Vroon lifted his head, the wind threatening to tear off his curly hair and beard. “For all the time of our remembering, we have awaited the king. He dreamed of us, and we felt his presence… your presence. But even with a manylight waiting, you had not come, and it was thought you could not remember us because of the time passing. And so we traveled through this moon-door, searched, and found the one who dreamed us, and then we saved you from the Sword Wielder who would have left you unbounded. The Source it was that commanded our sending - the Source knows all about you and about our waiting - and the Guardian chose the three of us from all Singlars to go. Our honor was unmatched, though we know not why - ”
A constant rumbling thunder like a stampede of herd beasts interrupted him. Fat drops of hot rain spattered on us from fast-moving, purple-streaked clouds. The wind had shifted so that it was blasting straight up from the plains, and it seemed to be staying cold for a while, so that as soon as we were thoroughly soaked from the hot drops, our teeth were clattering.
“Let’s continue this somewhere more sheltered!” I yelled in Vroon’s ear. “Can you lead us to this Source?”
“To the Source we cannot take you. Only to the Guardian. The Guardian can make answerings… if he will.”
“All right, then. Take us to the Guardian.”
Vroon prostrated himself again, apologizing that he could not transport us instantly as was sometimes possible outside the Bounded. I interrupted his abasement. “It’s all right. I wouldn’t want to travel that way in this land anyway. Please, just show us the way before we freeze. We need shelter and food.”
The three jumped to their feet. After a brief consultation which I could not hear, Zanore, his amber eyes like two great fireflies, bowed and took the lead, jogging ahead of us down a steep, narrow path. Though the path zigzagged sharply, every pitch seemed to head directly into the bitter wind. We stepped carefully. The rain made the black rock slick, and a misplaced boot would have left little to scrape off the sharp rocks below. The half-dark was no help, either. Each lightning bolt left me squinting to see beyond an arm’s reach.
“When does the sky get light?” I shouted at Ob and Vroon, who hovered around me like hummingbirds at a red flower.
“No sky-brightness shines in the Bounded, not as in the other bounded worlds.”
Paulo, raindrops dribbling down his face, nodded knowingly. “I tried to tell you. You slept a good four hours, and the sun never showed up.”
Vroon chimed in again. “Mayhap you will bring us sky-brightness, Majesty! By you could it be done.”
His eager assurance struck me colder than the wind. “I don’t do that sort of thing. If you expect sorcery from me, you’d best think again.”
Vroon halted abruptly, looking like a fountain gargoyle as the rain cascaded down his crinkled forehead, long beard, and ample belly. I walked on.
The dwarf did manage to soothe my annoyance after a while. About the time I realized that the unnatural quiet was his absence, I sensed rather than heard pelting footsteps on the track behind us. I stopped, holding on to a stunted tree that poked out of the rock so a wind gust wouldn’t knock me off the path. Vroon skidded to a stop right beside Paulo, his one eye hidden behind a pile of cloaks and bags.
“I happened across these things,” said Vroon. “The moon-door was open, and the One Who Makes Us Bounded wished them here.”
By the time I dragged my cloak out of the pile, Paulo held his gray saddlebag in one hand and was cramming a biscuit into his mouth with the other. He offered me the bag. “Breakfast.”
We trudged downward. The provisions stowed in our recently empty saddlebag were no more than dry, sweetish biscuits, old cheese, and weak ale, but they settled in the stomach as nicely as a Long Night feast.
Even if Vroon could have transported us straight to our destination, I would have insisted on walking. The Lord Parven had been a master of military strategy for a thousand years, and he had taught me everything he could stuff into my head during my time in Zhev’Na. Several of his lessons came to mind that night. Never accept favors from either an ally or an enemy unless it is to save your life. And never enter an ally’s stronghold without knowing how to get out of it as easily as you got in.
We walked briskly in the wild purple-and-green storm, able to move faster as we headed out of the craggy foothills into the lowlands. The ground was packed hard and mostly barren, though at a distance I could see a few twiggy trees no taller than I. Between the trees, the land showed a softer profile that might indicate low grasses or scrub.
Distances were deceptive. The closest tower had looked to be a good two hours’ march, but we’d not been walking half that when we passed by it.
Paulo stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Did you see him?”
“See who?”
“The fellow by that pile of rock back there. He had two arms on one side of him, a regular one, and a little, stubby one. Never saw the like.”
“No, I didn’t see.”
“He bowed as we went by. Look… there’s another.”
A ragged, hunchbacked old woman was standing beside a short squat tower. As we walked past she lifted her hands and fell to her knees, her eyes fixed on me. Just beyond her, a man with bright red hair and no eyes popped into view just beside another tower, as if he’d been inside and had stepped right through the wall onto his front stoop to learn what passed by his door. The towers looked like piles of solid rock, but I began to wonder if they were dwellings of some sort. The eyeless man’s head followed us just as though he could see, and as we left him behind he bowed very low.
“It’s like they’re worshipping you. Like you were their Lord… ” Disgust boiled out of Paulo like sap from a burning pine branch. I kept walking. He could believe what he liked.
The rain lashed our faces until we were numb, and the gale made it difficult to stay upright, but every tower produced someone to pay homage as we passed. All were dressed in shapeless tunics of grayish brown, and almost every one of the people appeared to be malformed - missing limbs or extra ones, bodies too wide or too tall, twisted or misshapen. Yet they were men and women, not monsters.
Seeing these people made me think about the shepherd’s son whose tale had led us here. He had been born with only one hand, so his father had said, and had believed he was going to a “place where he belonged.” And the Queen of Leire had said that most of those who had disappeared from the Four Realms in the past year had been people mutilated or malformed. But I had never seen such monstrous deformities as some of these.
Soon we came to an even larger cluster of towers, hundreds of them crowded together like a city. As Zanore threaded his way between them, I pulled off my hood and wiped the rain from my eyes so I could see more. The towers were every shape and size, some as tall as the towers of Comigor Keep, some no more than a jumble of stones, some smooth-sided spirals soaring into the low clouds, some squat and ugly stacks of pebbles or piles of sticks and mud. Most were made of a greenish stone streaked with dirty pink, though a few were dark-colored or of indeterminate grays. In the dim light I could see no doors or windows or other openings in their sides. The occupants moved in and out with a soft thwop.
The rain finally stopped, and the sky settled to a mottled black and purple, with charcoal-colored clouds floating across the sparkling green stars. The wind turned warm and died down to a sighing moan.
I stopped for a moment to gape at an immense tower, the tallest in the cluster, knobby and bulging at its base, but soaring smoothly upward into a bulb-shaped knot on the top. The colors of the stone seemed unsettled: here more pink, there more green, now reversed or taking on a purple cast. I couldn’t tell whether the shifting was a property of the stone or only a result of the uncertain light.