They continued up the road for another two or three miles, the Spiders moving smoothly and easily over the terrain, seemingly tireless, their dark forms scattering out ahead in the deepening dark. He thought to turn on the running lights, but he was afraid that would frighten them. They were clearly a highly superstitious bunch, if they believed in mountain spirits, and he couldn't be sure what else might disturb them. All he needed to do was find his way into the mountains, and he could leave this business behind. Besides, the sky was sufficiently clear that slivers of moonlight cut through the cloud cover and washed the landscape in a pale soft glow sufficient for his needs.
As they traveled, more Spiders joined those already leading the way, until there were easily more than a hundred. They were of all shapes and sizes, probably of all ages, big and little, old and young, and it became clear that word of his coming had spread to the larger community. More appeared with the passing of every minute, materializing out of the dark, come to see the magic wielder. He found himself wondering how large their community was and how distant their village. Did they even have a village? How did they live?
He knew so little about Spiders, he realized. Tiny splinter groups of mutants ostracized by everyone, they had been forced to make their own way in the larger world. They had survived by burrowing, Michael had told him once.
Humans, they had gone to ground when the bombs fell and the radiation poisoned everything. They had survived by living on earth, air, and water that should have killed them, but instead had caused them to mutate. Like the Lizards and the other breeds. Normal humans wanted nothing to do with them; normal humans could not imagine living as mutants did, would not have dreamed even of touching them. Humans had gone one way, mutants another. It remained to be seen how it would all come together down the road.
If it ever came together at all.
It was more than an hour later when they reached another crossroads, a new highway intersecting the one on which they traveled, this one running east to west from the plains into the mountains. The speaker came back to the AV and bowed. "The pass lies that way," he said, pointing up the crossroads and toward the peaks. "Should we come with you?"
Logan shook his head. "You have done more than enough to help me."
"The other man asked us to go with him so that he could be certain of the way," the speaker explained.
Logan frowned. "Have others like me come through here?"
The speaker nodded. "Only the one, more than two years ago. He carried a staff like yours. We did not recognize him. We did not understand who he was. We challenged him, and he revealed himself to us through use of his magic. Thirty lives were taken in payment for our foolishness. It was a necessary lesson, he said."
A rogue Knight. Logan had heard of them, a few only, men and women who had lost their way and their belief and become demons themselves. It was rare, but in the madness of the apocalypse, it happened.
"No lives are required here," he assured the speaker and those others pressed close enough to hear.
A murmuring rose from those gathered, borne on a wave of gratitude. Logan shook his head in disgust.
"Will you tell the spirits when you see them that we remain faithful?"
another asked, one whose face beneath the patches of hair was deeply wrinkled and spotted with age. "Will you tell them we are grateful for their protection?"
Several answers came to mind, but he said only, "I will tell them."
He left them clustered at the base of the mountains, gathered together at the crossroads, a collection of strange creatures with strange ideas. He felt oddly ashamed of himself for playing into their fantasies about mountain spirits, but he couldn't think of a better way to handle things. They seemed convinced that such spirits existed, and it would have been foolish for him to try to convince them otherwise. Even so, he didn't like pretending at things he knew weren't true.
He drove ahead through the darkness along a road that was mostly clear, a two–lane concrete ribbon that wound upward through foothills toward a black massing of jagged peaks. He should have waited until daybreak to attempt this drive, but he was anxious to get on with things. He could see well enough by moonlight to find his way, and if he drove slowly and carefully he should be able to reach the other side before morning and could sleep then.
"As long as there isn't another slide blocking my way," he muttered. Then he smiled. "Or unfriendly mountain spirits who don't appreciate my passing through."
He considered throwing the finger bones again, but it didn't seem necessary at this point. What he was looking for was somewhere on the other side of the Rockies, so he might as well wait until he had crossed to reevaluate which way he needed to go. Unless something drastic changed, he was headed into the northwest part of the country or maybe even into Canada. There was nothing to say that the gypsy morph hadn't chosen to hide outside the United States.
Boundaries didn't mean much at this point. Less still, if you were a creature of magic.
Or a wielder of magic, like himself. That was what the Spider had called him. But he knew what he was. He was a hollowed–out shell that had been infused with fresh purpose and a cause. He was a dead man brought back to life by an encounter with the Word. He was an orphan lost in a world of orphans, but unlike so many, he had been found. He was not a wielder of magic; he was its servant.
He ate a little and drank from a water bottle as he drove, keeping his eyes on the road and his attention on the task at hand. The road twisted and turned through the rocks, and now and again he encountered massive boulders hunkered down like predators to block his path. The air turned sharp and cold as he ascended, and breathing became more difficult. He was up about a mile by now, and light–headedness brought on by the thinning air forced him to concentrate harder. He was deep in the mountains, no longer climbing but simply navigating through narrow defiles and towering peaks, a solitary sojourner in an empty land.
Then fog began to gather and settle in about him, a thin blanket at first that quickly thickened to something much more unsettling. There was no reason for fog to appear this high up on a night that had been clear and in weather that had been untroubled. He watched it tighten like a shroud, shortening his vision to less than fifty feet, then thirty, and finally to ten. He slowed the AV to a crawl, switched on the fog lights, and waited patiently for the heavy mist to break. It did not; if anything, it got worse. Time passed, a steady unraveling of minutes that left him numbed and weary. He blinked against his sleepiness, sipping at the water bottle, humming tunelessly. His thoughts drifted and scattered like dried leaves blown in the wind.
You should have listened to them, a voice said suddenly.
He glanced over and found Michael sitting in the passenger's seat, rigid and unmoving, eyes directed straight ahead. He stared for a minute, and then looked back to the road.
"You aren't here. I'm imagining you," he replied.
There was no response. He glanced over, and Michael was gone. He felt a chill run down his back as he realized what had just happened. The change in altitude coupled with exhaustion was causing his mind to play tricks on him. He took a deep, steadying breath and let it out, nosing the car ahead. The fog couldn't go on for much longer; it had to break soon.
I wouldn't be too sure of that, boy, Michael said.
He was back in the passenger's seat, his craggy profile expressionless as he sat staring out at the night, hands resting comfortably in his lap atop his Ronin. Logan risked a quick glance over, unable to help himself, feeling the cold seep back into his bones. There was a pale light all around Michael, a hint of something otherworldly, of an ethereal quality that living things did not possess.