I turned for hours, to the right, to the left, and then I turned inward, spinning a glimpse of Aria moving amid the dogs. When I blinked she disappeared, but soon after her, I saw young Ives fall through the ice. I could feel the pack sense my confusion, because things got suddenly quiet. Trying to keep my sanity, I cut to ribbons with the cane a phantom of the mayor as he lurched out of the night, arm reaching forward, a perfect black hole in the middle of his forehead.
It leaped on my back, driving me to the ground. I could feel it snapping at my ear, trying to get to my throat. Covering my face with one arm, I rolled over and stabbed it with the end of the cane so hard I heard ribs cracking. It yelped and leaped off me. The next one was already on its way. I heard it running before I could turn to see. There was just enough time for me to hoist the cane up like a club and swing. The ivory monkey bit down into the dog's eye as my boot came up for the jaw.
I had sustained quite a few bites and scratches, and also wounded a good number of them, but near dawn, a shot rang out from the top of a nearby dune and the explosion chased off the dogs. I wasn't sure at first if it was another apparition or really Corporal Matters and Silencio coming toward me. The corporal wore no wig, and through his closely cropped hair I could see a suture that cut a longitudinal hemisphere across his scalp. He carried two pistols, both of which were aimed at my heart. Silencio followed close behind, carrying a rope.
"You've got a mother lode of sulphur to dig, Cley," said Matters. He looked down at Silencio and said, "Tie him up."
The traitorous monkey tied my hands behind my back and then wound the rope three times around my neck, leaving a long leash in front by which he could lead me. When he was done with the job, he clapped and did a back flip. Matters ordered him to bring the cane which was covered with dog blood. Silencio tugged me by the neck and brought the corporal his stick. I thought he was going to cry when he saw the condition it was in.
"I'd love more than life itself to beat you this very moment, Cley, but I'm saving you for something finer," he said, controlling his obvious anger. He walked close behind me with one of the pistols trained on the back of my head. Silencio led the way, the end of my leash over his shoulder.
"The monkey tracked you for a case of Three Fingers," said Matters. "After you're gone, he'll need it to console himself."
"What was all the business with the wigs, and the night watch and day watch?" I asked. I had nothing to lose. We trudged along the shoreline back toward the maze of dunes that held the mine. Silencio pointed out to sea, and I caught a glimpse of a kraken's tentacle as it curled beneath the waves.
"I'll give you some business," said Matters and shoved the barrel of the gun up under my ear.
"Your head has been tampered with by the Master, hasn't it?" I asked.
"If you consider a pound of brass gear work tampering," he said. "But tell me that your head hasn't been tampered with."
"I can't," I called over my shoulder.
"My brother's got the same setup, springs and the like, but his runs counterclockwise to mine," he said.
"What brother?" I asked.
He struck me across the back with the stick. "You think you're so smart, Cley. My mind is going to eat you alive," he said and swung twice more.
Silencio led us up through the dunes and, by some miracle route he knew, brought us to the opening of the mine in less than an hour.
"Now, Cley," said Matters, coming up close behind me, "I've been having nightmares about demons and ice, and I expect not to have them this evening. By sundown you'll have literally baked to death."
I was going to plead for my life, but before the words could make their way out, the butt of the corporal's gun smashed the back of my head, and I found I was already gone. In the dark distance where I was huddled, I felt my body being dragged and then the unbearable heat of the mine enveloped me.
I woke, screaming, to find my feet and hands bound and each roped tightly to metal cleats that had been pounded deep into the sulphur of the path. I lay outside my miserable tunnel, my head on the down slope, my eyes looking up to see, through the mist, the upper rim of the pit. Halfway to the top on the spiral path, I saw the doll-sized figure of the corporal across the abyss. He stopped in his ascent, turned to me, cupped his hand to his mouth, and yelled something. I thought he was going to yell, "The mine is the mind," but he didn't. It had more syllables than that, yet came across as a frantic grunting that he kept up until he had breached the top of the mine and disappeared.
Without the benefit of being able to keep moving, the mine was an oven. The heat built up in me quickly, and it was not long before I could feel my skin begin to lightly sizzle on the hot stone of the path. The sweat bubbled away in pools of evaporating steam. My tongue and throat soon became parched.
I tried to think what I could do, but all my plans gave way to an overwhelming weariness. I soon reached a point beyond pain where I felt nothing. The mine was cradling me in its warmth, but I fought to stay awake by trying to read the inscriptions above the tunnels on the opposite side of the hole. I located Barlow and went on from there.
Then I heard something, the sound of a voice far off. I searched all around before staring straight up. There was Silencio, dancing on the rim of the pit. He was screaming and waving as if trying to tell me something. "The damn monkey is more insane than Matters/' I thought to myself and could not help but laugh, drawing in great clouds of the noxious mist.
I watched from a distance as the miniature Silencio crept near the very edge of the hole. He moved suddenly as if he were tossing something out into the mine. I caught with my glance the falling object, something like a white log. Then the updraft hit it and it blew apart into a hundred separate white birds that flapped and circled.
For the longest time I watched, enchanted, as the thin flock soared through the sulphur wind, rising and falling. One swept down and flew past my face before being carried out and up in a hellish gust. That is when I realized that what Silencio had tossed in had been the Fragments. I caught one last glimpse of the monkey, leaning over, looking down at me. He made a brushing motion with his hands, as if washing them of the scene, and then turned and was gone.
When I lost sight of the pages, the pain returned, instantly becoming unbearable. It was difficult to breathe, and I could no longer keep my eyes open but for short intervals. The hair on my arms and back began to singe. To avoid suffering, I journeyed inward, searching desperately for paradise, and soon caught sight of Beaton in my eye's mind.
Beaton walked alone now along a dry riverbed that wound through a willow wood. After the deaths of Ives and Moissac in snow country, he had given up all hope of ever reaching paradise or home. He had with him the rifle the young man had continuously aimed but had never had the courage to fire. This would help him to survive for a few more weeks in his wandering.
Harad Beaton was numb with adventures and oddities. He had no wonder left. The things he had witnessed in the Beyond had made an ardent believer of him. What he had come to believe in was the invisible energy that connected the trees, the plants, the creatures of the wilderness. Now that he was alone, he would catch the whisper of its low hum moving beneath the wind in the branches. It was definitely there in all its awesome power, but he could not see what good knowing about it had done him. He was an outsider to it, a germ to be eradicated.
That afternoon, he sat on a tree stump next to the dry riverbed and ate some venison from a deer he had killed two days earlier.