The fire wasn’t really necessary, but it added a sense of occasion to what he did, as did the empty room and the silence around him. If he could shut himself off mentally, then he could do it anywhere. The most important thing about the fire was that it sent a shiver down the spine of the baron, and actually made him keep his big mouth shut. The worst obstacle that Morgan could face while trying to do this was to keep being interrupted by K’s incessant questions.
So now, with the baron silenced by his own sense of occasion, Morgan was able to settle down, to relax his body from the toes up, and to blank his mind by thinking of nothing, just seeing the flickering flames in front of him.
He thought of the six people he had met all too briefly: the one-eyed leader and his wiry sidekick, the one with the stupe hat and the odd obsession with hardware. They were the kind of men you’d want on your side in a fight, though you might not want to be their friends in times of peace. The other four comprised a strange and motley crew. The red-haired woman was a doomie. That much he had sensed right away. That made his task easier, as he could focus on her. How it worked, he didn’t understand, and didn’t care to know. It just did. The black woman and the old man were really odd. There was something about them that seemed aged beyond their looks, as though they came from another time. He would have loved to have known their stories. They would have been well worth knowing to tell again and again. And then there was the albino. Not a youth to know in times of peace, like One-eye and the Hat. But different from them. He had an air of wildness to him.
They were brave. He had to give them that. He wouldn’t have undertaken the mission, no matter how much jack was involved. When he thought of those they were chasing, a sense of cold, enveloping darkness came over him. Just letting that thought pass through his mind made him shiver.
Instead, he concentrated on the red-haired doomie. That was no great stretch, as to even let the thought of her beauty cross his mind brought the warmth flooding to his loins. He had to suppress a salacious smile at the thought.
Feeling more relaxed now, he began to get some impressions: faint at first, then confusing and jumbled even as they began to take shape. The agony of stretched muscles, and a feeling of danger—not hers, but of one close to her. The one-eyed man? He had sensed something between them, and now that seemed to be the overriding sense that he was getting.
It took greater shape, and he could see as though detached. Once inside her head and heart, it was suddenly as though he had been freed from this cage and was a bird flying high over them, seeing from above all that was going on. He could see now that they had wandered too close to the edge of a precipice when dark and fatigue overtook them. As he watched, he saw them pull One-eye clear. They were safe and he was relieved. For himself more than them, if truth be told. He didn’t relish having to tell the baron that they had bought the farm before they had found their prey.
And he was pretty sure that they hadn’t. They had to be on some kind of trail, as they had wandered into a region that he didn’t recognize. The fissure in the ground into which One-eye had nearly fallen was something he didn’t remember ever seeing in all his years. As to where the children and the darkling ones were…as a bird, he soared over the group that now lay exhausted but safe, and tried to stoop down into the fissure. He was looking for some kind of light. It was night, and they had to have some kind of torch to light their way, or fire to heat them as they slept. But no, there was nothing. No light and no sign of movement.
But he knew they were there, knew because he was forced to pull up and away from the deep groove in the earth, forced back by a sense of cold and black that was more than just the plains night.
Like a black claw around his heart, he felt it tighten and squeeze, making it hard for him to take breath. It seemed to last forever, that it would squeeze the life from him. Whatever it was, it didn’t welcome him.
Morgan snapped back to the here and now, darting his eyes away from the flame, thinking now of how his bladder was bursting, and how he might piss himself with fright. The very physical pressure was the perfect antidote to that part of his mind that wandered far in the night.
Dragging in his breath sharply, feeling the smoky air fill his lungs as though it was perfumed, he felt relieved to be back in this realm. And still alive, at that—at least, he did until he saw that K was staring intently at him.
“Well?” the baron asked simply.
Morgan considered this carefully.
“It is a long path, but as they come to the end of this road, they draw closer together until the point where they meet,” he intoned after some consideration.
K nodded sagely, as though understanding every word.
Morgan breathed a sigh and hoped that Red and her crew would make better progress than he. Otherwise he might have to find the words to tell K something that he really wouldn’t want to hear.
* * *
RYAN LOOKED INTO the abyss. It was hard to tell, under the pale moon, just how deep or shallow this crater was. It seemed to stretch as far he could see on either side of him, curving slightly to the left, but still reaching out into the darkness. Where it ended—if it did—he couldn’t tell. One thing seemed certain: there was no way across unless you went down.
J.B. joined him at the edge, staring down into the black. He took off his spectacles and calmly polished them, as though the events of a few moments before hadn’t occurred.
“They must have gone down,” he stated simply. “No other way.”
“But how?” Ryan mused. “Treacherous underfoot, and no path that I can see. Looks like a straight drop.”
“Does in this light. But that’s this light.” The Armorer shrugged. “Can’t see much in this. Mebbe it’ll be different when the sun comes up. That’ll be—” he tilted his wrist chron so that it caught as much of the moonlight as was possible, squinting to read the dial “—a good four hours. Can’t do much till then. I say we get some rest. We need it.”
Ryan sighed. “Four hours and we could lose track of them.”
J.B. smiled wryly. “Kind of have now, Ryan. No light to show where they are, which way they’ve gone. What are we going to do? Stumble down and risk our necks and then either go completely the wrong way or run into them when we aren’t prepared?”
Ryan’s expression echoed his friend’s wry tone. “I know, I know. Just seems like we’re losing so much ground this way.”
J.B. shrugged. “Mebbe… One of those times we can’t do jack about it. Might as well grab some z’s and wait till we can get a better picture.”
Ryan clapped him on the shoulder. “Not what we want, but just what is, right? Sense like always, J.B.”
They turned away from the edge. Now was the time to get some rest. Huddling together, for they couldn’t risk the beacon of a fire, the companions bedded down for the remainder of the night. They had a routine that was always the same in such situations: however much time was left of the night, they would divide watch equally among them. Looking up at the position of the moon, Jak elected to take first watch. The darkest of the night would soon give way to the gray of predawn, and he was the best equipped to cope with the inky blackness of night. His red eyes were sensitive to light, but at a time such as this, they were the best adapted of all of them.
While the others settled and soon drifted into the uneasy sleep that came
