Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [110]
Several answers came to mind, but he said only, “I will tell them.”
He left them clustered at the base of the mountains, gathered together at the crossroads, a collection of strange creatures with strange ideas. He felt oddly ashamed of himself for playing into their fantasies about mountain spirits, but he couldn’t think of a better way to handle things. They seemed convinced that such spirits existed, and it would have been foolish for him to try to convince them otherwise. Even so, he didn’t like pretending at things he knew weren’t true.
He drove ahead through the darkness along a road that was mostly clear, a two-lane concrete ribbon that wound upward through foothills toward a black massing of jagged peaks. He should have waited until daybreak to attempt this drive, but he was anxious to get on with things. He could see well enough by moonlight to find his way, and if he drove slowly and carefully he should be able to reach the other side before morning and could sleep then.
“As long as there isn’t another slide blocking my way,” he muttered. Then he smiled. “Or unfriendly mountain spirits who don’t appreciate my passing through.”
He considered throwing the finger bones again, but it didn’t seem necessary at this point. What he was looking for was somewhere on the other side of the Rockies, so he might as well wait until he had crossed to reevaluate which way he needed to go. Unless something drastic changed, he was headed into the northwest part of the country or maybe even into Canada. There was nothing to say that the gypsy morph hadn’t chosen to hide outside the United States.
Boundaries didn’t mean much at this point. Less still, if you were a creature of magic.
Or a wielder of magic, like himself. That was what the Spider had called him. But he knew what he was. He was a hollowed-out shell that had been infused with fresh purpose and a cause. He was a dead man brought back to life by an encounter with the Word. He was an orphan lost in a world of orphans, but unlike so many, he had been found. He was not a wielder of magic; he was its servant.
He ate a little and drank from a water bottle as he drove, keeping his eyes on the road and his attention on the task at hand. The road twisted and turned through the rocks, and now and again he encountered massive boulders hunkered down like predators to block his path. The air turned sharp and cold as he ascended, and breathing became more difficult. He was up about a mile by now, and light-headedness brought on by the thinning air forced him to concentrate harder. He was deep in the mountains, no longer climbing but simply navigating through narrow defiles and towering peaks, a solitary sojourner in an empty land.
Then fog began to gather and settle in about him, a thin blanket at first that quickly thickened to something much more unsettling. There was no reason for fog to appear this high up on a night that had been clear and in weather that had been untroubled. He watched it tighten like a shroud, shortening his vision to less than fifty feet, then thirty, and finally to ten. He slowed the AV to a crawl, switched on the fog lights, and waited patiently for the heavy mist to break. It did not; if anything, it got worse. Time passed, a steady unraveling of minutes that left him numbed and weary. He blinked against his sleepiness, sipping at the water bottle, humming tunelessly. His thoughts drifted and scattered like dried leaves blown in the wind.
You should have listened to them, a voice said suddenly.
He glanced over and found Michael sitting in the passenger’s seat, rigid and unmoving, eyes directed straight ahead. He stared for a minute, and then looked back to the road.
“You aren’t here. I’m imagining you,” he replied.
There was no response. He glanced over, and Michael was gone. He felt a chill run down his back as he realized what had just happened. The change in altitude coupled with exhaustion was causing