Priam's Lens by Jack L Chalker

Author:Jack L Chalker [Chalker, Jack L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction.Sci-Fi
ISBN: 9780345402943
Amazon: 0345402944
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2018-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

The Coming of the Demons

They had moved back, away from the river, but Little-feet had not been able to shake the sensation that things were not as they should be. For one thing, they seemed so far outside their traditional territory that he was certain that the Family was headed far closer to the coast than it had ever been, and it didn’t take a genius to see that the distant mountains to the west, which had always defined their boundary, were considerably farther away and looked more like ghosts or discolorations in clouds than high snowcapped peaks.

Father Alex was feeling much the same misgivings, and the unexplained deaths of the other family’s scouts, even though months had passed, continued to haunt him.

Lost? How in God’s name could the Family ever be lost? It was inconceivable. Yet every time they had scouted west they had hit other rivers, natural barriers as uncrossable if not as wide or as threatening as the great river to the east, that simply should not have been there. Since the land did not change in this fashion, at least not like this, it meant that they had jogged more south than west after retreating from the great river and had somehow gotten caught in a new area.

No, that couldn’t be right. How could there be rivers on both sides of them if they had not ever crossed a river in the first place? Rivers did not spring whole from the ground; they had sources in the mountains or in the upper lakes fed by various streams and waterfalls.

He called the Family council together, and they were as baffled as he was. Finally, one of the old Brothers who had clearly not much longer to live but whose experience was all the more valuable for that said, “We must depart from our traditional ways this once, it is clear. Since, as it is said, we cannot have a river on both sides without crossing one, and we have not crossed one, then one of two things has happened. Either the one to the west does spring from the ground even though we have not seen this before, in which case we must travel north along it to its source and go around it, or God is shaping a new path for us, in which case we will not find a source and will be forced to go where He wills. In either case, the course is clear. To the western river, and then north.”

They all prayed for guidance, but the only thing that they received was the wisdom of the old Brother, who had survived some fifty-plus years, and that would have to do. The Lord, Father Alex reflected, always seemed to make the struggle so hard. As he was so fond of noting to his questioning pupils, though, God always answered every single prayer. It was just that He usually said, “No.” Littlefeet was back pretty much to his normal self now, and was feeling far more secure.

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