Pathfinder Read online

  “So you wait here with Param,” said Rigg. “But that raises another question. When I pushed Param into the past, I put her hand into the hands of people to whom that time was the present. Whom will we be giving the carriage to?”

  “Can’t we just take it back there and then let go of it?” asked Loaf.

  “This sounds so crazy,” said Olivenko. “Straight out of the Library of Nothing.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rigg. “I’m not even sure if we can ‘take’ something that’s bigger than we are. Why not put our hands on a mountain, go into the past, and then leave the mountain there? Why doesn’t the ground come with us every time we move through time?”

  “Our clothes come with us—which I for one think is convenient,” said Param.

  “I think the ground, and things attached to the ground, they stay in the present because time is tied to the world,” said Umbo. “Remember, Rigg? Otherwise time travel would mean dropping yourself into the middle of the space between stars, right?”

  “So is the carriage attached to the ground?” asked Rigg. “Would we have to lift it up all at once?”

  “Not likely,” said Loaf, “not if we have to hold hands with each other like we did when we were going back to join Olivenko in his time.”

  “Let’s stop talking and try it,” said Rigg.

  In a few moments, he and Olivenko and Loaf were tightly gripping the carriage at various points, using their right hands, while gripping each other’s left hands in a three-handed knot.

  Rigg searched for a useful path, more than a hundred years old. He found one—a cow that had moved through the meadow across the road from where they meant to push the carriage. “All right, Umbo,” he said.

  He felt the familiar change as the paths on the road started to become people—walking, riding horses. But he didn’t let himself get drawn into focusing on any of them. Instead, he kept his eyes on the path of the cow. It moved very differently, and was harder to get a hold on. Rigg had never done this with an animal before, and now he realized how difficult it was. It was as if the smarter brains of people made it easier for him to latch on to them. The cow was elusive. Just a little vague, though the image was always clear enough. Like trying to see through sleepy eyes at the first light of dawn.

  But he locked in with the cow soon enough, and saw the world change around him. The cow was behind a fence now. There were fences on both sides of the road. Rigg hadn’t counted on that. This area used to be more populated, and what were now meadows had once been pastures. The road was also more trafficked—instead of being mostly grass, it was mostly dirt and stones.

  “Are you seeing the fences?” asked Rigg.

  “Yes,” replied both Loaf and Olivenko.

  “Then we’re here. Don’t let go of the carriage. But one of you—Olivenko, all right?—let go of my hand.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if you pop back to the present with Umbo.”

  “But Umbo is right there,” said Olivenko.

  “That’s how it is. We see Umbo because he’s actually the one putting us back in time. Now let’s see if you go back to the present if you let go of me.”

  Olivenko let go—but still gripped the carriage. He didn’t disappear.

  “Now let me try something else,” said Rigg. He let go of Loaf now, too, and reached down and scooped up rocks from the road and tossed them into the carriage. They made a satisfying rattle as they fell to the floor and some of them bounced off the door on the other side. “Wherever we are,” said Rigg, “the carriage is here with us.”

  “So it is,” said Loaf. “It’s a relief I’m not holding on to nothing.”

  “If stones from the past can rattle around in the carriage, then the carriage is in the past.”

  “Or you brought the stones into the future,” said Loaf.

  “Let’s try moving it,” said Rigg.

  “Meaning let’s me and Olivenko move it, since your weight against this thing won’t do much.”

  “Sorry I didn’t get fatter in Flacommo’s house,” said Rigg.

  “But you did,” said Loaf. “Taller, too. But not much.”

  “Don’t ever let your hand leave the carriage,” said Rigg.

  Loaf immediately let go of the carriage completely.

  “Thanks for that,” said Rigg.

  “You were being cautious,” said Loaf, “and that’s right, but I thought we should find out whether letting go of the carriage flips us back into the future. Or the present or whatever we call it. And it didn’t, I can still see the cow and the fences. Once we’re back here, we’re back here, as long as Umbo holds us here.”

  “All right,” said Rigg. “But I was more worried about whether the carriage would stay.”

