The road now seemed flat and broader. Follett and his men skirted the base of the mountain. The distance at this thickest circumference was almost as long as the mountain was tall and seemed to go on forever. Follett tried to explain that the distortion meant it was impossible to gauge distance by time, but only Pearlbinder understood him and Tarrant just chuckled to himself.
A day and half later, they passed into the eastern quadrant, and the horses shivered and strained against their riders’ directions. The wind stank of smoke. A polyphony of lures and suggestions would rise and then fall into dumb quiet. The only persistent noise was the dull, faint beat of a drum, mournfully regular in its slow, steady rhythm—a pulse of servitude without the faintest taste of music.
Alvarez went to the edge, dismounted, and firmly tied the horse he had adopted after the Kid’s death so it wouldn’t bolt. He squeezed through the stiff trees to catch a glimpse of the fields below.
“It fades in and out of sight down there,” he said when he returned, pale from shock. “Soot is running on the wind, but I think there is a multitude locked in combat. They glisten wrongly, and the surge is indistinct.”
“Is it a war?” asked Tarrant. “I see naught!”
“It must be! What else would sound or stink like that?”
All the men tied their horses hard to the trees, pushed through the brush, and peered down. At times, it was possible to catch a glimpse before the view was obscured again, but this was not caused by the sun moving in and out of the clouds. It was as if the physical sight of the land and the incidents below could not be looked at for too long. Each time the vision retreated from view, it seemed to take with it a fistful of gravity, making the men feel a vertiginous suction beneath them.
“They are not all men,” said Alvarez. “Some look like skellingtons or ravaged ghosts. Look at yonder flank where the drum plays. See how it moves like a great tide of bony heads locked together, all pushing forward into the fray.”
“It may be a trick of the light,” said Calca. “It’s just helmets of a marching army, that’s all.”
Tarrant looked from one man to another, then to the distant valley, squinting. “But I see nothing down there. Where are these sights?”
Pearlbinder already had his telescope in hand. Follett kept quiet.
After a long while, Pearlbinder said, “It is not they who move. They only quake, marching on the spot and waiting. The movement comes from the fighting before them. A multitude of men and women are being herded into a great box or silo by…”
“By what?” shouted Alvarez.
“It’s difficult to see….By…thin men.”
“Thin men?” pleaded Tarrant.
“Skellingtons,” said Alvarez.
“Envious bones,” whispered Follett.
“Something like that.”
“What else?”
“The whole landscape is wasted, a field of ruin and despair where nothing grows. And the horses…No animal should be treated thus. The dead ride their innocent bones into horror, a great cruelty. It looks like Armageddon,” said Pearlbinder as he began to withdraw from the others.
Follett had explained to each man as much as he could comprehend that the peril in this assignment did not come from other fighting men or rampant priests but from something much older, something they had all heard of before, either in myth or in actual explanation. He could barely speak its name, so instead Follett used parables and biblical quotations.
“It is said there are beasts that never encountered the ark still living in those lands. But far worse is the location of the Vale of the Shadow. It is the gully of death, where the endless battle between life and death is enacted under the same sun and moon we see every day of our short lives. But that place is not to be witnessed. It is not part of our lives or our mission; it simply exists nearby and its influence is terrible in the extreme.”
He then counterbalanced this horror by telling each man about the wealth they would receive when the mission was completed.
“Why art thou surprised? Thou knew of this place and why it must be,” said Follett.
“Yea, but not like this, not with horses.”
“How else, then? How else can it be?”
Follett was becoming irritated.
“It is the Gland of Mercy,” he said, “and thou knew it was there. It has always been there.”
The other men looked at one another. Tarrant was the most perplexed because he could not see a single trace of what so grieved his comrades. Then they all turned their attention to Follett, who was given no choice other than to explain.
“Yonder is a cleft in the reality of the everyday world, there to relieve the monstrous enormity of death. It is a breaking in the crust of the normal where the Triumph of Death bubbles out and is exposed. The sight of the endless culling of men, women, and children all over the world would be impossible to behold, so it is concealed beneath the surface of life. Only here in this Gland may the full horror be seen, exposed, to burn off the pressure from within.”
Owen Calca had lost all color from his face; a cold, sweaty whiteness seemed to envelop him.
“Can I use your spyglass?” he asked.
“It is not for thine eyes,” said Follett, while Pearlbinder slowed and waved the tapering brass tube toward the anxious man.
“Take it, but turn it on itself instead. It is chaos and impossibility down there, and such things cannot be. Turn the glass and keep them at bay,” he said as he moved away.
All the other men followed him except Calca, who pushed deeper into the resistant foliage, getting closer to the vision that seethed below.
Follett was furious at Pearlbinder’s intervention. Both men knew what was being enacted in the Gland, but they saw it from different ends of the telescope, from opposite magnetic poles.
“Why did you give him the spyglass?”
“Because he asked,” answered Pearlbinder, who had overcome his horror of tortured horses and was beginning to savor a curiosity about the torture of living men.
“If he sees his brother down there in that unearthly carnage, he will try to save him. And we can’t afford to lose another man.”
Ignoring the challenge, Pearlbinder deepened his inquiry. “Why? So far our way hath been without conflict; only the misunderstanding with the dog-headed giant shed blood.”
“Thou knoweth I need a store of confessions to steep the Oracle’s food. Only these men have a depth of sin and crime to draw from, and I need every ounce of it to get us to the end of this mission.”
“But we are almost there. How many more times do you need to see that thing perform?”
Follett was offended by Pearlbinder’s disrespect and hated being questioned like this. He tried to close the conversation by changing the subject.
“Anyway, things could get difficult on our way toward the monastery. I need the might of all of us.”
“But surely we are working for the church in this mission and hath their right-of-way?”
Follett could see that Pearlbinder was not going to let go. “The spoken pass is from the authority on the other side of the Inquisition, and they are disconnected from the caballistas, who rule below. They know nothing of our quest.”
“And, of course, you carry no written authority,” chortled Pearlbinder.
Follett bared his teeth and spat back, “Cease this now.”