The Doors of Stone

 It was a long, slow climb, each second he'd fallen requiring minutes of work to reverse. Sweat rolled down his face as Tex pushed himself onward and upward, aching fingers grasping whatever purchase they could find. By the time he clawed his way back to the top there was no sign of the others, neither friend nor otherwise, and Tex stood for a while letting the sweat seep away into the cool air, rubbing fingers, hands, and arms that had been pushed hard and could be relied on for little more, at least for a while. Then when the moment felt right he set off in the same direction he imagined Menepatros had gone, all the rest in tow, deeper into Nar. It was almost nothing at first, little else but a whim, yet he trusted it and the notion gathered more and more momentum as he walked, as though his motion and the idea shared some symbiotic bond, so that by the time he came out of the pass his conviction had the unstoppable power of an avalanche: there was going to be a rematch. He was going to win. No other course was possible.

The miles passed steadily and the land yielded with reluctance the first signs of civilization. A series of walls had been thrown over a valley to the height of the peaks on either side and he descended before the first wall to a gently rolling sward populated with rich drifts of greenery, oak groves and patches of clover and pink lilies and wild fruit trees, apricots and plums and figs and not a house in sight. If anyone took advantage of the land's generosity, they didn't live anywhere near at hand. Animals roamed in the shade of the trees, the more intelligent or fitful among them scurrying into their hiding places as they detected his presence. Rabbits and squirrels darted away, a fox watched from a hollow at the base of an old walnut tree. He felt himself an intruder in some sleepy, content little domain. In the open stood a kelenken, an enormous flightless bird that was to an ostrich as a lion is to a tabby, and it observed him and cocked its head to the side, black, glassy eyes absorbing the scene with the curious detachment of an apex predator, a being so secure in its existence as to have forgotten fear long ago.

There was a gate in the wall's base that had stood open so long the wood had rotted away and the metal crusted over with verdigris. It was wide enough to admit three wagons abreast, the remnant of what had once been a road well traveled. He walked through the tunnel that was the wall's foundation and along a packed dirt path where the occasional paving stone remained like an island. The others had all been ripped out long ago and weeds sprouted in their place. Reeds grew in ditches to either side, margins beyond which were middens and on the far side of those anonymous mongrel dunes the sheer slope of the mountains. A second wall loomed before him, so tall its shadow touched the first.

Where the outer layer had been naked stone, designed and built of pure military necessity, the second was adorned with the faded remnants of decorations, mosaics and reliefs whose figures assumed titanic proportions, a king holding a scepter the height of a tower, scenes of battle and heroism that even in their neglected state still held some power to awe. There was a saint with hands held out in benediction and either palm could have enfolded an elephant. The first wall had been only that, while the second, carved and painted and lavished with attention by its builders across its full height and breadth, impressed upon him some notion of what had once resided in that place. Here, it said, its the threshold of civilization.

There was another tunnel similar to the first, an artery through which the lifeblood of empire had coursed, now littered with debris. The sconces that had held torches were empty and the air hung about him musty and stale. The interstice between it and the final wall was different, for a gash had rent the wall top to bottom, a wedge-shaped absence where it had been destroyed or never built in the first place. Partially formed blocks of sandstone and granite and limestone dotted the area, half a face looking at him as if peering from behind a sheet, its lone eye a narrow slice bearing an indentation where the artisans had begun to carve out a pupil, creating the strange illusion of cataracts on that lifeless visage. Only after picking his way through the detritus-choked gap between two halves of a wall that would never be complete again was he truly in Nar.

The land beyond was speckled with tiny hamlets of clay brick huts and mud jacals from which the ends of sticks protruded. Even the smallest of these communities had a tower that superficially resembled a grain silo, each hollow in the middle and placed on high ground. In that hard, rocky ground a grave was a senseless waste and the locals committed their dead to the towers of silence. Sometimes Tex would see a figure in the distance, so far removed it was little more than a dark mote against a hillside or the bright cyan sky, and know he was being watched. He got the impression there were few travelers in that land and fewer who went alone. The nearest thing he saw to a crowd was the occasional flock of sheep, every one of which was accompanied by a pack of dogs. The hounds kept their charges from wandering too far and watched the stranger's passage warily. Any thought of stopping for the night evaporated. He knew country hospitality and by the same token understood when a place was closed for business. Something had happened to these people, either recently or so terrible that the scars left thereby still had not faded and likely wouldn't for a long time yet.

Tex walked until dusk and when the sun had fallen from view and the horizon was smeared with crimson reds and winestain purples he made camp under a cliff so that his fire wouldn't be spotted from the south. He ate fruit and nuts he'd gathered along the way and sat under the vanishing gloam watching the moons in their mysterious circuit.

It was some time before he fell asleep. The air was charged with some energy of which he had no evidence but believed in with all his heart. It was like the fey hours before a tornado when the air goes still and then slowly takes on the same strange yellow hue as a goat's eye, air so thick with portents it seems the world itself has stopped to take heed. He knew then he'd pick up the trail the next day. He'd pick it up and not let go until it was done.