by Lin Carter
Whether they could find water there, though, that was another question.
Had they dared ride due south, they could have found water at Nodus Laocontis, the old canal which once served to irrigate the gardens of Yeolarn.
Or they could have ridden southwest, into Nilosyrtis, an even greater canal which had similarly served the old, abandoned city near whose ruins the modern colony of Syrtis Port was built.
But these routes were too dangerous, as either would bring them within dangerous proximity to Yeolarn. And the two canals were more than twice as far away as Alcyonius.
So they rode on towards the Pole and the barren lands in the west.
Whether they would ever get there was another question and one which only time could answer.
5. The Cliff Dragon
ryker had known from the first that there was something unusual about his three companions.
Their strangeness did not lie entirely in Valarda’s uncanny golden eyes. Neither did it reside in the half-erased Clan tatoo on the boy’s breast.
During the two days it took them to reach the mesa, he pieced the parts of the puzzle together and was able to put it into words.
They did not act like Martians.
The difference was subtle, not blatant. It took intuition to notice it. But Ryker noticed it.
In the first place, why were they willing to let him go with them? The People hate Earthsiders with a virulent intensity hard to describe, but it was more than than just the xenophobia most provincials feel for outsiders. The F’yagha had raped their world from them, and left them homeless vagabonds wandering amid the wreckage of their own empire. By contrast, the Apaches and Cherokees and other subjugated aborigines of the Americas had been treated with courteous and chivalric generosity. The Conquistadores had left Montezuma with more dignity and power than the Earthsiders had left the Martians.
True, he had intervened to save them from the mob. But an ordinary native woman and her retinue, under the same circumstances, would have thanked him frostily, and left him to his own devices.
Valarda was no ordinary woman. This he knew by sheer gut-level instinct.
Nor was she a dancing girl. Ryker had mingled much with the People, an outcast from his own kind, and there were Low Clan women who danced naked before men. Whereas she had the daintiness and reserve of a princess.
Of course, even a princess can be left destitute, homeless and starving by whims of fortune. The difference is that a princess would rather starve than show her nakedness before men. And he would have staked his life on the fact that Valarda was highborn.
As for the old man, he too displayed marks of breeding and elegance. His features were delicately carved, and there was nobility in his high brow. When he spoke, which was seldom, his accent and vocabulary were those of a learned man, a priest or a scholar. And no itinerant musician for a dancing girl ever bore a name like his. “Melandron” was a High Clan name, and a very ancient sort of name, at that. The sort of name the Old Kings had in the hero legends and epics of the past.
As for the boy, he was just a boy. Nothing was mysterious about him, save for the marking above his heart.
Ryker was two days with them before he discovered they had a secret language.
He spoke the Tongue as well, he supposed, as any F’yagha. Which is to say, he could make himself understood in it, and could interpret what was said to him pretty well. But the language of Mars is old beyond telling, rich in allusions to literature and folklore and legendry, with whole vocabularies of rare or obsolete words. There was much of the Tongue he could not and did not know. But he could recognize the main regional accents used by the major Clans, and these three spoke with an accent he had never before heard.
When, towards evening on the second day out of Yeolarn, they came within sight of Alcyonius Nodus, Valarda and the old man halted their steeds and sat there in ihe saddle for a time, staring at the mesa with an emotion in their eyes he could not name.
And when they spoke softly to each other, it was in a language he did not understand.
And this was very strange.
The Martians have been civilized for so many ages, they long ago lost national divisions. For millions of years they have been one nation, and the one Tongue is spoken universally from pole to pole. If once upon a time they spoke several different national languages, it was so very long ago they have forgotten it, even in their myths.
And the language in which Melandron and the girl conversed was not the Tongue. Or if it was, it was a dialect so ancient, or so rare, or so sacred, he did not recognize it.
He filed the fact away for later thought.
But he was beginning to wonder to himself, and strongly, where these three had come from.
