A Question Of Time, Fred Saberhagen [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

      Camilla at his side seemed to be delirious, or almost, mumbling warnings. The last rays of the day’s sun came through a notch in the western cliffs, to burn briefly at her face unnoticed.

* * *

      Minutes later, Camilla still at his side, Jake went plunging into the swift icy water of this river that ought to have been the Colorado.

      At the last moment, right at the waterline, he seized a large piece of driftwood and dragged it with him. He wasn’t a strong swimmer, but the wood allowed him some hope of keeping himself afloat. He tried to call to Camilla to take hold of the log as well, but she was already gone ahead of Jake, disappeared into the torrent.

      The sun was now completely down.

      The rocks on which the current tore itself to foam were black in the sky’s last fading light. These were the deepest rocks of all the layers through which the Colorado cut.

      The water was a shock of cold, followed immediately by a greater shock of impact. Lights whirled and flashed before Jake’s eyes, and he saw, or imagined that he saw, first one white nodule protruding from a rock, and then a forest of them.

      And Jake, in the few moments before the current slammed him even harder against more rocks, was sure that he could hear Tyrrell, released by sunset and howling like a windstorm, coming after him to make sure of his revenge.

      But other hands than Tyrrell’s caught at Jake first, and held him up. Bright light, like colored searchlights reflecting from the river, was all around him.

      Whatever happened, Camilla was still with him. He could no longer see her face, but, whatever strange thing was happening to them now, he knew that she was near.

Chapter Nineteen

      Maria on straying out of the cottage into the dusk followed the same call that had brought her down into the Deep Canyon. She went exploring, looking for the source of the attraction.

      The call was voiceless and soundless, but somehow unmistakable and almost irresistible, like the voices of friends, and—this struck Maria as very odd—of devoted pets. It led her past the workshop-cave, all dark and silent, and upstream along the little creek.

      She walked on in the certainty that something—glorious—was waiting for her, just a little farther upstream. Something—she did not know what—but something truly glorious.

* * *

       The afternoon of New Year’s Eve had arrived on the South Rim. The last hours of 1991 were running out.

      “All right,” Joe Keogh said. “They’re both gone. Cathy left a note, this time. Is anyone going to argue that says Maria might have just wandered off by accident?”

      No one of the group assembled in the main room of the Tyrrell House was going to defend that theory.

      The gathering included Sarah, Bill, and John, as well as Joe himself, and Mr. Strangeways. Mounted predatory heads looked down with bared fangs from the log walls. Curious stone animals, the work of Edgar Tyrrell, stared from shelves and tables.

      Old Sarah looked at Mr. Strangeways. She said: “Cathy has gone down into the Deep Canyon again. Can you get her back this time? Somehow I doubt it.”

      Drakulya did not immediately respond. He was in a particularly dark mood. The signs were subtle, but to Joe, who had known him for years, they were unmistakable.

      John Southerland started to say: “Maria must have followed Cathy—”

      The bearded man turned from the window, where he had been watching occasional snowflakes, with an outburst of anger. “No!”

      “No?”

      “No. The two young women may be together, but only accidentally. I ought to have recognized the hand that was on her!”

      “On Maria?”

      “Of course!”

* * *

      Cathy, standing in the entrance to the workshop-cave and looking out, was astonished and frightened to see Maria approaching, in the company of a whirl of lights, a monstrous, glowing presence.

      At first glance it had appeared to Cathy that the figure walking at Maria’s side was a young man in work clothes. But amid a swirl of lights he disappeared, to be immediately replaced by the image of a young woman with red hair, similarly dressed.

      Cathy retreated a step, reaching for Tyrrell’s arm. “What is it, Father?”

      Tyrrell’s eyes were glowing, his voice was reverent. “It is the life of the planet, daughter. The light of the world.”

      For just a flash of time a new shape was visible among the lights: a saber-toothed tiger. Cathy thought she could not have been mistaken. Then all three figures reappeared in rapid succession, followed by a flurry of others, less distinct.

      With the onset of this kaleidoscopic display, Maria seemed to pull free of whatever influence had made her walk so trustingly beside this incredible companion. Catching sight of Cathy and Tyrrell standing at the entrance to the workshop-cave, she ran toward them.

      “I don’t know where I am!” she cried. “Cathy, help me. I don’t know what’s happening!”

      Cathy would have stepped forward to try to help, but her father’s hand on her arm, immovable, held her back.

      Maria looked desperately from one of them to the other. She made a choking noise, and in a moment had gone running off into the darkness.

      Stalking slowly, unhurried, the thing of light began to follow her. Once more its shape was simply that of a young man, walking.

      “Father, what is it?” This time Cathy made the question an intense demand.

      “Your friend will not be harmed, girl. Perhaps she will be allowed to feel the embrace of the earth, of life itself. Perhaps she will even be granted a kind of immortality. What happier fate could any of us hope for?”

      Cathy stared at her father. Then, suddenly terrified, she broke away and ran impulsively down-canyon, going in the opposite direction from that taken by Maria and her leisurely pursuer.

      Cathy’s father was shouting something after her. But he made no move to bring her back.

* * *

      Up in the Tyrrell House on the South Rim, Drakulya was insisting that the rescue operation be