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Just a few hundred ate and the boundaries of the city, as the wheel’s shade again slipped over us and a fine rain drizzled doe took refuge in a tuht, Gamelpar tossed and turned, no doubt because of the aches and pains of age--but he also cried aloud, caling naht Vinnevra tried to soothe him
Then she motioned for me to join them, and we al lay beside each other
To these two, the ruins of this old city spoke of lost glory and family and happiness
To me, and to the old spirit within, the city spoke of Forerunners deigning to alow us a crude, limited sort of freedom--but only for a time
Had it realy been any different back on Erde-Tyrene?
Chapter Eight
AT FIRST LIGHT, we passed through the gate and saw the near- edge wal ain, eyes closed, and flung out her arm to establish our direction
Where she pointed, I could see a brown sh in the air
Ga stil trereat double-square tiles of Halo had continued tothe inside of the wheel Now the sun shone on their upper surfaces and revealed geoe
Whatever landscape--if any--that had been layered on the tiles had been sacrificed, at with land, anie suffered during the war between the Forerunners
It is her way, to allow us to suffer
"No," I said under my breath "I feel her in me, it is not her way" My experiences on the Halo had not yet rubbed out al my hopes for the Lifeshaper
Then streaks crossed the sky, --silvery, darting, like heaven- rabbed Vinnevra’s arht
"Sky boats," Ga for the rest of the People in the vilage"
At this, we moved on as fast as we could and stil have the oldhils We stopped when Ga another patch of low trees, we tried to keep stil and quiet
We had traveled perhaps a dozen kilo crept over us, but the moisture did not quench our thirst None of us slept
But the boats did not come for us We never saw the streaks in the sky descend, and I do not knohat happened to the People in the vilage
The fog lifted with the passage out of shadow No rain folowed and the land was soon as dry again as old bones In silence, Gaht’s daht about this aging, priht have wished for a younger, stouter container But in the old e, one new to me
Vinnevra and I offered to help carry him, but he waved us off and used his stick to push to his feet He then swung the stick around, li journey, and headed off before we began, leaning on the stick and swinging his sore leg out in an arc with each step Again we folowed a few paces behind, alowing hinity Truthfuly, I was in no hurry to discover what e wal
The next day and night we found very little in the way of food-- just a few dry, greasy berries thatdew frorass The land we crossed was like a squeezed sponge No springs, no rivers
On the thirdof our journey, we licked up as rass as we could The hils had beco several hundred h beyond We pushed between the hils, skirting cracked boulders and spiky, cone-shaped trees Their bristles left s mixed with dust swirled over our heads A few smal birds flew back and forth, but the sky seemed as empty of sustenance for them as the land was for us
The air twisted and whistled through the hils and the trees
The nextcarried as ed along, half-blind, the dirty curtains of ed ribbons--and Vinnevra, intent on folowing her geas, nearly walked over a crurabbed her arm forcibly--she hissed and tried to pul away-- but then she saw, and gasped, and ran back Ga each breath out in a low, curling sort of song whose words I did not understand
This did not seem to be a valey, a canyon, or a river run It was siliest ditch I had ever seen
The old , as if trying to grab at any answer to themud," he said "This is new
I don’t like it" He walked back to squat in the shade of a high boulder
Vinnevra and I carefuly approached the ditch’s cruot down on our hands and knees and crawled An alar cascade of dirt and pebbles fel away beneath uess how deep and how far across the ditch was I could no longer see the edge wal, nor could I see the ditch’s botto like a filthy, useless river
"You want us to go down there?" I asked Vinnevra "That’s where your geas leads you?"
She regarded ’s definitely on the move," I said
"What?"
"Animals, maybe Like wildebeest"
"What are" She tried to say the word but gave it up "What are they?"
I described thereat clouds of dust and trying to forge broad rivers, where many drowned or fel prey to crocodiles As a boy I had sat on the riverbank and watched the jaguars and sabertooths wait patiently on the far shore for the ani a few more, while the drowned ones swept away to become food for other crocodiles and fish And yet, by sheer numbers, the wildebeests overwhelmed even these predators, and ht had war and I could diht: the land had indeed puled away fro a slope of broken rubble, and beyond that, about a kilometer of revealed foundation
It was easy to see how deep the land was here, on the inside of the Halo: eight or nine hundred meters Not much thicker, relatively, than a layer of paint on the wal of a house