  “So let’s all let go of it and go back to Umbo’s and Param’s time and see if the carriage stays.”

  “But I don’t want it here by the road.”

  “Then we’ll go back and move it. Let’s just see first,” said Loaf. “Before we go to all the trouble of pushing it down the hill and then finding out that it stays in the present and General Citizen’s spies will spot it instantly.”

  “Smart,” said Rigg.

  “You say that,” said Olivenko, “as if the fact that Sergeant Loaf here thought of it, and not you, must mean that you’re stupid.”

  “Get used to it,” said Loaf. “Rigg is constantly surprised when somebody is smarter than he is.”

  “We’ve all let go of the carriage,” said Rigg, ignoring their banter. “Umbo, bring us back to the present.”

  The fences were gone. The cow was gone. The carriage was gone.

  “Good job,” said Umbo. “You got rid of it.”

  “We didn’t move it,” said Olivenko, “and it’s gone.”

  Rigg looked among the paths on the road and found the answer. “Within a day after we left it there, a half dozen paths come up to the thing and stop. With a couple of horses—no, too small. Donkeys. Not ideal, but strong enough to move the thing. They took it—down to that barn.”

  “What barn?” asked Olivenko.

  “The rotting weathered shards of wood there,” said Umbo, pointing. “They used to be a barn.”

  Rigg took off running, and Umbo was with him at once. “You stay there, Param!” That almost guaranteed that she would come walking down the slope with Olivenko and Loaf, picking her way over the uneven ground.

  Inside the rectangle defined by a few scraps of standing wall, and amid the ruin of a fifty-years-fallen roof, the wheels of the carriage were still identifiable. As were the rusted and tarnished metal fittings.

  “Well, ain’t that something,” said Loaf.

  “Waste of a good carriage,” said Olivenko. “Those folks took it from the road, and never did another thing with it.”

  “Good hiding place, though,” said Umbo.

  “They took it out quite a few times at first,” said Rigg. “Got four horses to pull it. But not always the same people—it was like the neighborhood carriage. I count . . . five different groups that took it out at different times. But always the same horses.”

  “They bought four horses?” asked Umbo.

  Rigg knew what he was thinking. Nobody in Fall Ford could have bought four horses, all at once.

  “They must have pitched in together to buy them,” said Loaf.

  “Well, they never replaced them,” said Rigg, looking at the paths. “For a while they pulled the carriage with three horses, and then two. And then the carriage never went out again after that. So they had the use of the carriage as long as the horses lived.”

  “Probably worked the horses to death at the plow and harrow, or pulling wagons at harvest,” said Loaf.

  “I wonder if they thought it was worth the price, to have the carriage to take out now and then.”

  “Our little gift cost them,” said Rigg.

  “Come on, they loved it,” said Umbo. “What if we could have had carriage rides when we were little, Rigg?”
/>   “Imagine your father chipping in to buy a pig, let alone four horses, and then sharing!”

  Umbo shuddered. “Let’s get back up to the road. They haven’t been waiting somewhere till we finished our business. What if they came up the road right now? What would we do?”

  Rigg led the way back up the slope toward the horses. He could see that uphill was hard for Param, but then Olivenko was instantly there, helping her, and so Rigg ran on ahead. At the top of the hill, as he stroked the horse that he had decided was his, he scanned for new paths being formed in the road behind and below them. For miles out he scanned, and saw no paths except those of animals and local people going about their business. No urgency yet.

  For a moment Rigg thought it might be a good idea to go back a few days into the past, all of them, including the horses, putting more time between them and any pursuers. But then he nixed the idea without saying it aloud. To go back, they’d need to latch on to someone the way they had with Olivenko. That would be memorable, and when General Citizen’s men came along, they’d know that Rigg’s party was time-jumping.

  And if they jumped ten years, or fifteen years, or a hundred years into the past, then what? How could they guess what troubles they might run into? Or how they might change the future? Maybe they’d start a legend about travelers appearing out of nowhere—or, worse yet, about a prince and princess appearing out of the sky. Either General Citizen or Mother would have guessed what happened and been ready to intercept them as soon as they got on this road. No, they’d travel in the present until something forced them to do otherwise.

