I sighed; not remembering where I’d picked up the limerick. Such as it was.
“Well, Ank. I guess you knew what you weren’t getting into.”
I looked around at the steppes; at the green tundra and patched highway, at the miles and miles of nothing—the Big Empty; the Lost Country.
“I can’t do it, Ank. I can’t do this. I mean; I thought I could—I really did. But this ... this is hopeless. This is just—”
“You’ll always have me,” came a voice—a voice which was smooth, reassuring. Mellifluent. “Look—now, back the way you came—you’ll see me.”
But I already knew, even before I turned: knew exactly who it was, who had come to tempt me. Knew it by the charge in the air and the smell of sulfur; the shadow along the road, a laughing sound on the wind. “Szambelan,” I whispered, and drew.
But the dem
