Free Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio

it had been, was gone.
    He rolled up his sleeve and examined his skin; there was no trace of anything, and nothing unusual, no shimmer, no wave of light, was left anywhere around him.
    By this time, Shatz Abel, nearly mad with concern, had made his way down to the ice ledge; he looked down for a safe place to step and his eyes widened with astonishment to see Dalin looking safely up at him.
    “But Sire! I saw—I mean, you fell—I mean—”
    “ Yes, I did fail,” Dalin said. “But here I am.”
    “Goblins!” Shatz Abel said, standing firmly now on the ice ledge. He reached out to poke at the king tentatively.
    Dalin said, “Yes. Apparently there are goblins.”
    “I knew it! We’re doomed!”
    “Hardly,” Dalin said. “After all, whatever it was, it saved my hide.”
    “True!” the pirate said. He edged to the ice shelf’s lip and looked over. “Is it gone?”
    “I think so,” Dalin said. “When it let me go it seemed to melt upward, into thin air.”
    “Goblins! So the stories are true!”
    “It looks that way,” Dalin said. “Shouldn’t we be moving on?”
    Shatz Abel was studying the entire area around them, eyes darting to and fro.
    “I said it’s gone,” Dalin said.
    “Perhaps,” the pirate said, looking at Dalin. “Then again, perhaps not.”
     
    R ather than stay on the inconstant ice shelf, they began their descent. Below them another hundred meters was a narrower shelf, and they climbed down to it. This time, Shatz Abel went first, driving pitons deep into the ice; they both wore harnesses and trusted no crevice or step.
    Halfway to the next ledge the ice began to dissipate; and soon they were descending a sheer rock face. To Dalin’s surprise, he saw that what he had taken to be bottomless had seemed so because the rock’s deepening color had given the illusion of making it look deeper than it actually was. In fact, below the second ledge they soon reached a slope that angled downward into a long valley. Soon they were walking instead of rappelling.
    When they rested, Dalin looked up to mark their progress and was astounded by how much territory they had covered; the black sky above was a faraway slit between towering walls of rock and ice. At the bottom, their valley had nearly evened out; at this rate, they would reach the far side before making camp and be ready to make the ascent up the far wall after sleep.
    “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” Dalin said.
    Shatz Abel shook his head. “As I keep telling you, Sire, we’ve barely started. And it’s a lot harder to climb up than fall down.”
    The huge pirate began to study their surroundings closely as they walked; no doubt, Dalin thought, looking for goblins.
     
    A t the base of the far canyon wall, they camped, ate from food tubes and sought sleep. Dalin knew that Shatz Abel was having trouble with slumber—the big man snored like a bellows when he slept, and tonight there was only silence, punctuated by occasional loud snufflings, from the pirates’s sleeping bag. Dalin himself found sleep elusive; here at the bottom of Christy Chasm the wind whistled and moaned, sounding like a cacophony of wailing ghosts. High above, through the cut of rocks that showed the sky, he saw part of an asterism that may have been the Big Dipper; to either side of it a wash of fainter stars brushed the night.
    Knowing the pirate was awake, Dalin asked, “Shatz Abel?”
    The other grunted, then said, “What is it?”
    “Why isn’t there snow down here?”
    “The storm’s are localized. There are times when this arroyo is filled to the brim with snow, I’ll wager.”
    “Are you worrying about goblins?”
    The pirate snorted. “Not worrying. Wondering.”
    “You have no idea what they are?”
    “None. And it vexes me. I’ve been to most of the moons of the Solar System, set foot on every planet you could set foot on, and yet I’ve never met anything but transplanted men. We’re all of us from Earth, your domain,