Ghostcountry's Wrath (28 page)

Herself, she found more and more matched up with Brock. He was shorter than she and had lived a some what sedentary lifestyle while in England, but he was also twelve years younger, and that pretty well evened them out. He was panting heavily, so was she. Sweat sheened all four of them (like Okacha, she'd retained a shirt: a long-tailed one, though she wondered why she bothered). But everytime someone's breathing became labored, Tsistu, who kept ahead—mostly in the shape of a jack rabbit now—slowed just enough to compensate, but never stopped.

So Sandy had little choice but to try to distract herself from her legs and her lungs and from thinking about what in the world she was
doing
here by the expedient of examining the landscape.

It was worth examining. Once they'd climbed out of the wide, stone-walled gorge, they'd found themselves on a plain. Or desert, actually; the sand was still the same grainy black that had lain beside the river, though here and there it bore swirls of gray or silver. And purple: there was a
lot
of that, though whether it was the sand itself or some substance stirred through it that reflected the sky, she didn't know.

The sky…

It really
was
purple—mostly; woven with burgundy and indigo. It was like a permanent twilight, an ongoing sunset. Except that there
was
a sun—or at least a definite brightness that glided across the sky in the prescribed manner, a brightness that was too dazzling to look upon with unshielded eyes. But there was also a certain haziness, as if the air was full of smoke or silt.

She supposed that was possible, for the mountains yonder looked as if they could be volcanic. They were pointed enough, ragged enough, almost seemed to glisten like basalt. Except that she didn't think that worked because, according to Calvin, places like this were island universes that floated (in a loose sense) upon the primary World she knew as Earth. They depended on Earth for the gravity that leaked through the World Walls to sustain them. Which meant that they had (or many of them did) finite limits. You
could
step off the end of the World here. And the sky might
be
a vault, held to its island World by that World's gravity, which in turn depended in part on the gravity of its primary.

“Why not just enjoy it?” Brock asked her suddenly.

“Why'd you say that?” she replied between measured breaths.

“Because you were frowning. And people don't frown when they're havin' fun.”

“Should I be?”

“Given that you can't do much about it until Cal and 'Kacha finish whatever they're doing, you might as well.”

Sandy didn't reply. But if she did not smile, at least she scowled no longer.

*

For a long time they traveled, and Sandy discovered to her surprise that though she was pushed to the absolute limit, her plateau of fatigue did not seem to be decreasing. Indeed, it was as if each step—each contact with that odd golden sand—sent a tiny jolt of energy shooting up her legs which by slow degrees became a knot of sustaining comfort centered in her chest.

Trouble was, the mountains seemed to grow no closer, and they were the only goal she could fix on. Not that the plain was barren, she hastened to add. For the last…
while
…the pervasive flatness had been relieved by strange shapes of twisted stone. Black or mauve or purple, most of them were; knee-high or towering tree-tall. Single, sometimes, or in groups like groping fingers. None passed truly close, but she got conflicting impressions from them. On the one hand they had sharp edges, jagged points, and scalloped depressions, as if they had been struck or fractured or broken, like obsidian blades. But at the same time they seemed to have grown there: to have stood there weathering (for there was a constant wind, accompanied by a wailing that was probably the sound it made blowing between grains of sand) for countless ages.

And if nothing else they at least provided some sense of progress.

Abruptly, Tsistu stopped.

They stumbled to a halt behind him, all panting and gasping, as the shift shook them from the half-dream of their progress.

“R-rest?” Brock managed hopefully.

“Change,” Tsistu corrected. “This way.”

And with that, he turned ninety degrees, hopped once—and vanished.

Calvin followed, then Okacha—and likewise disappeared.

Except that when Sandy stood where Calvin had been instants before and gazed the same way, she could see him again, jogging along another vague glimmer of golden sand as if nothing had happened.

A pause to exchange tired glances with Brock, and she did the same.

And found herself forced to focus purely on running, because Tsistu all but doubled the pace. No time to look at the landscape now; time only to think about breathing.

Breathing, and running, and the pain in her legs.

And then, all at once, their path dived into another watercourse; they shifted directions again at the bottom

—And the mountains were closer.

Very
close, in fact, filling a quarter of what world Sandy could make out at all, with the steep walls of the defile rising twice her height on either side.

More running—though not so much as ought to have been the case, and the mountains filled
half
the sky ahead.

More running—and they were there…

It was jarring. For though she had traveled a bit, Sandy was from North Carolina, where mountains bubbled up from the earth in low hills and ridges and humps, so that one came into them gradually. This was much more like the West, where the Rockies rose with startling precision from the Great Plains. Shoot, you could practically put your finger at the point where the plain (for the bottom of the defile was as flat as the surrounding desert had been) ended and the mountain commenced.

Or that would have been possible had the way ahead consisted of stone instead of a cave, the mouth of which arched overhead to curve down again at the top of the defile.

One instant they were at the edge of the mountain, the next, they were under it.

Calvin made two torches from the sticks of driftwood he'd brought along and lit them with the coals he'd kept alive in the bowl. Those, together with a surprising amount of light that followed them in from outside—Sandy thought it was due to the high reflective quality of the vitreous rock around them—allowed them to make decent progress.

No more jogging, though; now it was a steady trek, still following a narrow stream along a yard-wide beach of black sand, while the cave walls rose tubelike around them. The only sound was the chanting of the water and their own breathing, both of which echoed and reechoed into a sort of white noise that was oddly soothing.

