Robert Silverberg: This is the Road

Crown, swinging around, now rumbled like a machine of death toward Leaf and Shadow. His wild red eyes glittered ferociously. Leaf did not move; Shadow shook him urgently, and finally he pushed himself into action. Together they caught hold of the massive gate and, straining, swung it shut, slamming it just as Crown crashed into it. Leaf forced the reluctant bolts into place. Crown roared and pounded at the gate, but he was unable to force it.

Shadow shivered and wept. Leaf drew her to him and held her for a moment. At length he said, “We’d better be on our way. The Snow Hunters are far ahead of us already.”

“Sting —”

“I know. I know. Come, now.”

Half a dozen Tree Companions were waiting for them by the wooden houses. They grinned, chattered, pointed to the packs. “All right,” Leaf said. “Go ahead. Take whatever you want. Take everything, if you like.”

Busy fingers picked through his pack and Shadow’s. From Shadow the Tree Companions took a brocaded ribbon and a flat, smooth green stone. From Leaf they took one of the ivory medallions, both copper coins, and one of his stickskin boots. Tribute. Day by day, pieces of the past slipped from his grasp. He pulled the other boot from the pack and offered it to them, but they merely giggled and shook their heads. “One is of no use to me,” he said. They would not take it. He tossed the boot into the grass beside the road.

The road curved gently toward the north and began a slow rise, following the flank of the forested hills in which the Tree Companions made their homes. Leaf and Shadow marched, mechanically, saying little. The bootprints of the Snow Hunters were everywhere along the road, but the Snow Hunters themselves were far ahead, out of sight. It was early afternoon, and the day had become bright, unexpectedly warm. After an hour Shadow said, “I must rest.”

Her teeth were clacking. She crouched by the roadside and wrapped her arms about her chest. Dancing Stars, covered with thick fur, usually wore no clothing except in the bleakest winters; but her pelt did her no good now.

“Are you ill?” he asked.

“It’ll pass. I’m reacting. Sting —”

“Yes.”

“And Crown. I feel so unhappy about Crown.”

“A madman,” Leaf said. “A murderer.”

“Don’t judge him so casually, Leaf. He’s a man under sentence of death, and he knows it, and he’s suffering from it, and when the fear and pain became unbearable to him he reached out for Sting. He didn’t know what he was doing. He needed to smash something, that was all, to relieve his own torment.”

“We’re all going to die sooner or later,” Leaf said. “That doesn’t generally drive us to kill our friends.”

“I don’t mean sooner or later. I mean that Crown will die tonight or tomorrow.”

“Why should he?”

“What can he do now to save himself, Leaf?”

“He could yield to the Tree Companions and pass the gate on foot, as we’ve done.”

“You know he’d never abandon the wagon.”

“Well, then, he can harness the nightmares and turn around toward Theptis. At least he’d have a chance to make it through to the Sunset Highway that way.”

“He can’t do that either,” Shadow said.

“Why not?”

“He can’t drive the wagon.”

“There’s no one left to do it for him. His life’s at stake. For once he could eat his pride and —”

“I didn’t say won’t drive the wagon, Leaf. I said can’t. Crown’s incapable. He isn’t able to make dream contact with the nightmares. Why do you think he always used hired drivers? Why was he so insistent on making you drive in the purple rain? He doesn’t have the mind-power. Did you ever see a Dark Laker driving nightmares? Ever?”

Leaf stared at her. “You knew this all along?”

“From the beginning, yes.”

“Is that why you hesitated to leave him at the gate? When you were talking about our contract with him?”

She nodded. “If all three of us left him, we were condemning him to death. He has no way of escaping the Tree Companions now unless he forces himself to leave the wagon, and he won’t do that. They’ll fall on him and kill him, today, tomorrow, whenever.”

Leaf closed his eyes, shook his head. “I feel a kind of shame. Now that I know we were leaving him helpless. He could have spoken.”

“Too proud.”

“Yes. Yes. It’s just as well he didn’t say anything. We all have responsibilities to one another, but there are limits. You and I and Sting were under no obligation to die simply because Crown couldn’t bring himself to give up his pretty wagon. But still —still —” He locked his hands tightly together. “Why did you finally decide to leave, then?”

“For the reason you just gave. I didn’t want Crown to die, but I didn’t believe I owed him my life. Besides, you had said you were going to go, no matter what.”

“Poor, crazy Crown.”

“And when he killed Sting —a life for a life, Leaf. All vows are canceled now. I feel no guilt.”

“Nor I.”

“I think the fever is leaving me.”

“Let’s rest a few minutes more,” Leaf said.

It was more than an hour before Leaf judged Shadow strong enough to go on. The highway now described a steady upgrade, not steep but making constant demands on their stamina, and they moved slowly. As the day’s warmth began to dwindle, they reached the crest of the grade, and rested again at a place from which they could see the road ahead winding in switchbacks into a green, pleasant valley. Far below were the Snow Hunters, resting also by the side of a fair-size stream.

“Smoke,” Shadow said. “Do you smell it?”

“Campfires down there, I suppose.”

“I don’t think they have any fires going. I don’t see any.”

“The Tree Companions, then.”

“It must be a big fire.”

“No matter,” Leaf said. “Are you ready to continue?”

“I hear a sound —”

A voice from behind and uphill of them said, “And so it ends the usual way, in foolishness and death, and the All-Is-One grows greater.”

Leaf whirled, springing to his feet. He heard laughter on the hillside and saw movements in the underbrush; after a moment he made out a dim, faintly outlined figure, and realized that an Invisible was coming toward them, the same one, no doubt, who had traveled with them from Theptis.

“What do you want?” Leaf called.

“Want? Want? I want nothing. I’m merely passing through.” The Invisible pointed over his shoulder. “You can see the whole thing from the top of this hill. Your big friend put up a mighty struggle, he killed many of them, but the darts, the darts —” The Invisible laughed. “He was dying, but even so he wasn’t going to let them have his wagon. Such a stubborn man. Such a foolish man. Well, a happy journey to you both.”

“Don’t leave yet!” Leaf cried. But even the outlines of the Invisible were fading. Only the laughter remained, and then that too was gone. Leaf threw desperate questions into the air and, receiving no replies, turned and rushed up the hillside, clawing at the thick shrubbery. In ten minutes he was at the summit, and stood gasping and panting, looking back across a precipitous valley to the stretch of road they had just traversed. He could see everything clearly from here: the Tree Companion village nestling in the forest, the highway, the shacks by the side of the road, the wall, the clearing beyond the wall. And the wagon. The roof was gone and the sides had tumbled outward. Bright spears of flame shot high, and a black, billowing cloud of smoke stained the air. Leaf stood watching Crown’s pyre a long while before returning to Shadow.

They descended toward the place where the Snow Hunters had made their camp. Breaking a long silence, Shadow said, “There must once have been a time when the world was different, when all people were of the same kind, and everyone lived in peace. A golden age, long gone. How did things change, Leaf? How did we bring this upon ourselves?”