# Palaces Of Light

James Axler

Remnants of America's past are littered across the postapocalyptic landscape, but little remains of the predark ideals of law and order. Survival is a blood quest, and lethal force the means to power. Still, a handful retains their humanity among the coldhearts, and in a world where nothing lasts forever, hope is a commodity as precious as jack.Steeped in beauty and mysticism, the canyons of Mesa Verde, Colorado, survived the blast that altered the American West. Hired to track a group of missing children, Ryan Cawdor and his band follow the trail to a legendary city carved in stone, older and stronger than the nukecaust. The inhabitants of the palaces of light are more than warriors and survivors; they are masters of mind games that prey on illusion. And true believers in a metaphysical endgame poised to push the companions over the edge of reality…into certain death.

Lost vistas

Remnants of America’s past are littered across the postapocalyptic landscape, but little remains of the predark ideals of law and order. Survival is a blood quest, and lethal force the means to power. Still, a handful retains their humanity among thecoldhearts, and in a world where nothing lasts forever, hope is a commodity as precious as jack.

Divide and conquer

Steeped in beauty and mysticism, the canyons of Mesa Verde, Colorado, survived the blast that altered the American west. Hired to track a group of missing children, Ryan Cawdor and his band follow the trail to a legendary city carved in stone, older and stronger than the nukecaust. The inhabitants of the palaces of light are more than warriors and survivors; they are masters of mind games that prey on illusion. And true believers in a metaphysical end game poised to push the companions over the edge of reality…into certain death.

Jak stared into the abyss

The abyss stared back. With a lurching fear, an emotion foreign to him, Jak felt the desire to throw himself off the edge and into the welcoming arms of…what?

Breathing hard, he hurriedly stepped away and looked up at the sky. It was cold and distant, yet reassuring compared to what he had just seen.

The land beneath the lip of rock had seemed to disappear beneath a blanket of darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. The darkness was almost a presence that seemed to have a life of its own, acting as a cover for what lay beneath it, and fiercely protective of its charge….

Palaces of Light

James Axler


www.mirabooks.co.uk

With equal or even inferior power…he will win who has the resolution to advance.

—Ardant du Picq,

1821-1870

THE DEATHLANDS SAGA

This world is their legacy, a world born in the violent nuclear spasm of 2001 that was the bitter outcome of a struggle for global dominance.

There is no real escape from this shockscape where life always hangs in the balance, vulnerable to newly demonic nature, barbarism, lawlessness.

But they are the warrior survivalists, and they endure—in the way of the lion, the hawk and the tiger, true to nature’s heart despite its ruination.

Ryan Cawdor: The privileged son of an East Coast baron. Acquainted with betrayal from a tender age, he is a master of the hard realities.

Krysty Wroth: Harmony ville’s own Titian-haired beauty, a woman with the strength of tempered steel. Her premonitions and Gaia powers have been fostered by her Mother Sonja.

J. B. Dix, the Armorer: Weapons master and Ryan’s close ally, he, too, honed his skills traversing the Deathlands with the legendary Trader.

Doctor Theophilus Tanner: Torn from his family and a gentler life in 1896, Doc has been thrown into a future he couldn’t have imagined.

Dr. Mildred Wyeth: Her father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, but her fate is not much lighter. Restored from predark cryogenic suspension, she brings twentieth-century healing skills to a nightmare.

Jak Lauren: A true child of the wastelands, reared on adversity, loss and danger, the albino teenager is a fierce fighter and loyal friend.

Dean Cawdor: Ryan’s young son by Sharona accepts the only world he knows, and yet he is the seedling bearing the promise of tomorrow.

In a world where all was lost, they are humanity’s last hope....

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Prologue

“Time…time is a funny thing, my friend. Time is something that is the master of all of us. Even the greatest of barons who have ever walked across the soil that gives us what we laughingly call life is at the mercy of the ticking of the chron. Eventually we become part of that dust that we stomp beneath the heels of our boots. We’re nothing when it comes down to it. We fuck and fight and think that we’re really important, but it doesn’t matter jackshit. Everything comes from the dust, and returns there sooner or later. What comes in between seems kinda important at the time, but all it really amounts to is our own sense of our self-importance. I guess some of us think we’re more important than others. That’s why some of us try to become better than others. Why some of us become barons, and waste our time trying to get somewhere, when at the end of the blacktop there ain’t nothing but the same darkness that greets everyone.”

Baron K frowned. In the darkness of the hut, it was hard to see if the grossly fat man seated in front of him was smiling. His tone betrayed nothing of the sort, but even in measured tones the weight of his words carried a reproach that the baron found irritating. Would the old man in front of him dare to be so dismissive of the efforts that had brought K to this point? Would he risk the wrath of the baron, and the violence that it could wreak?

“Careful what you say, Morgan. You have a great wisdom, but even so—”

“I could go too far, eh?” Morgan spit through the tangled skein of his gray beard onto the dirt of the floor. It was just the clearing of phlegm, but such was the aura of the old man that it seemed to carry greater import.

“I have seen men chilled for less,” K replied, keeping his tone even.

Morgan fixed him with a gimlet eye that glittered bright, despite his age. He raised the paring knife that had been carving charred meat from the bone of an unrecognizable animal, and used it to gesture at the baron.

“Mebbe you have, at that. But I’m too close to the end of the blacktop for it to matter to me. So you chill me slow by your standards. Is that any worse than the certain knowledge that I have of the slow chilling we all endure? No—” he shook his head, his heavy frame heaving as he wheezed a chuckle “—let’s face it, K. There’s nothing you can do to bother me. And if you want to know what you’ve come here for, then you’d better get off that high horse you’ve ridden in on and start to listen. You want to know about the palaces of light. You think that’s where they’re taking them.”

K tried to answer, but his throat was tight and his mouth dry. Constriction forbade him from breathing, let alone form speech. It was all he could do to nod dumbly. His own flesh and blood… He had to find where they were going and why. That was why he had to put up with the old man and his tongue, which by rights should be cut out and roasted like the meat he slobbered on.

Morgan sighed, tossing the bone over his shoulder and wiping the blade of the knife on his vest, which was unlikely to get any greasier than it was already. He chewed ruminatively on his bottom lip, his eyes glazing over as he stared into the distance. It was as though he was recalling something told to him a lifetime ago, and it needed immense concentration to plunge memory back through the years and pluck out the memory fully formed.

K thought about his daughter and felt the tightness in his chest as the pain of anticipation almost burst his heart. Even a man who could trample hundreds of lives beneath him in the quest for power had the weakness of tender emotion somewhere within him, and for someone.

When Morgan spoke finally, it was as though he were channeling something from the distant past, no more than a conduit for a dead and forgotten time. Which, in a sense, perhaps he was.

“All things come to pass. From sand to sand, they say. None proved that more fully than those who had the greatest tech of all human history, and did little with it other than create a blizzard of fire, ice and wind that lasted for more than three generations. Men who wanted to be gods, and created a tech that should have ensured their immortality, yet did little except wipe out the records and traces of memory that they wished to be commemorated by. Iron, or something, that was what they said about it. Doesn’t matter. Point is, it shows that nothing lasts forever. But some things last longer than others. Last longer than memory.

“That’s how it is with the palaces of light…the mysterious palaces of light as they used to call them back in the day. They were there for so long that people forgot just how they got to be there in the first place. But there were some old legends that survived. Whether they were the truth or lies, I couldn’t say. I only repeat what I was told. One thing for sure, though,” he said, slipping back into the faraway tone of a man who was reciting much of his text from memory. “It’s always been a place where it pays to be fearful.”

K felt his guts churn. He hadn’t come from this part of the Deathlands, having spent his early years struggling out of a pesthole ville to ride with some coldhearts who preyed on convoys. It had been a hard and brutal training in the lessons of life, and he had acquired skills and a cynical, ruthless streak that had served him well when he ended up in a ville where the incumbent baron had grown fat, old and careless. Taking over had been a breeze, and he had used the superstition and fear of the people as a tool with which to maneuver his way to power. But the one thing he had never bargained on was that the superstition and fear was rooted in a sense of history. The words that Morgan now intoned brought that home to him, and clutched at his heart.

“There are those who say that the Mancos Canyon was gouged out of the rock by the thumbs of the gods. They needed somewhere to hide the demons that they had banished from the skies, and that was where they chose to leave them. Figures, when you look at how fucked the Mesa Verde is all around. Even before the shitstorms that the nukes brought with them it was still one hell of a place. Hell being the word. They say that the world was once a green and verdant vale—that’s another one of those phrases that means something good, although I couldn’t tell you exactly what it means.” Morgan sniffed and shrugged. “Anyways, the Mesa has always been a place that the gods skirted around with no notion of ever visiting ever again. Man wasn’t meant to tread there, but we did. Always have been some cursed souls who ended up there for want of anything better to do.

“Thing is, those who have wandered across the Mesa and not tumbled to their chilling when they reached the lip of the canyon have always seen the same thing. The mysterious palaces of light. Mysterious because they’ve been there since the dawn of time. Since before man, which kinda begs the question as to who the hell built them. Beautiful as they are, hewn out of the rock and shaped into buildings that have a light shining from them, they’ve been sheltered from everything that’s ever happened in this world. Think about it, K,” Morgan said softly, leaning forward so that his eye fixed on the baron, the paring knife emphasizing every word. “Even the nukecaust never touched these babies. That nightmare of howling winds and driving acid rains, the fire and the ice… It never touched them.”

He leaned back and sniffed back a gob of phlegm, growling in his throat.

“’Course, there are those who say that there are no such things as demons. They say that there were men who lived long before the Indians who everyone took to be the real natives that came across from where the seas now run. These were men like those who lived on the old southern lands, the ones who used to worship the sun and ripped out each other’s hearts to offer up. The kind of people you must like, K. But I tell you this—there are those who say that they built the palaces, yet they take no account of the fact that none of the temples and cities these men built looked anything like the palaces.

“Same way as others used to say that it was the Norsemen who built them. The ones who were supposed to sail on rafts across the raging seas centuries before the one called Columbo came and claimed the old lands, naming them Amerigo.” He frowned. “Something like that.” He shook his head as if to dismiss the confusion. “Thing about them is that, like the ones from the south, they couldn’t have done it because they had nothing like it in their own lands. Besides which, they were coming from the far coast, and how the fuck were they going to get across the plains when all they could do was build rafts of wood that must have got them here more by luck than any kind of skill?”

K interrupted. He felt almost as if it was wrong to do so; his mouth, too, was dry with fear of what Morgan was leaving between the words. “If not them, then who? The demons of who you spoke?” he asked.

