As the mercenaries descended the mountain, its shape became clearer, the rock outcroppings more uniform, and the angle above and the drop below more regular. Their spiral track scratched into the steep massive sides of Das Kagel was becoming constant, its downward curve dizzyingly inevitable. The snow on all the surfaces had become smoother and animal tracks were more frequent; there were even a few the Calca brothers could not identify.
Occasionally, bits of field and distant landscape appeared as the men circumnavigated the great mass. On the sixth day, Follett guessed that they had been around it once. As they wound down, the days of passage would get longer, even though they passed through the same vertical quadrants over and over again. He looked up, realizing the place they now stood was not more than four chains below the exact spot where the Kid had been thrown over.
Pearlbinder saw Follett looking into the wide branches of the trees and thought he was hunting for wild bird nests and eggs to supplement their waning food supplies. In fact, Follett was searching for signs of the Kid, splayed in the branches like a scarecrow or decorating the canopies in torn fragments. But there was nothing.
They had almost cleared the stone chasm without incident when a shrill cry sounded below them, and a white shadow sped above the snow-filled trees. They were near the sea again and the drifting gull had confirmed it. The riders stopped and leaned sideways in their saddles.
“ ’Tis an albi-tross,” said Tarrant.
Pearlbinder dismounted and walked closer to the edge, straining to glimpse the sea and a horizon he had almost forgotten.
“Canst thou see it?” asked Follett.
“I care not to. Some animals have omens written into them,” said the big man in the turban, closing his eyes and rolling his head in a circle.
Pearlbinder’s carefully chosen words hit their mark, igniting an instant anger in Follett.
“I wasn’t asking about the damn bird,” he spat back.
“Damned, indeed.”
“The sea. I was asking about the sea.”
Pearlbinder turned into the old man’s glare and said slowly, “I see naught, but I canst smell it.”
No one spoke, knowing this was a dubious claim. Pearlbinder mounted his horse in the manner of a dignitary who had just been given the keys to a city, or that of a commoner dubbed knight. He moved ahead without so much as a glance at Follett, and they all followed the slightly declining track.
Three days later they were facing northeast again and their speed on the icy path had increased. Directly below them was the Gland of Mercy, invisible and outside hearing but casting its terrible influence upward. The horses turned their long heads inward, and the men were silent, taking interest in the clouds or in the snow’s intimate patterns. No one looked over the road’s edge.
Alvarez suspected that on the next rotation it would be much worse and marked this place on their descent with a curse, an oath, a prayer, and a gob.
Only Tarrant knew the legend of this great secret and its meaning for humanity. It had been a large part of his reason for joining Follett’s expedition. He kept his knowledge to himself, sharing nothing with this company of animals. It was not a difficult choice, and it also gave him a modicum of pleasure.
Follett had been told a bit about what to expect from his commissioners, but he had closed his ears to such things; it was better not to know. Ideas and stories like that can get inside a man, like worms, and eat at his brain. It was better, cleaner, and safer to trust his instincts.
They were now more than halfway down the mountain and the snow was thinning, patches of foliage and clumps of trees becoming more frequent. The view from the edge of the path was clearer; the low clouds and unidentified mist were now above them, as if belonging to another realm. Different sounds were climbing the mountain to join them now. Tarrant said he could hear a faint bell tolling, but nobody else could. They continued in silence; the only sounds were the shod horses walking on thawing ground, their breathing, and the creaking of the leather saddles.
Follett noticed that boreholes had started to appear in the face of the mountain. At first he thought they were failed attempts to chip away the frost, loosen the snow, and dig into the earth and rock. But as the group descended, the holes seemed more frequent and more successful. He couldn’t figure out what nature of animal could make such cavities: they were too large for rodents, badgers, or foxes and too small and irregular for men. Then, as they approached the deepest excavation, he realized they were not incursions, but exit holes. He looked back along the line of men and saw he was not alone in his observations. The distance between riders had been growing as the track widened; the confidence of the horses and the relaxation of their men had increased. Their long, slow line embraced the subtle curve of the mountain.
Bringing up the rear, Abna Calca bent sideways on his mount to look into the largest hole he had yet seen. Something glinted there, so he stopped and dismounted. His brother, riding before him, did not notice Abna stopping, or if he did, he assumed it to be a call of nature and continued the slow ride. Abna saw Owen round the bend, but he did not think to call out and tell him he was stopping to investigate the breach in the mountain. He tied the reins to a low, spiny bush and approached the hole with dagger in hand. It was big enough to walk-crawl into. The daylight haloed him for about three minutes; then a sharp bend cut it off.
Abna stopped, straining his eyes to see through the murk.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him from the darkness. “Young master, don’t hurt me, I shelter here.”
The words were ill-formed, but the quality of the voice was mesmerizing, a hum of total innocence that vibrated up his spine.
Abna’s words came to his mouth without being shaped, and he sounded different, clearer than ever before:
“I mean thee no harm.”
After a while, with almost a sob in its voice, the reply came, “I think I am lost here, or I forgot my way.”
Without hesitation, Abna said, “Come forth, so that I may see and help thee.”
Had something happened to his ears?
“I fear, for I am naked. Please speak to me further in the dark.”
Something like arousal and protection ignited both sides of his masculinity, and he became confused and hopelessly engaged. “How didst thou get here?” he said, forgetting he had never spoken so eloquently.
“Das Kagel is made of knowing,” it spoke again.
“Dost thou mean thou hast found the way into it?”
“Verily. Everything is here. Come and see—there is a wealth.”
“I have heard of hoards in these mountains,” the young man said.
“This is not a mountain; it is a fallen tower. It was made by the other sons of Adam in another time.”
The tingling was growing stronger with the cadence of the voice, but the cold wind on his back still attached itself to the outside world, his brother, and the other men, who were steadily moving away from him.
