Oberheim (Voices): A Chronicle of War

e to pass the night. It must be sheltered, not so much from the elements (though this too was important) as from the marauding bands of g

ly into its broad embrasure. Detecting some deeper shadow in the blackness of the eastern wall, he flew toward a narrow fissure in the rock. Landing silently on the lip of it, he tested

wandered alone for a period of days, remembering, until one morning, at the rising dust of a fiery dawn, he had felt the North calling to him. He fe

. No, it was more the feelings and emotions that the long pilgrimage evoked in him, seeming almost to rise from the vast loneliness of his world. For though the man's spirit had died or moved on, h

EY MUST BE, he thought.

EN NO ROLE, NO CLEAR P

ND MOISTURE I

his own existence. Through all his twenty months he had sought after some intangible, some elusive quality of being, with no

love and loss. To take personally and introspectively the irresolvable conflict of life and desire over stillness and the vo

m. The rockface offered little resistance as he climbed, and soon he stood atop a hooked spire that sprang from the pillar's crumbling eastern shoulder, high above the plain.

d him what he must do. Stopping to rest along the top of a shallow ridge, he ate part of a darkening bush

ws left from times when the water had been greater. Sometimes as he pondered these, at the edge of thought he would feel a sound, a sensation: deep throbbings in

now carried with it a bitter and biting cold that would not rest. His strength beginning at last to fail him, he determined to go on on foot, until he found some shelter,

t frustrated all the lessons he had learned as a mai. Being alien to his experience, he had assumed that it did not exist--that there was only weakness of will, and that so long as his desire held, no barrier of the flesh wou

nd wind torn boulder. A thin lacing of ground-snow, carried by the wind, swirled around him and whistled in its cracks, making a melanc

a dull and frozen brown, broken now and again by rock, or gnarled scrub, or nothing. The thin snow blew over all, trailing and whirling about in long wisps like the twisting hands of witches. He continued on for many hours, until the wind relented jus

isture; and though it was his mind he feared, denying it had not yet become unbearable. He rested a short time, went on the next day. And the

pas

in groups or branching straight like disjointed coral reefs, while its gusting blasts wrapped veils over all, swirling and howling in relentless defiance. The day lasted but four short

gone; he did not know

never known defeat…..

ess of his near-frozen

e was dangerously c

lmost see, or sense, uncovered earth or the edges of rock far below. And this was what he sought. But alway

im, wider and emptier and deeper than any he had yet come across. Like a crushed cylinder of otherworldly proportio

well be madness, but he felt a presence far below, some wild hope….. No. He must find shelter. Perhaps it was there. A shelter. If he

retched to the limit, trying not to slip. To slip was death. Down. Down farther. A little farther. THE WIND IS L

P. An overhang. CAREF

ST. WARMTH. IT MUST B

OR I AM DYING. I AM

that now it was scarcely thirty meters broad, a sharp cleft of stone, rising sheer into ice that overtook it for perhaps a thousand meters

iny pool of snow that had formed from a trickle of the torrent above, and with his trembling foreclaw worked small bits of

and taken him in, narrow and not high, but a cave nonetheless. A passage. After a time he knew instinctively that he was underground, but was far too weary for the kn

ng something, and stroked the tip of his claw against the slanting surface which met it. The surface was sometimes soft and not smooth; it was not part of the stone. He tried to break off a small piece. The layer was thin, and it crumbled. He tried again, brou

ad taken lifted his mind back to awareness, strong, if subtly altered by the thick aura of the place, and by the strange an

ble. The light was dim and surreal, softly yellow and fallow gold, but nonetheless afforded him a glimpse of this underground world, if it did not end, which

ngen

that was the edge of his sight. He was still too weak to fight, or to go on, as the many legged creature approached him blindly, unaware of his presence. It drew closer, then seemed

coming from the other: He was not part of its food chain, nor was its territory threatened. It was only frightened, why so strongly he could not guess. He also knew, with sudden sureness, that it was one of many. Somehow he knew. He took a step forward, and

t branched off from it. The other's speed was considerable, moving through the regions of its birth, and try as he might he could

a true source, nor did it cast a single shadow. He felt a slight pulsing of moisture across his face, like a fine drizzle-rain touched by the wind. The light was in the mist itse

owest point of the enclosure, where he found a tiny pool of dark water, sponged by a thick and brackish black algae. He imm

ve once more. He moved to hide himself behind a jagged