But this no longer mattered. Nothing mattered, but that this agony and
fear must end. There was no other way.
He rose and walked the remaining distance. To the Vale of the Obelisk.
To wait.
***
SO FAR IT'S GONE WELL ENOUGH, she told herself, though she still could
not look at him, or one second further than the present. They sat
together on the sunlit slope of a wide, grassy recession. Its quiet
symmetry would have been lovely and serene, but for a single thrust of
gnarled stone which pierced its center, ringed about the base by a
matting of jagged weeds. The company called it Devil's Thumb. It
was a protrusion of the devil to be sure, but she wasn't at all sure
that ‘thumb' was the correct metaphor. She kept her eyes away
from it, concentrating instead on the white sheet spread beneath them,
on the bread and wine before them.
He had brought the wine, for which she was grateful, and she drank of it
probably more than she should. But it gave her confidence, and helped
dull the edge of her rebelling senses. Perhaps half an hour had passed
from the time of her first ready mouthful; and he smiled each time the
glass touched her lips. If an eerie contraction of taut face muscles
can be called a smile.
'Have you ever done hallucinogenic drugs?' He tried to ask
carelessly, but could not quite pull it off.
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