“Somewhere where there’s an audience,” the Kid said. “Somewhere where they still like magic.”

“I never liked magic,” Temperanza said. “All that pulling coins out of ears and breaking clocks and, you know . . .” She shuddered. “Spoon-bending.”

The Kid shrugged again. “I’m not much of a fan either,” he said.

The clowns had gone. Hole was left abandoned, its treasure piling uselessly where it fell. All that mined substance. It would be best, the Stranger thought, to disperse it widely. So much of it in one place distorted things.

“What will you do now?” he said.

The Kid looked at Temperanza and she smiled. “We thought we might ride together a while.”

“Oh,” the Stranger said, and he smiled too. They looked good together, the bounty hunter and the Kid, he thought. He hoped they wouldn’t get into too much trouble together—though he rather expected they will.

The Stranger bid them farewell as the sun set low over the horizon. He gave the Kid an awkward hug. “I’ll see you, Kid,” he said.

He tipped his hat to Temperanza, who nodded back. “Stranger.”

He left them then.

The Stranger rode out of Hole on a horse that bore no name, traversing the silent, now abandoned, ghostly landscape. The map was in his pocket. It felt good to ride alone again. He knew where he was going, and he knew who he was. The Plant of Heartbeat was within his grasp, he knew that now. It was close.

There was yet time.

The Stranger rode out of Hole and into the west, towards the setting sun.

The Hermit

ELEVEN:

THE HERMIT

The Stranger rode for many days and many nights in the wilderness. The land was red rocks and dry creeks, which the Stranger crossed, and dead and blackened trees.

The sun rose each morning and set each night, and the Stranger’s shadow followed him from dawn until dusk by his side. He began to scent salt in the air and he thought he must be coming close to the Great Salt Lakes beyond which lie the Mountains of Darkness.

One night the Stranger saw the flashes of asterisks and curlicues and ankhs on the horizon that meant a storm was coming. He worried that the Titanomachy had ranged this far onto the edges of the world, and he changed his course to avoid the storm. He rode fast, his horse uncomplaining, and he came unexpectedly upon a maze of tall misshapen cliffs above dry riverbeds, and there he saw a light on top of the cliffs.

It was a single unwavering light, like a lantern hung out as a signal to travellers. And though the Stranger was wary of the Escapement’s traps, nevertheless he traversed the narrow paths that led up to the cliffs, until at last he came to a cave.