"It matters a bunch to me. That stuff is scary. I'm just a simple low-class city brat—"
"Cancel the old whine-and-toe shuffle, Sleepy. You're wasting time. I probably know as much about you as you know about yourself. There're things you need to know."
"I'm listening."
"Till now you've dealt with the plain well enough by letting the Annals guide you. Stick with the rules you've already made and you won't have any trouble. Don't dawdle. You didn't bring enough water—even if you slaughter your animals as you go, the way you planned. There's ice here that you can melt but if you waste time getting here, you'll end up having to kill more animals than you want. And take good care of them while they're still alive. Don't let them get so thirsty they start charging around looking for water and go busting through your protection. That'll heal itself but it does take time. The shadows won't give you time."
"Then we're safe from the break that killed Sindawe and some of the others?"
"Yes. You'll find Bucket tomorrow. I warn you now so you'll have time to prepare yourself."
I was prepared already. I had been prepared for a long time. Actually seeing Bucket dead would be difficult but I would get past it. "Tell me what I should do now that I'm here."
"You're doing it. Just don't do it slowly."
"Should I split the group? Send a strike force forward?"
"That wouldn't be wise. You wouldn't be able to manage whichever group you weren't with. And that'll be the one where somebody screws up and gets us all killed."
"You, too?"
"There's nobody else who can get me out if you fail. There isn't even anyone else out there who knows that we're alive."
"The Daughter of Night and Narayan Singh know. Probably." They had overheard enough to figure it out, certainly.
"Which means Soulcatcher does too, now. But you know, I don't really see those people developing an interest in raising the dead. Not to mention that now the Shadowgate can only be opened from this side. This is the last cast of the dice, Sleepy. And it's for everything."
I did not remind Murgen that Narayan Singh and his ward had a very strong interest in resurrecting someone who was practically his grave-mate. He was right about the Shadowgate, assuming there were no more Keys outside. "How did I know you were going to say something like that?"
He gave me the smile that probably won Sahra's heart.
I told him, "You should go see Sahra."
"I already have. That's why I was so late getting around to you."
"What can I say? Oh. I saw those creatures... the... " I did not know what they were called, so I tried to describe them.
"The Washane, the Washene and the Washone, collectively referred to as the Nef. They're dreamwalkers, too."
"Too?"
"I'm a dreamwalker. You can see me but only with your mind's eye. In some way that you remember me. The Nef are out here all the time. They may be trapped, or they may no longer have bodies to go back to. I've never been able to tell. They want to communicate so badly because they want something badly but don't seem capable of learning how. They're from one of the other worlds. If they no longer have bodies they may even be skinwalkers, so be very careful around them."
"The... duh... what are you blathering about?"
"Oh. We haven't talked about any of that yet, have we?"
"Any of what?"
"I really thought you'd figure most of it out by reading between the lines. The Companies had to come from somewhere and it would be hard to scratch out a living on a tabletop of bare stone. So they must have come from somewhere else. Somewhere very else, since the plain isn't so big you can't walk around it and discover that there's nowhere for armies to come from. The land just gets colder and more inhospitable."
"I'm real thick, boss. You should've drawn me some pictures."
"I wasn't keen on having anyone outside know. I didn't want anybody getting scared to come get me."
"You're my brother."
He ignored me. "I haven't slept here, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I've used some of it exploring. There are sixteen Shadowgates, Sleepy. And fifteen of them open onto places that aren't our world. Or did at one time. Most of them are dead now and in my state, I can't see what used to be on the other side without actually going out there. And I don't have the eggs to do that, because I like my own world just fine and I don't want to take a chance of getting trapped any farther away from it than I already am.
"Only four of the gates are still alive. And the one to our world is so badly hurt that it probably won't last many generations more."
I was lost. Completely. I was prepared for none of this. And yet he was right when he hinted that there were bells I should have heard ringing. "What does all that have to do with Kina? It isn't in her legend anywhere. In fact, what does it even have to do with us? It's not in our legend anywhere."
"Yes it is, Sleepy. The truth is just so old that time has totally distorted it. Examine Gunni mythology. There's a lot there about other planes, other realms of reality, different heavens and whatnot. Those stories go way back before the coming of the Free Companies, a thousand years or more. Near as I've been able to find out, when the first Free Company came off the plain, almost six hundred years ago, that event marked the first time our Shadowgate had been used in at least eight centuries. That's a lot of time for truth to mutate."
"Whoa. Whoa. You're starting to imply things I can't quite get my mind around."
"You'd better open it up and spread it out wide, Sleepy, because there's a whole lot more. And I doubt I've discovered even a tenth of it."
I have a dark, cynical, untrusting side that at times even doubts the motives of my closest friends. "Why is it that none of this ever got mentioned until now? This isn't fresh news to you, is it?"
"No. It isn't. But I told you, I want out of here. Badly. I chose not to pass on any information that might handicap you."
"Handicap me? What the heck are you talking about?"
"Kina and the Captured aren't the only things sleeping up here. There're also a lot of truths that would shake the foundations of our world. Truths I have no trouble imagining wholesale slaughters and holy wars arising to suppress. Truths I have no trouble seeing getting my family and the Company obliterated, they're so threatening."
"I'm trying to open my mind but I'm having trouble. I feel like I'm about to plunge into an abyss."
"Just hang on. I've been out here forever and I still have trouble with it. I think the way to start is, I should outline the history of the plain."
"Yes. Why don't you do that? That might be interesting."
"You still have that edge on your tongue, don't you? Maybe Swan is right and what you really need is a good... all right. All right. Listen closely. The plain was created so far back in antiquity that nobody on any of the worlds has any idea who built it, how, or why, though you have to believe that it was meant to be a pathway between the worlds."
"Why the shadows and standing stones and—"
"I can't tell you anything if I'm not the one doing the talking."
"Sorry."
"In the beginning there was the plain. Just the plain, with its network of roads that have to be walked a certain way to get to other worlds. For example, every traveler has to enter the great circle at the center of the plain before he can leave the plain again. Back then there were no shadows, no Shadowgates, no standing stones, no great fortress inside the great circle, no caverns beneath the stone, no sleeping gods, no Captured, no Books of the Dead. There was nothing but the plain. The crossroads of worlds. Or possibly of time. One rogue school of thought insists the gates all open into the same world but at times which are separated by tens of thousands of years.