Dream d2760-s: The Wall Ends, the Want Begins

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the top of the standing wall of Osierthwaite on the fourth night of residency, and Lano sat at my heel, and the country went out from the wall's edge without edge of its own.

The drawn record was in my hands. Sixty-five places on it, nine carrying a mark that meant a light still burning. I held it up and let the horizon show through where the ink stopped. The horizon did not stop.

The Reckoner had come up the steps with a lamp and a worry she did not name. She laid the figures out without preamble. The gauge on the generator house read a quarter of what it had read at the start of the month. The salvage yard's middle bay was open to the weather and the shelves in it were down to single pieces. She said the last useful run had gone out eleven days ago and had come back short. She did not say what that meant for the weeks ahead. She set the lamp on the parapet and waited.

The night held two hundred and seventy-six places. One hundred and seventy-one of them were on no record held in this settlement.

Lano's ears went flat. She turned from me and stood stiff-legged at the wall's edge, nose out over the dark, and gave one short bark at nothing visible, and then held still.

I looked at the seven marks on the record that pointed at ground no path I knew could reach. They were accurate marks. The ground was there. The path was not.

The Reckoner said the Rangemaster had been spoken to. He was readying a run further than the last, beyond the margin of the known ground, into country that was on no record anyone here held. Fifty-eight places had been walked in the last thirty days. Twenty-seven of those had a light. The run would go toward whichever of the unlit ones could be reached before the gauge dropped further.

She asked whether the network would hold at that range. She did not say what would happen if it did not.

Beyond the wall the land was open and dark. Yarrowgarth was out there somewhere, one day standing, too new to be on any record. The Reckoner's lamp threw nothing as far as Yarrowgarth.

Lano pressed against my leg and held still, watching. The bark had come and gone. She had said what she had to say.

I looked at the record and at the country beyond it. The record ended. The country went on. The gauge was where the gauge was. I wrote nothing down. I was there to see it.

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