Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,214

followed him and thus both disappeared from view. “Find your way back to the Palace,” he directed her, “you have done well to make these things known to me.” And she took her leave, hieing away eastward and hugging the ground, looking for the long way around the storm.

Remaining in the concealment of the clouds, Egdod flew to the north side of the chasm, then set down in an isolated place and transformed himself so that he looked like one of the wingless souls of Town. Thus disguised, he hiked across the snow-covered rocks of that high place until he joined in with a stream of other such souls who were all making their way south toward the bridge. Most were poorly shod and clothed for these conditions. He marveled at their willingness to suffer so when the sole reward they could expect for it was to carry a rock across a bridge.

“My, but this is hard going,” he said to one soul who was on the move in a group of three. “I am of a mind to turn back, how about you?”

“The angel told us we are almost there!” said this soul. Then, reacting to Egdod’s bafflement—for he had never before heard this word “angel”—she pointed into the sky a little behind them, indicating a winged soul who was hovering above the caravan and occasionally gliding down to proffer aid or encouragement to stumbling and exhausted hikers. Egdod had never seen this “angel” before, or any soul like it; it was not a member of the Pantheon.

“The One Who Comes will reward us,” added another soul in the little group, “once he has delivered us from the tyranny of Egdod.”

Egdod, curious to hear more in this vein, accepted their invitation to walk as part of their group. From that point it was not far—just as the angel had promised—to the bridge. As they went along, Egdod plied his new companions with questions about the One Who Comes and angels and the bridge, but it seemed they knew very little.

Past a certain point it seemed to be expected that they would pick up rocks, and so they did, and fell in with the stream of other rock bearers funneling together onto the bridge’s near abutment. There traffic slowed, giving Egdod time to examine this strange growth that had so unexpectedly thrust itself forth from the wall of the chasm. It was indeed of solid adamant, a seamless whole with the bedrock of the Land, no different in its strength and permanence from anything Egdod himself might have made at the height of his powers. Not even Pluto could have achieved it. It occurred to Egdod to wonder whether he might have done this himself in some kind of dream and then forgotten about it. Or was there another soul like Egdod abroad in the Land? One as powerful as—or, come to think of it, mightier even than—Egdod himself?

And yet the power of the bridge maker was apparently not infinite. For as Egdod now perceived, the Fastness itself was not visible from the bridge. Even its topmost towers were concealed from view by a sort of buttress thrown out by one of the arching mountain ranges. Cunning had been the bridge builder, whoever it was, in choosing a location where his or her work could not be looked on by Egdod or any other soul gazing north from the high vantage points of the Fastness.

At the place where the abutment narrowed to the width of a road and gave way to the wooden trestle, an arch of adamant had been thrown, or grown, over the way and topped with a small castle-like tower that put Egdod in mind of the one he had made in the middle of the Park. Standing at its parapet, wings folded against their white-robed backs, were two of the souls that the others had classified as angels. They were facing opposite directions, keeping watch over the bridge. Egdod understood, as he passed under that arch and ventured out onto the rude wooden trestle, that whoever had built this could just as well have made it span the entire chasm with an unbroken stretch of solid adamant. Instead they had chosen to build it in such a way that it could easily be broken, when breaking it might better serve their purposes.

But what were their purposes?

A hundred slow trudging paces took him to a second gatehouse that was a mirror of the first, complete with two