“Who?”

“The horses. The mules. How do they know these trails?”

The boy wrinkled his nose and forehead. “They train them, of course!”

Asach said a silent prayer for Orcutt, who clearly had done more of the choosing than Asach had realized, and another for Laurel, out of new respect for a Seer’s multifaceted responsibilities.

Another day of this, and they had passed the foothills, into the mountains themselves. Asach could not identify the smells, beyond something like leaf mold; something like earth. They had to unrope the horses now, so that the mules could drop back to single file. Then, even that became impossible, and they had to dismount, tying the mule to the horse and leading the horse on foot. Asach felt physically ill as they clambered across a scree slope one by one, the very trail, if it could be called that, cascading from beneath their feet, but miraculously, all made it safely, and not a single animal was lost.

Finally, toward day’s end, they topped a rise, and slithered into a saddle of level ground. Asach leaned against the horse, exhausted, soaking in the snuffly warmth of its breath. It turned and nibbled hopefully at the mule’s pack, then jumped as a raucous cheer swept the line. Unbalanced, Asach nearly hit the ground, and in sheer reflex swept back the hood—only to see everyone else do the same.

“Hoods off! Hoods off from here on!”

This time, they made camp in daylight. The animals were fed and rubbed down. As dusk fell Asach dozed, leaning on the mule’s pack, trying to stir the energy to cook a meal, mind drifting to an eerie, half-heard sound. It echoed softly between the rock walls of the saddle; oozed down from higher on the mountain. Like a roundelay, of childhood. Like a desert wind. Like a—Asach stirred. Like a medieval chant. Asach sat up. Like a hymn. Asach stood. Which is what is was. For the first time, Asach was hearing The Gathering Hymn sung aloud. It was unbelievably alien. It was unbelievably beautiful. Picked up and carried beyond fatigue; carried away by the moment, Asach joined in. Surely, they were not far now.

Fog lay so heavily in the valley that morning was marked only by a lessening of darkness. People; shelters; animals, loomed suddenly from the grey, then sank back into the mist whence they arose. There was a shallow, rocky lake somewhere beyond their picket line. Asach led the stock to water.

“Not too much,” cautioned Laurel’s disembodied voice. Asach started. “This water’s OK for them, but not too much at once. Don’t let them wade in and muddy up the bottom. It’ll make them sick.”

The mule was fussy. It sipped, then raised its head to swivel its great, long, fuzzy ears, spooking at every noise. Eventually it was done, and Asach returned them both to the picket line.

“They rest today,” said Laurel, materializing again. “Come on with me. We’ll lead the others up. I don’t want to lose you. “

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

Laurel rolled her eyes. “No, you won’t. Come on.”

Asach worried briefly that the hoods were about to go back on; that they’d spend the day teetering on precipices, blind. But not so: it was trail craft that concerned Laurel, not visibility. “Stay off the dirt. Stay off the sand. See there? Stay on the rock.” She pointed to an option off the obvious path; it required hopping across polished boulders, as if fording a stream. A light came on in Asach’s head.

“Is that what we’ve been doing all along? Avoiding seeing the trail? Avoiding making a trail?

Again, Laurel rolled her eyes. “What else?”

I don’t know, thought Asach. Initiation rites. Secret orders. Dark mystery. And so on.

Laurel trudged upward. “We share His gaze. We don’t hide it. But we’re not stupid. If they found this place, what do you think TCM would do?”

“I’m surprised they haven’t already.”

Laurel stopped and turned around. Her eyes were piercing aquamarine. They seemed to focus the dreary light. “A few have tried.”

She turned, and continued on.

Eventually, the path became—a path, worn into dark granite. Asach did some mental calculations. The Himmists had been on New Utah less than a century. Either there were a lot more of them than anyone thought, which was unlikely, or the path predated them by a very long time.

“Who made this?”

Laurel’s answer was matter-of-fact, as if Asach had asked the time. “The Angels.” She did not look back.

The path wore deeper into the rock, and widened. The route became more boulder-strewn. They were old, and weathered, and lichen-encrusted. Lichen-like encrusted. Who knew what grew here of its own. Then suddenly they stepped through the veil of fog into the open sun. Asach was momentarily dazzled. Before them lay a barren, until the path rounded up over a lip and disappeared. Behind them lay a carpet of cloud, sparkling in the sunshine.

Finally they reached the rim. Asach gasped as their heads cleared the rise. They looked out over the edge of a tabletop; the truncated remains of an ancient cone. It dipped gently away from the eye, like a concave lens seen edge-on. Windswept, bare, it seemed paved with diamonds. As they climbed up over the edge and stood to full height, the reason became clear. The ground was littered with foamy shards, brilliant white in the morning sun. Asach picked one up in a hand heated by the climb, and saw the ghost of blue iridescence. It was opal meerschaum.

“His tears,” smiled Laurel. “It makes me happy to be so near.”

As they walked on, the scattered chunks consolidated; some streaked edgewise in exposed veins, crystallized in an ancient volcanic layer-cake. Their boots crunched in the gravel. Then, behind them, floated the eerie thread of the Hymn as the others joined them on the plateau. It came from all directions, as other parties also cleared the edge, converging toward the unseen center, obscured by the slope of the land. Asach looked up at the aquamarine sky, clear as Laurel’s eyes. The day was crisp, clean; the sun warm. They walked on awhile. As the voices of one group joined the next, the singing became less a roundelay, but kept that exquisite polyphonic harmony. Then, as they approached a dip, Laurel held up a hand and turned, shouting back, “We stop here.”

Asach looked about, confused as others crowded past and pushed forward, singing in full voice. Joining hands; turning to look one another full in the eyes, then turning to do the same to each neighbor; they waved Asach to join in; belting out the final stanzas:

Arise! And leave no stone unturned!

Arise! And plow each field!

Arise! Believe! That all who yearn

Will see His Face revealed!

We fled in fear His awful Gaze

But with His Earthly Eye

He sees, He knows, He sends His Grace

Across all starry skies.

So shoulder all your burdens!

For when your time is done

Revealed at last! His angels

Will make all Churches one!

And as they ringed the rim and the final words echoed below, all looked down, and gasped again as one: even those who had been there before. Centered within a mile-wide bowl stretched a polished dome of white: a stratum of perfect opal meerschaum, nearly half a mile across, its overlying layers worn away by wind and time. It bulged upward slightly, perhaps due to pressures within the mountain core. At its center intruded—an old lava tube?—that radiated with crystalline depths in the sun, like a ruby set in gold. Or more likely, thought Asach, like a garnet set in mica, but why spoil the magic of it all?

Whatever the structure was that twinkled in the heart of the dead volcano, the effect was unmistakable: it did indeed, for all the world, look like an enormous red eye, complete with mica-speckled iris and a dark pupil staring up from deep within the mountain.