Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,172

did not know what course it should take. One range failed to match up with another, forcing him to leave vertical walls in some places and bottomless gorges in others. It was the only such place in the whole Land: the place into which all of the wrongness had been concentrated and focused as he had expelled it from everywhere else. He had squeezed it now into an area not much larger than that occupied by Town, street, and Palace, but the more he reduced its extent the greater did its absurdities become. He had despaired of ever fixing the Knot and had even considered leaving it in its current state and simply raising a great wall about it so that no soul could ever come in and see there the sum of all Egdod’s mistakes. He did not now do this, but instead flew into an especially tortured convolution in the land. Here, a range of mountains skirted a chasm that had no bottom. In its depths, frank chaos could still be seen: the only place in the whole world, as far as he knew, where any vestige of it remained.

This place could not be reached by walking. Flying to it was difficult, and as he went along, he purposely made it more so by shrouding it in cascades of icy water and causing the wind to crash against it with nearly as much force as the waves of the ocean did against the rocks of the coast.

Thus had Egdod found refuge from others’ eyes by going to a place where no other soul could look upon him.

Having thus found the solitude he required, Egdod perched on a ledge beneath the overarching mountain range. He prepared the ledge, making it broader and flatter. Upon it he then sought to raise up another structure. In some respects it was akin to the Palace, but he was of a mind to build this with greater complexity. It would have high walls and many towers. Names such as Castle and Fortress came to him as he wrought it, but the one he settled upon was Fastness. He brooded at length on what its shape was to be before beginning to draw forth its foundation from the living rock of the ledge. With time and patience, adamant reverted to chaos, became plastic, and moved as he wished. Having made the foundation, he then strove to raise up the first wall. Again the rock did not at first do his bidding, but again it presently conformed to his vision of what it should be.

Egdod understood that he was not truly alone. Another was here, watching him. He gazed about, expecting to see Freewander or another soul from Town hovering in the air nearby. He saw none such, nor did he sense any trace of aura such as often signaled the presence of a newly arrived soul.

Then he chanced to look down toward the chaos that filled the void below the Knot, and saw the other. A great face it was, emerging from the chaos as if breaching out of the sea. The head was larger than Egdod’s, and ill formed, wreathed in wild static that trailed behind it like stout tentacles and could not be clearly distinguished from its body. As it rose up toward Egdod it focused and coalesced into a form that agreed more closely with Egdod’s in its size and its general configuration, but still it was interpenetrated with the wild dark aura of the chaos from which it was struggling to more fully separate itself. Its inchoate limbs reached up to grasp the rock upon which Egdod was laying the foundation of the Fastness, and it drew itself up to his level and gazed at him. Egdod gazed back. This was not the strangest form he had known a wild soul to adopt. It had a face, at least, and the more Egdod gazed upon that face the more certain he became that he knew this soul.

“How long have you abided thus?” Egdod asked, gesturing toward the pit of chaos below them.

“Not long,” answered the other. “Out of it I climbed some days ago, and explored the curious habit of the rock hereabouts, and from a high place looked out over those lands that can be surveyed from here. Then weariness overtook me and I returned for a while. Several times I have done this, I think. But my recollections have a sameness that baffles the mind.”

“Such is the way