It was like they were from another world.
Or another age.
That night they slept in a cave in the mesa wall. The boy Kiki had gone dart hunting, and had brought back fat scarlet lizards whereon that night they feasted.
Ryker had gone out to help, but when he saw the boy clambering over the cliff face as agile as any monkey, he knew there was nothing he could do.
And dart hunting is a Martian sport at which Ryker’s sort are hopelessly clumsy. The slim metal shafts, like miniature javelins, were too light for his musculature, and Ryker knew it. Earthlings are built by evolution to stand erect under the crushing gravity of their heavy planet ; they
have more strength than is required on Mars, where a man who would weigh one hundred fifty pounds back on Earth here weighs only fifty-seven.
So he watched with helpless admiration as the boy cast his slim glinting darts at the rock lizards. They flickered through the air like weightless beams of light, transfixed the wriggling scarlet reptiles with unerring accuracy; and that night they feasted on ongga-steak broiled over chemical fire in spice leaves.
And they drank deep, having found in the deep crevices of the cliff rich growth of pod lichen the Martians crush and drain for precious water.
Here they were safe, with food, shelter and even water for their needs. By now Ryker was certain they were not being followed. The shambling gait of a loper’s splayfooted stride raises a plume of the talcum-fine sands of the Dustlands you can see for many miles. And there were no far, dusty plumes behind them on the dark skies.
Ryker had tried a few casual questions, had been answered by silence, and gave it up. You do not intrude upon the privacy of this fierce, proud, wary people with blundering queries. What they wish you to know, they impart unasked.
But why wouldn’t Valarda or the old man or the boy tell him where they were from, or the name of their tribe?
Actually, there could be many reasons. They could easily be outlaws, fleeing from tribe justice, or exiles, cast out by their chief.
Or the last remnants of a dying people.
Odd how that thought popped into his head.
Odder still how his skin crept and his nape hairs tingled at the thought. It was as if his body recognized the truth before his mind had reason to believe it.
Still, there was no evidence.
He set it aside to think about later.
That night, very late—near dawn, it was—Ryker came lully awake all of a sudden, as if some sixth sense warned him of danger.
Without the twitching of a single muscle, without changing the slow, deep rhythm of his breathing, did he give notice of his awakening. But with slitted eyes he searched the black gloom for a sign of difference.
A faint green glow from the residue in the fire pan was ihe only illumination that pierced the inky darkness of the cave. That, and a dim, blue-white glimmer from the thronging stars.
Nothing moved in the darkness, and no sound broke the stillness. He levered himself up on one arm, his other hand brushing his gun butt. There lay his companions bundled m their cloaks, spaced around the fire. Nor was there anything in the cave.
But something was wrong, he knew. He searched the green-lit gloom again—and then he saw it.
<
br /> The girl was not there.
Her cloak and furs lay neatly arranged in the place she had selected for herself, but the place was empty.
Soundlessly as a cat, Ryker rose to his feet and padded to the mouth of the cave. Peering out, he saw her crouched in a huddle on the stone ledge. Cold blue starfire shone from her naked shoulders, caught and dazzled in her silken hair, and glowed upon the soft rondures of her bare breasts.
Ryker caught his breath at the loveliness of Valarda, nude in the starlight.
He must have made some slight sound—perhaps the
scuff of his boot leather rasping against dry stone—for she turned and saw him. And he saw that she had been weeping, for starfire glittered in her tear-wet lashes like tiny gems.
In the star sheen her perfect breasts were coppery silver above, polished ebony beneath. He had one swift, breathtaking look at her nakedness. Then she shook forward the black wings of her long hair, veiling from him the temptation of her tawny flesh.
And her face—open, vulnerable, soft lips atremble, some strange, heart-deep sorrow visible in her wet eyes— went hard and proud and cold. It was as if she had, in an instant, donned a lifeless mask; her eyes were frozen now, aloof, with the hauteur of a princess whose privacy a boor has blundered into.
