The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,127

and halfway up the valley’s southern slope, the wind changed and brung us some of the sounds from below. One of them was Elaine saying please again, five or six times.

43

We went up over the ridge, out of Calder Valley and into someplace else. It had got to have a name, but I didn’t know what it was.

We followed the line of the ridge for quite a way, but staying just down under it on the windward side. The trail had been cut like that, and I guess it was so anybody who was watching from down on the valley floor wouldn’t see nobody moving up here. This high up, the wind was strong and cold, blowing off our shoulders so it come near to pitching us down the slope once or twice. I was grateful for Sky’s strength then, for she didn’t flinch or slow. She was anchored firm into the ground. She put a hand on Cup’s back too, and drawed her in against her side – into the leeward of her, you might say, where the wind didn’t hit her so hard. She left Mole to fend for his own self, which he done without complaint, though his teeth was all bared with the effort of it.

By and by, the trail went down into another valley that seemed to run the same way Calder did. It was a whole lot narrower than Calder though, and got narrower still as we come down. At the bottom, it seemed not much wider than the trail was. We was walking down into a place that was all choked up with green so you couldn’t see what was under it. I didn’t think there could be another river there, for a river would of caused trees to grow and there wasn’t none. There was a mess of big-hand ferns instead, and ropeknot, of course, and hookfasts, and a dozen others I didn’t know how to name. Burdock leaves as big as the roofs of houses hung over everything, and the big wasps we call dog-eaters was hovering under the leaves with their wings all blurred and shining, ready to sting anything that come and then dig theirselves into the melted skin and eat it.

We didn’t go down all the way to the bottom, thank Dandrake. The trail run sort of alongside it, maybe a little bit higher than you could reach if you stood up on your toe-tips. It got wider here. The floor under us was bare earth, trod down and packed hard by lots of feet passing. That made me think we might be close now to where we was going, but Sky didn’t stop or even slow.

I kept looking into that narrow gully down below us, wherever there was a break in the leaves. There was something down there that run straight like a made thing. It was brown, so I thought of wood, but there was a redness in the brown so it might be rusted metal. Then I seen that there was not one thing but two, lying flat along the ground no more than a stride apart, and they run on for a considerable way.

Everything about this place give me to wonder. Right across from us was a green slope even steeper than the one we was on. But there was breaks in the green here and there, and behind was not a jumble of rock and earth but blocks of dressed stone that was brown like baked bread. Someone had builded here, a long time ago, and the wall they builded was higher than you would think could be. It was like the wall of some Rampart Hold that giants made for theirselves.

By and by, the trail come right down onto the valley floor, but in a place that had been cut back and cleared. The green rose up all around, and it bent over us like a roof, but it did not hinder us. It struck on my thoughts once again how well these ways was hid. Whoever they was, that was Sky and Mole and Cup’s kindred, they had fixed it so they could come and go without nobody seeing them or guessing they was there.

Them long straight bands of rust red was under our feet now, one on either side of us, guiding our way. They was metal, like I thought: two solid bars of iron, or something like it, that had been laid down on the ground. But you can’t