A smile, almost mocking, wreathed the old man’s face. “You really believe that there are such things as gods and demons? It’s all a story, K. Just a story. Evil comes from men, but perhaps—just perhaps—it’s the case that the evil in men can somehow become instilled in a place, where it becomes magnified and acts as a draw to those who would think and feel the same way. Then again, mebbe I’m just plain wrong, and the story about there being gods who gouged the earth to throw down devils is right, and those devils built the palaces of light. One thing of which I’m certain, because it’s the only thing that runs through every story I was ever told, is that the men who built those palaces weren’t the Indians, nor the blond North men who were said to come before. These were men who came from a time before that, and had skills that could hew things of beauty out of ugly, harsh rock. That speaks of some power, some knowledge. And that’s still in there, K. It ain’t good, and it’s always done nothing else but attract its like.

“The dark ones—be they a kind of power or gods and demons—have always protected the canyon. Through the days of skydark and right till now. And whoever lives there is evil. If not to start with, then it’ll soon infect them.

“And that’s where they’re going, K. Into the heart of darkness and into the palaces of light. Remember, my baron, that not all light is good. The light that came with the nukes wasn’t good. Mebbe this is that kind of light.”

K was frustrated. He turned away from the old man, not wishing him to see the confusion that was written on his face. This talk of gods and demons was shit. But evil, real tangible evil that could infect a man, running from man to man like a disease. That was something he understood only too well. The palaces were places of legend. The legends were swathed in shadow, like the physical stones that hung over the canyon edge, protecting the palaces from the elements, just as they always had.

Hiding them from prying eyes—all but those of the most questing.

All but those, he hoped, of the ones he had sent to discover the truth.

Chapter One

Heat—dry and oppressive, unrelenting, bore down on them with every step the companions took. It was the kind of heat where, if they had any sense, they would seek out any shelter they could find and wait for the sun to sink in the sky, and the cool of night to start sweeping across the plain.

But the companions could only do that if they had time. And that was the one thing they were sorely lacking. There was no time for them to waste. The group they were trailing was obviously used to traveling in such conditions, and moved swiftly across the blasted and scorched plain. Swiftly enough to set a punishing pace.

“Oh, that we could have had the use of a wag,” Doc bemoaned in a voice that was cracked and parched, both by the dry atmosphere and the effort of an enforced march in such conditions. “Even a gas-guzzler…a mere wooden effort on wheels, powered by nothing more than the power of a mule would have satisfied me. But no, we are to be denied even that Spartan comfort in the search for our prey. How, pray tell, are we to be in a fit state to face them when we eventually confront them when we have had to suffer such unendurable conditions?”

“Doc, if they were unendurable, you would have bought the farm, and I wouldn’t have to listen to your interminable complaints,” Mildred countered in a voice that was as dry as Doc’s. Albeit that she had preserved hers by holding her peace for what seemed to be far too many miles while the old man moaned and droned on, his voice like the drip of water wearing away at her patience. At that, the fact that it made her think of water at a time when they were preserving theirs and putting aside thoughts of slaking their ravaging thirst was something that only served to increase her irritation.

“All I am trying to point out is that the baron may be rewarding us well for our endeavors if we achieve our goal, but he has not exactly given us the tools with which to finish the job.” He paused for a moment, his head cocked in thought, much to Mildred’s relief. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to last, and before she had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief he had started again, albeit on a different tack.

“Strange, but by the Three Kennedys, that phrase strikes a resonant chord deep within the caverns of remembrance! Perhaps it was something that one of the three blessed ones themselves uttered at some point. Or some such personage, one who shared an exalted position similar to that—”

He was cut short with a sudden action. Mildred, realizing that his sudden ramblings, now that they had veered from the simple grumblings of before, presaged a descent into the kind of temporary madness that blighted his life—and therefore by extension hers and those of her fellow travelers—turned and slapped him across the face. Hard. She was about five yards from him, just in front, and so to achieve this action she had to spin and then take a step back that added to the momentum of her swinging arm. She caught the old man with a full and open palm.

In the quiet of the arid and deserted plain, with no sound from the others beyond the muffled padding of boots on hard-packed sand, the blow sounded large and shocking. Doc’s head snapped on his neck, his eyes wide with shock and his jowls shaken by the impact of the blow. It resounded so loud in their collective silence that the others stopped to turn and face Doc and Mildred.

For a moment Doc stared blankly into Mildred’s face. From his expression she couldn’t tell if he would cry, yell, hit her or pass out.

He did none of those things. Instead, a slow grin spread across his face as he held a hand up to his stinging cheek.

“Madam,” he said slowly, “there must be other, and perhaps better ways in which to bring a man back from the brink of the abyss. But I would doubt if there are any that would have such an immediate effect. Do you know, for a moment there I could hear myself and found it quite hard to credit the things that were coming from my mouth. It is very hard to describe, as though one is separated from oneself and observing from a distance. To be back in a place where the mind and body occupy the same place is a pleasure. Even if—” he added, looking around “—it is such a place as this.”

The others had stopped to watch, taken aback by the sudden explosion of violence in Mildred’s behavior. Doc’s mumbling moan had become little more than a background sound to them, marking and punctuating each footfall. In truth, each of them was finding the going tough, and to waste time on the disjointed grumbling of the old man was more effort than they felt they could spare.

Now, almost forced into a halt by the turn of events, it became obvious that they had become mechanical in their actions, and for the first time in several hours under the baking skies they stopped to look at one another.

“He’s right about the wag, though,” Krysty said in a voice ravaged by the climate and by the lack of water. “At least we could have made some kind of shelter for the worst of the day.”

Ryan shook his head slowly. To speak was a great effort, so he used his words sparingly. “Can’t get too close. They’re on foot. Too much risk of them seeing dust clouds if we used wheels.”

Jak sniffed. “Get too far, lose touch.”

J.B. cast a long glance into the far distance. Toward the horizon, it seemed as though the vista in front of them was devoid of life. Only toward the edge of land and sky, where the two met in an indistinct haze, was there anything that could in any way be construed as signs of life. Even then, the specks that moved in the sealike mirage of wavering light might have been nothing more than phantoms of imagination. Following the Armorer’s gaze, Ryan could barely focus his only functioning orb on them. If he was honest, he knew they were real only because he had been tailing them for so long, and in an area about thirty miles back where there had been some jagged outcrops that jutted savagely from the earth to provide some kind of cover, he had been able to get close enough to take stock of the enemy.

“Should have taken them then,” J.B. murmured, as though able to read the one-eyed man’s mind.

Ryan allowed a grin to crack the previously grim set of his jaw. J. B. Dix had traveled with him for so long that each man knew the other’s way of thinking.

“You know why we couldn’t do that,” he said simply, for the Armorer, as he was also known, was only too well aware.

“Yeah. Can’t lose the captives. Can’t return without them. And if we don’t, then there’s no point in us having come this far.”

Ryan shrugged. There was nothing more to say. With a gesture, he indicated that they should start to move forward. Wearily, and with a resignation born of knowing that objective could only be achieved with further suffering, they began to move in a straggling line once more.

Ryan and Krysty were at the front, almost side by side. Jak came in their wake, with J.B. behind him. Mildred hung back a little, partly because she wanted to avoid the choking and irritating dust that they raised with their heels, and partly because she felt beholden to keep an eye on Doc. The old man—in some ways, and yet not others, as he was centuries old in conception yet had lived a span not much longer than any of them—was lagging behind. The ravages of his past experience made it hard for him sometimes to keep up in extreme conditions, his body having suffered at the hands of too many to sustain the levels of stamina sometimes needed. His tenacity, however, and sheer determination could sometimes equalize him with his peers.

As they made their weary way in the wake of the party they trailed, Ryan played over the options in his mind.

They had to have been crazy to take this one on. Sure, they needed the jack and the supplies that this would bring, but at what cost? It irritated him when they were reduced to hiring out their services like the mercies of the days before skydark. The highest bidder got the service, and screw what the mission may be. There were certain things that they wouldn’t do. Honor might have been a word that had lost all meaning postnukecaust, but Ryan still had to be able to look at himself in a mirror and be satisfied with what he saw. In their own ways, all of them had codes that they lived by. And those codes were basically the same. It was one of the things that bound them together.

This job was different from most others they’d taken on. The way the baron told it, some coldhearts had taken all the children in the ville. Why was a mystery; how was an even bigger one. Despite his best efforts, Ryan had been unable to understand what had occurred. All he knew was that the baron was willing to pay them a lot of jack to rescue the ville’s children.

While it was true that a ville was lost without kids—without the next generation a ville could do nothing but wither and buy the farm, at the mercy of an aging population and an outside world that grew progressively younger and stronger—still it was more than just altruism that had driven the baron’s desperate bargaining. The fact that one of the kids taken was his own had a greater bearing on his willingness to give ground than perhaps his people would have liked, had they been privy to the negotiations.

The thing was, with his own kid being involved, he was willing to pay a lot to get her back. Conversely, what information was he holding back that might make them decide not to take the job? Ryan wondered.

How had these coldhearts taken the kids so easily? What danger did they really present?

Perhaps that was part of the reason that he was trailing at a distance: caution for his people until they had a real chance to recce the situation.

But it had better come soon.

* * *

LIGHT BECAME DARK easily in the barren wasteland. Heads down, focused on keeping one foot in front of another at a steady pace that ate up the ground, ignoring the thirst that gnawed at their parched throats, the companions didn’t notice the passing of time. Suddenly the light around them became much dimmer, and the sands that reflected light and heat at them became much cooler.

“Dark night, how long have we been doing this?” J.B. asked in a voice that was barely above a croak. It was so quiet that it was hard to tell if he was talking to anyone in particular, or just to himself.

Nonetheless, Ryan opted to answer. Looking at his wrist chron, alarmed at how the heat and sweat in his eye made it hard to focus on its face, he said, “Too long, J.B. Hours. We should have taken a water break a couple of hours back.”

“Mebbe have plenty time do that,” Jak observed morosely, gesturing at the horizon.

Ryan followed the direction indicated by the albino teen. Although he could now see the group of people in the far distance much more clearly than a few hours previously, the horizon no longer blurred and obscured by the haze of the day’s heat, the group was greatly diminished from the one they had been following up to this point.

“What the fuck…” he whispered.

“Unless they’re walking off the edge of the world—and I wouldn’t blame them if it goes on like this—then I figure that the plains must be about to take a huge dip,” Krysty said with a wry twist to her tone.

“If that is so, then I would suggest we take advantage of the drop in temperature and step up the pace, lest we lose track of them,” Doc suggested. “It would, after all, be a great pity to come this far only to lose them in a hole in the ground.”

Mildred grinned. “Not like you to be understated,” she said hoarsely, the smile cracking her dry lips.

Ryan, however, was in no mood to take such humor at face value. “Shit,” he swore in frustration, “we’ll take in some water, then try to step it up. I know you want to rest, people, but mebbe we’ll get lucky and be able to take a break when we find where they’ve disappeared to.”

