I heard it coming. An agonized scream of metal. A tumbling clangor, banging down the tower with thunderous crashes. It was only a few instants before it hit. Shattering. Shards of metal flying in all directions. One buried itself in the wall beside me. Voices crying out, weeping. The furious roaring outside suddenly stilled, as though in horror at what had happened. Then one voice raised, then another, rebelliously cheering.
Struggling gray forms on the floor, one or two. I went toward them, trying to feel where one might go out. No door. No exit. Even close beside the writhing figures, I couldn’t see them clearly, and the revelation almost stopped me in my tracks. The sound was as clear as my own voice, but these figures were misty, which meant that Lom didn’t remember them very well. It remembered the sound and those outside, but not these. Just something, something dying. There was a rush of unfocused anguish, a kind of thinning in the atmosphere of the place. I grabbed Peter’s hand and moved toward it, trying to find it. It was stronger beside the monument he had climbed upon earlier, shattered now. The anguish I felt was anguish at the destruction of this! Not at the death of the creature, but at this shattering. . . .
I moved in the direction of the feeling, pulling Peter along by one hand, not certain where.
And came out.
We were standing in a desert. Nothing was happening. A chilly wind blew a few grains of sand restlessly across the parched soil. Bristly growths spiked here and there on the limitless flat around a jagged line of broken statues.
“Don’t move,” I said, frustrated. “I think we came in the wrong direction.” I tried to breathe, gasping, as though I had been crying. What was it?
“What were you after?”
“There was this feeling of anguish. Grief.” I stopped, unable to go on. The feeling was still there, all around me, a sadness so palpable it stopped my breath. I gritted my teeth, did a small concentration spell, and was able to breathe once more. I went on, “At first I thought it was grief over something dying, but Lom didn’t even remember the things that were dying, so it had to be the grief over something else. Maybe grief over the destruction of’ the carving. Perhaps it was a work of art.”
“Maybe not.” He mused over the unchanging scene. “It could have been a monument. A cenotaph, maybe. A memorial to someone or something dead which Lom did remember. And these may be more of the same.” He gestured toward the shattered statues.
There was a funerary air to the place. Solemn. Still. No rush or fury of life. Only the barren soil, the keening wind, the stark bulk of the carved stone against a line of distant mountains. The statue nearest us looked away from me, to one side, staring into eternity. I couldn’t tell what it was from this distance, but I was afraid to go closer. I didn’t want to leave the place we had come in without marking it. And how did you mark something in a place like this? I tried scraping away at the sand beneath me. It scraped very, nicely, then slowly filled itself up like oozy mud. Evidently I could have only a temporary influence here. I tried breaking a branch off a thorny bush. It broke, nipped my finger with a thorn, quietly dissolved in my hand, and reappeared on the bush. The hole in my finger was still there. “We can’t make any lasting changes, Peter. [t restructures itself.”
“If we can’t make any changes . . .” His voice trailed away as he stared at me. I knew what he was thinking. If we couldn’t make any lasting changes, then how were we to have any effect on Lom’s mind? He broke off the thorn branch I had broken. It dissolved in his hand and reappeared on the bush. He broke it again, stubbornly, and went on doing it while I watched, wondering what he thought he was doing.
At about the dozenth break, the branch did not dissolve right away. At about the twentieth, it stopped dissolving altogether. He stood there, holding the branch, watching it, scratches all over his fingers. “It seems to respond to persistence,” he said, sucking his thumb.
I ventured, “I’d like to take a look at that statue, the closest one, but I’m afraid to lose the place we came in.”
“I’ll stay here,” he offered. “Perhaps I can get some bearings.” It was true there were mountains around the edge of’ the place, and other monuments scattered out in several directions. One should be able to take sightings on several things and locate the spot. I left him at it and trudged away to the nearest monument.
Sad. Oh, my, sadness doesn’t half say it. The broken stone was awash with grief. It was that same unfocused grief I had felt before. Lom’s grief, not mine. I could not understand it. I could only feel it, and feeling it was more than enough. I leaned against the plinth on which the monument sat, making my lungs behave.
Chunks of the pedestal had been broken away. Great riven stones lay about, and the edges of the breaks showed no signs of weathering. When it was new it
