I nodded.
"Then let's get them up and headed out."
"Hang on while I provide you with one final taste of good cheer from my midnight walkabout. Those people we saw running toward my camp when we were climbing the hill yesterday? Guess who. You say anybody but Goblin, One-Eye and Gota, you're wrong. I can't go back in time to find out but I think it's a safe bet they wanted to catch us before we came up here."
Croaker lost his smile. "You overhear anything?"
"A lot of snoring. They were asleep. Goblin did mumble something but it wasn't in any language I understand."
"The road is open," Lady observed. "You could go collect them."
"Hardly practical," Croaker said. "Even if one of us rode back the rest would have to stay here waiting. Half our supplies would get used just sitting."
"We could all go back."
Neither the Old Man nor I responded but nothing needed saying. She did not mean that, anyway. She was just listing options.
There was light enough to see the standing stones nearest us. The characters on them started to shine. They had not shone during the night. I wondered how they managed with so little light.
"I'm worried," I told Croaker.
"So am I. But we have to make choices. You think we ought to cancel the expedition because the prodigals crawled out of their holes?" He asked Lady. "Do you?"
"No. They'll be there when we get back."
I hoped her confidence was justified. Us being gone was an opportunity for all sorts of mischief to happen back up the road.
"Let's move them out," Croaker said. "Grab your pole and hike, Standardbearer."
When I went and tried lifting the standard it came up as though it never had been stuck.
That place up ahead never seemed to get any closer. I hate open country because of that. You can travel for days with the scenery never changing.
Croaker's mood darkened with time. He grew more impatient to get on. In the afternoon, when he spelled me carrying the standard, he began to pull ahead. After a while I asked Lady, "You figure you better slow him down?"
"What?" She had not noticed, so deep was she into her own interior world.
"Him." I pointed.
She urged her mount forward.
I kept trudging. Maybe I even slowed down a little. There was no drive to rush forward once the standard was out of hand. In fact, the world behind me grew more and more attractive as time passed, the sky darkened and the plain changed not at all. The only color anywhere was inside our party unless you counted the gold characters on the pillars.
Lady caught the Old Man. I did not overhear their exchange. I suspect she was a bit sharp. He looked back at me, now understanding how come I zoomed ahead before.
He kept watching till I caught up. "You want to take this thing back now?"
"I still haven't got the kinks out from carrying it before. You just got to concentrate."
He grunted. And the next circle we hit turned out to be our campground for the night.
Soon after we settled the men began going to the southern roadhead to study the fortress ahead. And fortress it surely was, partially fallen. Speculation centered on whether or not we would reach it the next day and whether the Old Man would turn back if we did not. There was no reason to be optimistic about that. This close to his goal the Old Man would push on and worry about hunger when the time came.
This time we lighted the communal fires, enjoyed a warm meal. We all needed the morale boost.
There would be fresh meat from now on because we could not feed and water animals doing no useful work.
It is a tough world for livestock.
I asked Thai Dei, "There anything in mythology anywhere that might tell us something about that place up ahead?"
"No. At least in no way we would recognize."
"You sure? Your buddies seem real uncomfortable with it."
"They are uncomfortable with everything, this plain in particular. They can see this is a place that should not be. That this is not natural."
"No shit."
"It would take an entire nation a thousand years to build something this vast. No monument so huge can be a good thing."
"I don't understand."
"Only a very great evil could remain so single of purpose, so uncaring of cost, as to create something so ultimately useless. Consider the evil of the sorcerer Longshadow. He invested a generation in his fortress. It is nothing in comparison to this plain."
He had a point.
I stepped over to the barrier and stared at the countless sparkling standing stones.
A swarm of sudden shadows flickered over our encampment. I jumped. So did everybody else. The flock of crows wheeled, crossed the sun again, flew on to the north. All but one.
The birds were strangely silent. Not one caw trailed behind them.
The straggler settled atop a column almost directly in line with the fortress ahead. He stalked around, stretched his wings, settled down to watch us.
Pthwan! A fireball streaked toward the crow. It missed. It had not come from a dedicated crow-killer.
I leapt, grabbed Wheezer's shoulder, nearly spun him ass over appetite. But I did not get there in time to keep him from loosing another ball.
This one clipped the top of the pillar where the crow perched. It ricocheted slightly left and upward after taking a bite of stone, then caught the squawking, flapping bird squarely. Black feathers exploded.
The earth shook.
This was a big one. I went down. Most of the others did, too. Animals bleated and bellowed. Nyueng Bao yammered at one another. The plain seemed to shimmer and wobble around us.
Lady strode up, balance perfect, to all appearances completely unperturbed. But she kicked old Wheezer so hard he flipped over. "You idiot. You may have just killed us all." She slammed her hands onto her hips, studied the injured pillar. She did not look like a woman who was convinced that she was about to die. Suddenly, she turned and shouted, "Get those animals under control! Whatever you do, don't let them run out of the circle."
A bullock became supper because he was determined to run for it. People took Lady's orders literally.
The plain heaved one more time, then a stillness gathered. For several seconds there were no sounds and nothing moved.
"Look," somebody said, murdering the silence.
Part of the distant fortress appeared to be sliding down. In time a remote rumble reached us, long after a cloud obscured the place.
Wheezer coughed. "Shit. Did I do that?"
104
Lady was all business. She snapped orders. Men scurried off in search of her shopping list of apparently unrelated items. I strolled around the perimeter while waiting to learn what she was doing. Other than the settling dust in the distance this site was identical to the last. When I got to the road leading south I found a place to set the standard waiting. I took advantage.
I went back to Lady and watched over her shoulder while she concocted a rusty-colored dust that swirled in a small, lazy witch-wind in front of her. She considered it for a moment, then sent it splashing against the invisible barrier protecting us from the plain. It behaved like a liquid then. It ran down the barrier, defining it clearly.
It also defined, as clearly as imminent death, the holes Wheezer's fireballs had opened. And the sun was charging the horizon.
Wheezer garnered some black looks. His hacking got worse but nobody offered any sympathy.
Lady kept everybody too busy to turn ugly.
The flock of crows returned for a second pass, this time laughing all the way. They circled once, then fled northward for good.
Lady's way of dealing with the deadly holes was not dramatic. She employed no great gaudy sorceries. She took Wheezer's ragged leather jacket away from him, cut chunks out of it, wadded them up and plugged the holes. Then she used some minor spell to cement them there.