Obviously, he had landed in the middle of a road. Or of what had been a road. Some of the thistles sprouting from the cracks between the blocks in the road were three feet high. More than one entire block had been heaved completely out of position by winter frosts, spring thaws, and the slow, steady work of the plants. No one had used this road or cared whether it was usable for many years.

But all roads tend to lead somewhere. From the way the light was rapidly fading from the sky, Blade guessed it was almost sundown. The chill already in the air suggested that the coming night would be uncomfortably cold for a naked man to spend in the open. Blade looked along the road and noticed that to the right it sloped down and to the left it rose. In both cases it rapidly vanished into the twilight, but it seemed to Blade that going up made more sense than going down. At the very least, the higher he got the more he could see when morning came. He turned off to the left and set off up the road, eyes moving ceaselessly from side to side, looking for possible dangers and for anything that might be converted into a weapon to meet those dangers.

The climb up into the gathering darkness lasted so long that Blade was beginning to wonder if he was climbing a mountain. Then abruptly the row of trees on either side vanished, and the road divided and swung out on either side to form a circular drive. Directly ahead a flight of stairs-overgrown and crumbling like the road-led up to a vast sprawling house that seemed to cover the whole top of the hill. For a moment Blade's anticipation rose. Then it fell back again as he examined the house. He noted dead and living vines encrusting the once white walls, windows gaping like the eye sockets of a skull, and leaf-clogged gutters oozing dirty water. No one had come along the road for a long time, and no one had lived in this house or cared whether it was even livable for an equally long time. Whoever had raised the mansion there was long gone.