The other five all experienced a sinking feeling in the pits of their stomachs when they heard what the one-eyed man had to say. Yet each of them had already steeled him or herself for the difficult trek ahead, knowing that it was necessary, and that Ryan only spoke what they all knew to be true.

Without another word, they took great drinks of water to rehydrate and fortify themselves before setting off in grim silence for the target.

The way ahead was nothing but a hard slog. They had to focus on getting to the target, and not waste time and energy on anything else. Even the encroaching darkness and cold seemed to be peripheral to the goal that filled their minds. But before the blanket of night finally descended, and they had only the pale wan light of a cloudless moon to light their way, Ryan was able to see that the last of the group of people ahead of them had vanished from view. How far was the horizon from where they were? Apparently, always the same distance.

No, he thought, shaking his head a little to clear the muzziness that came with fatigue and the chill that crept into their bones. The question was, how much land lay between themselves and the horizon at any given time? That was how far ahead their prey was from where they stood now. And if he knew that, then he could work out how long it would take them to cover that distance and so find out where that prey had gone, and how long until they could even think about stopping.

The figures rushed around his head, producing a different answer with each thought, and making him question his own sanity. And yet that futile train of thought served a purpose: the longer and more complicated the train of thought, then the more distance it ate up without his noticing the effort it took to drag his body across the arid plain, gray in the moonlight.

In their own ways, and with their own trains of thought, the others did the same. It was a way of shutting out the cold, just as they had tried to shut out the heat.

So it was that they came upon the fissure before they truly had a chance to register what was up ahead. It had looked like nothing more than a patch of ground that was darker than the surrounding area. It was only that the land beneath their feet grew less smooth, rougher and more broken, that the presentiment of any danger became apparent. The pale light of the crescent moon had been little enough, but somehow the land around had seemed to soak up what little light prevailed.

Another time, perhaps, any of them would have noticed. But, tired and worn by their self-enforced march, they were receptive to the change before it was almost too late. Ryan, still in front, had registered that the ground was less certain beneath his boots, but had put this subconsciously down to a minor change in the terrain than anything that should take his attention.

Perhaps it was the night around them dulling his senses. Perhaps it was the dehydration and the introspection that had enabled him to counter this. Perhaps it was nothing more than the tiredness that came from a day’s march without any respite.

Whatever it was, it nearly cost him his life.

One moment the one-eyed man was wrapped up in thought, feeling and yet not registering the ground beneath his feet, the next, he was sliding forward as that ground gave way with an unexpected treachery.

Now the darkness around him made more sense. This was what the people they had been trailing had disappeared into: a fissure in the earth, running deep and almost sheer beneath them. Somehow they had wandered into a small ledge that jutted into space. Those who had gone ahead had known it was there, and had benefited from the light of day. For Ryan and his people there was no prior warning, and as his foot had come down on loose earth and started a slide, the momentum and weight of his body not only threatened to carry him over the edge and into the unknown dark below, but it also carried the risk of making the ledge crumble.

Krysty and Jak were nearest as Ryan’s leg skidded from under him and he toppled back toward the ground. He would have yelled, if not for the fact that his throat was so cracked that little more than a startled croak would emerge. His arms flew out in an attempt to balance himself and spread his weight, to stop the ground beneath him giving way any more than it already had. Without his realizing it, this gave Jak and Krysty the help they needed. As his arms flew back, they were both able to reach out and grab hold of him.

Yet even as they did, both were aware of the earth beneath them trembling and starting to crumble. An ominous groan came from deep within the ground beneath their feet.

Mildred, J.B. and Doc were lagging behind a little. Although it gave them more ground to make up before they could be of assistance, it also gave them the split second they each needed to snap out of their respective reveries and take instant stock of the situation.

To be too close would be to risk their combined weight causing the unstable ground to break up even more. To stay away would be to leave Jak and Krysty to try to haul Ryan back while the rock splintered beneath their feet. They had to move in and lend support while staying back enough to stop the ledge turning to dust beneath them, and dropping all of them into the abyss below.

Ryan had no idea of what was happening behind him. He knew only that the ground was falling away beneath him even as he scrabbled with his boot heels to gain some kind of grip. Each frantic attempt to gain a foothold had only the opposite effect. At the same time, he could feel his legs start to slip and his calves cramp as the jagged edge of rock cut into them. At the other end of his body he could feel an ironlike grip around each wrist, and his shoulders strained in their sockets as he was grabbed and hauled back while his momentum sought to carry him in the opposite direction.

He stopped kicking, realizing that his efforts were counterproductive.

At his back, Jak and Krysty could feel the movement beneath them slow as Ryan ceased to fight. Now more confident, but still cautious in case they started a slide of their own, they began to move back slowly, one step at a time. They staggered their steps so that first Krysty, and then Jak, moved, causing the minimum of disturbance and impact to the fragile earth beneath them. Within a few steps, each felt another hand reach out and grab them in the darkness. Mildred took hold of Jak, and Doc assisted Krysty. Each allowed the others to lean a little of their weight into them, so that it took some strain off the ground beneath, and allowed the stress to be carried over a greater area of ground. At the rear, J.B. planted his feet firmly on solid ground and took hold of arms that were stretched out behind Doc and Mildred. Bearing their weight, he began to slowly shuffle back, taking the strain and helping them to haul back Jak and Krysty.

It was a slow and painful process. Sweating with the effort, despite the chill of the night, J.B. could only relax when he could see, under the wan moon, that Ryan was several yards from the edge, and was able to dig in his own heels and push back.

When they were all back level with the line of the crevasse, they collapsed onto the ground, breathing hard.

Ryan raised himself up on one elbow. In the moonlight he could see the inky blackness that was delineated only by the jagged line of collapsing rock. They had hauled him back only just in time. He could still hear the faint sounds of falling dirt and stone where small sections of the lip continued to fall away.

Just in time. Timing was everything. A few seconds and he would have been gone before they could reach him.

Timing was everything. A day either way and they might not even have been out here on this cold, dark night.

Chapter Two

“Tell me where they are, Morgan. Tell me what they’re doing.”

Baron K leaned into the fire, so that his face was reflected in the upward glow. Shiny, bright and expectant, there was almost something childlike about him as he asked.

The old man sucked his teeth, then spit to one side. “Wish it was that simple, Baron. But if it was, I would have seen them coming, known who they were when they arrived and been able to do something about it.”

The baron shook his head. “When I look back, I should have seen it, too. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious that they were bad news. No, Morgan, they had a magic about them that was strong, and could mask a lot.”

The old man cocked his head to one side as he considered the man who was nominally his superior. Not at present. Right now it seemed that the baron was looking up to him as a superior because of powers he appeared to possess. His faith was touching, if a little misplaced. Morgan mused that if he had been the kind of man who wished to gain and use power, he would have been able to use the baron’s belief against him. For a man who had used a very physical and worldly grasp of power to gain his position, he had a vulnerable point that was unexpected.

But Morgan wasn’t that kind of man. He considered that running his own life was enough of a struggle, let alone taking on the task of telling others how they should live. He also had what he considered to be a sense of perspective. And from that he knew that the baron had overestimated what he could do. The baron believed in magic and power that was beyond the physical and human. Morgan didn’t. All those old stories were crap. It was true that he had a certain ability. He was a doomie, as he had heard others like himself be called. He could see things that weren’t there, or that were happening some way distant. But he didn’t call it magic. He came from a long line of those who carried the history of the time before the nukecaust. This role as a person who could recall the stories of the past gave him a kind of protection. He was treated with a kind of awe akin to those who could cure the sick. Doctors, as they called them once. With a wry twist of humor, he realized that he was one of the few who would know that word around these parts. Just as he was the only one who knew that doomies weren’t some kind of supernatural beings.

But let the baron believe what he wanted. It kept Morgan alive and relatively safe.

It was true, though, that he did possess that kind of doomie gift that enabled him to see from a distance. If he concentrated, then he could see what it was that he concentrated his attention upon. Viewing remotely, as some had once called it. Or second sight, which seemed a stupe name to him, as he could barely see now that he was getting on and his eyes ailed him.

The fire wasn’t really necessary, but it added a sense of occasion to what he did, as did the empty room and the silence around him. If he could shut himself off mentally, then he could do it anywhere. The most important thing about the fire was that it sent a shiver down the spine of the baron, and actually made him keep his big mouth shut. The worst obstacle that Morgan could face while trying to do this was to keep being interrupted by K’s incessant questions.

So now, with the baron silenced by his own sense of occasion, Morgan was able to settle down, to relax his body from the toes up, and to blank his mind by thinking of nothing, just seeing the flickering flames in front of him.

He thought of the six people he had met all too briefly: the one-eyed leader and his wiry sidekick, the one with the stupe hat and the odd obsession with hardware. They were the kind of men you’d want on your side in a fight, though you might not want to be their friends in times of peace. The other four comprised a strange and motley crew. The red-haired woman was a doomie. That much he had sensed right away. That made his task easier, as he could focus on her. How it worked, he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to know. It just did. The black woman and the old man were really odd. There was something about them that seemed aged beyond their looks, as though they came from another time. He would have loved to have known their stories. They would have been well worth knowing to tell again and again. And then there was the albino. Not a youth to know in times of peace, like One-eye and the Hat. But different from them. He had an air of wildness to him.

They were brave. He had to give them that. He wouldn’t have undertaken the mission, no matter how much jack was involved. When he thought of those they were chasing, a sense of cold, enveloping darkness came over him. Just letting that thought pass through his mind made him shiver.

Instead, he concentrated on the red-haired doomie. That was no great stretch, as to even let the thought of her beauty cross his mind brought the warmth flooding to his loins. He had to suppress a salacious smile at the thought.

Feeling more relaxed now, he began to get some impressions: faint at first, then confusing and jumbled even as they began to take shape. The agony of stretched muscles, and a feeling of danger—not hers, but of one close to her. The one-eyed man? He had sensed something between them, and now that seemed to be the overriding sense that he was getting.

It took greater shape, and he could see as though detached. Once inside her head and heart, it was suddenly as though he had been freed from this cage and was a bird flying high over them, seeing from above all that was going on. He could see now that they had wandered too close to the edge of a precipice when dark and fatigue overtook them. As he watched, he saw them pull One-eye clear. They were safe and he was relieved. For himself more than them, if truth be told. He didn’t relish having to tell the baron that they had bought the farm before they had found their prey.

And he was pretty sure that they hadn’t. They had to be on some kind of trail, as they had wandered into a region that he didn’t recognize. The fissure in the ground into which One-eye had nearly fallen was something he didn’t remember ever seeing in all his years. As to where the children and the darkling ones were…as a bird, he soared over the group that now lay exhausted but safe, and tried to stoop down into the fissure. He was looking for some kind of light. It was night, and they had to have some kind of torch to light their way, or fire to heat them as they slept. But no, there was nothing. No light and no sign of movement.

