Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson Page 0,372

It was at least partly hollow. And though Pick had not yet gone to the trouble of coming right out and saying as much, all who had descended into the fault in the Asking, only to emerge here, understood that Pluto had, in the waning years of the First Age, explored these deeps and connected them with roads of chaos so that he might more easily make his way from one part of the Land to another without having to trudge across all of the intervening ground. To follow those roads without going astray and losing oneself in unknown realms was subtle and dangerous, but Pick knew how to find their beginnings and Mab knew how to trace them to safe ends.

The canoes were laden with goods and victuals that they now unloaded on the shore of the lake. A lot of the cargo consisted of clothing; lacking very much of it, the Firkin contingent simply put that on. The remainder they distributed among packs that they could carry on their backs or suspend from poles that two could carry between them on their shoulders.

Pick was of a mind to explore the several other cave entrances that could easily be seen from here, but Corvus literally bristled at that suggestion. “It would take forever,” he said. “Mab assures us they do not lead where we wish to go. Now that you know how to find this place you can come back here later, after we have saved the world, and do all of that.”

“If our purpose is to save the world,” said Ferhuul, “this is the first I have been made aware of it.”

“Yes,” said Lyne, “you might have mentioned it earlier.”

“Oh, come on!” said Fern. “It’s perfectly obvious. Has been all along.”

“Sometimes I must express myself in few words,” said Corvus, “so that these Quest councils don’t go on forever. If ‘save the world’ is objectionable I can expand on it. Doing so wouldn’t help. Things are wrongly set up in the Land now, as anyone who has seen what we have lately seen would agree. Even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, I think you’d have to admit it’s not how a proper god would compose a world. It is not going to fix itself. That is probably why I came here from the other plane of existence. Things were set in motion there that it is my purpose to see through here. Stop arguing.”

“What does seeing them through mean, exactly?” Lyne inquired, in a most polite and agreeable tone, to emphasize that he was not arguing.

“I don’t know,” Corvus admitted, “but I think we are all going to be glad that Ferhuul had the presence of mind to bring warm dry clothing. Our road runs south into the Stormland.”

“You’re saying,” said Prim, “that we are going to the Fastness. You want to penetrate the storm and break into the Fastness.”

“It has just been sitting there since the Fall of the Old Gods,” said Corvus in an almost defensive tone.

“Just the other day,” Lyne pointed out, “we sat and listened—very patiently, I might add—to a song from Weaver explaining that it’s locked up behind magical chains and such.”

“Anyway, no one can get anywhere near that thing,” Weaver objected. “The Expedition of Lord Stranath couldn’t even get within sight of it.”

“According to that one survivor, sure!” Corvus said. “But he turned tail and ran home when the Lightning Bears sprang their ambush. Not even halfway to the Precipice, which according to the Dark Codex is the first vantage point from which it’s possible to even glimpse the inmost convolutions of the Knot.”

“The Dark Codex blinds any person who reads it,” Weaver scoffed.

“You have to set it up in a mirror and read it backward,” Edda put in.

“Oh.”

“And I’m not exactly a person,” Corvus added. “Look, we have to go there—it is the entire point of the Quest—and we have many advantages compared to Lord Stranath. We will not be tackling the Lightning Bears, and the Vortex Wraiths are overrated.”

“I’ve never heard of them,” said Weaver. Behind her back, Mard and Lyne exchanged satisfied looks.

“Then the less said, the better. Coming to the Fastness? Our way lies south, on the surface for now. Abandoning the Quest? There are some perfectly serviceable canoes awaiting you just there.”

“And the whole Bewilderment to cross,” cracked Lyne to Mard.

“I can cross it,” Ferhuul pointed out, “as I have just demonstrated. And cross it again is what I am going to do