Learned Edmund nodded.
Slate was dreading what she’d do when the half-hour was up, but within ten minutes the sound of the horses’ hooves changed, from the chuffing of pine needles to the thudding of a roadway. Slate sat up a little straighter.
It was a narrow path, barely a lane, and badly overgrown.It did not look like the hard-packed smugglers’ road. Between patches of grass and horsetail rushes, the mud and packed pebbles glittered like the reticulated hide of a lizard.
“This isn’t our road,” said Caliban.
“No,” said Brenner, “but it’saroad.”
Everyone looked at Slate.
Shit, do I have to be in charge again?She rubbed her forehead.
“Any road is better than no road at this point. Let’s follow it.”
Learned Edmund nodded, and kicked his horse into a brief, brutal trot. Slate sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep from shrieking. Her shirt pulled away from one of the punctures, and she felt a new wetness of blood slide over the already layered stickiness.
My torso has got to look like raw ham.
The light began to grow.Dawn already? Really?
It was. Her horse’s ears stopped being a black cut-out and became infused with brown and pink. The black mane that washed over her hands separated into individual hairs. Green began to leach into the grey of the grass on the roadway, and the gnole’s cloak became a ragged patchwork of violet and carmine and dun.
In a way she was astonished, and at the same time the night seemed to have lasted at least a thousand years already.
We’ve got to stop soon. If I don’t stop soon, I’m going to fall out of the saddle.
The road opened up before them.
Learned Edmund led them forward into an empty clearing as broad as a sheep meadow. Trees lined it on three sides, and on the fourth, it rose up into a hillside, and…something else.
Slate couldn’t figure out what it was. It could have been a building or a statue or a strangely symmetrical rock formation.
It looked for all the world like a man, crouching belly down, with his hands curved in a circle before him. His head was down, half-buried in the ground, his mouth open in a silent yell.
“What the hell isthat?” said Brenner.
They rode nearer. Slate pulled up at a safe distance, but Learned Edmund spurred his horse forward.
It wasn’t until she saw the horse and rider approaching the strange statue that Slate realized exactly how huge it was. The thing was the size of a house. Its open mouth could have held a team of horses.
Learned Edmund practically fell off his mount in front of the thing, tossed its reins to the ground and ran forward to touch it.
“Well, it looks like someone knows what it is,” said Slate.
She reined in a few feet from Learned Edmund. He was stroking the material of the statue, which up close didn’t look like stone as much as it looked like ivory, except that was impossible because you couldn’t get a piece of ivory the size of a house, and if there were any seams, they were hidden well.
“Is it a building? Some kind of temple?” Slate asked.
Learned Edmund didn’t so much as glance back at her. “No. I think it’s a…wonder-engine.” His voice was full of awe.
“What’s a wonder-engine?”
“Nobody’s really sure. Some of them do things.” He stretched up a hand as far as he could, and ran it tenderly down the ivory surface.
I’ve been made love to with less enthusiasm than a celibate guy is fondling a big ivory…thing. Possibly it’s time to rethink my life.
“What sort of things?” Brenner wanted to know.
