“That is suddenly the least of my concerns,” Yama said.
They found a narrow path at the far end of the long lawn. It wound along the foot of a bluff from which a cluster of square, white, windowless buildings hung, like the cells of a wasp nest. Far below, the hell-hound stopped for a full minute, burning in the midst of a steep field of red corn, and then suddenly moved forward at a steady pace, cutting across the field in a straight line toward them.
They hurried on, passing between the legs of a skeletal metal tower clad in a living cloak of green vines. The path angled through a thicket of bamboo, and then a little village was below, flat-roofed houses of wicker and daub crowded around a central square. Threads of smoke rose into the gray sky from several of the houses. A cock crowed in anticipation of the rising sun.
Eliphas stopped and bent over and clasped his knees.
For a while all he could do was breathe hard. Yama went back to the beginning of the bamboo thicket to look for the hell-hound, then returned to Eliphas, who slowly unbent and said, “We must go through the village. If the hell-hound follows, the villagers will try and stop it.”
“Will they be better armed than the library guards?”
Eliphas shook his head. Sweat beaded his smooth black skin. He dabbed at his brow with the back of his hand and said wearily, “They are husbandmen who till the fields on this part of the Palace roof. They will have axes and scythes, perhaps a few muskets. They will not be able to stop it, but they might slow it down so we can make our escape.”
“No, I will not risk their lives. We cannot wait here, Eliphas. Remember that the hell-hound does not rest.”
Eliphas waved a hand in front of his face, as if Yama’s words were flies that could be brushed away. “A moment, a moment more, and I will be able to go on. Listen, brother. The quickest way to the nearest gate will take us through the village. The husbandmen take their produce to the gates. That’s where they sell it to merchants from the day markets. Don’t spare a thought for them. They are indigens whose ancestors colonized the ruined parts of the Palace ten thousand years ago. They are animals, brother, of no more importance than the sacred monkeys of the outer temples. Less so, in fact, since priests and sacerdotes care for the monkeys that live in their monasteries and temples, but no one cares for the husbandmen. They are tolerated only because they supply the day markets with fresh produce. We’ll go through their village, eh? It will delay the hell-hound a little.”
Yama remembered the fisherman, Caphis, who had saved his life after he had escaped from Dr. Dismas and the young warlord, Enobarbus. He said, “Even if the indigenous peoples cannot transcend their animal origins, still they are something more than animals, I think. I will not risk their lives to save mine.” He pointed to the terraced rice paddies that stepped away below the next bluff.
“There is a path that descends beside those fields. We can follow it. Eliphas, if you wish to, leave me now. Go through the village. The hell-hound will not follow you.”
“I made a bargain,” the old man said. “Maybe a bad one, but it might still pay off. Lead on, brother, although I fear your scruples will help the villagers more than they will help us.”
The sun had begun to rise above the distant mountains when Yama and Eliphas reached the steep ladder of steps beside the terraced rice fields. The narrow steps were worn by the tread of a thousand generations of husbandmen, and slippery with seepage from the flooded paddies. Ferns grew in cracks between the steps, and bright green mosses made the way more slippery still.
Despite their fearful haste, Yama paused at a wayside shrine. Take this burden from me, he prayed, as he had prayed so often before, meaning, make me ordinary, make me no more than other men. Save me from myself.
The rice paddies were narrow and long, curved to follow the contour of the hillside and dammed with stout ramparts of compacted earth wide enough for two water buffalo to walk abreast. Freshly planted seedlings made a haze of green over the calm brown water that flooded them; the ripe smell of ordure reminded Yama of the flooded fields around Aeolis; at another time it would have eased his heart.
When he suggested that the rice paddies might have been here before the Palace had been built, Eliphas laughed and said that it was impossible. “Even now, we step on the roof of the Palace itself. The indigens who tend the fields or hunt the wild animals here are like the birds or mice which colonize the older habitations of man. It would have meant nothing to have gone through the village, brother.”
“It would have meant something to me.”
After they had descended a while in silence, Eliphas said, “This part of the Palace was ruined in the last war of the Age of Insurrection, and has never been properly rebuilt. If you were to dig deep enough, you would find rock fused like glass, and then rubble, and then rooms and corridors wrecked and abandoned ten thousand years ago. Because this side of the Palace faces the Rim Mountains, and is in sunlight for most of the day, it is favored for cultivation.”
Eliphas laid one hand on the small of his back. “I am sorry, brother, but I must rest again. Only for a moment.”
Each time Eliphas stopped to catch his breath, Yama anxiously looked back at the path they had taken, but by good fortune they managed to reach the bottom of the long ladder of steps before the hell-hound finally appeared.
White cockatoos rose into the blue sky, screeching in alarm. A moment later the hell-hound burst out of the thicket of bamboo above the terraced rice paddies. Like a whirlwind or dust devil, it threw clouds of dust and scraps of foliage into the air as it moved forward. It seemed just as bright in daylight as at night, like a bit of sky fallen to earth and roughly shaped into a tall, skeletal man. It started toward the village, but quickly returned to the path, and came on steadily.
Yama and Eliphas ran down a dusty track between the steep bank of the bottommost rice paddy and the margin of a sloping field of melon vines. They splashed across a stream and ran through a belt of eucalyptus trees, scattering a herd of small black pigs, and ran on until Eliphas tripped and fell headlong in the dust.
At first Eliphas could not get up, and when Yama finally hauled him to his feet he said that he could not run anymore. They were on a long downward slope with tall grass on either side of the path. A chorus of crickets was beginning to whistle, woken by the early-morning warmth.
“Leave me,” Eliphas said. He was trembling and his silver eyes were half-closed. He could not get his breath.
“Leave me, brother, and save yourself. I will find you again, if we both live.”
The slender eucalyptus trees at the top of the slope stirred and shook as if caught in a localized gale. A horrible squealing went up and black pigs pelted out of the trees. The hell-hound appeared behind them, blazing like a piece of the sun caught in blue glass. It seemed to have grown taller and thinner, as if the glass, melting, was being pulled apart by its own weight. Veils of dust and leaves whirled up around it. At first it seemed confused by the pigs and made short, swift dashes after one or another of them. Most of the pigs scattered into the tall grass, but a few ran in circles, dazed by the brilliant light, and finally the hell-hound pounced on the smallest. The hapless pig flew up as if it weighed no more than a dead leaf, was dashed to the ground, and lay still. As if excited by this, the hell-hound whirled in wider circles. It swept through the tall dry grasses, which immediately caught fire with a sullen crackling, then steadied and came on down the path toward Yama and Eliphas.