He cursed himself for letting her discover him watching from the shadows like some panting voyeur. He opened his mouth to make some fumbling apology for intruding upon her privacy—and then, very suddenly, they were both of them too busy for words.
A terrible shape, black as night, edged with star jewels where the dim light caught its scales, clambered up over the brink of the ledge.
The slioth was a cliff scavenger, found commonly in these cliffs and mesas, which was accustomed to devouring the bodies of dead things. It did not usually prey upon the living, but—after all—meat is meat, and even the cliff dragon likes a hot, fresh meal at times.
For a split second it paused, clinging there by the suction pads on its six, hook-clawed feet. Then it slithered up and over the ledge and came at them, eyes burning like lamps of green phosphor, filled with a mindless, ravening hunger.
The girl sprang for the safety of the cave but Ryker was
in her way. She stumbled against him and went down on her knees and he tried to interpose his body between the lizard and the girl. One hooked paw raked him from throat to navel and he staggered back, until he stood flat against the wall of the cliff.
Miraculously, he was unharmed. The tough, insulated synthetic of his thermal suit had been built to keep in his bodyheat. It had never been designed to resist the terrible, razory claws of the slioth or its distant cousin, the dreaded sandcat of the Dustlands. But it was strong enough to keep those steely hooks from his flesh, although the fabric was slit open from neck to waist.
The lizard reared up, hissed like a steam whistle, and reached for them with three of its mailed limbs. Blood thundering in his ears like pounding surf, Ryker fumbled with numb, clumsy fingers for the gun which lay holstered against his thigh.
He half-drew it, and then, suddenly, the girl was in his arms, all of her cool, sweetly-rounded nakedness pressed against his own bared torso, her slim arms locked around his neck, making his draw awkward.
He cursed in harsh, senseless gutturals, swivelled to one side, and fired as the huge reptile loomed up, casting its black shadow over them.
In the inky gloom, the bolt of electric flame was brighter than many suns.
The cliff dragon was armored in leathery hide, and mailed with tough overlapping plates of horny chitin, like a lobster’s shell. But the gun was set for a needle beam, and the sizzling ray lasered through the body of the beast and spurted from its back—bright, diffuse flame intermixed with gobbets of meat and thick, splattering gore.
The slioth squalled deafeningly. It fell backwards off
the ledge and, a moment later, they heard it thud against the rock-strewn slopes below.
The blaze of afterimages wavered before his eyes, blotting out everything but the pale, wide-eyed face the girl lifted to his. Where-the soft roundness of her tender breast was pressed against his bare skin, he felt the thudding of her heart, and she felt his own heartbeat like an echo of hers.
She trembled in his arms, and he soothed her with strong, rough hands that were curiously gentle.
And then he kissed her, a tender probing kiss that went on and on as if their lips had grown together into one mouth. And she did not draw away until they both had to breathe.
She withdrew her body from his own then, and went into the cave, not looking at him, and left him there, stiffly leaning against the cliff, his chest and arms and mouth still tingling with the warmth of her and with the sweetness of her.
The boy and the old man stood, both naked, both saying nothing, both staring with wide, frightened eyes. The reek of burnt dragon meat was thick and sour on the dry, cold air.
He holstered his gun and stooped, entering the cave again. Valarda was curled up in her blankets, her back turned towards him so that he could not see her face.
No one said anything.
Ryker returned to his fur cloak and pretended to sleep.
But he lay awake for hours staring into the green-lit gloom, remembering the silken softness of her body against his own, and the honey sweetness of her mouth under his kiss.
II
The Caravan Road
6. The Oasis Town
dawn had lit the cave-roof with its pale luminance before Ryker got back to sleep, and when at last the others roused him it was near midday.
He went out to check on their lopers, and was surprised to find them unmolested. They had tethered the beasts at the foot of the cliff wall of the mesa, some distance up a narrow ravine where they could feed on the rock lichens and podweed. The slioth had not investigated the ravine, apparently.
