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“Wonderful choices…” I muttered under my breath.

Yeee—ahh…answered the nearby vulcrow.

I glanced up.

In the cloudless winter blue sky north of where I rode, two other vulcrows swept in slow wide circles.

Once again, the road stretched ahead down a narrow valley, straight for at least another two kays before it began a gentle turn toward the right, northward.

The mountain grass beside the road was all brown, but I saw no more horses as Gairloch carried me toward the wide curve and I followed the grooved coach traces back toward Antonin.

Mid-morning came and passed. I rode silently along the slowly-rising road, a road so dry that only a few stunted bushes and patches of mountain grass grew. A road so silent that the occasional screech of the single vulcrow that followed us, and the sound of Gairloch’s hooves, were the only sounds echoing between those rocky walls.

The pair of vulcrows remained circling behind us and to the north, but the one continued to follow us. I knew why, but doing anything about it would have been stupid. The less capable Antonin thought I was, the better.

Before noon, I stopped at the first water, a brook barely a cubit wide. Gairloch appreciated the water, cold as it was. I did also, and fed him some grain cake, not much, and let him browse on the scattered roadside grass. I appreciated the yellow cheese and travel bread, though they were sustenance and not much more. Eating beat starving. I threw a morsel toward the vulcrow that perched on the rocks on the far side of the road.

For a time, the bread lay on the grass untouched. Then, with a rush, the scavenger swooped down and bore it back to its rock perch.

After saluting the black-feathered creature, I continued slicing and eating cheese. I’d never been the type to tear it right off the block.

The silence continued, and I wanted to talk, even to the vulcrow. Instead, I packed away my remaining travel food, filled the water bottle, and climbed back on Gairloch.

The rock walls flanking the road seemed to get whiter and deader, and the silence increased. Not even insects chirped, and the only living things were a vulcrow, a pony, and a damned idiot. In the high distance, the cold reflection of the high Westhorns glittered.

I kept riding.

Until I found the gates.

At first glance, the valley continued as it had for all too many kays, long, narrow, straight, and dry, the clay-covered white pavement stretching out before me. On the north side, there was a dip in the high rocky walls, and the grassy stretch that led to the near-sheer rock was nearly flat.

I blinked and looked again, sensing the illusion. Behind the apparent grass and rock lay another narrow passage. Unlike the road, the rock walls of this entrance were not timeworn and smooth, but sharp and clear, and the imprint of chaos was far more recent.

As Gairloch stood there, reined to a halt, I studied the reality behind the image, wondering if anything created by chaos could be said to represent reality.

The passage through solid rock was not that long, perhaps fifty cubits, and the rockface through which it had been cut was far shorter than most of the valley walls, less than thirty cubits above the road at the highest. Still, to destroy that mass of rock was impressive.

Midway into the passage were two heavy white-oak gates, their hinge brackets mortared into the rock itself. Both gates were closed.

Blocking the illusion from Gairloch, I nudged him forward. To any bystander, we would have appeared to walk into solid rock.

No chaos-forces touched the gates themselves, save for a thin link across them. A heavy but simple latch kept them closed. While I could have rerouted that thin link and opened the gates without breaking it, I did not. After all, what simple blackstaffer would have known that?

As I opened the latch, a spark flew, but nothing else happened.

Gairloch and I rode through, and I dismounted and reclosed the gates. Simple courtesy.

Once through the passage, the road