came to his life, and bore him two sons and a daughter, which has to have hurt … she loved him that much. Then one day she turned into a beautiful white dragon and flew away. And she was happy forever.
John reached the Henge of Prokep the following day.
It helped enormously, that time stood still in the enclaves. He could search patiently, drawing the sigil of the door over and over, until he got through; he'd learned to keep a torch burning in one hand the moment he stepped through a gate, and a drawn sword in the other, and—if nothing attacked him, and usually it did not—to immediately turn and mark where the gate lay. He brought water with him, too, in a clay jar slung over his shoulder on a strap of braided rags. At least, from enclave to enclave, there was no worry about whether it was half an hour after noon or not.
The gate on the left, the one immediately to the right of the Gate of Dawn, passed him through into the Salt Garden: stone pavement, beds of glittering salt stretching hundreds of feet in all directions under a pitiless golden sky. There was no gate to be seen there, but at noon, when he had returned to Prokep and was investigating the other gate locations he'd found, he passed through one of them and found himself in the Salt Garden again, and spent a grueling eternity in the heat there until he found by sheer patience where the invisible gate was, that let him into the Maze beyond.
Sometimes the walls of the Maze were hedges—knee-high in places, head-high in others. Sometimes they were stone: gray smooth river stones, or harsh hunks of black basalt like the garden wall. Sometimes the Maze itself was just a gravel path raised between mossy ditches where a little water glittered, curtained by a very fine scrim of mist. John knew better than to step off the path or touch the mist in any fashion. He didn't know what would happen if he did, but had an idea he wouldn't like it. From a number of points in the Maze it was possible to see the Henge, huge dark uneven stones showing through whitish fog. As he'd seen by moonlight, and again in Corvin's vision, they seemed to be about twice his nearly six foot height, rough-hewn and, as he drew nearer, he could see that some of them were embellished with the same crude carvings that he'd sometimes seen on standing-stones on the far northern moors in the Winterlands, spirals and rings and crosses. There were ninety of them, when he counted them from a break in the tall hedges of the Maze. When he came out to where the hedges were shorter and counted again, there were eighty-seven.
Intrigued, he began to count from wherever he could see them, and quickly discovered that if he was on the correct path there were ninety; if the path was leading him to a dead end, or to one of those places where the level of the ground dipped down under sheets of still silvery water, there were either more or less. Why the makers of the Henge would have created a Maze in the first place, John wasn't sure—it was a far less effective form of defense than the nodes of choice in the gardens—but in two places mists covered the path, and he felt himself watched from the hedges by unseen eyes.
Watching for demons, he wondered? Corvin had set electronic alarms on his Otherworld property that would be triggered by a demon's presence, and had spoken of such things still active in Prokep. Or was this only his own imagination, fueled by nerves and exhaustion?
The Henge itself stood where it had stood for a thousand years, in the midst of the ruined city. Standing next to its stones, John could see across the barren ground, to the three pillars where a temple had stood, to the pit of the dry lake. To the palace foundation, where Corvin brought new gold every evening from other caches in the city to lie upon; where trib-ute-bearers walked eternally around the walls of John's painted room. Standing beside the circle of stones, John wondered if he would be invisible to someone standing in
John reached the Henge of Prokep the following day.
It helped enormously, that time stood still in the enclaves. He could search patiently, drawing the sigil of the door over and over, until he got through; he'd learned to keep a torch burning in one hand the moment he stepped through a gate, and a drawn sword in the other, and—if nothing attacked him, and usually it did not—to immediately turn and mark where the gate lay. He brought water with him, too, in a clay jar slung over his shoulder on a strap of braided rags. At least, from enclave to enclave, there was no worry about whether it was half an hour after noon or not.
The gate on the left, the one immediately to the right of the Gate of Dawn, passed him through into the Salt Garden: stone pavement, beds of glittering salt stretching hundreds of feet in all directions under a pitiless golden sky. There was no gate to be seen there, but at noon, when he had returned to Prokep and was investigating the other gate locations he'd found, he passed through one of them and found himself in the Salt Garden again, and spent a grueling eternity in the heat there until he found by sheer patience where the invisible gate was, that let him into the Maze beyond.
Sometimes the walls of the Maze were hedges—knee-high in places, head-high in others. Sometimes they were stone: gray smooth river stones, or harsh hunks of black basalt like the garden wall. Sometimes the Maze itself was just a gravel path raised between mossy ditches where a little water glittered, curtained by a very fine scrim of mist. John knew better than to step off the path or touch the mist in any fashion. He didn't know what would happen if he did, but had an idea he wouldn't like it. From a number of points in the Maze it was possible to see the Henge, huge dark uneven stones showing through whitish fog. As he'd seen by moonlight, and again in Corvin's vision, they seemed to be about twice his nearly six foot height, rough-hewn and, as he drew nearer, he could see that some of them were embellished with the same crude carvings that he'd sometimes seen on standing-stones on the far northern moors in the Winterlands, spirals and rings and crosses. There were ninety of them, when he counted them from a break in the tall hedges of the Maze. When he came out to where the hedges were shorter and counted again, there were eighty-seven.
Intrigued, he began to count from wherever he could see them, and quickly discovered that if he was on the correct path there were ninety; if the path was leading him to a dead end, or to one of those places where the level of the ground dipped down under sheets of still silvery water, there were either more or less. Why the makers of the Henge would have created a Maze in the first place, John wasn't sure—it was a far less effective form of defense than the nodes of choice in the gardens—but in two places mists covered the path, and he felt himself watched from the hedges by unseen eyes.
Watching for demons, he wondered? Corvin had set electronic alarms on his Otherworld property that would be triggered by a demon's presence, and had spoken of such things still active in Prokep. Or was this only his own imagination, fueled by nerves and exhaustion?
The Henge itself stood where it had stood for a thousand years, in the midst of the ruined city. Standing next to its stones, John could see across the barren ground, to the three pillars where a temple had stood, to the pit of the dry lake. To the palace foundation, where Corvin brought new gold every evening from other caches in the city to lie upon; where trib-ute-bearers walked eternally around the walls of John's painted room. Standing beside the circle of stones, John wondered if he would be invisible to someone standing in
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