Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [158]
“Stop him! Don’t kill him, but stop him!” the senior Gate Master shouted.
With dozens of soldiers in pursuit, Ehomba ran inland. A lifetime of chasing down errant calves and stray lambs allowed him to outdistance all but the most active of his pursuers, not to mention the Gate Masters who trailed huffing and puffing in their wake. Neither group was in any especial hurry. There was nowhere for the herdsman to go. If he entered the water they would quickly chase him down in boats. The headland toward which he was running ended in a low bluff overlooking the river. All other directions were sealed off by the still active time gates, through which the flow of Time continued to ripple and shimmer.
“Stop!” yelled a voice from behind him.
“You can’t get away!” shouted another. “There’s nowhere to go!”
But there was somewhere to go. Or rather, somewhen.
Taking a deep breath and making an arrow of his clasped hands, Ehomba leaped forward and dove headfirst into the time stream.
Somewhere far around the curve of the world, the most powerful sorcerer alive woke up screaming.
From the hole Ehomba’s body made in the channel, Time spewed forth in a gush of unrestrained chronology. Amid shrieks and howls, Gate Masters and soldiers alike were swept up and washed away in the flood of Time, to disappear forever into some otherwhen. The detained deranged foreigner was forgotten in the survivors’ haste to close all the time gates and so shut off the flow to the devastating leak.
Once this had finally been accomplished, reluctant soldiers were sent to scour the area where the tall stranger had disappeared. Though not hopeful, the Gate Masters knew they had to try. The Logicians would demand it. As expected, there was no sign or suspicion that the foreigner had ever existed. He was gone forever: vanished, swept away, taken up by the river of Time. With wondering sighs and expressions of regret for those colleagues who had been lost in the short-lived disaster, they set about composing themselves for the journey back into the city. It was an occurrence that occasioned much animated discussion among the survivors.
Caught up by the river of Time, Ehomba kicked and dug hard at the eras that rushed past. Growing up by the sea, he was a naturally strong swimmer. Still, it was hard to tread years, difficult to hold one’s breath as wave after wave of eternity broke over one’s mind. But to the determined and well conditioned, not impossible.
He swam on, trying to make timefall as close to the point where he had entered the river as possible. The current was strong, but he had expected that and, by his angle of entry, done his best to anticipate it. Caught up in the flow of Time, he was battered and buffeted by astonishing sights. Animals ancient and fantastical rushed past. Great machines the likes of which he had never imagined clanked ponderously forward down unsuspected evolutionary paths, and all manner of men inhabited times immemorial and impossibly distant.
He was almost out of breath when a faint gleam caught his eye. Turning in the Time flow, he kicked hard for it. It was one of the blazing yellow-white streaks he had seen from his own time, viewed now from the inside out. This in itself was a wonderment to him, for he did not know that it was possible to see light from the inside out. The current tore at him, insistent and relentless. He felt himself weakening.
Worse than that, he was running out of Time.
* * *
Below the Narrows of Hamacassar the Eynharrowk once more became a broad, placid highway. Smaller boats traveling in the same direction as the Grömsketter kept closer to either shore, while those beating their way upstream gave her a wide berth. Small islands dotted with reeds and