“I will bring others to help thee,” he said.
“But there is barely room for you here. Come closer and see.”
Abna looked back and could still see the faint light of the entrance, so he shuffled a little deeper inside. The smell changed as he moved, as if he had rubbed up against a different substance; it was less earthen and had a tinge of the smolder of fired bricks. Suddenly the space opened upward and he was able to stand. A dim glow came from farther on, a luminescence that had nothing to do with the sunlight outside.
“Wait a moment, I must not lose my brethren.”
His words were taken up by an unexpected volume. Resonance held them and savored their length and texture. It was like speaking in one of the great churches of Iberia, and he was appalled, proud, and heightened.
“Do not be afeard. They will return for you shortly,” said the naked voice. “Come hither. I seek the Murmur Stone.”
The voice moved toward the inner glow, and cautiously Abna followed. As they did, luminous forms rose on the wall and began to pulse. Slowly, the contour of the creature took form. He stopped, his heart in his mouth.
The voice belonged to a beautiful woman. She turned and exposed her small elfin face. It was pointed, with a very wide mouth and eyes of abhorrent innocence. Her slender arms had been folded across her belly, and now they rose to modestly cover her delicate pointed breasts. Her legs did not seem to exist; instead long, quill-like tendrils flowed from where they should have been and hung over the lip of a large, pale shell. This conch-like strangeness made up, or contained, the rest of her body, and its pearlescent sheen was absorbing much of the dim light.
“Do you see the arch?” she asked, and as she spoke, she moved her arm to point above them. Her hair had been tightly pulled back and fastened with what looked like a fish made of metal with a sliver of precious ivory.
“You cannot lose words here, Child of Paradise. Here, you must gain them.”
Her tongue was long and had the same nature as her quills.
“Are you in fear?” she asked.
Abna did not know, because his shock had been poached by glamour. All other emotions, ideas, and memories became subservient to it.
She glided closer to observe what had happened to her silent companion. Something new entered her eyes, and she brought up her hand to cover her mouth. Her gaze stopped him.
“You do not have knowing of my kind?” she asked.
There were only three fingers on her hand.
“No,” he whispered, but somehow his deep voice boomed around them, and he sheathed his dagger.
Outside, Owen Calca had been riding half-asleep. The careful monotony of his mare stepping slowly down the safe spiral track had conjured inevitable drowsiness. The growing warmth of the Lowlands and the increasing scent of pine and oak soothed away any strangeness. He nodded with the movement of the horse, its rhythm passing through his body; he and the beast became one. As they passed through an alpine spinney of young trees growing down the side of the mountain in an unexpected scree of life, a tide of procreation began to rise inside his rocking sleep. Even some of the old scarred souls in the company marveled at this gentle surprise, lifting their arms to touch the shy new leaves and unbinding some of the smaller branches that remained furled against the winter. One of these now swung across the track and brushed against Owen’s face. His blinking eyes opened and closed on two entirely different worlds. The smell of the rising land turned inside out, and the filtered light reversed into a luminous gloom born of total darkness. It was not a leaf that touched his face, but a hand—a transparent hand composed of tenderness.
Owen tightened the reins to stop his horse, sitting up in the saddle to smell the air and the sunlight, his spine becoming a tauter aerial. He turned and looked back up the track and saw Abna was no longer with them. He remained stationary awaiting Abna, but the other place that had reared up in his daydream had left a rind of disquiet in his heart.
In the cave, Abna and the female in the shell held hands in a magnetism of proximity, but none of their other physical parts fitted together. Even their faces, which shared some basic similarities in function and symmetry, could not join. In that touch, though, the sexual exchange was absolute and overpowering. No previous congress with a woman had prepared him for this, and every practice that he tried, from his limited carnal knowledge, came to less than naught. When he pushed his hand down inside her shell to find more of her inclinations, she elevated on her tendrils.
“Sir!” she cried, thrusting harder. “O, Sirrah, tear not my proximities with thy devotions.”
And he, at this bidding, grew savage; his eyes shook with tears until he fainted.
A great sense of foreboding made Owen Calca turn his horse around and go back up the track to find his brother. The pathway reverted into its treacherous self as his mount slid and stumbled, trying to gain purchase. So he stopped, tethered the horse, and continued on foot, still with great difficulty, gravity seeming to have a will of its own in this place.
He fell to his knees, landing badly. From this low position he could see more clearly, and spied the back of Abna’s horse beyond him. He quickly climbed up, toward it, sometimes scrabbling on all fours. The horse was tethered close to one of the holes in the mountain, and Owen knew his brother was inside. “Abna,” he called out, the name swallowed without the faintest echo. Owen unsheathed his sword and pounded the pommel against the ice and stone, still calling, “Abna, Abna, Abna…”
Time had no attachment for Abna, who neither forgot nor remembered he had passed out; he awoke a silent man. He held her fingers the best he could, weeping for solace because he could not grasp the breadth of the world he thought he had known. The luminescence had changed hue, shifting into a pale amber and making her shell gleam with pink radiance. In the core of the mountain, which had once been the greatest library on Earth, the ghosts of books drank deeply on the sounds of their union, counting the sighs in their pages, amid discarded oaken shelves that lay on the damp ground. The vaulted arches above dripped punctuation to the translations of the joined species through endless hours of midnight echoes. And each rotting brick, between purple and brown, considered itself as pale as the white stones that sleep untouched on the unlit side of the moon. In truth, that pumice is only turquoise in the reflected light of Earth’s blue seas.
Far off, Abna thought he heard someone yelling, then banging and yelling. Someone he knew, someone on the outside. But it was too distant, and slowly the arches closed around them. The light and the consequence of everything beyond this moment dimmed.