But he knew they were there, knew because he was forced to pull up and away from the deep groove in the earth, forced back by a sense of cold and black that was more than just the plains night.

Like a black claw around his heart, he felt it tighten and squeeze, making it hard for him to take breath. It seemed to last forever, that it would squeeze the life from him. Whatever it was, it didn’t welcome him.

Morgan snapped back to the here and now, darting his eyes away from the flame, thinking now of how his bladder was bursting, and how he might piss himself with fright. The very physical pressure was the perfect antidote to that part of his mind that wandered far in the night.

Dragging in his breath sharply, feeling the smoky air fill his lungs as though it was perfumed, he felt relieved to be back in this realm. And still alive, at that—at least, he did until he saw that K was staring intently at him.

“Well?” the baron asked simply.

Morgan considered this carefully.

“It is a long path, but as they come to the end of this road, they draw closer together until the point where they meet,” he intoned after some consideration.

K nodded sagely, as though understanding every word.

Morgan breathed a sigh and hoped that Red and her crew would make better progress than he. Otherwise he might have to find the words to tell K something that he really wouldn’t want to hear.

* * *

RYAN LOOKED INTO the abyss. It was hard to tell, under the pale moon, just how deep or shallow this crater was. It seemed to stretch as far he could see on either side of him, curving slightly to the left, but still reaching out into the darkness. Where it ended—if it did—he couldn’t tell. One thing seemed certain: there was no way across unless you went down.

J.B. joined him at the edge, staring down into the black. He took off his spectacles and calmly polished them, as though the events of a few moments before hadn’t occurred.

“They must have gone down,” he stated simply. “No other way.”

“But how?” Ryan mused. “Treacherous underfoot, and no path that I can see. Looks like a straight drop.”

“Does in this light. But that’s this light.” The Armorer shrugged. “Can’t see much in this. Mebbe it’ll be different when the sun comes up. That’ll be—” he tilted his wrist chron so that it caught as much of the moonlight as was possible, squinting to read the dial “—a good four hours. Can’t do much till then. I say we get some rest. We need it.”

Ryan sighed. “Four hours and we could lose track of them.”

J.B. smiled wryly. “Kind of have now, Ryan. No light to show where they are, which way they’ve gone. What are we going to do? Stumble down and risk our necks and then either go completely the wrong way or run into them when we aren’t prepared?”

Ryan’s expression echoed his friend’s wry tone. “I know, I know. Just seems like we’re losing so much ground this way.”

J.B. shrugged. “Mebbe… One of those times we can’t do jack about it. Might as well grab some z’s and wait till we can get a better picture.”

Ryan clapped him on the shoulder. “Not what we want, but just what is, right? Sense like always, J.B.”

They turned away from the edge. Now was the time to get some rest. Huddling together, for they couldn’t risk the beacon of a fire, the companions bedded down for the remainder of the night. They had a routine that was always the same in such situations: however much time was left of the night, they would divide watch equally among them. Looking up at the position of the moon, Jak elected to take first watch. The darkest of the night would soon give way to the gray of predawn, and he was the best equipped to cope with the inky blackness of night. His red eyes were sensitive to light, but at a time such as this, they were the best adapted of all of them.

While the others settled and soon drifted into the uneasy sleep that came with night cold and the hardness of earth with no bedding to soften it, Jak settled down on his haunches to welcome the night. As the breathing of his friends subsided into the settled snores and soft grunts of rest, he was able to tune out those noises and concentrate on the land around them.

Even by night, not all was quiet. The companions had seen little in the way of wildlife and fowl during the day. Those few birds that had stamina to fly from distant eyries were content to circle at a great height, patient in the hope of fallen prey. On the ground, the heat and inevitable depth of any water encouraged only the most hardy of burrowing animals. Any aboveground dwellers who dared to encroach on the arid wasteland would soon scuttle back to their havens, or perish in the attempt. By day, few would venture aboveground, and even those that did would be wary of any who passed over their burrows. By night, it was a different situation. The cool air would draw them aboveground to forage. Their snufflings, the patter of claws on hard-packed earth, the occasional yowl of conflict, and pain or mating—perhaps both—were clear to Jak and proscribed a symphony of hidden movement.

The creatures were harmless, their musk faint and bespeaking of the distance they preferred to keep from the larger creatures they instinctively identified as a potential danger. Jak allowed himself something that appeared as only a flicker, a twitch, of the facial muscles, but was a laugh to all who knew him. Possible food, if he could be bothered to hunt them, but no threat.

Very well. There was something else that was bugging him that he could check out now that he was sure they were safe. While the others slept unaware, he walked to the edge of the crack in the earth. Mindful of his footing, he edged as close as he could to the lip, gingerly feeling for loose earth and rock. He found a path that was sure enough underfoot for him to reach the very edge, so that he could peer over and scan the width of the deep trench. With his eyesight being attuned more to the night than any of the others, he expected to be able to see more than Ryan or J.B. had a short while before. There was no fire to light the path of their prey, but the trail of a group of people couldn’t fail to be read on such terrain. It would be impossible to move without leaving something in your wake. Maybe, if fortune favored them, he may even be able to make out something even blacker than the hole below: a darkness caused by a clustering of bodies.

Now on the edge of the abyss, he concentrated his attention on the space below, shutting out not just the sounds of his companions, but all the other noises of the night. Down there, somewhere, were enough people to be making some sound, to leave some indication of their position.

Jak stared into the abyss.

And the abyss stared back. With a lurching fear that swept over him like a wave, an emotion to which he was unaccustomed, he felt the desire to throw himself off the edge and into the welcoming arms of…what?

Breathing hard, Jak hurriedly stepped back and looked up at the sky. The night was ink-black in patches, dotted only with the distant diamonds of stars and the wan disk of the moon. It was cold and distant, hardly welcoming, yet somehow reassuring when compared to what he had just seen.

For the land below the lip of rock had seemed to disappear beneath a blanket of darkness that had nothing to do with the absence of light. It was like a presence that seemed to have a life of its own, acting as a cover for whatever lay beneath it, and fiercely protective of its charge. It was almost as if it had tried to strike out at him when he dared to look beneath it.

Despite the cold weather, Jak was sweating. An icy-cold puddle formed in the small of his back. He turned away from the abyss to see that Krysty had awakened, and was now standing, watching him. Her hair was coiled around her neck, in an almost mirrorlike imitation of the sweat at his own. Even in the dark of night, he could see the unease and fear in her eyes.

“Not look down there,” he said softly. “Wait sunup.” He walked back toward the sleeping group. If she was to relieve him, then he wanted to find the oblivion of sleep as soon as possible. As he passed her, she began to step toward the edge of the abyss. Jak grabbed her arm, pulling her back so that she turned around to face him.

“No.” He said it simply and quietly, but there was a power in it backed up by the expression on his face and in his usually blank eyes.

Krysty tried to speak but nothing would emerge. It was all she could do to shake her head before taking up her watch with her back firmly to the fissure in the earth.

Jak sank down gladly against the sleepers, welcoming oblivion… .

* * *

BARON K SHIVERED as he recalled that day, shivered because he had no real memory of the day the children were taken. What had come before was still etched into his mind as though someone had taken a wag battery, cut it open and poured the gunk into his brain. And what had come after, when the whole ville had awakened from what seemed to be a stupor that could only have been induced by some kind of jolt was only too clear. But of that time—the time when the exodus had occurred—there was nothing.

And while Morgan stared into the fire, K brought back to mind the awful task of having to outline that moment to the one-eyed man and his crew as they had sat in front of him.

“You can’t tell us anything? But you expect us to go after these coldhearts with no real clue as to what they can do.” The man known as Ryan Cawdor had looked around at his people, all of whom were looking as incredulous as himself.

K squirmed. Part of the strategy that had made him a baron was to be in complete control of everything that went on around him. To admit that he hadn’t been was almost like an admission of weakness. And weakness was anathema to him.

“The only way I can explain it is that it was like the kind of sleep you get when you’re exhausted…when you’ve been on the road for days, and you kept traveling until every muscle is at breaking point, and your eyes are out on sticks with the grit of the road rubbing them raw. That moment when you’re just running on fumes one moment, and the next your body just gives up and you fade so quick you don’t even know it until you wake up and it’s dark, and your face is embedded in the dirt.”

Ryan sniffed. The baron had a colorful turn of phrase, but it served its purpose. He knew that feeling. They all knew it.

“Okay, so you just nodded out,” he said simply. “Your point is what? That these coldhearts drugged you in some way?”

The baron’s laugh was cold and bitter, with no humor. “The whole ville? How would they make that happen?”

Ryan shrugged. “Could be easy enough, from what you say. Gather the whole ville together in one place, make like it’s some kind of festival, and just spike whatever you’re going to give them. Doesn’t have to be anything mutie or some kind of weird shit.”

“Doesn’t have to be, but it probably was,” K had said with a shrug.

Doc, at Ryan’s elbow, indicated Morgan, who was seated by the baron. “I fear that perhaps you have been listening to your friend,” he said in an amused tone.

Morgan glared at Doc. His eyes bore into him, and for a moment the scholar experienced a shiver of apprehension as it seemed that the grizzled old-timer was peering into his soul. Morgan smiled slowly and slyly.

“You know that I can’t influence the baron in this matter, and you know that there are stranger things…what was it? On heaven and earth, Horatio, or something like that.”

Doc looked uncomfortable. Yes, he knew that, but he was unwilling to accept at face value that K was right.

Maybe he was…

There was silence, broken eventually by the baron, who was hesitant as he tried to express what had happened, and what had led him to enlisting the outlanders on a task that he was so unwilling to undertake himself. Or to put his people at risk. When the outlanders had come their way, the ville folk had been suspicious. So soon after the ones who had stolen their young, it was remarkable that they had not chilled the newcomers on sight.

Yet there was something about the six people who had ridden into the ville in a battered wag that was on its last legs that set them apart from the ones who had come before.

“Listen, Ryan,” K said carefully. “When they came, I should have read the signs. A bit of me did. But another bit of me couldn’t do anything about it. Why the fuck was that? You tell me,” he continued before the one-eyed man had a chance to speak. “All I know is that they did what they liked. In my ville. And then they took our kids. My kid,” he said quietly, almost as an afterthought, but one that he deliberately downplayed. “I can’t trust myself to follow them. I can’t trust any of my people, much as I can any other time. This is…different.”

“Then why us?” Ryan questioned.

K looked him squarely in the eye. “Because you haven’t fallen under the spell. Because you’re prepared…” He railed off, but seemed far from done.

“And?” Ryan said.

K shook his head. “Because you need the gold I’ll give you for it.”

Chapter Three

Ryan was the last one to take watch, and was still staring out across the wastes when the others had roused themselves and risen to join him.

