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level all the way to the top. A six-year-old child could have scrambled up
those vines, let alone a trained athlete like Blade, who had climbed the face
of the Eiger.
He went up carefully though. He weighted a good deal more than any
six-year-old child. If the vines did break under him, he might be dropped
forty or fifty feet onto hard rock.
A broken leg here and now could be a good deal more fatal than the Watchers.
Foot by foot, Blade clambered upward. In places his fingers pushed through the
tangle of vines and
touched the Wall itself. When he did that, he could feel a faint, irregular
vibration within the blue-gray material. It was like putting his fingers on
the head of an enormous drum being gently tapped by an invisible drummer. Once
he was able to put his ear against the Wall and hear a distant humming that
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came and went in irregular pulses. The Wall was not as dead as it seemed, or
perhaps even as solid.
The last few feet were particularly tricky. The vines were growing thinner,
the twice strands broke as
Blade gripped them. Both times he hung there with a death clutch on the broken
strands, barely breathing, toes curling for a better foothold.
At last there was no more Wall to climb, only a flat surface like a blue-gray
tabletop stretching out of sight. The golden shimmering in the air above the
Wall was clearly visible now. It seemed to start three or four feet above the
top and then curve upward and away toward the inner side of the Wall. It was
soundless, odorless, unchanging, and totally unlike anything Blade had ever
seen or imagined. It reminded him that, as he explored the Wall, he might be
in the position of a caveman trying to examine and understand a jet bomber -or
an atomic reactor.
Blade scrambled out onto the top of the Wall. On hands and knees he crawled
forward. He held his sword in one hand, probing the featureless surface ahead
of him as he moved.
He covered forty feet, and then suddenly he could no longer see. It was as if
he'd stuck his head into a black sack. He drew back, startled, and vision
instantly returned. He looked ahead, at both the Wall and the air above it.
High above he caught hints of the golden shimmering. Directly in front of him,
he could see nothing at all except the top of the Wall. He crawled forward-and
again the world vanished around him.
He tried three more times, until his head was beginning to spin with the
repeated coming and going of his vision. By that time he realized what had to
be wrong. The Wall was generating some sort of field that completely deprived
him of vision. That field started at a point only a yard or so in front of him
and continued until . . .
That was a question he'd have to answer, sooner or later. Not now though. Not
when he had Twana to get back home and the Shoba's men were still close enough
to take advantage of any mistakes he might make. He crawled back to the edge
of the Wall and stood up slowly. As his head rose into the golden shimmering,
he had a moment's sensation of being jabbed with thousands of tiny blunt
needles. Then the sensation faded. Whatever the shimmering meant, it did not
appear to be dangerous.
Blade tied a loop in the end of the rope and threw the loop down to Twana. She
caught it and drew it around her body. Then Blade began to back slowly away
from the edge of the Wall, pulling Twana up as he did.
He was also keeping watch on either side of him, along the top of the Wall. It
rose and fell in long, slow curves, like waves far out at sea. It was totally
bare. In a few places it looked as though it had even been scraped or
sandblasted clean.
That thought reminded Blade of the Watchers. He was beginning to wonder if
they had ever existed, except in the legends of the village people. Here he
was on top of the Wall, and he still seemed to be completely invisible to
whomever or whatever might be on guard. He was also perfectly happy with this
situation.
As Twana's head appeared over the edge, Blade caught another flash of the sun
on polished metal. This one was far to the south and came and went so quickly
that he wasn't completely sure he hadn't imagined
it. He reached down and helped Twana up onto the level surface. She lay
gasping for a moment, then rose to her knees and reached for her water bottle.
As she drank, Blade again scanned the top of the
Wall in both directions, as far as he could see.
Whatever had made the flash was now invisible again. A Watcher? A large metal
machine such as
Twana had described could make the kind of flashes he'd seen when the sun
caught it at the right angle. If the Watchers existed, that is-and if they
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existed, then where were they?
Blade and Twana moved swiftly north along the smooth top of the Wall. They
went barefoot to reduce noise and leave no visible traces. They kept just far
enough away from the edge of the Wall to be invisible from the ground without
wandering into the blindness field. If the Watchers no longer mounted a
reliable guard on the Wall, the Shoba's men might also discover this. Then
they might be willing to climb the hills, and the chase would be on again.
Blade decided that he and Twana would stay up on the Wall for two days, moving
as far as they could in that time. That should leave the Shoba's men far
behind. With the enemy off their trail, they could return directly to Hores.
Blade was no longer quite sure what he'd be doing after that. This Dimension
was developing more than the usual quota of mysteries. The Wall seemed to be
only a starting point.
They'd been walking for two hours when Blade saw metal flash again, three
times in five minutes. The flashes were a good ten miles away, but this time
they were to the north. He stopped and desperately strained his eyes to see
what might be waiting for them but saw nothing-not even a hint of movement.
After a few minutes they moved on. Blade no longer felt quite so willing to
believe that the Watchers were a myth. It occurred to him that they might be
playing games with him, like a cat with a mouse, waiting for their chosen
moment to strike.
They walked along the Wall all through the rest of the morning and into the
afternoon. Every hour or so
Blade went down on his belly and crept to the edge of the Wall to examine the
plain below. The Shoba's men were nowhere in sight.
Blade decided that, if their pursuers were still out of sight the next
morning, he and Twana would climb down from the Wall and take to the ground
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