Colorado, he thought. The CQZ. They were just names on a map, bits of colored light on the screen of Michael’s CRT. The reality behind them, the hidden world of which they were a part, was nothing Peter could imagine. When they’d spoken of such a journey earlier that night—had it really been that same night, the four of them crowded into the Lighthouse?—Peter had envisioned a proper expedition: a large armed detail, carts of supplies, at least one scouting party, a meticulously plotted route. His father would spend whole seasons planning the Long Rides. Now here they were, fugitives on foot, scurrying away with little more than a pile of old maps and the blades on their belts. How could they possibly hope to get to such a place?

“I don’t really know,” he told her. “But if we don’t leave now, I think we’ll all die here.”

She ducked into the tunnel and was gone. Peter tightened the straps of his pack and scrambled in behind her, pulling the hatch closed over his head, sealing himself in darkness. The walls were cool and smelled of earth. The tunnel had been dug long ago, perhaps by the Builders themselves, to make it easier to service the trunk line; except for the Colonel, no one had used it for years. It was his secret route, Alicia had explained, the one he used to hunt. So at least one mystery was solved.

Twenty-five meters later, Peter emerged into a copse of mesquite. Everyone was waiting. The lights were down, revealing a gray dawn sky. Above them, the face of the mountain rose like a single slab of stone, a silent witness to all that had occurred. Peter heard the calls of the Watch from the top of the Wall, sounding off their posts for Morning Bell and the changing of the shift. Dale would be wondering what had happened to them, if he didn’t know already. Surely it wouldn’t be long before the bodies were found.

Alicia closed the hatch behind him and turned the wheel, then knelt to cover it with underbrush.

“They’ll come after us,” Peter said quietly, crouched beside her. “They’ll have horses. We can’t outrun them.”

“I know.” Her face was set. “It’s a question of who gets to the guns first.”

And with that Alicia rose, turned on her heels, and began to lead them down the mountain.

The Darklands

VII

THE
DARKLANDS

I saw eternity the other night
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright,
And round beneath it time in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

—HENRY VAUGHAN,
“The World”

Chapter Forty-Two

FORTY-TWO