Indeed, the starry heavens brought him a strange, painful emotion. When at last he stopped, it was upon a high crest. His long legs ached a little, as legs should perhaps. But being in this sacred place, this place which meant more to him than any other bit of land in the world, he could remember a time when his limbs would not have ached, when he could have hurried up the hill in big, loping steps.
No matter. What was a little pain? It gave him an insight into the pain of others. And humans suffered such terrible pain. Think of the gypsy asleep in his warm bed, dreaming of his witch. And pain was pain, whether physical or mental. Not the wisest of men or women or Taltos would ever know which was worse—the pain of the heart or the pain of the flesh.
At last he turned and sought even higher ground, climbing steadily up the slope even when it seemed impossibly steep, often reaching for a grip upon branches and firm rock to help himself.
The wind came up, but not strongly. His hands and feet were cold, but it was not a coldness he couldn’t endure. Indeed, coldness had always refreshed him.
And indeed, thanks to Remmick he had his fur-collared coat; thanks to himself he had his warm wool clothes; thanks to heaven, perhaps, the pain in his legs grew no worse, only a little more annoying.
The ground crumbled a little. He could have fallen here, but the trees were like tall balusters keeping him safe, letting him go on and on rapidly.
At last he turned and found the path he had known would be here, winding up between two gently rising slopes where the trees were old, untouched, perhaps spared by all intruders for centuries.
The path descended into a small vale covered with sharp stones that hurt his feet, and made him more than once lose his balance. Then up again he went, thinking the slope quite impossible except for the fact that he’d climbed it before and he knew that his will would overcome the evidence of his senses.
At last he emerged into a small clearing, eyes fixed on the distant overhanging peak. The trees were so close he could not easily find the path now, or any simple footing. He moved on, crushing the smaller shrubbery as he went. And as he turned now to his right, he saw far below, beyond a great deep crevasse, the waters of the loch shining with the pale illumination of the moon, and farther still the high, skeletal ruins of a cathedral.
His breath went out of him. He had not known they had rebuilt so much. As he fixed his eyes on the scheme below, he made out the entire cross pattern of the church, or so it seemed, and a multitude of squat tents and buildings, and a few flickering lights that were no more than pinpoints. He rested against the rock, safely nestled, peeping, as it were, on this world, without any danger of tumbling and falling down to it.
He knew what that was, to fall and to fall, to reach and cry out and be unable to stop the fall, his helpless body gaining weight and speed with every few feet of bruising terrain beneath him.
His coat was torn. His shoes were wet from the snow.
For a moment all the smells of this land engulfed him and overpowered him so that he felt an erotic pleasure moving through him, gripping his loins and sending the coarse ripples of pleasure over his entire skin.
He closed his eyes and let the soft, harmless wind stroke his face, let it chill his fingers.
It’s near, it’s very near. All you have to do is walk on and up, and turn there before the gray boulder you can see right now under the naked moon. In a moment the clouds may again cover the light, but it will be no less easy for you.
A distant sound touched his ears. For a moment he thought perhaps he was imagining it. But there it was, the low beat of the drums, and the thin flat whine of the pipes, somber and without any rhythm or melody he could discern, which drew from him a sudden panic and then a low, pumping anxiety. The sounds grew stronger, or rather he allowed himself to hear them more truly. The wind rose, then died away; the drums came strong from the slopes below, the