Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 101 of 150

Ben walked down the pass with the purse against his ribs and the whistle in his pocket. The stones were slick from the day's melt. He kept his eyes on the road and tried to feel relief. He could not. He had handed the crate to a woman in a gray robe he had never seen before, on the word of a boy he had known for one afternoon. If she was not the oracle's, the set was gone and Cage's men would still come. He stopped at the third switchback. The gate was already lost behind the rock. He turned back. The wolf was waiting at the second bend. It had not gone down with Picabo. It sat on the road with its ears forward, watching him climb. Ben did not question it. He climbed. He reached the stone gate at full dark. He did not knock. He crouched by the wall where a narrow slot cut through for drainage and put his ear to it. He heard nothing at first. Then, faint, the hum. Eleven notes braided together, the sound he had carried for a year. It was inside. It was still inside. He let out a breath he had been holding since the pass road. A voice spoke on the other side of the wall. Low, patient. "You came back." "I came back," Ben said. "The oracle expected you would. She said a man who carried it this far would not walk away on faith." Ben pressed his hand against the stone. "Open the slot wider. I want to see the crate on her floor." A panel slid. A thin line of lamp light fell on his boot. Through the gap he saw the traveler's box on flagstones, lid up, the eleven carved boxes set in a row on a cloth. A gray sleeve reached in and lifted one, turned it, set it back. Then the panel closed. "Enough?" the voice asked. "Enough." "Then go. She will not open the gate twice." Ben stood. His knees ached. He started down the pass a second time and this time the relief came, small and cold, like water after a long thirst. At the second bend the wolf stood up. Something moved beside it in the dark, low to the ground, box-shaped, with short legs and a pale face. One of Anna Conda's small creatures. It had followed him up. It carried nothing now. It looked at him with black eyes and turned and trotted down the road. Ben followed. He had coin. He had a wolf. He had a witness that the set was where he said it was. Cage's men would come, and soon, but they would come for a man who had already been paid and no longer had a crate to lose. He walked down toward the pines and did not look back.