As for the cliff dragon, its body was gone. Either the bolt from Ryker’s power gun had not slain it outright, and it had dragged itself off to its lair, or its fellow scavengers had carried it away to feast in private.
Ryker thought it likely the beast had limped away on its own. Such reptiles are notoriously hard to kill, having brains so small it takes them hours to realize they are dead—an old hunting joke—and two hearts.
Nobody spoke over breakfast. And there was utterly no reference made to last night. It was as if none of it had even happened. Valarda did not meet his eyes, and served his meal with a cool reserve.
Ryker was just as glad. The embrace, the kiss, they had been one of those things and meant nothing. And he was in a surly, taciturn mood and felt little like conversation. The little imp, Kiki, however, had a twinkle of mischief in his green eyes as the boy demurely asked how he had slept.
They rode on that day, due west, following the curve of the meridian.
There had been some discussion about this, but not much. The girl informed him that they wished to reach the oasis of Yhakhah, where it was their intention to join a caravan traveling north.
This oasis town—actually, little more than a more-or-less permanent camp—stood at the northernmost terminus of the old waterway called Nilosyrtis, at the southern tip of the Casius Plateau. Now, it was the most logical place to go from where they were, perhaps; but Ryker still wondered why Valarda wished to venture into those parts. No matter what she had said to him, it simply could not be true that they wanted to travel north from that point. For north lay nothing: the barren cliff wall of the Casius, the bleak and uninhabited tableland itself, and then endless leagues of empty desert which stretched clear to the pole.
There was no city or encampment of the People north of Yhakhah. So where was she going?
There was more to all of this than met the eye, he knew. But he was in this, now, up to his neck. And there wasn’t much else for him to do but go along, if only for the ride.
All that day they skirted the soaring cliff wall of the great mesa, riding west, carrying as much food and water as they could store. From time t
o time, Ryker eyed it curiously. The mesa meant something to Valarda and her old grandsire—if that is all he was. The Earthling recalled the curious emotion with which they had viewed it the previous evening. They had seemed—what?—appalled?, crestfallen?, saddened?
Now, why should that be? The mesa of Alcyonius Nodus was as it had ever been, a barren tableland of dead, sterile rock. And it had been thus for millions of years, surely, or anyway since the great oceans of prehistoric
Mars began to dry up. Once, perhaps , it had been a broad and fertile island, against whose cliffy shores the lost oceans had burst in shattering spray. But that was long ago.
They rode west, then north awhile until the mighty wall of the great pleateau darkened the horizon to the north. Reaching the foot of the plateau, they skirted it, riding west until sundown, and slept that night in the mouth of one of the innumerable ravines into which the cliffs of Casius were cloven.
The following day they caught their first glimpse of the broad Nilosyrtis. Once this canal had been amighty river, perhaps, flowing down into the lowlands from the mountainous heights of Casius, and watering the Old City which stood at the northern extremity of that huge peninsula now called Syrtis Major. Now it was only a level plain covered with knee-high vegetation, weirdly blue.
When Mars began to dry up as the free water vapor in its atmosphere escaped in ever-dwindling amounts into space, the crust of the planet had shrunk and cracked, forming a network of long, geometrical lesions in the surface. Into these titanic ravines the shrinking oceans, or what was left of them, had drained. And over succeeding ages the Martian vegetation, adapting to ever-dwindling supplies of moisture, had taken root along these fissures, forming thick belts of hardy growths whose root systems delved down for miles into the pockets of moisture trapped within the bowels of the planet.
It was these broad strips of fertile vegetation the Earth astronomers had mistaken for artificial waterways. Only some of them, like Nilosyrtis, had once been the beds of primordial rivers, and only a very few showed any signs of having been engineered by human hands. While it was now thought that a few of the old canals had actually been