  The journey went faster now, even though three of them were walking. Param started out astride a horse—that was hard enough work—with Loaf taking the other to ride ahead and scout the way. Before long, Param insisted on dismounting and taking a turn walking. “I’ll never build up my walking strength by sitting on a horse. Besides, it isn’t all that comfortable. It chafes my thighs and I feel all stretched out.”

  They traveled for another couple of weeks this way, Param walking farther and farther before needing to ride again, until she was walking all the way. They bought more provisions at two different farmsteads, and at the last one, the farmer said, “Don’t know where you think you’re going, but it isn’t there.”

  “What isn’t there?” asked Olivenko.

  “Anything,” said the farmer. “Ain’t nothing at all that way.”

  “Maybe nothing’s what we’re looking for,” said Olivenko.

  “You think to find the Wall,” said the farmer.

  “Wall?” asked Olivenko.

  “Ayup,” said the farmer. “At’s right, then. Oh, you’ll find it. All up that way. Day or two beyond.”

  “Are there any brigands living in that area?” asked Loaf.

  “Might be,” said the farmer. “If they is, they an’t bothering us here.”

  “Then we’ll do fine,” said Olivenko.

  “What you running away from?” asked the farmer.

  Rigg didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “You,” he said. “We want to get to a place where nobody pries into other folks’ business.”

  “Soldiers patrol along there, you know,” said the farmer, not taking the hint. “You never know when they’ll come along. Just thinking you might want to know that, if you’re running away and don’t want to get caught.”

  Rigg changed his estimation of the man at once. “Thank you for the warning.”

  “Why do you think a man moves to this part of the wallfold?” said the farmer, grinning. “Run off with a rich man’s wife, you got to get off to a far place where you’ll never meet the old cuckold by chance. Close to the Wall, but not too close. I know what it is to run. So does my wife.”

  Rigg looked at the half-toothless woman and the five children who huddled around her and thought: Is she happy with the bargain that she made? He could see that she had once been pretty.

  They paid the man for the provisions—paid exactly what he asked, with no bargaining, since they were buying silence as well, if it could be bought, or at least thanking him for his attempt at good counsel.

  There was no road now, and as they moved out across country, up hill and down dale, Rigg kept thinking about the farmer’s wife until he finally spoke up. “Why would she give up a life of comfort for what she has here?”

  “She didn’t know it would be like this,” said Umbo, “and then it was too late.”

  “She knew how the world works,” said Olivenko. “Her beauty would fade, her rich husband would replace her with someone younger.”

  “She loved the man,” said Loaf. “Probably loved him before she ever married the rich man—bet her parents talked her into that. Bad advice, and she decided she’d been wrong to take it. That’s the whole story, I think.”

  Rigg looked at Param. Param smiled a little and said, “She wanted his babies, and not the other man’s.”

  The others laughed.

  “Is it that simple?” asked Rigg.

  “It may not be the story she told herself,” said Param, “but it is that simple. That’s what Mother said.”

  Ah yes. Mother. “Is that the reason she gave for marrying Father Knosso?” asked Rigg.

  “She was talking about other women,” said Param. “Other women marry for that reason.”

  “And her reason?”

  “For the good of the royal line,” said Param.

  “In other words,” said Loaf, “she wanted to have his babies.”

  They all had a good laugh at that.

  They came to the Wall four days after leaving the farm instead of two, but that was no surprise, they’d been angling southeast, not east. They found the Wall, not with their eyes, but with their minds.

  “You notice how we’ve turned south?” asked Loaf.

  “Have we?” asked Olivenko.

  Rigg and Umbo didn’t need to ask. “I know,” said Umbo. “The horse won’t go to the east at all anymore.”

  “They sense it. The aversion,” said Loaf. “The wish not to go that way.”

  Param shuddered. “I didn’t realize that that feeling was the Wall.”

