We hurtled though the dunes, my mind a storm of confusion. In quick succession I had been honored, worshiped and feared by a mob of souls. They had cast me out and now a detachment of their overseers were trying to hunt me down. All because of the color of my skin.
This probably put a fork in my search for Karla. How was I supposed to find her if I couldn’t go near any crowds? And the fact was, I had long lost heart. I was a coward and a weakling. I didn’t deserve to find her. She deserved better. Though, now that was a moot point.
So I was relegated to tagging along with this odd couple of warrior infidels in tinkling armor. I had no idea where we were going. They spoke very little to me or even to each other. They just hummed and mumbled brief snatches of song that sounded like prayers.
They had a casual, disinterested air about them that I found oddly comforting. I could tell that I interested them, but they were not invested in me following them or not, which made me want to follow them all the more. I was like one of those stray dogs that attaches its loyalty to random strangers.
They gave up their names only after considerable prodding. Taro, the Asian, hailed from Manila. Brian had grown up and passed away in a suburb of San Francisco. Both were clearly veterans of the Deeps, though neither could say how long they had roamed these wastes. Years meant nothing to them now.
Neither were suicides, so they had no knowledge of Root apart from what they had heard from other souls.
Taro, surprisingly, had the rougher life. He had entered the Deeps directly, after a criminal and violent existence cut short by an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol.
Brian’s path to the Deeps was a bit more circuitous. He was more reticent about his lives and deaths. That he had been a pizza chef was about all he would say about his first life. His first death was accidental and had involved a fall from a ladder.
Before death number two, he had spent time on an island swaddled in fog, a place called Lethe, apparently another kind of threshold world like Root. His time there had ended abruptly. After an injury had left him immobile, a man with a scythe had come and cut him in two. There was obviously more to his story, but that was all he would say.
We passed up the rumpled flank of the valley, which was basically a ramp of dunes piled on dunes. We wound our way through a sinuous maze of sand, following their creases, trying to keep our heads out of sight of anyone who might be tracking us.
We kept finding footprints which I could swear were our own. I was certain we were walking in loops, yet Brian and Taro never faltered, fully confident in their navigation.
We finally emerged from the dunes onto to a wind-scoured plateau. There were no boulders or canyons, no place to hide, but at least we could spot any pursuers from afar. We headed for the largest in a group of broad, gentle hills that looked like shields laid flat. The curve of its domed summit was interrupted by lines and indentations where the natural contours had been modified by human hands. It seemed to be some sort of settlement.
We paused when we reached its base, not because we needed to rest, but because the guys were nervous about a swirl of dust on the plateau that was obscuring the view back to the dunes.
“That them behind that?” said Brian. “They using a screen?”
“Wouldn’t doubt it,” said Taro. “Doesn’t look natural.”
“Better get trucking.”
“There!” said Taro, pointing to a dot and another curl of dust on a nearby hill.
“A runner,” said Brian. “C’mon. Let’s get our ass home.”
We slogged up a long, smooth incline. About halfway up, we passed between two igloo-like structures of stone, with exits in the back and slotted windows arcing around their outer walls.
