James Axler - Palaces Of Light

He screamed.

And when he opened his eye once more, he was bemused to see that the others were, indeed, standing over him and J.B. Only instead of looking down at them, they were looking around.

Without even sitting up, he knew why. The hard-packed dirt was solid beneath him, and he could see from the periphery of his vision that they were on level ground. Level with where they had been before their descent. Raising himself on one elbow, he looked around. To his left, he could see the flat expanse of waste that they had trekked across the previous day. He recognized the scrub and rock they had used as landmarks to count off the miles.

They should be in the crevice.

But it was no longer there.

More than that, to his right, where there had previously been only the flat lands that stretched on the other side of the crevice, there was now a wall of rock that stood about forty yards high, on a steep incline, about three miles away. It was like an inversion of the crevice.

And maybe it was just as real?

“I don’t know what just happened, and to be honest I don’t really give a shit how. The real question is, what can we do about it?”

Ryan turned to the Armorer, who was sitting up, his arms clasped around his knees as he surveyed the territory. The laconic wryness of his tone belied the real urgency of his question.

“Keep going,” Ryan answered simply. “I figure that we really were seeing them in the distance, and when they disappeared it wasn’t down a nonexistent hole. It was behind some kind of wall they could put up mentally. Something that could get inside our heads.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Doc murmured. “Down the hole and out of sight. Make something grow smaller and then make it grow bigger. Is it really that way or does it just seem to be that way?”

“Not make sense.” Jak spit. “Have to go like real, then see. Just be ready for any shit.”

“Looks that way,” Krysty said slowly. “That crap that Jak and me were feeling last night… Mebbe that’s the mechanism they use, a kind of super doomie power that can play on our fears.”

“How know what scare us?” Jak questioned.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to know us.” Mildred shrugged. “Anyone getting this far would be exhausted, so a deep drop and a narrow path would be daunting. Like that wall is going to be bastard to climb,” she added, indicating the distant barrier, which seemed to stretch across the horizon.

“Can’t be that hard if it doesn’t exist.” J.B. shrugged.

Mildred laughed shortly. “Still hurt like hell to get down that nonexistent drop, didn’t it? Wonder what we would have looked like to anyone watching as we went down an imaginary drop?”

“No more stupe than we’ll look climbing an imaginary mountain,” Ryan replied. “But if that’s what we have to do—”

“That is if it truly is imaginary,” Doc interjected. “There is, of course, the possibility that the abyss was a dream, yet the mountain is real. The one a mask for the other.”

“You know, we could talk about that all day,” J.B. said quietly, spitting on the ground in disgust at their impotence. “We’re not really going to know one way or the other, even when we reach it. But one thing I can tell you for sure is this—the longer we stand around, the farther those coldheart bastards get from us, and the harder it’s going to be to get the kids back and get our jack.”

The Armorer was right. If they intended to finish their mission, they had little option but to continue regardless. And so they started forward again, in silence, hearts and limbs heavy, and all the time knowing that this was exactly the frame of mind that the clouding of their reality had been intended to produce.

Just how hard was it going to be if they had to fight on two planes simultaneously: the mental and the physical?

* * *

MORGAN’S EYES flickered, then rolled back into their usual position. He was surprised to find himself being cradled by the baron, and even more surprised by the distant look in the man’s eyes. It was as though the hardened baron was a million miles away.

And then, as if suddenly noticing that the old man had come to, and not wanting to give anything away, the baron’s worried mien suddenly hardened into its usual mask.

“What did you see, old man? Tell me,” the baron snapped in a harsh voice. It was unnecessarily abrupt, and despite his best intent couldn’t entirely hide the anxiety he felt.

Despite his own fear, exacerbated by the sudden intrusion of the visions he didn’t want to see, Morgan felt a pang of pity for the baron. K wasn’t a man he would have ever thought that he could have sympathy for, and yet he could see that the man had a… A what? A weakness? Was it a weakness to have feelings for your own flesh and blood? Perhaps it was if you were a hard-fighting and hard-fought leader of a ville. So, despite the stubborn streak of his nature that told Morgan to tell the baron to get fucked, in spite of any consequences, he took a deep breath and started to speak.

It was halting and confused as he tried to explain in words the things that he had seen and felt primarily as a series of impressions and emotions, but as he went on the baron’s face changed yet again. He was absorbed by what the old man was telling him. It confirmed his worst fears about the powers of those who had taken the children. At the same time, it boosted his self-esteem. At the back of his mind, still there despite the fears for his own child, was the lurking fear that his judgment had somehow been in error when he allowed these events to happen. But after all, if a man of Morgan’s undoubted doomie sensibility was easy meat to whatever was behind the intruders, then no one could hold him responsible and use that fact to challenge his position.

By the time the old man had finished, the baron had moved back and away, and was hunkered against the wall of the shack, elbows resting on his knees and chin in his hands as he focused on the story. Morgan, for his part, had moved in the opposite direction and had wiped the spittle from his beard. He turned to the barrel where he kept his own personal brew and scooped out a mugful that he downed in one swallow.

K didn’t see it that way. As soon as he saw what the old man was doing, he sprang across the room, swiping the mug from the old man’s fist in one smooth and swift motion.

“No,” he yelled, “you’re not doing that. I want you sober and awake so that you can tell me what’s happening.”

Mutely, Morgan followed the progress of the mug as it flew across the room, its tin body clanging as it hit the boards of the cabin floor, the fire hissing and flaring as a spray of alcohol swept across it like an incoming wave. He turned back to K and looked him squarely in the eye. When he spoke, it was with a hushed gravity that made the baron look away uneasily.

“You idiot. Do you really think that those poor bastards are going to be able to get your daughter back? You don’t give a shit about the other kids. Why the fuck should you? Their parents wouldn’t care squat about your kid, after all. But you should give it up, K. She’s gone. And no amount of making me face going mad seeing what it can do and letting it get inside my head is going to make any bastard difference. Not one little bit. They’re as good as chilled. And so is your daughter. The sooner we face it, the better. Whatever the fuck those coldheart bastards were who took her and the others, they weren’t human. Mebbe once. Before whatever it’s that makes the black fist got hold of them and changed them forever. Mebbe they still have some kind of humanity in them. But if they have, it’s so buried that there ain’t no way it’s ever going to find a way out.

“Face it, K, she’s gone. You lost. We all did. And those poor fuckers you sent after them with the promise of gold? They’re gone, too.”