Slower and slower, and now they walked. Sandy felt the sweat drying on her body, her heart assuming a more reasonable throb. She was utterly burned out, yet not tired, at once drained and energized, as if all resistance and stiffness and strain had boiled away, leaving only that reservoir of inner strength that was always hers to command.

Yet she had no urge to speak; none of them did. All seemed content to amble along while torches painted alien landscapes in red and gold along the shiny, black-purple walls, and Tsistu's tail (cotton white) continued to mark the way.

Until, abruptly, it vanished, leaving them alone in a high-domed room the size of her cabin, at the far end of which the stream plunged under an arch the height of her knee. Beside it, she could barely make out a glimmer, as if daylight filtered in from a matching arch to the left on their beach.

Calvin staggered to a stop ahead of her. She eased up to join him, grasped his hand unobtrusively.

“He's…gone!” Calvin groaned, glancing around at Okacha. “Where—?”

The panther-woman scowled. “I'm not sure. I—”

“What are you waiting on?” came an irritatingly familiar voice from somewhere beyond that low arch. It expanded, filled the chamber with echoes. Sandy didn't want to think about a rabbit that big.

“Where are you?” she called back, unable to stop herself.

“Here, of course: on the other side.”

“Other side of what?” Brock chimed in.

“Of the gate!”

“Gate…?” From Calvin.

“Gate! Do you not see it, fools? There, a hop from your kneecaps.”

Calvin knelt to peer beneath the arch. Sandy followed suit—and got a shock that sent shivers up her spine. What she saw was hard to describe. Light, yes: a yard-wide span of it below the stone wall beside the stream. But that light was…
full.
It was as if the air itself was a sort of semisolid in which dust floated and gleamed and glimmered as though supersaturating it. She couldn't tell how thick it was, how far it persisted; only that the glare beyond was stronger than the dim flickering which surrounded them. But what
really
got to her was that even as she watched, a darkness settled onto the arch of light from above, as if—there was no other phrase for it—a gate descended. Down it went, at an ever-increasing pace, until no light showed at all—whereupon it slowly rose again. Twice she observed that process: that rise and fall, which lasted maybe a minute from cycle to cycle. Yet at no time did the light extend higher than her knee.

“What is keeping you?” Tsistu called again.

“Good sense,” Calvin growled. “So, what d' you think, Okacha?”

The panther-woman frowned. “I think we've gotta go through. I don't
know—
I
can't
know, but I really think we do. Everything I've known so far's been based on what I've been told, on what I feel. But here—I only know what the legends say.”

“And what
do
they say?” Sandy inquired wearily.

“That to the west the sky vault comes down to the earth, so that one must run beneath it to reach the Ghost Country.”

Sandy rolled her eyes. “Gimme a break, woman.”

Okacha's eyes flashed fire, but her words were calm when she spoke. “I'd suggest
you
keep an open mind,” she whispered. “See what you see and draw your own conclusions.”

“I see quite
wonderful
things out here,” came Tsistu's voice from the slit. “But all I hear is the cackling of fools. Come or stay, but the gate will soon close for the last time this day, regardless. Then you will have to await sunrise. And Snakeeyes will have twelve more hours in which to prowl your World.”

Calvin grimaced worriedly. Sandy wondered how much he hurt. “How far is it?”

“Not so far I cannot run through before the gate falls. Maybe further than that for slow ones such as you!”

“Shit!” Calvin spat. “You mean you brought us here, and now we can't get through?”

“I wouldn't have wasted my time so foolishly if what I propose were not possible,” Tsistu shot back. “You can pass—but you have to be fast.”

“How fast?”

“Fast as me.”

Again Calvin sighed. “But…we'd have to crawl. And nobody can crawl fast.”

“
Nobody
… Tsistu let the word fade off suggestively.

“Nobody
human
,”
Okacha breathed at last. Sandy gazed at her quizzically, wondering what the hell
that
meant.

Calvin too stared at her, his expression a mix of doubt and dread.

“A panther can move that fast,” Okacha said quietly. “And there's water right beside us.”

“Ah, so
your
brain works,” Tsistu's voice rumbled.

“That's fine for you,” Brock grumbled, kicking at a chip of glassy stone. “But what about the rest of us?”

Calvin gnawed his lip. “It's possible,” he said at last. “But I don't even want to think about actually doin' it.”

“Doing what?” Sandy inquired, though she feared she already knew.

Calvin's face was grim. “Usin' the scale,” he murmured, his hand moving to the thong at his throat. “I can use it to change shape into something fast.”

“So, do it!” Brock told him flatly.

“Easy for you to say,” Calvin replied with a frown. “You don't know the whole story. See, I
can
use the scale to change—but Uki told me last year at my naming ceremony that it can only empower an indefinite number of changes—and I don't know how many I've got left.”

“Which means we could get stuck in animal form and not be able to change back,” Sandy finished for him.

Calvin glared at her. “There's that
we
again!”

“The gate closes for the day in five more cycles,” Tsistu announced from beyond.

“I'm goin'.” Okacha sighed, tugging at her shirttail. “Maybe I can do some good, even if you guys can't.”

“I have to go too,” Calvin agreed solemnly. “Sorry, Sandy, Brock, but you guys have to stay here.”