Krysty walked over to him as he stood on the lip of the crevice, surer of his footing now that he could see the gaps between land and empty air.

“You see anything, lover?”

“Like what?” He turned and looked sharply at her. There was something about her tone that set his senses tingling.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Like a trace of where they went after they disappeared over the edge.”

He said nothing for a moment, that single, ice-blue orb burrowing into her consciousness, probing that mind it knew so well. Finally, he said, “There are some tracks. They were careful, no doubt, but no one can be that careful. No one.”

She nodded. “That’s good.”

“Something you want to tell me, mebbe?” he asked quietly. “About what you saw in the night?”

She grimaced. “I didn’t see anything…not actually see…and I’ve got to be honest with you, lover, I didn’t get so close. There was a way weird feel to it, and Jak… Well, I don’t really know what Jak saw, but it was something that wasn’t just a bunch of coldhearts.”

“This whole business has the ring of the macabre and mysterious about it,” Doc announced, moving near and clapping his hands together as he did so. “I do so love a mystery, especially when knowledge of it could save my skin. It resembles some stories I used to read by a young man called Pope. Edgar Wallace Pope, as I recall. Liked a touch of the bizarre. A bit like these fellows we are chasing.” Doc’s tone, which had previously been jocular, now became somber, his voice lowering. “I really do think you and young Jak should share this with us, no matter how silly or odd you may feel about it.”

“Doc’s right,” Mildred said, also coming near. “No matter how odd it is, even if it isn’t spooky, the fact that they’re making us feel like that means it’s one of their weapons.”

Jak had remained apart from the group, which had slowly clustered around Ryan. He was ruminative, as though weighing how to explain himself. He joined them, then. Looking away from them, he began. “Not sure how say. Deal with things in front you—hit man, chill mutie. Blades and bullets, know where are. Not with this. Shit scare kids with…didn’t feel like that, though.”

And so hesitantly, as the sun grew higher in the sky, Jak went on to outline how he had felt the previous night when he had tried to scan the dark, and how he had felt as though something was almost physically manhandling him. They listened in silenced until he had come to a halt almost as hesitantly as his beginning.

“Even if one does not believe in the supernatural,” Doc said, “then there is the preternatural. There are powers of the mind that we have all felt, one way or the other. Indeed, our own dear Krysty is living testament to this. To suppose that there are others with a more enhanced power, who could strike fear in this way, is not such a leap. To purport to be an ancient evil as a means of clouding men’s minds and gaining protection, that would be a simple expedient for such a power. I would venture to suggest that we proceed with nothing less than the utmost caution.”

“I guess that goes without saying.” Ryan grinned. Trust Doc to state the obvious, and in a way that used twenty words where one would do. But nonetheless, his central point remained valid. And as Ryan turned back to the narrow valley made by the crack in the earth, he knew that the people they were tailing had strengths that could put the companions on the last train west.

The fissure was unusual. It looked for all the world as though a fork of incredibly strong lightning had struck the earth and mined out a narrow and deep seam of soil. It was no more than fifteen yards across at its broadest point, the ledge that had nearly claimed him the night before being not so much an incursion into existing space as a curve in the trajectory of the seam, its width being the same even though the path suddenly changed. Now that they had good light they could see that it curved in a slow arc that took it beyond their view to the east and west. It was as if nature had decided to arbitrarily cut the earth in two, using this line as a crude division.

And yet there was something that was odd. At the edges of the horizon, where you would expect the curve to continue in a smooth arc, it suddenly seemed to cut sharply at an angle.

The Armorer had noticed that, and to his practiced eye there was something unnatural about the curve. Wordlessly, he took out his minisextant and took some readings by the newly risen sun. Then he sucked on his teeth, deep in thought.

“Something wrong, John?” Mildred asked.

“Could be,” he said after a reflective pause. “This might sound crazy, but if you look at the distance between here and there, then there’s no way we should be able to see those kinds of angles. What’s more, where do they actually go?”

Ryan looked again. J.B. was right. The sharp bend in the fissure seemed to suddenly peter out into nothing before it finally hit the edge of the horizon.

“We’ll follow the trail, such as it is, but we’ll take it real slow,” he said carefully. “There’s something about this that’s crazy, and not in a good way.”

The path ahead of them seemed treacherous. The slope into the fissure was almost sheer, and it was deep. In places, it was so deep as to disappear into shadow. There were paths, but they were narrow and covered with shale. To try to descend them would take a sure-footed care that Ryan felt only Jak truly possessed. And yet the men they sought had made this descent with a bunch of children.

Was there another way? One they were missing? It certainly didn’t seem so. Indeed, from the evidence of torn shrub and cleaned and skidded patches of shale, it would seem that there was a clearly defined route that they could follow.

“I’ll take point,” Ryan said. “Jak, you stay near the back, keep an eye on Doc.”

Doc raised an eyebrow. “I feel somehow as though I should be insulted, my dear Ryan, and yet instead I feel a little reassured.”

“More than I do, Doc,” Ryan replied with a grin. “J.B., follow me and watch my back. If I go, grab me before it’s too late.”

The Armorer moved across Krysty so that he would follow Ryan down the path. To access it, they had to drop almost three yards onto a narrow ledge. Ryan looked over. It was no more than a yard wide, and while one side was sheer rock with only a few handholds, the other dropped off into space that was empty right down into shadow, the occasional jagged rock that broke the shadow being the only real indicator of depth.

“Here goes jackshit,” he said with a sigh, gradually lowering himself over the edge until he was at full extension, his feet slipping on what little hold they could find, and his forearms taking the strain until he had to flatten his palms and let himself fall free a little way. He could feel the rough ground bite into his fingertips as they took his weight. With the pack that he carried, this wasn’t inconsiderable, and as he took a breath, preparing himself for the next drop, he wondered how Doc and Mildred would cope. They were tough, but they weren’t as physically strong as the others. With his head turned and his cheek pressed against the cold, dusty rock, he wondered if momentum would make any of them tumble back as they hit the ledge below, falling into space.

Fireblast, he thought. That was no way to think. Ryan spared himself one look down at the narrow ledge below, which seemed now to be too thin even to accommodate the length of his boots, before letting his fingers loose and feeling himself fall.

He scraped against the face of the rock, feeling it abrasive and hard against his skin. The uneven surface beneath his feet as they hit the ledge made him stumble and fall back. He put one heel back to steady himself, feeling it scrape the edge of the ledge and fall free into space. Barely able to take a breath, he thrust his torso forward so that he could equalize his balance, throwing himself into the rock, pulling that heel forward so that it was now on solid footing. For a second that felt like forever he held his breath in his lungs, feeling the blood thump around his arteries as he revelled in the fact that he had made it in one piece.

He stepped back as far as the ledge would allow and looked up. Above him, he could see the faces of the others, watching anxiously yet unable to do anything in the blinking of an eye that had yet seemed so long to him.

“Come on, we don’t have time to waste.” He grinned, making light of it.

Shrugging, J.B. slipped over the side and dropped down, allowing Ryan to steady him and so avoid the near disaster that the one-eyed man had faced. For Mildred and Doc, it was made easy by the assistance of Jak and Krysty up top, who aided them down to Ryan and J.B. Finally, when they were safely down, they pondered the way ahead.

The path was narrow and wound down into the valley formed by the crevice. Dark shadows enveloped it as it burrowed farther into the earth. Sparse scrub littered the rock-strewed pathway, and it was only this that marked the way taken by those they were following. It seemed a daunting path ahead. There was no indication of how much ground the other party had gained on them. Certainly, they were nowhere in sight.

The path wound down on a slight incline, moving into shadow. The companions started to walk along it, picking their way gingerly over the loose shale. The only consolation was that as the sun rose higher in the sky, they were in shadow and so protected from the worst ravages of the elements.

“How much distance do you think they’ve got on us?” Ryan muttered almost to himself. J.B., close on his heels as he had requested, sniffed ruminatively as he stared across the short yet infinitely deep space between one side and the other.

“I don’t get it, Ryan. It feels all wrong. Never mind what Jak and Krysty were saying, thing is this—it was so bastard dark down here that there was no way they could have gotten that far in front of us before having to stop. Which means that down here, we should be able to at least catch sight of them. But where are they? They’re nowhere I can see.”

“No way they could have gotten across, either,” Ryan mused. He stopped and looked into the darkness that seemed to swirl in the depths, having no real form. It was a disorienting experience and he quickly tore his vision away. “They must be in front.”

“Yeah, well, they better not have gained that much distance,” Mildred grumbled. “Or else they found some way off this path.”

It was true. They had been walking on the narrow ledge for some time, and the lure of the endless drop to their right was calling to them, giving each the almost irresistible desire to throw themselves into the abyss. None would admit it, but it was all they could do to keep their vision focused on the shale path beneath and in front of them.

The call of the darkness grew stronger. Into each person’s mind, unbidden, came a picture of what it would be like to throw himself or herself into the crevice. A despair at their progress swept across them like a wave. What point was there in going on when they couldn’t see their prey? How far in front, how distant were they?

It was inevitable that, with this clouding their focus, one of them would stumble and fall. Almost as inevitable was that it would be one of the weakest of the group. And yet this was where fate had a surprise in store for them, for although Doc found his mind clouding, and his feet becoming heavy and cumbersome, it was J.B. who suddenly felt his combat boots slip on loose shale. Taken momentarily by surprise, he felt his leg shoot out from under him. He threw out an arm, grabbing instinctively for Ryan.

The one-eyed man felt J.B. pull on him, and he was thrown off balance. Beneath him, that which had once been solid was now almost fluid as it slid out from under his feet.

He heard Krysty and Mildred both yell, as he and the Armorer found themselves falling into space.

* * *

MORGAN WAS DOZING fitfully in the morning light as it penetrated the heavy covers over the windows of his hut. The fire had died down and was now little more than a few smoking embers and wisps of smoke, the smell of the sweet, burned wood permeating the room. The baron was hunkered down on the far side of the room, staring into the embers, lost in thoughts of his own. Since the moment the dark force had reached out and thrust him back, Morgan had been content to remain within himself. He might have had some small degree of power, but he knew that whatever was behind the people who had taken the children was far more powerful. Baron or not, he wouldn’t risk going near it again. Tell K whatever he wanted to hear—make it up, if necessary. But he didn’t want to feel that icy claw around his heart again.

“Don’t hold out on me,” K murmured without looking up.

Morgan looked across at the baron. Had K been watching him? Did he, in some way, have the power to see into the old man’s mind? A power that he didn’t, perhaps, even realize he had?

“Whatever you’re seeing, I need to know. Even if you don’t think it’s what I want to hear. I won’t hold you responsible. But I have to know.”

I don’t think you do, Morgan thought but wouldn’t dare say.

