She Is The Darkness

101

It became a quiet journey once everybody got up onto the plain. We were all too nervous to talk. After a mile or so, though, Lady said, “Warn everyone not to leave the road. As long as we stay on it nothing can touch us.”

Croaker raised a hand to signal a halt. I dropped the butt of the Lance to the road surface. Damn, that thing got heavy fast. The Old Man sent Lady’s news back down the column. He did not question her. He did not distract her at all. Which might mean she was concentrating totally.

Soon after we resumed moving we reached a place where the road widened out into a big circle. A campground, I reasoned. Lady, in one of her rare remarks, confirmed my guess. Whoever created the plain understood its dangers.

It was almost noon when we came at last to a standing stone near enough the road to be examined. It was the same kind of rock as the plain’s surface off the road. The sparkle came from metal characters set into the stone. They were characters, that much was clear, but they were none I or anyone else could read.

It is immortality of a sort.

I jumped.

Lady said, “There is great power in this place.”

“No shit.”

The earth shivered again, no more strongly than the last time but sufficient to make everyone nervous. These tremors might be harbingers of something worse. Though, I noted, not one of the pillars had been toppled by the vicious quakes of recent years.

Croaker paid the stone little heed. He kept staring ahead. It was now clear that there was, indeed, some massive structure beyond the forest of stones. It had begun to look like it might be of Overlook’s magnitude.

The Old Man pushed hard all day, not sparing himself. He spelled me with the standard, setting its butt in his stirrup. Eventually he halted in one of the circles that occurred about each five miles. He stopped only because Lady insisted that it was time. He wanted to keep going. But the column was strung out for miles now and the animals needed rest and water worse than did the men.

I checked the clouds, wondered if there would be rain and if we could collect any of it. We had brought a lot of water but animals consume a lot and I had a feeling we would get thirsty a long time before we started getting hungry.

The Captain shed his helmet and the more cumbersome parts of his armor. He was less intrigued with his Widowmaker avatar than was Lady with hers. She bent the knee to comfort, too, though, divesting herself of her helmet, then shaking out her hair. Croaker stared into the distance. He asked, “You make anything of that place?”

“There is great power there.”

“There is great power there,” Croaker grumbled. “She’s starting to repeat herself.”

“That Kina’s hideout?” I asked. “Or Khatovar? Or both? Or neither?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Let me hold that for you,” Rudy told me, offering to take the standard. He planted its butt and leaned on it.

“Where the hell were you the last fifty miles?”

“Fifty? You’re letting your imagination overload your asshole.”

“Felt like five hundred, lugging that thing.”

Rudy chuckled. “Bet you we didn’t do fifteen.” He was having fun. At my expense. “Thought you’d be in shape after all those trips over to suck up to the Old Man.”

“Rudy, I ain’t in the mood for it.” I wanted to keep an eye and ear on Lady and the Captain, who had moved away once Rudy intruded.

“Don’t let me get to you, son. I’m just thinking about what a wonderful night it’s going to be.” Behind us the Nyueng Boa had their heads together contemplating those possibilities. A lot of bamboo was in evidence. Sparkle had a team erecting a community cookfire that would be elevated above the surface of the plain. Lady had an idea the road would not like being burned. She had suggested, during the hike, that it might be alive in its own way.

I wished there was a way to look inside her mind. She had been focused completely since coming onto the plain. Her speculations would be interesting. And she was sharing them with the Old Man, now. And Rudy was keeping me away.

“Hold on there,” Croaker told Sparkle. “Go ahead and set it up. But don’t start a fire. We’ll eat cold if we can.”

Shit. We had not eaten well since we left Taglios but plain water and jerky were a step beyond bad.

“Rudy. You got work to do?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Let me see you doing it.” Croaker turned around, leaned close to Lady again, stared through the stands of pillars. I was willing to bet he was trying to face down his doubts. Right out there might be the culmination of many hellish years that had begun by what, I suspect sometimes, might have been the momentary whim of a man who had had no idea what to do next and who had big trouble changing his mind in public.

I began to prowl the perimeter of the camping circle. Wherever I looked the view was the same. With an overcast sky that was disorienting.

“Standardbearer? You all right?”

“Sindawe. I’m sorry. I guess I’m more distracted than I thought. I never noticed you coming.”

“The place has that effect, doesn’t it?” I got the impression he would have been ghostly pale had he been capable. “There’s something I thought you should see.”

“All right.” I followed him through the press of animals and men all trying to set up camp without pushing one another out of the circle or damaging the road.

“There,” Sindawe told me, indicating the road where it left the circle on the southern side, a fact I determined only because I could see parts of the huge structure down that way.

“A hole?” That was all I saw. A hole in the road, two inches across and a foot deep. Maybe more. The light was not good enough to betray its bottom.

“Yes. A hole. It may be a huge leap of faith, or just my imagination, but it strikes me that it would be a perfect place to set the standard.”

“Sure does.” Had I been past this point before? Had there been a hole? I could not recall. The opportunity to put the damned pole down for a while sure was attractive, though. And grew more so as I stared.

I dropped the butt of the standard into the hole. It went in a foot and a half. “That’s good,” I muttered. “Perfect place for it, too. Assuming the Old Man don’t have some notion of his own.” I stretched. I had not lugged the standard all day but I had carried it more than anybody else.

Sindawe grunted. He sounded nervous.

I felt it, too. Another earth tremor. “Hope it’s not building up to a big one.”

I looked down at the base of the Lance. The road had hold of it solidly. But when I put it in there, there had been half an inch to spare.

I tried to pull it out.

No go.

It was not vibrating anymore.

“Shit.”

Sindawe tried to pull it out. He stopped before he got a hernia.

“No problem,” I grouched. “If I have to, I’ll just cut it off. Tomorrow.”

I checked the Old Man and his woman. They still stood shoulder to shoulder, staring southward, now only exchanging the rare word or two. Even with their helmets off they looked pretty spooky.

Thai Dei materialized to tell me he had our camp set and food prepared. His expression was so bland I knew that he was angry. Here I was out gallivanting around, having a good time, while he was home working his fingers to the bone.

“I wish you’d grow tits and lose the sausage, we’re going to be married.”

Another feeble tremor stirred the stone beneath us. I murmured, “And the earth shakes when they walk.”

“What?” Thai Dei asked.

“Something from a story I heard when I was a kid. About ancient gods called titans. I was just thinking how far I’ve come since then.” And maybe we were giants.