he couldn't credit no one having heard him at all. A call brought no response from any of the eight doors or any of the sixteen windows; it did, however, shut the bleating and barking up.
He sniffed, rubbed at his neck thoughtfully, and checked the houses again before moving. Nothing had changed. They were well kept, clean, upper and lower stories without shop signs or family designations of any kind, and the stone walls with only a single break for entry were neither crumbling nor broken. In all, the hamlet could have been just completed for all the indications of habitation it gave.
A self-consciously casual stroll to the last pair in line brought him no attention; a faster stroll back showed him his shadow arrowing toward the forest, and he realized with a start that the sun had already drifted behind the range and, when he checked, the flock or herd was gone from the pastureland. If it was a flock or a herd. And if all that grass was only pasture and not another obstacle course.
A yell this time produced no more reaction than his first call, and he decided it was time he stopped thinking about the right thing to do and act on instinct instead—unfortunately, a race for home was out of the question, so he walked through the gap-gate of the first house on his right and knocked on the thick, banded door. When there was no answer he reached for the knob and his fingers closed around air, reached for a latch and found nothing. Trusting sorts, he thought, and backed away to peer up at the windows, the roof, around him again before he returned to the door. Another knock for form, and he pushed. The door swung open noiselessly, and only after he had scanned the street and the other buildings did he step inside.
—|—
There was no one home.
There may never have been anyone at home.
The room he walked into was large, its walls done in soft white, its ceiling the same, the floors wood and polished, and not a stick of furniture or a single framed painting caught his eye anywhere.
There were two narrow doors side by side in the back wall. He chose one and found a switchback staircase that led him to the second floor, three more large rooms, and not a thing else. The second door below led him down a short hall off of which he found four other rooms, all the same though smaller than the first. A back entrance showed him an ill-tended band of grass, the wall again, and to the north low hills he had not seen before. This place, then—the meadow, the forest, the deserted hamlet—was in a bowl valley, and for some reason the thought was not comforting at all.
It didn't occur to him until he returned disquieted to the front that he had seen neither kitchen nor bath anywhere, nor anything that might lead him down to a cellar or up into an attic. He didn't much care for the way his bootheels sounded on the floor, or the way his breathing seemed magnified, ragged, and echoed; the curtainless round windows were covered with a light dust, but the panes weren't broken, nor was the glass rippled with age, and when he caught his reflection in one, and realized who it was, he also didn't like the way he seemed more like a ghost than a human being looking for help.
The house across the way was the same, though the floorplan was slightly different.
He searched every building, and every building gave him the same empty answer.
By the time he had reached the last one and was sitting on the wall outside the front door, he guessed that he wasn't going to have any better luck here. No plumbing, no refrigeration, no facilities for internal or external relief. Dollhouses, he thought with a shudder and a quick look to the sky for the giant child who might soon come tramping over the mountain to take her toys home; they're like dollhouses no one wants to play with.
Dollhouses, or a ghost town.
Twilight hazed the air; the eastern range turned to blood.
He could see more clearly here that the meadow, the forest, and the colony were in a bowl-like valley, and the northern and southern arms of the two ranges were considerably lower than those to his right and left. Empty; large, verdant, and empty. A pricking at the base of his spine. He glanced eastward and knew, as he had before, that something was there on those blood-red slopes. Something was there, knew he was here, and was watching.
Glorian, he thought, this isn't fair at all.
He found himself searching the sky for contrails and, as the stars began to appear when twilight turned to dusk, familiar constellations. He didn't know many back home, only a handful at best, but what he saw up there made no sense. The moon, when it finally appeared in an unpleasantly pale form, seemed like the one he was used to, but he couldn't be sure.
So what else is new? he thought, and spun himself off the wall into the yard, where he picked up his pack and went inside the last house.
It was the same, no surprises, but it was out of the night's chill and it didn't take him long to find a way to use the clothing he had brought to make an unreasonable facsimile of a bed and lie down, facing a front window, hands cupped behind his head.
He decided as he watched the track of the moon that, first thing in the morning, he would see if he could uncover whatever it was that Glorian had intended to do after she brought him here; then, if that failed, he would head on toward the slope to see if he had really seen grazing animals there, or if those tiny moving spots were only perverse tricks of the mind. If they did exist, and if they weren't undomesticated, there would probably be someone around to watch them, and that someone might be inclined to give him a direction or two. Assuming he didn't run into anything else first.
Maybe, he thought, sitting up suddenly with eyes wide, he ought to first do something about a weapon. He hadn't the slightest idea how to use a sword or a gun except in the most theoretical manner, and he supposed there wasn't going to be much use for a good blindside tackle now and then. What he would have to do, then, is find himself something equivalent to a baseball bat; it had worked before, and it might just work again. It was, on any slate you cared to write, better than his bare hands, and a damned sight more comforting.
