Yet though Karitas maintained he had lived long before the Fall of the world, he would not speak of his society, its laws or its history, refusing to answer any of Shannow's questions. Strangely, Shannow felt, this gave the old man credibility.
'I would like to tell you, Jon, for it is so long since I spoke of the old world. But I have a fear, you see, that one day Man will recreate the horrors of those days. I shall not be a willing party to it.
We were so arrogant. We thought the world was ours, and then one day Nature put us in our place. The world toppled on its axis. Tidal waves consumed vast areas. Cities, countries, vanished beneath the water. Volcanoes erupted, earthquakes tore the world. It's a wonder anyone survived.
'And yet, now I look back, all the clues were there to see — to warn us of impending disaster. All we needed was to be humble enough to look at it without subjectivity. Our own legends told us that the earth had toppled before. The Bible talks of the sun rising in the west, and of the seas tipping from their bowls. And it did. My God, it did!'
The old man lapsed into silence. 'How did you survive?' asked Shannow.
Karitas blinked and grinned suddenly. 'I was in a magical metal bird, flying high above the waves.'
'It was a serious question.'
'I know. But I don't want to talk any more about those days.'
'Just one small question,' said Shannow. 'It is important to me.'
'Just the one,' agreed the old man.
'Would there have been a black road with diamonds at the centre, shining in the night?'
'Diamonds? Ah yes, all the roads had them. Why do you ask?'
'Would they have been at Jerusalem?'
'Yes. Why?'
'It is the city I am seeking. And if Noah's Ark is on a mountain near here, Jerusalem cannot be far away.'
'Are you mocking me, Shannow?'
'No. I seek the Holy City.'
Karitas held his hands out to the fire, staring thoughtfully into the flames. All men needed a dream, he knew. Shannow more than most.
'What will you do when you find it?'
'I will ask questions and receive answers.'
'And then what?'
'I shall die happy, Karitas.'
'You're a good man, Shannow. I hope you make it.'
'You doubt I will?'
'Not at all. If Jerusalem exists, you will find it. And if it doesn't you'll never know, for you'll look until you die. That's how it should be. I feel that way about Heaven; it's far more important that Heaven should exist than that I should ever see it.'
'In my dream, they would not let me enter. They told me to come back when the wolf sits down with the lamb, and the lion eats grass like the cattle do.'
'Get some sleep, Jon. Dream of it again. I went there once, you know. To Jerusalem. Long before the Fall.'
'Was it beautiful?'
Karitas remembered the chokingly narrow streets in the old quarter, the stink of bazaars. . the tourist areas, the tall hotels, the pickpockets and the car bombs.
'Yes,' he said. 'It was beautiful. Good night, Jon.'
Karitas sat in his long cabin, his mood heavy and dark. He knew that Shannow would never believe the truth, but then why should he? Even in his own age of technological miracles there had still been those who believed that the earth was flat, or that Man was made by a benevolent bearded immortal out of a lump of clay. At least Shannow had a solid fact to back his theory of Armageddon. The world had come close to death.
There had been a lot of speculation in the last years about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.
But next to no one had considered Nature herself dwarfing the might of the superpowers. What was it that scientist had told him five years after the Fall?
The Chandler Theory? Karitas had a note somewhere from the days when he had studiously kept a diary. The old man moved into the back room and began to rummage through oak chests covered in beaver pelts. Underneath a rust-dark and brittle copy of the London Times he found the faded blue jackets of his diary collection, and below those the scraps of paper he had used for close to forty years. Useless, he thought, remembering the day when his last pencil had grown too small to sharpen. He pushed aside the scraps and searched through his diaries, coming at last to an entry for May 16. It was six years after the Fall. Strange how the memory fades after only a few centuries, he told himself with a grin. He read the entry and leaned back, remembering old Webster and his moth-eaten wig.
It was the ice at the poles, Webster had told him, increasing at the rate of 95, 000 tons a day, slowly changing the shape of the earth from spheroid to ovoid. This made the spin unstable. Then came the day when mighty Jupiter and all the other major planets drew into a deadly line to exert their gravitational pull on the earth, along with that of the sun. The earth — already wobbling on its axis — toppled, bringing tidal waves and death and a new Ice Age for much of the hemisphere.
Armageddon? God the father moving from homilies to homicide?
Perhaps. But somehow Karitas preferred the wondrous anarchy of Nature.
That night Jon Shannow dreamed of war: strange riders wearing horned helms bore down on a village of tents. They carried swords and pistols and, as they stormed into the village in their hundreds, the noise of gunfire was deafening. The people of the tents fought back with bow and lance, but they were overpowered; the men brutally slain. Young women were dragged out on to the plain and repeatedly raped, and their throats were cut by saw-toothed daggers. Then they were hoisted into the air by their feet and their blood ran into jugs which were passed around amongst the riders, who drank and laughed, their faces stained red.
Shannow awoke in a cold sweat, his left hand twitching as if to curl around the butt of his pistol.
The dream had sickened him and he cursed his mind for summoning such a vision. He prayed then, giving thanks for life and for love, and asking that the Lord of Hosts watch over Donna Taybard until Shannow could reach her.
The night was dark and snow swirled around the village. Shannow rose and wrapped himself in a blanket. Moving to the hearth he raked the coals until a tiny flame appeared, then added timber and fresh wood and blew the fire to life.
The dream had been so real, so brutally real.
Shannow's head ached and he wandered to the window where, in a pottery jug, were the coca leaves given him by Curopet. As ever, they dealt with the pain. He pushed open the window and leaned out, watching the snow. He could still see the riders — their curious helms adorned with curved horns of polished black, and their breastplates embossed with a goat's head. He shivered and shut the window.
'Where are you tonight, Donna, my love?' he whispered.
Con Griffin had been many things in his life, but no one had ever taken him for a fool. Yet the riders with the horned helms and the casually arrogant manner obviously thought him as green as the grass of the valley.
The convoy, having survived three Carn attacks and a heartstopping moment when an avalanche narrowly missed a wagon on the high trail, had come at last to a green valley flanked by great mountains whose snow-covered peaks reached up into the clouds.
At a full meeting the wagoners had voted to put their roots into the soil of the valley, and Con Griffin had ridden with Madden and Burke to stake out plots for all the families. With the land allocated and the first timber felled, the wagoners had woken on a chill Autumn day to find three strange riders approaching the settlement. Each wore a curious helm embossed in black and sporting goats' horns, and by their sides hung pistols the like of which Griffin had never seen.
Griffin strode to meet them while Madden sat on a nearby wagon, his long rifle cradled across his arm. Jimmy Burke knelt beside a felled log idly polishing a double-barrelled flintlock.