I stopped. I looked back. The Old Man was a hundred yards behind me. Even Thai Dei was having trouble keeping up.
I looked across the valley. Already I was high enough to look down on all Overlook but the broken tooth that used to be Longshadow's crystal-capped tower. Men were at work inside the fortress, scurrying little dots. They were Lady's guys, many having been with her since the Company's big disaster outside Dejagore. I guess the Captain finally had something in mind for the old stone shack.
Croaker was puffing badly when he caught up. "Man, I'm really out of shape."
"You're the one wants to take this walk. It'll suck that belly right off you." He was not fat. Yet. But he had not been missing any meals lately. "You see the road clearly?" Just to make sure I was not suffering some vision with my eyes open. I am no longer ever quite sure of my place in reality, never unsuspicious that there might not be an objective reality at all. Everything could be dreams inside of dreams, the illusions of souls rolling forever in a Swegah where now and then a few collided and joined in an almost common fantasy.
You notice, nobody ever sees things exactly the same?
"The black path? I don't remember reading anything about that in the Annals."
"We never read anything by anybody who ever actually saw any of this. We've never read anything by anybody who was closer than two generations to this place. By then the Company had a different set of concerns."
Croaker grunted.
To make sure we held this illusion in common I polled everybody. Even the Nyueng Bao agreed we were following a ribbon of blackness. They did not like that. They were frightened by it but accepted it. The entire world, outside Man's natural swamp realm, was a frightening place.
"Everybody got their breath? Let's trudge on." I really wanted to get to that plain. I tried to remember what it looked like at night, from up high and far away, but the view had been pretty obscure. I wondered why I never tried to go exploring. I wondered what Kina had to do with the plain. Could this be the plain where she fought the great battle of her legend? I wondered if we would find out why no Taglian would talk about the place, why, when it was mentioned, most walked off shaking their heads and muttering, "Glittering stone." I wondered how that phrase could have found its way into a language as an idiom for "madness." Especially inasmuch as we were now certain that the Taglian terror of the Company and the Year of the Skulls had been artificially induced.
There was not that much more to the slope but I was gasping for air, staring down at the dark guide a step in front of me and pushing for that just one more step when the footing suddenly stopped insisting that I keep climbing. I stumbled, got my balance, overcame an urge to run ahead, halted while the others caught up.
I examined the plain while I waited.
"Glittering stone" was apt. The jet path became a wide and perfectly preserved road here and curved gently off into a region of tall, square pillars, each of which glittered as though splattered with polished gold coins. To either side of the road the plain consisted of dark grey basaltic stone cut smooth, showing only the slightest evidence of aging. Nothing grew there. Nothing. Not even a lichen. Not a fly or an ant. The place was unnaturally clean. No dust, no dirt, no leaves.
The morning sun had set the pillars sparkling but clouds were moving in from the west. We would have an overcast sky soon. Maybe rain before the evening.
"Hold up, Murgen!" Croaker yelled. "Goddamnit, if you don't stop charging off I'm going to nail your feet to the ground."
I looked down. My feet were moving again. I stopped. I looked back. The others were a hundred yards behind again, right at the rim. Except for Thai Dei. My brother-in-law was an island in between, drawn by his obligation to me but held back by his reluctance to follow the black road.
"Get your ass back here!" Croaker bellowed. "The fuck you think this is? Some kind of race to the edge of the world?"
I went back. It was like walking against the wind. The vibration of the standard seemed to change, to become almost plaintive. When I got there I told him, "Captain, take this thing for a while. It's going to carry me off."
He felt it right away. But he was stronger than me, I guess. He planted the damned thing and stared ahead. "You bring something to write on?"
"Yes, I did."
"Something to write with, too?" He was reminding me of a time when I had done everything right but remember to bring a pen.
"I'm all set, boss. Long as this wind don't blow me away."
"You still afraid?"
"Huh?"
"You said that before you were afraid all the time after you came back."
I frowned. I felt no fear at all. Now. "Out there, I guess. I'm fine here." I looked back at the world. From where we stood you could see only the mountains beyond the broad valley containing Overlook and the ruins of Kiaulune. Not only did there seem to be a heat shimmer between us and them, there was a haze, too. The world seemed very remote.
I mentioned that to Croaker.
"I don't see it," he said. "There's always a haze over a forest in the summer. Unless it's just rained."
I shrugged. These days I was not as uncomfortable with the fact that I was different. I had suffered various incarnations of weirdness for too long. "You going up the road?" It stretched so invitingly before us.
"Not today. What's that?"
"What?" I saw nothing but the standing stones. They seemed to be arranged in no special order, spaced well apart from one another.
"Past the stones." He pointed. "Let your gaze follow the road. When you can't make it out anymore just lift your eye to the top of the stones. You'll see it. Your eyes are younger than mine."
I saw something. Just a looming something.
"It looks like a fortress," Thai Dei said. The Old Man and I had not been using a secret language. His companions both grunted assent. Rudy and Bucket just looked troubled.
"I'll take your word for it," I said. I recalled having seen what might have been a light out there during one of my ghost-walks. "Reckon that's Khatovar?"
"I couldn't say from here. But if it's a fortress and that's all it is then it stands a good chance of being a big-ass disappointment."
Yeah. If you were counting skipping through the gates of paradise when you got to the end of the road. I did not know anybody who was. Unless it was him.
"How far would you guess that is, Thai Dei?" Croaker asked.
The Nyueng Boa shrugged. "Many miles. Perhaps a walk of days."
Ugh. That gave me a chance to consider what it might mean to spend the night on the plain, inside the Shadowgate, in the land whence the Shadowmasters' deadly pets had come.
The Old Man said, "This is enough for today. We'll go back and set up the major probe."
Thinking about shadows, I found, encouraged me to resist the call of the black road.
I paused on the brink, took one last look at the glittering pillars before I left the mountain.
It is immortality of a sort.
"What?"
"You say something?" Croaker asked. He was fifty feet ahead of me already.
"No. Just thinking out loud. I think."
100
The Old Man did not sleep in. He and Lady, Otto and Hagop, Swan, Mather and Blade, the Nar, Clete, Longo and Loftus and all the rest of the Old Crew and their bodyguards, with some of Lady's longtime followers, were on the road to the Shadowgate when I dragged myself out. It was still dark enough that Croaker's outriders carried torches. "That son of a bitch really wants to get a head start."
Thai Dei was awake already. He was boiling water to make breakfast mush. He looked downhill and grunted.
Big Bucket stumbled up, yawning, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with the back of one hand. "That the Old Man already?"