horizon. It was once more the Great Meridian, a path of energy. On either side of the bright path, a fire was burning. The voice of his own intuition spoke inside his mind, and it said: This is where you must go. Striding down the ridge, Zhu Irzh headed for the Meridian.
As he walked, he saw that a gate was beginning to raise itself along the Meridian. It started as a swirl in the air, a frosty glitter emerging from the ground and winding the frozen grass into its design. Within minutes the pillars of the gate were complete, hardening into a lacquered darkness the color of old blood. Along the horizon, clouds were building before the wind and the unseen sun faded as though a shadow passed across it. The pillars stretched high into the heavens, and now the lintel of the gate was building itself; each side putting out a tongue of air, which solidified, hardening to become the carved, curling roof.
The gate was fully made now, a finished and perfect structure, glowing against the bright air. Through it the light wavered, as does the air above a source of heat. It reared above him now, and as he gazed at it he saw with dim surprise that Mhara was standing on the other side.
Interlude
The office worker was nearly ready to drop, snatching lungfuls of the inexplicably cold air as he swung around, dizzy in the grip of the demon's powerful arms. Her roaring had deafened him. His ears had stopped bleeding now, but the rivulets of dried blood down each cheek itched. Why he should be aware of so small and irritating a thing at a time like this, he could not have said. The demon had taken him all over the Shaopeng district, waltzing her toy along. He kept trying to avert his head from her stale, hot breath.
He had long since ceased trying to keep upright: it was easier to let go and let her swing him about as she chose. He was fairly certain that his ankle was broken because he had felt the snap, a wet blow to his lower leg, but he could not feel much anymore. Dimly, he remembered that the demon had killed Chara before picking him up and dancing off with him. He hoped devoutly that she would tire of it soon, kill him too and then it would be done with and over. She did not seem to be tiring, however, and now he saw with despair that they were back at the upper end of Shaopeng. As they whirled along the center of the street, the demon's feet striking sparks from the downtown rails, he felt a convulsive movement beneath them. At first he thought that it was the demon, throwing him around; he was too sick and giddy to think much of it, but then it came again and somewhere within his bruised brain the word "earthquake" reverberated. They had said that another quake was coming, some rumor that had been running rife in Shaopeng since the evening. It threw the demon off balance. She stumbled, and as she did so, she let him go, flinging him haphazardly from her.
He landed at the edge of the road, and with a dulled horror watched his hands sink into the surface of the pavement as they clawed frantically for a hold. The tremor had liquefied the road surface and it trembled and quivered beneath him. He dragged himself, half-swimming, across the pavement and pulled himself upright against a teetering awning. Gasping, his hand to his mouth, he glanced across the street and saw the demon poised on a shuddering shelf of roadway. Slowly, elegantly, she pointed one clawed foot forward and then dived, graceful as a swan, into the molten stone sea below her. The road closed silently over the gap caused by her passage. Unable to move, he grasped the pole of the awning like a man drowning and before his eyes the length of Shaopeng once again opened up and cracked from end to end.
Fifty-Eight
Zhu Irzh shook himself. For a moment there, he had forgotten who he was. As ruffled as a cat rubbed up the wrong way, he turned to Mhara. "Where's everyone else?"
"On their way," the prince of Heaven said calmly.
"I don't even remember becoming separated."
"We weren't. It's just that none of us could see the others. But I could sense all of you, and that's when I realized what had happened. Shai is