XXX. PLATEAU

The four saw their destination, the lone plateau, the day before they arrived there. It broke the line of the horizon, a lightless beacon toward which they proceeded almost wordlessly. Long ago, Vorbyx forced slaves to enlarge its caverns and hew steps from its stone. Very close to the center of the vast territory he had claimed, the plateau enabled the ancient king to surveille the whole of his dominion. Now, like everything else Vorbyx had built, it was a ruin, and no beast or humanoid in Thar remembered its purpose, though the birds of Thar employed it as Vorbyx and his watchers had–until recently.

“At last,” said Ystrien when they came to its base. “It’s certainly open enough to the elements and who knows what else.” A weathered ramp rose in a half-spiral from where they stood to a large cave mouth. They had seen another cave mouth close to the top as they approached, but there was no way to access it from the outside.

“No birds,” remarked Cuatala. “There should be.”

Vahaera and Graddick said nothing. They had been silent and keeping their distance from each other for the last day. Ystrien and Cuatala knew that something had happened and guessed more or less accurately what it was. Poor Graddick. He was feeling pangs that began in his chest and went out through his arms, like echoes in a cave. He shunned thought that went beyond taking the next step, and he had no appetite. Poor Vahaera, too. She wanted nothing more than to go back to the way things were before the knight made the mistake everyone long dreaded he would make. She didn’t like silence or awkardness, but she knew whatever she said was likely to hurt him; she knew the sound of her voice alone had that power. If they had been back in Melvaunt, she would have said goodbye to Cuatala and Ystrien–and him, of course–and looked for adventure elsewhere. But here they were in Thar, at the base of a lonely ruin. There was no place for her to go. She wondered if he had said what he said because on some level he knew that.

***

Meanwhile, from the cave mouth at the top of the ruin, an alien intelligence assessed the four and contemplated its hunger for them.

I do not desire in a way of a human, it said to itself. They have an appetite without which there is a dying. Eating birds, not for sustaining, tasting no trouble, not in woe delighting–such am I. Eating not because of a must but because of a want, not because of a wanted pleasure but because of a wanted annihilation, not because of an annihilation’s violence but because of a result of violence, a taking away of substance and busy intellect, a making cleaner and more pure of all space, all planes.