For an instant he seemed to see (in his imagination?) a grim and terrible figure dressed in black, with a black cowl that came down about a bony face that was merciless. The figure and the face struck terror into him. His legs were watery and bending; his body drooped and his brain became a blob of shaking jelly. His life, all his life, everything that he had ever been or seen or done, spilled out of him, and although it was out of him, he could feel sticky fingers with unclean fingernails plucking at it busily, sorting it out, probing it, examining it, judging it and then balling it all together in a scrawny, bony fist and stuffing it back into him again.
He stumbled forward on jerky legs that still seemed watery, and only by the greatest effort kept himself from falling. Meg was beside him, holding him and helping him, and in that moment his heart went out to her—this marvelous old hag who had trod uncomplainingly all the weary miles that had led them to this place.
"Straight ahead, laddie boy," she said. "The way is open now. Just a little farther."
Through bleary eyes he saw ahead of him an opening, a tunnel with light at its other end, not just a little way, as she had said, but some distance off. He staggered on, with Meg close beside him, and although he did not look back to see-fearful that, looking back, he would lose the way—he knew that the others were coming on behind him.
Time stretched out, or seemed to stretch out, and then the tunnel's mouth was just ahead of him. With a final effort he lurched through it and saw ahead of him a rising slope of ground that went up and never seemed to stop, ground covered with the beautiful tawniness of sun-dried grass, broken by rocky ledges thrusting from the slope, dotted by clumps of bushes and here and there a tree.
Behind him Rollo said, "We made it, boss. We are finally here. We are on Thunder Butte."
A short distance up the slope, they found a pool of water in a rock basin fed by a stream that barely trickled down a deep gully, with misshapen, wind-tortured cedars forming a halfhearted windbreak to the west. Here they built a meager fire of dead branches broken off the cedar trees, and broiled steaks cut off a haunch of venison that was on the point of becoming high.
They were up the slope far enough that they could see over the ring of the Trees to the plains beyond. There, just over the tip of the Trees, could be seen the toy like figures of the wardens. Their horses were bunched off to one side and the five wardens stood in line, facing toward the butte. At times they would fling their arms up in unison, and at other times, when the wind died down momentarily, those around the fire could hear their shrill keening.
Meg studied them through the glasses. "it's some sort of
lament," she said. "Rigid posturing, then a little dance step or two, then they throw up their arms and howl."
Ezra nodded gravely. "They are devoted but misguided men," he said.
Cushing growled at him. "How the hell do you know? You are right, of course, but tell me how you know. I don't mind telling you that I have a belly full of your posturing, which is as bad as anything the wardens may be doing."
"You do me wrong," said Ezra. "I was the one who got us through the Trees. I spoke to them and they opened a way for us; then I spoke to them again and they let us out."
"That's your version," said Cushing. "Mine is that Meg got us in, then got us out again. All you did was mumble."
"Laddie boy," said Meg, "let's not quarrel among ourselves It doesn't really matter who got us through the Trees. The important thing is they did let us through."
Elayne looked at Cushing and for once her eyes had no blankness in them. They were cold with hatred. "You have never liked us," she said. "You have patronized us, made fun of us. I'm sorry that we joined you.
"Now, now, my pet," said Ezra, "we all are under tension, but the tension now is gone, or should be. I'll admit that I may have been over-clowning to a small degree, although I swear to you that my belief in my own ability has not faded; that I believe, as always, that I can talk with plants. I did talk with the Trees; I swear I talked with them and they talked to me. In a different way from the way any plant has ever talked with me before. A sharper conversation, not all of which I understood, a great part of which I did not understand. They talked of concepts that I have never heard before, and though I knew they were new and important, I could grasp but the very edges of them. They looked deep inside of me and let me look, for a little distance, into them. It was as if they were examining me—not my body but my soul—and offered me a chance to do the same with them. But I did not know how to go about it; even with them trying to show me, I did not know the way to go about it."
"Space is an illusion," said Elayne, speaking in a precise textbook voice, as if she were speaking not to them, nor indeed to anyone, but was merely reciting something that she knew or had newly learned, speaking as if it were a litany. "Space is an illusion, and time as well. There is no such factor as either time or space. We have been blinded by our own cleverness, blinded by false perceptions of those qualities that we term eternity and infinity. There is another factor that explains it all, and once this universal factor is recognized, everything grows simple. There is no longer any mystery, no longer any wonder, no longer any doubt; for the simplicity of it all lies before us—the simplicity… the simplicity… the simplicity.
Her voice ran down on the single word and she lapsed into silence. She sat staring out beyond the campfire circle, her hands folded in her lap, her face again assuming the look of horrifying emptiness and terrible innocence.
The rest of them sat silent, stricken, and from somewhere a chill came off the slope of ground above them and held them motionless with an uncomprehending dread.
Cushing shook himself, asked in a strained voice, "What was that all about?"
Ezra made a motion of resignation. "I don't know. She has never done a thing like that before."
"Poor child," said Meg.
Ezra spoke angrily. "I've told you before, I tell you now:
never pity her; rather, it is she who should pity us. Meg said, "No pity was intended."
"There are more wardens out there," said Rollo. "A new band of them just showed up. Six or seven, this time. And from
far to the east there seems to be others coming in. A great dust cloud, but I can see no more.
"It was a shame about the wardens," said Meg. "We messed them up after all their years of watching. All those generations and no one had ever got through."
"Perhaps there has never been anyone before who wanted to," said Rollo.
"That may be true," said Meg. "No one who wanted to get through as badly as we wanted to. No one with a purpose.
"If it hadn't been for the bear," said Rollo, "we might not have made it, either. The bear provided a distraction. And they lost their horses. They were naked and defenseless without the horses."
"The bear shook them up," said Ezra. "No man in his right mind goes against a bear with nothing but a spear."
"I'm not a man," said Rollo, reasonably, "and I was not alone. Cushing put some arrows in the beast and even Andy came in on the kill."
"My arrows did nothing," said Cushing. "They only irritated him."
He rose from where he was sitting and went up the slope, climbing until the campfire was no more than a small red eye glowing in the dusk. He found a small rock-ledge that cropped out from the slope, and sat upon it. The dusk was deepening into night. The Trees were a hump of blackness and out beyond them what must have been the campfires of the wardens flickered on and off, sometimes visible, sometimes not.