The last roost's window was a mirror, dark and cloudy. Coyote saw himself dimly — a gaunt, handsome man with glittering eyes — and he told himself that he was no less a magnificent sight. He almost did not notice the small black egg that lay in the nesting box, cradled in red velvet, but a sound drew his attention, a scratching click. He looked down and saw that a web of cracks was spreading across the smooth surface of the egg.
A terrible fear clutched at his heart, but it was too late. Now I know why the palace dwellers fled, he thought in that instant. Death was hatching, but slowly enough, here, that they could run away. He looked up at the mirror, and saw an image emerging from the blackness. A tattered, dull-eyed Raven scratched at a fresh grave.
The black egg fell open, and Death swirled out, thick and choking, and took Coyote away for a thousand thousand years.
AND THAT is the story of Coyote and the Chicken House of Death," said Ironhorse. It watched Thinwolf with anxious eyes. Thinwolf stirred. "Well," he said. "That's interesting."
"Did you think so, truly?"
"Yes. Though your story asked more questions than it answered. For example, what was the nature of the bargain the palace dwellers made? With whom did they make it? And why would they incubate death?"
The hulk looked away. "All living things incubate death within themselves."
"I suppose," Thinwolf said. "I suppose. Well, not a bad story, for a beginner. You're a redskin, Ironhorse; who could doubt it?"
The hulk's beautiful eyes glowed, and it smiled, exposing strong steel teeth. "Thank you, John."
Thinwolf nodded, drifted away again on the tides of his coming death.
That night, Thinwolf dreamed the last dream. He paddled a canoe, a graceful and beautiful vessel, made of silvery bark and laced with yellow roots, as light on the water as a thought. The sky was a flawless blue bowl, the sun a blazing jewel, the sea a green mirror. He paddled strongly, and the canoe slid across the sea swiftly, toward a destination that he did not think about, but which he knew would bring him some great reward.
The dream shifted, with the smooth perfection of dreams, so that he looked up at the high walls of a City, unaware that anything had changed. He laid his paddle across his knees. The City turned, or perhaps the current moved him, but the effect was of a great turntable, revolving so as to display some glittering treasure. His heart thumped with excitement, and the walls of the City spun past, until the Gate of Faces came into view. The City stopped spinning, or the current ceased — and all was motionless.
The Gate was closed.
The Gate's facade was glorious. A thousand faces pushed from its golden surface, and Thinwolf knew them all. At the top were many faces he could not put a name to, but he knew them. They lived in the distant halls of his early memory; they were people who had once meant something to him.
Halfway down, the faces were more familiar, and their names tickled at his mouth, so that he wanted to greet them, even though their eyes were blank, looking far away.
Closest to him, at the bottom of the Gate, dipping into the sea with the slow swell, were the faces that he remembered best. His colleagues on Dilvermoon. The flame-haired woman with the sweet breasts. Gray Dove and the others of the People.
At the very bottom was the beautiful face of the hulk, smiling, streaming with the sea's cold water. Out of all of them, only the hulk's eyes were alive. The hulk's eyes, warm with recognition, fixed on Thinwolf, and Thinwolf felt a twinge of sorrow shoot through him, sharp as a knife.
The dream went dark, as though a shade had been drawn across the sun. A cold wind whipped the sea into tumbling white. The Gate made a hideous screeching sound and started to open. Thinwolf would have paddled away, but the dream had frozen him into immobility, locked him into some relentless event. The opening Gate sucked him forward, through the sea's violence. He looked down at the canoe. The silvery bark was going black with mildew; the lacings were fraying; the seams beginning to weep. The paddle withered in his hands and fell into dusty fragments.
He could see nothing but darkness within. He wanted to scream, but he could not. The disintegrating canoe shot through the Gate, and he saw the awful thing within, the thing he feared to see — the back of the Gate, where a thousand headless skeletons hung. The Gate closed behind him. The movement dislodged many of the bones, which rained down on him, shattering the canoe, pushing him beneath the black water. His mouth filled, his lungs filled, and he floated downward, unable even to struggle.
Thinwolf woke, choking, his lungs full of fluid. His breath rattled in his rib cage, trying to get out. I'm dying, he thought, and the emotion that filled him was amazement.
The hulk was there, offering its terminal switch, its head turned away so that Thinwolf saw only the noble profile. On the hulk's sleek side, the transfer palmprint glowed a cool, pure white, beckoning him toward life. Thinwolf reached out, hand shaking.
Before he quite touched the palmprint, his hand paused, then clenched into a stubborn fist. He said his last word.
Some weeks later Coedi Kimpt watched the little squirtboat sweep into the lagoon. It docked with John Thinwolf's longhauler, and a massive figure emerged into the sunlight.
Coedi waved. "You look healthier, John," he shouted.
The hulk looked at him with a stranger's face, and Coedi grew uneasy. "That is you, isn't it? Did you find the Gate of Faces?"
For a moment the hulk gazed at him with wide, alien eyes. When it spoke, Coedi understood that something had gone wrong. "I believe he did," the hulk said.
Then the hulk entered the ship and lifted away.