This was the route that Violet had intended to sail. We can never know how far he went after leaving me, but a few angels did return to Heaven at about that time and by that road. Their accomplishment shows how greatly the respective levels of the two oceans had changed while I wandered alone on the sands and then dallied among the seafolk.
Yet there were also wide calm places, where the river wound in chasms through barren hills scoured to sterile rock by the higher floods of the past, or cauterized by the heat of summer. Sometimes the river narrowed, with rocky sides rising sheer until the sky was a ragged slit of light shining far above me, reflected on the black stillness as if it were also far below. At those times I seemed to float in air rather than on water. Plumes of cataracts graced the walls, some dropping from heights so great that only mist reached down to dimple the mirrored surface. For long stretches I traveled on dark glass, leaving a narrow, V-shaped wake behind me.
Earlier—at about the time of my birth—the river had been much higher, but I have been assured by the saints that I saw only a part of the canyon. They estimate that it was still about half-full when I went through; at other times the gorge is that much deeper. I have never had any desire to go back and see.
The only more terrible journey I can imagine would be to descend that hellish torrent in an angel chariot. It had never been done so late in the cycle, but it was the fastest route from Heaven to the March Ocean, and with time running out for the seafolk, the archangel had sent his six best sailors. Brown and Pink survived. The names of the other four are recorded on the Scroll of Honor.
We emerged at last from a rift in the mountains onto calm water stretching out of sight in three directions. I thought it must be another ocean, but it was only an inland sea lying to the east of the Andes. On Heaven’s maps it looks very small.
Here I was greeted by a gentle rain, an experience I had almost forgotten, the first shower I had seen since my childhood. It cleared almost at once, to show a nearby hillside clothed in rich grass and bearing real trees.
I was battered and spent, much too weary to think of food. Frith took me to this idyllic shore. I drank deeply at a stream of crystal water, found a dry spot under a bush, and lay like a dead man.
I awoke stiff, bruised, and famished. By then the surface of the sea was already dotted with fins and spoutings. Even as I watched, more great ones were emerging from the mouth of the canyon. Of course I did not know about Two-pink-green. I did not know that my mission had been completely unnecessary. I assumed that the honor was mine, and I congratulated myself on being a hero. All Brown need do now was watch as the seafolk were rounded up by the great ones and borne away to safety. That was, indeed, what happened. Unlike the tragic dying in the grasslands, there was no disaster on the March Ocean in this cycle. Not everyone made it—many bodies floated back down the Great River—but most did, and Heaven recorded a success.
Battered and naked and starving, though, the self-hailed hero wanted breakfast. In the tumult of the canyon I had lost everything except my knife and my amulet. I mounted a rock at the water’s edge and hopefully sang Frith’s name. The shore sloped steeply. In a miraculously short time he thrust his head up almost at my feet and tossed me a fish, clicking welcome and amusement. I called out my thanks, greatly relieved that he had not deserted me.
Yet raw fish is a dull diet. After I had taken the edge off my hunger, I began collecting dry leaves from below the densest shrubs and soon worked up a sweat twirling a stick, while I pondered my immediate future.
The passage of the canyon had been a torment for even a strong mount and a relatively skilled rider. Towing coracles of terrified children and pregnant women would be a feat I just could not imagine the tribe achieving without my help. There was not a man I would trust to keep his head. My obvious duty was to return to the March Ocean and take charge.
If Frith refused to go through that hell again—and of course my craven heart hoped that he would refuse—then I could camp quite happily on this hospitable shore. Or so I thought. I could wait for the tribe—great ones and people both. So I thought. Even if I was asleep when they passed through the gates of the mountain, Frith and Pfapff would tell them where I was. They would almost certainly head for this stream anyway, the first fresh water. Whether I went back or stayed, we should be reunited. I would ask Frith, and he would decide. I saw no other possibility.
But I was fairly certain that Frith would take me.
By the time I had worked all that out, I had roasted a piece of my fish on the rocks of my hearth. I skewered it on a stick. With my mouth watering, I rose to my feet to find a comfortable spot, away from the heat.
I had earned this feast, I thought, and a rest in this so-serene campsite. I had earned the joy of smelling grass again, and the soothing shade of real trees, the inspiring view of mountains and shore. This was Paradise, and I longed to share it with Sparkle and my friends.
Above me, the smoke from my fire climbed slowly up the azure sky, visible to half the world.
I think of that moment as the end of my innocence.
—6—
THE ANTS
SOMETHING HURLED ME DOWN, spun me over with sharp agony in my shoulder, and then crushed me into the ground. It dug claws into my shoulders and belly. It pushed a black-furred muzzle close to my face. Too dazed and horrified even to scream, I stared up at huge yellow eyes with vertical slits for pupils, at pointed ears, at white teeth as long as my toes. It snarled and spat, and the reek of its breath was nauseating.
“Stay very still,” said a nearby voice, “or it will rip out your guts.”
I rolled up my eyes and pretended to faint. I felt my knife being taken, then the weight moving off me. A boot slammed into my ribs. “Now get up!” Obviously my deception had failed.
I clambered dizzily to my feet. My captor was short and broad, clad in stiff black leather garments, soiled and much patched. Little of his face was visible between a wide leather hat and a bristling beard—both of them black—but I could make out a broad flat nose and evilly glittering eyes.
I clenched my jaw to prevent my teeth from chattering insanely. I was streaming blood. There were claw marks horribly close to my groin. The cause of my injuries was sitting on its haunches near the fire, watching me narrowly with a third yellow, slit-pupil eye, wiping its jowls with one paw. It was furry and black and as large as an adolescent girl. It had eaten my dinner.
“What’s your name?”
“Knobil.”
He kicked my shin—hard. I yelped and staggered. The animal spun around, snarling.
“Address me as ‘master’!”
“Yes, master!”
He nodded. “If you give me any trouble, I’ll have my friend here bite your knackers off. Makes a man more docile—understand?”
“Yes, master!”
“How many more of you are there around?”
“None, master.”
He kicked my other shin—harder. I staggered again and almost fell. The panther crouched threateningly. “The truth!”
Shrill with terror, I insisted that I spoke the truth. I babbled about the angel and the great ones.
He nodded and reached up to the amulet that was the only thing I wore. Checking for valuables, I supposed. “What’s in there?”
“Angel tokens, master.”
He guffawed. “More pilgrims end up in the pit than in Heaven, dross! They won’t help you.” He snapped the tie and contemptuously hurled my precious amulet away. “Now kneel!”