Instead he said, “There’s nothing to tell you. At the moment all is dark, as though there was some kind of blanket thrown over the glass.”

K chuckled, albeit without humor. “You’re speaking in riddles, Morgan. Don’t do that. Speak plain.”

“Very well.” The old man sniffed. “There’s some kind of power that’s stopping me seeing clearly, but—”

“What is it?” K was electrified into sudden movement. With a speed that spoke of his strength, he moved from his haunches and across the room in one smooth movement, until he had Morgan’s face in his hands. He was holding it up to whatever light he could find, trying to get a better view. For his part, the old man was making desperate gurgling sounds on the back of his throat, his eyes rolled up into his head so that only the whites showed, yellow and awful as the few shafts of light to penetrate the gloom caught them. Spittle rolled down his chin and into his beard.

“What is it? What is it, man? Tell me!” K roared, as if sheer volume would break through the barrier between them.

But Morgan couldn’t answer. All intent of lying to the baron had been lost, and now all hope of soft-pedaling in an attempt to stay on the right side of the baron was also a cause that was given up. For Morgan had wanted to steer clear of the dark force that One-eye and his motley crew were pursuing. He wished them well, but he knew when he was facing something greater than he had ever believed existed. He didn’t even care about the children. The ones he knew. Even the ones he cared about. Such was the fear that this dark power had instilled in him with one swoop.

Morgan wanted to steer clear, but the dark force wouldn’t let him. It was almost as if it was sentient, seeking to use him as a tool, to scare the baron away from further pursuit.

Struggle as he might to deny it, Morgan was seeing what was happening to Ryan and his people. He hated it, for so many reasons.

But he couldn’t deny it.

* * *

RYAN YELLED in anger and surprise. He was furious with the fates and with himself. He was certain that he had a sure footing, and that he would be able to take the weight of the Armorer as he reached out for him. It should have been simple to grab J.B. and stop him from falling. And yet the ground had seemingly given way beneath him, causing him to be dragged in the wake of his stricken friend. For the second time in less than twelve hours he felt that he was plunging to his doom, except that this time there was no one to stop him. Unlike the night before, the others were too far out of reach, being behind the Armorer as he was the first to take the plunge.

As he fell, weightless, in the air it seemed to him that he was falling at an infinitesimally slow rate. He felt as though he slowly turned in the air, away from the swirling and formless shadows below so that he could see the anguished faces of Doc, Mildred, Jak and particularly Krysty as they stared down, helpless. It was almost funny. They looked so ridiculous in that moment when Ryan knew even their pain and longing could no longer help him.

Maybe that was what did it. At that moment, when Ryan gave in to what he saw as his fate, and his inevitable end, it was as though he ceased to fall. He felt as though he was lying on static ground, as though J.B. was lying next to him. He turned his head and could see that the Armorer was level with him. Surely that wasn’t right? Shouldn’t J.B. have fallen first and been beneath him? The expression of bewilderment on his old friend’s face told him that thoughts of a similar nature were crossing the Armorer’s mind.

The others, looming over him, seemed to be closer than they had a moment ago. Too close. And the air, which had been whistling around his ears, now seemed so static and dry. Dusty, almost…

A blinding pain shot across his skull, running from the back of his neck, up and around so that it blinded his only eye, making him shut it tightly to try to stop the agony, which seemed as though it wanted nothing more than to take a physical form and force its way out through the socket.

He screamed.

And when he opened his eye once more, he was bemused to see that the others were, indeed, standing over him and J.B. Only instead of looking down at them, they were looking around.

Without even sitting up, he knew why. The hard-packed dirt was solid beneath him, and he could see from the periphery of his vision that they were on level ground. Level with where they had been before their descent. Raising himself on one elbow, he looked around. To his left, he could see the flat expanse of waste that they had trekked across the previous day. He recognized the scrub and rock they had used as landmarks to count off the miles.

They should be in the crevice.

But it was no longer there.

More than that, to his right, where there had previously been only the flat lands that stretched on the other side of the crevice, there was now a wall of rock that stood about forty yards high, on a steep incline, about three miles away. It was like an inversion of the crevice.

And maybe it was just as real?

“I don’t know what just happened, and to be honest I don’t really give a shit how. The real question is, what can we do about it?”

Ryan turned to the Armorer, who was sitting up, his arms clasped around his knees as he surveyed the territory. The laconic wryness of his tone belied the real urgency of his question.

“Keep going,” Ryan answered simply. “I figure that we really were seeing them in the distance, and when they disappeared it wasn’t down a nonexistent hole. It was behind some kind of wall they could put up mentally. Something that could get inside our heads.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Doc murmured. “Down the hole and out of sight. Make something grow smaller and then make it grow bigger. Is it really that way or does it just seem to be that way?”

“Not make sense.” Jak spit. “Have to go like real, then see. Just be ready for any shit.”

“Looks that way,” Krysty said slowly. “That crap that Jak and me were feeling last night… Mebbe that’s the mechanism they use, a kind of super doomie power that can play on our fears.”

“How know what scare us?” Jak questioned.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to know us.” Mildred shrugged. “Anyone getting this far would be exhausted, so a deep drop and a narrow path would be daunting. Like that wall is going to be bastard to climb,” she added, indicating the distant barrier, which seemed to stretch across the horizon.

“Can’t be that hard if it doesn’t exist.” J.B. shrugged.

Mildred laughed shortly. “Still hurt like hell to get down that nonexistent drop, didn’t it? Wonder what we would have looked like to anyone watching as we went down an imaginary drop?”

“No more stupe than we’ll look climbing an imaginary mountain,” Ryan replied. “But if that’s what we have to do—”

“That is if it truly is imaginary,” Doc interjected. “There is, of course, the possibility that the abyss was a dream, yet the mountain is real. The one a mask for the other.”

“You know, we could talk about that all day,” J.B. said quietly, spitting on the ground in disgust at their impotence. “We’re not really going to know one way or the other, even when we reach it. But one thing I can tell you for sure is this—the longer we stand around, the farther those coldheart bastards get from us, and the harder it’s going to be to get the kids back and get our jack.”

The Armorer was right. If they intended to finish their mission, they had little option but to continue regardless. And so they started forward again, in silence, hearts and limbs heavy, and all the time knowing that this was exactly the frame of mind that the clouding of their reality had been intended to produce.

Just how hard was it going to be if they had to fight on two planes simultaneously: the mental and the physical?

* * *

MORGAN’S EYES flickered, then rolled back into their usual position. He was surprised to find himself being cradled by the baron, and even more surprised by the distant look in the man’s eyes. It was as though the hardened baron was a million miles away.

And then, as if suddenly noticing that the old man had come to, and not wanting to give anything away, the baron’s worried mien suddenly hardened into its usual mask.

“What did you see, old man? Tell me,” the baron snapped in a harsh voice. It was unnecessarily abrupt, and despite his best intent couldn’t entirely hide the anxiety he felt.

Despite his own fear, exacerbated by the sudden intrusion of the visions he didn’t want to see, Morgan felt a pang of pity for the baron. K wasn’t a man he would have ever thought that he could have sympathy for, and yet he could see that the man had a… A what? A weakness? Was it a weakness to have feelings for your own flesh and blood? Perhaps it was if you were a hard-fighting and hard-fought leader of a ville. So, despite the stubborn streak of his nature that told Morgan to tell the baron to get fucked, in spite of any consequences, he took a deep breath and started to speak.

It was halting and confused as he tried to explain in words the things that he had seen and felt primarily as a series of impressions and emotions, but as he went on the baron’s face changed yet again. He was absorbed by what the old man was telling him. It confirmed his worst fears about the powers of those who had taken the children. At the same time, it boosted his self-esteem. At the back of his mind, still there despite the fears for his own child, was the lurking fear that his judgment had somehow been in error when he allowed these events to happen. But after all, if a man of Morgan’s undoubted doomie sensibility was easy meat to whatever was behind the intruders, then no one could hold him responsible and use that fact to challenge his position.

By the time the old man had finished, the baron had moved back and away, and was hunkered against the wall of the shack, elbows resting on his knees and chin in his hands as he focused on the story. Morgan, for his part, had moved in the opposite direction and had wiped the spittle from his beard. He turned to the barrel where he kept his own personal brew and scooped out a mugful that he downed in one swallow.

K didn’t see it that way. As soon as he saw what the old man was doing, he sprang across the room, swiping the mug from the old man’s fist in one smooth and swift motion.

“No,” he yelled, “you’re not doing that. I want you sober and awake so that you can tell me what’s happening.”

Mutely, Morgan followed the progress of the mug as it flew across the room, its tin body clanging as it hit the boards of the cabin floor, the fire hissing and flaring as a spray of alcohol swept across it like an incoming wave. He turned back to K and looked him squarely in the eye. When he spoke, it was with a hushed gravity that made the baron look away uneasily.

“You idiot. Do you really think that those poor bastards are going to be able to get your daughter back? You don’t give a shit about the other kids. Why the fuck should you? Their parents wouldn’t care squat about your kid, after all. But you should give it up, K. She’s gone. And no amount of making me face going mad seeing what it can do and letting it get inside my head is going to make any bastard difference. Not one little bit. They’re as good as chilled. And so is your daughter. The sooner we face it, the better. Whatever the fuck those coldheart bastards were who took her and the others, they weren’t human. Mebbe once. Before whatever it’s that makes the black fist got hold of them and changed them forever. Mebbe they still have some kind of humanity in them. But if they have, it’s so buried that there ain’t no way it’s ever going to find a way out.

“Face it, K, she’s gone. You lost. We all did. And those poor fuckers you sent after them with the promise of gold? They’re gone, too.”

Chapter Four

Doom. An overwhelming sense of it; a kind of despondency that weighed heavily and seemed to bodily add to any kind of forward momentum so that every step was a task that seemed almost beyond accomplishment.

So it was that they trudged across the hard and hollow earth toward the tower of rock that stood in front of them. It stretched across their vision in the same way that the crevice had but a short time before, and even appeared to curve at the same oblique and impossible angle as it reached the periphery of vision.

Each of them knew that it was an illusion. As they walked in silence they told themselves that, repeating it internally like some kind of mantra. It should have helped to reinforce the knowledge, and perhaps see the illusion crumble in front of their eyes. Yet the edifice remained solid to all appearances.

Krysty, who was the only one of them possessed of the kind of mutated sense that was in any way a match for the mind or minds that had created the wall, felt a despair that was unlike anything that she had ever known. It was more than just the sense that the illusion in front of them was stronger than they could defeat. It was as though the mind itself that had created this was thrusting tendrils into her own consciousness, attempting to find her weak spots and probe at her feelings and memories. To find out more about those who were approaching, perhaps? She wondered if the others were feeling this, or if it was something that was her own experience because of her mutie blood.