  “You just think of going that way, and it makes you a bit tetchy, right?” said Loaf.

  “It would be like volunteering for a nightmare,” said Param.

  “Very good,” said Loaf.

  Olivenko handed the reins of the horse he’d been leading to Rigg. Then he strode out going due east, up a rise of ground. Soon he disappeared on the other side.

  “He’ll be back,” said Loaf.

  Sure enough, Olivenko reappeared farther south, walking resolutely, until he finally heard them calling him and saw them waving. He seemed genuinely astonished to see them and ran to them. “How did you do that?” he demanded. “How did you get ahead of me like that?”

  They laughed, and Loaf explained. “It’s the Wall. It steers you clear. You just kept walking, fast and hard, right? Thought you could bull your way through. But the Wall bends you. Every step you shift direction a little more, bending farther, and then you’re heading away from the Wall. Thinking you’re still heading for it.”

  “You didn’t move?” Only then did Olivenko seem to notice how the horses were pretty much where they had been when he left. “You just stood here waiting?”

  “So the Wall tricks you into staying away?” asked Param.

  “No,” said Loaf. “It fills you with terror and grief. Your brain can’t stand the idea of bearing it, not for a moment, and so you trick yourself into staying away.”

  “I wanted to know what it felt like,” said Olivenko. “I didn’t really think I could get through.”

  “You have to pick a landmark on the other side. And by ‘pick’ it, I mean write down what the landmark is and keep glancing down at the writing so you can remember it. You pick the landmark and you walk straight toward it, never taking your eyes off it for long. Then you’ll get close enough to really feel it.”

  “I want to do it,
then,” said Olivenko. “So I’ll know.”

  “You’ve never had a nightmare? Never woken up in a cold sweat, or crying?”

  Olivenko shrugged a little. “You’re saying I already know?”

  “I’m saying you don’t want to know. Because the closer you get, the more your mind starts coming up with reasons to be as terrified and devastated as you feel. You start hallucinating monsters or mutilations, or your family tortured or dead. And what you remember afterward, for the rest of your life, it’s the things your brain showed you to explain the grief and horror that you felt.”

  “Then I wonder how anybody ever understood that it was the Wall, and not a haunted place,” said Olivenko, the scholar in him coming to the fore.

  “Didn’t you experience the Wall when you went with Father Knosso?” asked Rigg.

  Olivenko shook his head. “Your father made us stay well back. Still, I was near enough to see that the Wall is marked out with buoys. Has been for a thousand years. For fear of boats getting lost. You have a wind in the wrong direction, and sailors can get too close. They go mad. Everyone always knew a boat could get through the Wall—it was your father’s idea to make himself unconscious during the passage.”

  “Wasn’t he afraid of dreaming? Nightmares as he crossed?”

  “Drugged and dreamless sleep,” said Olivenko. “And we don’t know that it worked. He was never able to tell us.”

  “Let’s keep moving,” said Loaf. “Unless you want to try again, Olivenko.”

  “No,” said Olivenko. “Time enough for the evils of the Wall when we meet the place where we cross together.” He looked at Rigg. “What are we looking for?”

  “A smooth place. Stony, no trees, but not so steep there’d be avalanches or landslides. Father and I saw it atop Upsheer Cliff. The whole area used to be a huge lake, the Stashi Falls pouring right over the lip of the cliffs. But then the water cut its way deeper and deeper, and the lake drained lower and lower, until now it’s just a wide place in the river, and it leaps out far below the rim of the cliffs, and falls through a deep canyon that didn’t exist twelve thousand years ago.”

  “You saw the past?” asked Param. “The lake?”

  “I saw the paths of the people,” said Rigg. “Where they walked. Where the bridges were. Where they swam. Paths in the middle of the air, where once there was land, before it eroded away. None of us can fly. We have to pick a place that hasn’t eroded much, a place where the path we have to follow isn’t in midair. And where there isn’t a lot for animals to eat, so we won’t be faced with a predator that thinks we look like easy pickings. A place that was the same twelve thousand years ago as it is today.”