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A pen.
A pad of paper.
A combination lock.
A folded flag.
A gun.
A skull.
A tattered brown teddy bear.
There had been no time limit set, except that hunger and thirst applied their own unique pressures. It had taken me many hours, or at least I had experienced them as hours. Hours of wandering beneath a blistering sky, denying as I walked that I understood the significance of the objects.
But when I was done, when I held all seven objects in weary fingers, I knew.
Memory faded away and I once again beheld the beautiful Pacific, the waves gentling now as the sun turned all the world pink and orange and gold.
“I won the game,” I said.
“Yes,” Messenger said. “You were free to go. You did not.”
I shook my head, recalling that last as well, but Messenger told it to me as if it was a story I had nev
er heard.
“I told you that you had won. That you were free to go on. And you said, ‘No.’ That you did not deserve to walk free. That you deserved to be punished.”
“Daniel was there,” I said.
Messenger displayed one of his rare, fractional, fleeting smiles that never quite became a smile. “Daniel generally is.”
“He said he had a way. He said it was not a punishment he could impose, but rather one I could choose to accept. But once I accepted . . .”
“You would be bound. You would be bound until your penance had been completed.”
I nodded. I wondered if Messenger had come to this same duty by a similar path. I believed he had. I doubted he would ever tell me the how and the why of it, but in that I proved to be mistaken. It would be a long time coming, but in the end I would know all.
“I am to be the Messenger of Fear,” I said, and my voice no longer quavered as I spoke, though this terrible truth would have left me whimpering before.
“When you have learned,” Messenger said. “When you are ready.”
I suppose I should have been accustomed to sudden changes of venue, but it still came as a surprise when I blinked, opened my eyes, and saw that I was in a place like no place I had ever known or imagined.
It was both an open and a closed space, at once vast and intimate. I felt myself to be at the bottom of a well, a cylinder driven deep into the earth. Hundreds of feet, maybe even thousands. Looking straight up, I could make out a flattened circle of stars, and even the melancholy lights of a passenger jet miles above.
The sides of this well were lined with dull golden rectangles, each perhaps ten feet tall and half as wide. All that I could see—and most were too far above me to be seen clearly—seemed to have been inscribed in careful, ornate calligraphy.
There was no other visible source of light that I could see, no lamps or sconces or torches. But there was a glow greater than could possibly have come from the cold stars, and of far warmer hues. It seemed almost that the gold itself was glowing softly.
The nearest of these tablets ended just above my head, and peering through the gloom at this, I read names. Some were easily recognized: Tom, Harley, Diana. Others were more exotic: Akim, Shadan, Caratacus. Some were in Western script; others appeared to be Chinese or Japanese, Arabic or Hebrew. There must have been thousands of names. Maybe tens of thousands.
While the well was basically circular, one wall was flattened, and on this wall no golden tablets glowed. Instead there was a hugely tall painting, or perhaps what is called a fresco—paint saturated into fresh plaster. I could see only the bottom of it clearly but still had the impression of three distinct sections.
One was a sort of group portrait, seven strong and proud people in flowing robes, their heads wreathed in a yellow mist, almost like a halo.
The second was a single female figure. She was tall, dressed in armor, with a leather skirt and greaves on the legs and arms. She held a short sword in one hand and hefted a shield with the other. She did not look as if she were pretending to be a warrior. She looked like she’d been born a warrior.