If it was her alone, then she had to be strong. She tried to think of anything that could blot it out and block the tendrils of despair with a wall of memory that was designed to combat the negativity. Back where she came from, in Harmony ville, those with the mutie strain and those without had always worked to further their own positivity, and she drew on these lessons.

But the toll on her was great, and the effort it demanded caused her to walk at a slower pace, and to fall back until she was lagging behind the others. Such was their own burden that they didn’t, at first, notice. It was only when they were within a spit of the seemingly impenetrable rock face that Ryan turned back and noticed. He rushed toward her.

“Krysty, what…?”

She shook her head, flame-red tendrils of hair hugging the contours of her face. “Can’t you feel it?”

“What?”

The woman smiled grimly. So it was just a mutie thing. She tried to explain, but the words came out halting and vague. It was like trying to capture a wisp of smoke borne away on the breeze. If she had but known it, she wasn’t the only one having such problems in explaining what was happening to her.

“Can you shut it out for long?” Ryan asked with a calm he didn’t feel. He was worried for Krysty, sure. But he had the others to think of, too, and the safety of all his people was at threat unless she gave an honest answer.

Her twisted grin—half humor and half agony—was all the answer he needed.

“I can try, but every second is a battle. And I don’t think I can win the war, Ryan.”

He nodded grimly. “I know we’re exhausted, people, but we need to get past this obstacle as soon as we can.”

“For what, I wonder?” Doc mused. “Just what lies on the other side? Is it worth our effort, or should we perhaps just leave well enough alone and turn away? After all, do we really need the money?”

As he spoke, he could feel the waves of pressure recede slightly, so negligible as to barely be noticeable, and yet it piqued his curious nature, and he got to his feet and walked toward the rock.

“Perhaps it would be best if we just gave this up as a bad lot and walked away from it, maybe head off in another direction altogether,” he continued with all the conviction he could muster.

Krysty, who had been kneeling as she tried to gather her strength, leaned forward. “Ryan, look.”

Doc was walking toward the rock face as he spoke, and the sheer wall seemed suddenly to shimmer in front of him. For a moment, it became semitransparent. As though through a veil, they could see flat land beyond. A land that seemed to extend beneath a wall of rock that was, bizarrely, still there.

To each of them, it was apparent—if not clear why—that the rock wall was little more than an illusion, and one that it would now be easy to simply walk through as though it wasn’t there. It was as if the consciousness that had created it was somehow impeded or lessened when they considered turning back.

Which, Ryan figured, kind of made sense if the mind behind this was building it as a defense. Why waste the energy it needed if the enemy was no longer a threat? Suppose it could see inside their heads, but had no way of physically seeing what they were doing? If it only locked onto consciousness, then perhaps it might be able to fool it for long enough to pass through.

Ryan stood and followed Doc on his steady progress toward the shimmering rocks. “Fireblast, we don’t need this crap, Doc! You’re right, mebbe it’s about time we gave this shit up as a bad idea. It’s not our fight, after all.”

Krysty held back, unwilling to enter the fray as her psyche might betray the actions that Ryan and Doc were seeking to further. Mildred and J.B. looked on, uncertain as to how either of them would stand up to such scrutiny of conviction. But while they hesitated, for their own reasons, Jak walked forward to join Doc and Ryan.

“Screw this shit. Say we get fuck out, leave ’em to it,” Jak agreed, his impassive visage giving away nothing of the inner turmoil as he sought to convince himself that he should walk away from a fight. It was something that he had never done, and in truth he had no intention of doing so now. Whatever had constructed the illusion of the rock wall didn’t have to know that, though.

The three men advanced on the rock, their self-imposed conviction making the opaque now transparent.

Doc was the first to the surface that now shimmered and flickered like a light that was defective, there and gone in a strobe that was as fast as the blink of an eye. He indicated to the other two that they should stay, as with his other hand he stretched out and tried to touch the surface.

It gave in front of him like a pool of liquid that inexplicably remained on the vertical plane without flowing over him. His hand penetrated the surface without the kind of rippling that he might expect, for although it looked like an illusion of light, it felt as though he was actually plunging his hand into a wall of fluid. There was some resistance and give, and it felt as though the light was flowing and closing around his hand like a dense, viscous fluid.

“We cannot head back to Baron K and tell him that we have reneged on his mission,” Doc said calmly. “I guess we shall have to proscribe a pretty big circle if we are going to avoid him on the way back, seeing as we’ll be without his precious cargo.”

As he spoke, he could feel the fluid grow lighter around his hand and arm. He was able to penetrate it with greater ease. Past the elbow now, and it seemed to be giving him less resistance with each moment. He had almost convinced himself that they would be turning back, so it was little wonder that the so-called rock was giving way. Indeed, so much had Doc convinced himself in his quest to break down the illusion that he had to remind himself to actually move forward: first one foot, then another, so that he was moving within the confines of the illusory rock face.

A moment of panic almost overwhelmed him as the strange semisubstance of the illusion hit his face. It was like plunging his head into a pool of molasses, thick and gloopy, sticking his hair to his head yet not actually making him wet. It felt dry and hot against his skin, which seemed the opposite of how it should feel, and for a second that panic was reinforced by the sudden fear that he may not be able to breathe. Yet, despite the feeling of being closed in by this elusive thing that was not, he was still able to suck air into his lungs. Dry and hot, but still oxygenated.

Doc felt confidence well in him as he took in a breath. He had it beaten, and he would be able to get through to the other side with ease. If he could do it, then that should break the illusion and allow the others—even Krysty—to follow with ease.

And yet, paradoxically, even as he thought this he knew that it was a major mistake. If whatever powered this illusion fed on their received thoughts to know how much power to put into the defense, then to think such a thing was to reveal that it was being deceived. And that way lay disaster.

Even as these thoughts flashed across his mind, he felt the illusion start to regain a kind of solidity that swiftly passed beyond the point it had been fixed upon when his hand first pushed into it. Now it passed from feeling like a dry mist around him to being like molasses again, and then to a state where it was more alarming. It began to increase in pressure around him, constricting his chest and making breath hard to take—not that this mattered, as the hot dry air became like dust that began to choke in his lungs. He felt his arms and legs become encased in something that was, bizarrely, both clinging and also hard around him. It stopped him from moving back to where the others were watching in mute and frozen horror. He could feel that, although it was impossible to see as he was now unable to turn his head.

Around him, the sky and land beyond the end of the illusory wall, which had previously been clear through the transparent and fading defense, was now disappearing as the air around him grew gray, shot through with red streaks of iron ore and sandstone as the rock started to attain the consistency of the land that it sought to copy. Even this was soon lost to him as the opacity grew to such a degree that it began to block out any light around him.

What would be worse? To choke on the air that had become dust, or to be unable to take breath because of the rock that hardened around you so that your chest was constrained, and the space around your mouth and nostrils became filled with the hard substance, allowing no breath to be taken, or even that which remained in your lungs to be expelled, so that they felt like they were exploding?

Perhaps it was the panic of the situation that flung Doc into such a place, but he felt strangely calm as he pondered this fate. If he was going to buy the farm this way, it would at least give him a conundrum in which to pass his last few remaining seconds.

But if Doc had resigned himself to his fate, the same couldn’t be said of his companions. For a moment they were all frozen to the spot, stunned at what they were seeing. The rock seemed to darken and take shape around the old man, encasing him and gradually becoming more opaque so that his shape was becoming lost within it. It seemed absurd and terrible at the same time. The rock itself didn’t exist, they were sure of that. And yet the mental construct that had formed it seemed to be so strong and vital in its force that it made the intangible solid to the extent that it had the physical force of the real thing.

It was Jak who snapped out of this trance first. The albino teen’s hunting and survival instincts kicked in, overriding the shock that had momentarily stopped him dead. Without a word, he sprang forward, plunging himself into the rock.

Why it worked, he had no idea. In fact, the question didn’t even occur to him. Jak didn’t hesitate. And maybe that was the crux of the matter. He didn’t give the construct a thought. Someone put it in his mind, and it wasn’t really there. The logical knot that it was seemingly so solid as to be trapping Doc didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting the old man out.

Jak felt the rock yield against him only with protest. It was like trying to push heavy rocks out of the way, yet these were rocks that had no edges. It was as though the sheet of solid rock in front of him moved and ground around the force of his momentum, yet didn’t break up into rubble. He felt the pressure against his face and chest, closing his nostrils and constricting him. But where Doc had given in to this and accepted it, Jak wouldn’t.

It couldn’t be doing this, as it wasn’t there. Simple as that.

This clear thinking seemed to have an effect on the illusion that the albino youth couldn’t have foreseen. In truth, he didn’t even notice it, so focused was he on his task. Pushing aside the hardness of the rock with what was little more than an effort of will, he reached out until he grasped Doc’s shoulder. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, as the rock was encircling the old man’s form, and yet he felt the soft cloth of Doc’s frock coat beneath his fingers. He clamped them down hard and pulled on the old scholar, to spin him.

Doc felt the hand and was puzzled. A hand through rock? Surely that wasn’t possible. He was shocked more than any other emotion when he felt himself turn in what was, to him, a solid coffin, only to find that Jak’s face was in front of his own. Bizarrely, and in a way that he couldn’t explain, it seemed to merge with the rock that should have been there.

Dr. Theophilus Tanner was a man who was no stranger to madness. He recognized it. In the same way, as strange as this situation was, he knew that it was not insanity. On the contrary, it made perfect sense. His own belief in the power of the intelligence that created this illusion was now helping it to keep up that very thing. As a result, the only way for it to end, and for him to be saved, was…

“Hit me,” he said to Jak. It came out cracked and barely audible, but it was enough. Jak looked into Doc’s eyes, and even if he couldn’t phrase exactly what he saw, he grasped it on an instinctive level. He pulled back his free hand and hit out. Even with the resistance, real or imagined, that the rock provided, he was still able to muster enough power to connect with Doc’s jaw hard enough for it to make the lights go out behind Doc’s eyes. The whites showed as they rolled up into his head, and he slumped toward the ground.

A ground that was now solid and unencumbered by the illusion of a wall of rock. It was as if, without Doc’s belief—a belief that he had tried his hardest to deny but had, paradoxically, only reinforced by so doing—the intelligence that had formed the defense had nothing on which to build.

Ryan whistled softly. He turned and looked around at the other three, who were a few yards behind him. Krysty was still hunkered on the ground, while J.B. and Mildred had huddled together, perhaps unconsciously. Their eyes were fixed at a point beyond him; beyond even where Jak stood over Doc’s inert frame, bending over him in solicitation now that the necessary force had been exerted.

