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Could she have taken the Saracen trail up?
His mind worked feverishly. He hadn’t paid any attention to the old story, treating it as yet another colorful legend, like so many others attached to the island. Did anyone even know today where the Saracen trail went? Did it still exist? And how could Constance have known about it? There probably weren’t more than half a dozen people in the world who would know the actual route.
He cursed savagely, racked his brains, trying to remember more of the story. Where did the Saracen trail go?
There was something in the legend about the Saracens losing men into the Filo del Fuoco, a narrow gorge that split off from the Sciara. If that were the case, the trail must have hugged the edge of the Sciara all the way down the Bastimento Ridge-or up it, as the case may be-
He rose abruptly. He knew-he knew!-this was what Constance had done. She was a consummate researcher; she had gotten hold of some old atlas of the island. She’d studied it, memorized it. She’d flushed him from his house, like a badger from a bolt-hole, driven him up the more familiar trail. Allowing him to think that it was his own plan all the time… And meanwhile, she would have cut to the west and taken the secret trail up, flanking him as he’d waited in ambush, wasting minute after precious minute. And now she was above. Waiting for him.
A cold sweat broke out on his brow. He could see the breathtaking subtlety of her plan. She had worked it all out ahead of time. She had expected him to flee his house, run up the trail. And she had expected him to pause somewhere along the trail and wait in interminable ambush, giving her-the weaker one-all the time she needed to get up the Saracen trail to the Bastimento Ridge-
He stood abruptly in horror, eyes focusing on the great black fin of the Bastimento above him. The clouds were tumbling across the peak, the mountain groaning and shaking with each explosion-and then they parted, exposing the ridge to the glare of the eruptions: and in that moment he spied, silhouetted against the horrid lambent glow, a figure in white, dancing… And despite the roar of the wind and the rumbling of the mountain, he was sure he could hear a shrill, manic laughter echoing down toward him…
In a convulsion of fury, he aimed his gun and fired again and again, the bright flashes blinding his own night vision. After a moment, he cursed and lowered the gun, his heart pounding. The ridge was bare, the figure gone.
It was now or never. The end was upon them. He tore up the trail, moving as fast as he could, knowing that she could never hit him in the dark. The fork in the trail loomed ahead, the newer trail ru
Sciara del Fuoco!
Pericolosissimo!
Vietato a Passare!
Active Lava Flow Ahead!
Extreme Danger!
Do Not Pass!
He leaped over the fence and scrambled up the ancient trail toward the top of the Bastimento Ridge. There was only one possible outcome. One of them would walk back down the mountain; the other would be thrown into the Sciara.
It remained to be seen who, in the end, would prevail.
Chapter 79
Aloysius Pendergast paused at the fork in the trail, listening intently. Not five minutes before, he had distinctly heard shots-ten of them in all-over the thundering of the volcano. He knelt and examined the ground with his light, quickly determining that Diogenes-and Diogenes alone-had taken the fork blocked by a fence.
There was much about this situation that he had not yet untangled, enigmas wrapped in mysteries. There had been very few footprints-only where dust or sand had blown into pockets of the rock-but even so, Constance’s prints had ceased, almost at the begi
And then, there had been gunshots-but whose? And why so many? Only a person in the grip of panic would fire ten shots in a row like that.
Pendergast scaled the fence and continued up the ancient trail, which had fallen into dangerous ruin. The top of the ridge was perhaps a quarter mile distant, and beyond that he could see only the sky, stained by an angry orange glow. He had to move fast-but with care.
The trail came to a steep part of the ridge, carved into a staircase that ran up the rough lava itself. But the staircase was badly eroded, and Pendergast was forced to holster his sidearm and use both hands to climb it. Just before cresting the top, he leaned into the slope, paused, and removed his gun again, listening. But it was hopeless: the roar and bellow of the volcano was even louder here, and the wind howled ever more fiercely.
He crawled to the top of the ridge, into the stinging wind, and paused once again to reco
He edged around the lava spike, and the Sciara suddenly appeared on his right: a sheer cliff falling away into a steeply pitched chasm, like a huge cleft in the side of the island: half a mile broad, plunging precipitously into a churning, boiling sea hundreds of feet below. Heated air came roaring up the chasm, screaming diagonally over the ridge, carrying with it stinging particles of ash and clouds of sulfurous fumes. And now, in addition to the roar from the mountain, Pendergast could hear a new sound: the crackling and rumbling of huge blocks of living lava, some glowing red-hot, that came bounding down from the crater above, leaping and tumbling into the sea below, where they blossomed into dim white flowers.
He staggered forward into the tearing wind, finding his balance while compensating for the hellish force pushing him back from the brink of the cliff. He examined the ground, but all possible tracks had been scoured away by the wind. He sprinted along the ragged trail, taking cover behind old blocks of lava whenever possible, keeping his center of gravity low. The trail continued, still climbing the ridgeline. Ahead stood an enormous pile of lava blocks, an arrested rockfall, which the trail skirted around, making a sharp right toward the cliff’s edge.
He crouched in the shelter of the lava fall, gun at the ready. If there was anyone on this trail, they would be directly ahead of him, at the edge of the cliff.
He spun around the edge of the rock, gun in both hands-and saw a terrifying sight.
At the very edge of the chasm, he could see two figures, silhouetted against the dull glow of the volcano. They were locked in a curious, almost passionate embrace. And yet these were not lovers-these were enemies, joined in mortal struggle, heedless of the wind, or the roar of the volcano, or the extreme peril of the cliff edge on which they stood.
“Constance!” he cried, racing forward. But even as he ran, they began to tip off balance, each raking and clawing at the other, each pulling the other into the abyss-
And then, with a silence worse than any cry, they were gone.