He forced himself awake finally, not wishing to sleep any
longer, afraid to sleep when he was not certain what was hap-
pening. Nothing around him appeared to have changed. It
seemed that he could not have been asleep for more than a few
moments.
He tried lifting his head, and pain stabbed down the back of
his neck. He lay back again, thinking suddenly of Steff and Teel
and of the thinness of the line that separated life and death.
Padishar Creel came up beside him. He was heavily bandaged
about the head, and his arm was splinted and strapped to his
side. “So, lad,” he greeted quietly.
Morgan nodded, closed his eyes and opened them again.
“We’re getting out now,” the other said. “All of us, thanks
to you. And to Steff. Chanctos told me the story. He had great
courage, that one.” The rough face looked away. “Well, the
Jut’s lost but that’s a small price to pay for our lives.”
Morgan found that he didn’t want to talk about the price of
lives. “Help me up, Padishar,” he said quietly.’ ‘I want to walk
out of here.”
The outlaw chief smiled. “Don’t we all, lad,” he whispered.
He reached out his good hand and pulled Morgan to his feet.
XXXII
It was a nightmarish world where Par and Coil Ohmsford
walked. The silence was intense and endless, a cloak of
emptiness that stretched further than time itself. There were
no sounds, no cries of birds or buzzings of insects, no small
sidtterings or scrapes, not even the rustle of the wind through
the trees to give evidence of life. The trees rose skyward like
statues of stone carved by some ancient civilization and left in
mute testament to the futility of man’s works. They had a gray
and wintry look to them, and even the leaves that should have
softened and colored their bones bore the look of a scarecrow’s
rags. Scrub brush and saw grass rubbed up against their trunks
like stray children, and bramble bushes twisted together in a
desperate effort to protect against life’s sorrows.
The mist was there as well, of course. The mist was there
first, last, and always, a deep and pervasive sea of gray that shut
everything vibrant away. It hung limp in the air, unmoving as it
smothered trees and brush, rocks and earth, and life of any kind
or sort, a screen that blocked away the sun’s light and warmth.
There was an inconsistency to it, for in some places it was thin
and watery and merely gave a fuzzy appearance to what it sought
to cloak, while in others it was as impenetrable as ink. It brushed
at the skin with a cold, damp insistence that whispered of dead
things.
Par and Coil moved slowly, cautiously through their waking
dream, fighting back against the feeling that they had become
disembodied. Their eyes darted from shadow to shadow, search-
ing for movement, finding only stillness. The world they had
entered seemed lifeless, as if the Shadowen they knew to be
hidden there were not in fact there at all but were simply a lie
of the dream that their senses could not reveal.
They moved quickly to the rubble of the Bridge of Sendic so
that they could follow its broken trail to the vault. Their footsteps
were soundless in the tall grasses and the damp, yielding earth.
At times their boots disappeared entirely in the carpet of mist.
Par glanced back to the door they had come through. It was
nowhere to be seen.
In seconds, the cliff face itself, the whole of what remained
of the palace of the Kings of Tyrsis, had vanished as well.
As if it had never been. Par thought darkly.
He felt cold and empty inside, but hot where sweat made the
skin beneath his clothing feel prickly and damp. The emotions
that churned inside would not be sorted out or dispersed; they
screamed with voices that were garbled and confused, each des-
perate to be heard, each mindless. He could feel his heart
pounding within his chest, his pulse racing in response, and he
sensed the imminency of his own death with every step he took.