Beyond the area where the rock wall had seemingly been, there was an expanse of bare and arid land, scorched and blasted by the hot winds of the nukecaust and still enough of a hot spot for little other than some shriveled shrub to have prospered in the intervening years. And beyond this, where the land rose slightly in level until it formed a ragged lip, there was another chasm. It was a deep, wide split in the earth that extended for hundreds of yards. The shadowed contour of the rock face forming the far wall of the chasm could be plainly seen. It was a gash in the earth that ran in an irregular line, widening and then narrowing along its path. Unlike the earlier illusion, this had the random look of nature, and didn’t veer off at strange angles from the periphery of vision. Unlike the previous chasm, and the mountainous wall, this had dust disturbed in eddies and whorls by the air currents that were stirred by the depths of what was, Ryan was certain, a canyon.

And, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he could have sworn he knew which one.

“Is that one real?” J.B. asked hesitantly.

Ryan swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and nodded.

“Yeah, that one’s the real deal.”

There was something in his tone that made Mildred look at him askance. “You sound certain,” she murmured.

“Makes sense now,” he said cryptically, shrugging. “I never really believed all those stories, but the look of that…and what’s happened to us.”

“Mancos Canyon,” Krysty said softly. “I’d always figured that those stories were just that…not that there was any truth in them.”

Jak turned back so that he was facing her. His brow was furrowed.

“Stories?” he queried.

“I fear I am with you on this one,” Doc agreed. “You speak of these as though they are common knowledge. Perhaps to you. But not to everyone.”

“Sorry, Doc,” Ryan said absently. “It’s just that they were the kinds of tales that you spin around the fire at night, on watches, to stop yourself falling asleep unless you wanted nightmares.”

J.B. walked past the one-eyed man and looked to the split in the earth that lay in front of them. He took off his fedora and scratched his head, lost for a moment in thought. Then, without looking around, he said, “Mancos, eh? Rumors have always swirled about that place.”

Doc was becoming a little exasperated, and it was reflected in his tone. “This is all very well, but if there is some legend attached to this place that may, perhaps, have some bearing on what we are about to face, then I think that you should tell those of us who are not privy to the knowledge. It would, after all, help.”

“I don’t know if you could dignify it with the word legend,” Krysty began reflectively. “The region got blasted in the nukecaust. So hot that no one could go near it for generations. But along the way there were those who wandered off the tracks and ended up here. Now mebbe you’d think that anyone who did that would end up as shriveled as an old man’s dick that had been left out in the sun too long. If you did, then you’d be wrong. Most who disappeared into this region were never seen again. Those who were, well, when they were seen again, those who knew them said they were…different.”

The way in which she let that last word hang in the air made Mildred shiver. Different in what way? she wondered. More to the point was another thought, to which she gave voice.

“So you’re telling me that we’re headed into an area that is full of nukeshit still, and from which people either don’t come back, or if they do they’re not even recognizable to their friends?”

“Something like that,” Krysty said in a tone that managed to be both flat and grim at the same time.

Mildred whistled. “Sounds like we’re in for a real fun time.”

“Quite,” Doc added quickly. “But I think the real question for me is, in what way changed? Are we to expect that we will become in some way infected by radiation and covered with sores and distortion of the features? Or will we somehow develop some kind of mutation?”

“Like the ones that you think nearly caused you to buy the farm?” Krysty countered. There was an edge of hostility in her voice. “You think that because it’s evil then it must be mutie traits? You think that’s why these people—the ones who were seen again—were so changed?”

“My dear, I do not know,” Doc said mildly. “That is the sole reason that I ask. Being mutie is not itself a bad thing. You must surely know me well enough by now to know that I would not countenance such a thought. But it would require a kind of power that is only possessed by those who are muties to achieve the things we have seen.”

Krysty gave a short, barking laugh. “Guess you’re right about that, Doc. Mebbe that’s why I’m getting so bastard defensive. Doomie sense is one thing, but this is more than that. Far more.”

Mildred had moved forward so that she was standing next to J.B. “So what was it about those who returned that had changed?” she asked.

Krysty thought about that for a moment before answering.

“They had a darkness all around them. Not just in the way that their attitude to people they had known had changed. They seemed to relate to everything and everyone in a different manner. Even dogs didn’t like them. Come to think of it, that’s a good way to describe it. It was like they looked at those around them in the same way that everyone else looked at dogs.”

“Another step up the evolutionary ladder, another link in the evolutionary chain,” Doc mused almost to himself. “That is an interesting idea. Before the proliferation of fools tampering with nukes, and then the nukecaust itself did nothing more than prove the random nature of nature itself, there was an idea that those who had what we call mutie powers were some kind of preliminary breakthrough to the next step of humanity. So maybe, if those who wander this way survive and are changed by that which lies ahead of us now, maybe they feel that kind of superiority.”

“I’ll tell you what really worries me,” Mildred added softly. “What if the reason they think that is because someone or something is telling them that? Where does that leave us?”

“Up to our necks in shit,” Ryan stated succinctly. “That wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You know, we can sit here and wonder all we want, but the only way we’re really going to find out is if we go and have a look for ourselves,” J.B. said with a faraway tone that was reflective of the way in which he was looking to the horizon, and the gaping maw that split the land in front of it.

Ryan shrugged. His old friend was right, of course. They began the march toward what they hoped would be a real answer to all the questions that were bubbling inside them.

One thing was obvious from the start: whatever intelligence had been working on them, and however it had worked, that was now at an end. The land where the illusory rock carapace had stood was proof enough of this on its own. Where the land that had led up to it had seemed smooth and unmarked, now they could see that the land behind them was marked with tracks that were obviously other than their own—obvious because they now stretched across the space that had seemingly been taken up by rock before, and beyond that across the land leading toward the lip of the canyon.

J.B. looked up at the sky. There was some cloud cover, but it was high and thin, barely more than a haze in places. And hardly moving as it drifted slowly across the scorching sun. Down below, where they wearily and warily trudged across the hard-packed dirt, there was no movement at all in the air. It was still. Perhaps it had been that way for most of the time since the first scouring winds of skydark had cleared the land and left it to chill. Then, as his eyes scanned from the skies down to ground level, he could see the immutable proof of the land’s still nature. The ground ahead of them was crisscrossed by trails. Some were made by human feet, others by the hooves of pack animals. Although it took a moment for the fact to sink in, he also realized that there were no wag or bike traces among the paths that had been trudged across the loose dirt. Maybe that said that the way down into the canyon—where, presumably, some kind of life was possible—was too narrow and precarious for such luxuries.

One thing was for sure: the tracks had been made over a long period of time. There was a massive amount of overlap, where one trail was crossed, often many times, by others. Some were ground deep into the dirt, impacted by repetition so that they ran deeper. But as the land around here was so arid, none seemed to have been baked into mud. Instead, they rested precariously on loose soil that should have made them things of an ephemeral nature. Their longevity said much for the bizarre conditions of the region.

And now they were adding to them. It would be simple for anyone to see where they had been, and where they were going, if they wanted to follow in their wake. But even as the thought occurred to Ryan, he realized that not only was there no place to hide out here on the flat, but whoever lived in the canyon would already know of their presence either because they had been alerted by the defenses…or because they were the defenses.

It was a chilling thought that they were walking toward an enclosed space and people who were most probably aware of their presence, people who had cover while the companions were out in the open.

Perhaps it was his preoccupation with those thoughts that made the distance between where they had started and the lip of the canyon seem to pass by in less than the blink of an eye. Maybe, too, they had increased their pace with the knowledge that they were now within sight of their prey. For there was little doubt that the party they had been pursuing had descended into the canyon. There was a trail that they could follow plainly. It ran from the path that they, themselves, had traversed, and carried on ahead. The number of feet that had impressed upon the land was consistent—the children of the ville, and the men who had taken them.

J.B. thought about what Baron K had told them about the men who had come into the ville: how they had acted, how they had conspired to move themselves into a position where they were able to take the children with no resistance from the men and women of a ville that was renowned for its hard-bitten fighters. He suppressed a shudder at what Ryan had agreed for them to take on. It would have been hard enough to tackle them at any point on the route, let alone to follow them into their own territory.

His mind was still mulling that over when the companions reached the lip of the canyon. The strata of rock spinning away below them into the shadows were layered in geometric patterns that were awesome in their precision. The shadows, too, were layered in this way as shards of light caught on gleaming stone.

Yet that wasn’t what immediately caught the eye. Certainly, it was something even more awesome—and yet completely apposite and bizarre—that caused Krysty to gasp, “Gaia, it’s beautiful.”

Mildred smiled wryly. “Yeah, but it’s got trouble written all over it.”

Chapter Five

Baron K was thoughtful as he left Morgan. The old man had recovered, but had been more taciturn than usual. After his outburst, he had refused to be drawn on what he had seen in his vision state. Even the direst threats that the baron could make—worse than chilling, the torture that preceded but stopped short all the time, suspending him on the edge of oblivion without ever taking the plunge—couldn’t shift him from his silence.

That disturbed K more than anything. If anyone knew what he was capable of, then it was the old man. Trusted lieutenants came and went without much in the way of trust when you were a baron, but someone like Morgan—a seer whose insights were important, and whose cache with a sometimes disgruntled populous could never be an underestimated tool—was an invaluable ally, and as such would be privy to things that it was best others didn’t know. Morgan had seen the worst of the baron, and he knew to what lengths K would go to achieve his aims. The old man had been smart in the past, and had known when to counsel and when to shut up and nod. Never had he been so—what was the word?—defiant.

Whatever the old man had seen, it had frightened him so much that he was prepared to incur the wrath of his baron rather than relive it. For it wasn’t as if he didn’t want to speak. It was stronger than that. It was as though to just speak what he had seen would bring it all flooding back in such a way that would drive him into the abyss of insanity.

K mused that he could make the old man talk. That would be easy. Everyone had his or her point of no return, after which their tongues would be loosened no matter what their threshold and their tolerance to pain.

But what would that achieve? Did he really want to hear whatever it was that Morgan had seen?

He reached his palace. His wasn’t a rich ville, and in truth his home was only a palace in relation to the hovels that the rest of the population had for homes. K may be the ruler of this land, but it was a poor land in relation to much of the rest of the wasteland. The soil was poor for farming and the keeping of livestock, and much of the food they had came about as a result of trade. Not that they had much to trade with. When K had arrived here, it was a ville that was on the verge of extinction. Now it was barely alive and breathing. But it was there, crawling and scratching its way to some hope of prosperity.

It might not be much, but it was K’s own. He had built it from nothing, and intended to keep it that way. To do so he had flexed considerable muscle. So it was that Morgan’s defiance shook him on more than one level. It wasn’t just the refusal, so out of character. It was also the fact that it reinforced that which he had been unwilling to face: his own uselessness in the face of this enemy. Rather than go after them himself, he had been more than happy—no, relieved was a better word if he was honest—to let the one-eyed man and his band of mercies go after the children. Even though his own daughter—the one thing he prized more than his own existence—was among the ones taken.