The House indeed had possessed a trick in reserve, he soon saw, and as he saw, described it to the others. Gimp had been brought up to date earlier by old Aldo, so that he needed only a limited amount of explanation.
As the fire had raged down upon its lair, the House had somehow forced its brood of fungi (perhaps a special breed) to exude a gummed foam of sticky bile, which hardened on contact with the air. Whatever the stuff was, it must have been completely fireproof. Now a ragged, brownish wall of it, something like congealed glue, glazed over and pitted with holes and bubbles, formed a rampart between the toadstool forest beyond and the burned lands. Here and there in the latter, smoke curled, mostly from vast, still-smoldering logs, but the main fire showed no sign of reviving. Barren though the aspect now was, Hiero felt it to be far more cheerful than the realm of the House when that was flourishing. His mind could detect no sensation of the monster, but he knew from experience that meant nothing.
Now he could see, looking to right and left, that small parties of the tree women, armed with blazing torches, were setting” fire to any small bits of the blight which the fire of yesterday had missed, chiefly on the edge of the true forest itself. No seed of that filth was to survive if they could help it!
The day was becoming overcast, with a hint of rain to come in storm clouds building towers far to the south. As they left the mound, they speculated on the chance of carrying fire further into the territory of the House and what that vileness might do in retaliation if further provoked.
“I don’t think it’s at the end of its resources, frankly,” Hiero said.
“Indeed not, if what you tell of its strength is true, and also what I could feel of the mental barrier it was able to erect between us. How I hate to leave a wicked, unnatural thing like that alive. In a few years, perhaps even less, it will attack again, and we will not be here to save these women and their tree world the next time.”
“Have you asked where the tree women’s men are?” Hiero said, his mind off on a tangent.
“No, and if I had, I’m sure the answers would have satisfied no one. These strange, lovely creatures have a secret. Perhaps their males are very ugly, perhaps timid, or perhaps the women dominate them so, they are never allowed out in public. Why not simply accept it and not waste time on profitless speculation? They seem to be our friends at any rate.”
“Yes.” Hiero sighed. “But I had a strange dream, strange but beautiful. It was—” He ceased suddenly, for Gimp was looking at him oddly and had stopped walking.
“Did your dream have one of them white-skinned gals in it, now, Master Hiero? just you and her maybe? A real nice dream?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Hiero was too old to blush, but he felt embarrassed. “How did you guess that, Gimp?”
“Because me and Blutho and all of the boys, mark you, even old Skelk, who’s a bleeding grandfather, we all had the same dream. Each one of us had just one gal, see, and all to ourselves. Nicest dream we ever had, we all agrees. And do you know, none of them naked wenches will even talk to us this morning! How’s that for a peculiar situation, eh?” His snub-nosed face looked both pleased and regretful.
As they walked on, Hiero was very thoughtful indeed.
At length, when they were back in the cathedral shade of the great trees, Brother Aldo asked to see the Unclean map again, and the three of them bent over it.
“The scale is not quite the same as the Abbey map,” the priest said, producing that one also. “But it seems to me that the area I must search is quite close to us.” He indicated the symbol marking the site of the ancients, “It must be here, I think, in the angle somewhere between the true desert, the southern corner of the blight caused by the House, and the very end of the forest. I’d put it, at a rough guess, between twenty-five and thirty-five miles away. You’re used to charts; what do you think, Gimp?”
The squat little sailor stared hard at both maps before answering, “That’s close to my reckoning also.”
“And mine.” Brother Aldo folded the maps and returned them to Hiero. “Now comes a time for hard decisions, my boy. Have we fulfilled your agreement with Vilah-ree? The House is wounded and driven off but hardly destroyed. And yet—I feel time presses. There were great waves of mental force used yesterday, both by us, mainly yourself, of course, and also by that foul thing out there. In Neeyana and perhaps nearer, too, there are both instruments and evil minds which would take great interest in such phenomena. You have been ruthlessly pursued by the Unclean overlords since you slew that adept far up in the North. Do you think they have given up entirely?”
“Not S’duna, at any rate! He swore he’d kill me or die himself, and I believe him. You can’t lie at that close range and deceive anyone as trained as I am. No, they haven’t given up. And S’duna was apparently a person of great power in their councils.”
“So I think as well. The main eastern trail to the Lantik Sea lies to our south, perhaps no more than four days’ good march. If I were the enemy, I would be hurrying eastward along that trail even now, and when I had gone as close as possible to the area, that is, our area, whence came the mental disturbance I had detected, I’d head north. Let us say, to be on the safe side, that a week from yesterday divides us from our foes. Maybe more or maybe less, but a week seems safe.”
Yet while the old Elevener spoke, his words were being refuted. All that he had said was quite correct, but he, and Hiero too, had gravely underestimated both S’duna’s cunning and his malice. An armed and armored host had been collected in the country east of Neeyana, and that host had been on the march for four days, even as the three took counsel! But of this development they were ignorant.
As they debated, the clouds overhead grew darker, and a moist wind from the south seemed to promise that rain would come soon.
Sooner than the rain, though, came Luchare. They heard her singing to herself, some song of D’alwah, apparently, for Hiero could not understand it. She emerged from a path under the trees and came up to them, her face soft and dreaming. Around her upper arm she wore a lovely, twisted torque of gold, with gems, mostly green, carved as leaves, set in its surface, so that the effect was that of a vine.
“Like my present?” she smiled at Hiero and linked her arms around his sinewy neck. “Vilah-ree’s farewell gift to me. Gorm’s still talking to her. She thinks he’s the most interesting of all of us and wants him to come and live here.”
“Exactly why should Vilah-ree give you a present?” he mused, fingering the heavy armlet, which possessed some of the strange beauty of the giver. “She didn’t give me anything, did she?”
“Oh—I loaned her something she wanted. And maybe she did give you something.” Her face was now pressed into his buckskin shirt and he could not read her eyes. He felt his suspicions growing as the bits and pieces of evidence in his mind fell suddenly into a pattern he had been trying not to see. He straightened up and held the lovely, dark face firmly between his two hands, so that she was forced to look at him. The other two tactfully had moved away out of earshot.
“Where are Vilah-ree’s menfolk, my little vixen princess?” His voice was half-angry, half-amused, as he studied the black, defiant eyes. There was a silence, and then she made up her mind.
“There aren’t any. Her people live a long time, though, when they stay in and near their trees. And they need men, poor things, to have children. But the children they do have are always more girls. They hope that someday, somehow, a boy will be born. They don’t even seem to know how they first appeared here or who or what they are. But they know that human travelers pass south and east of here. And sometimes when a lone traveler or just a few camp for the night, they—well…”
“Have a very nice dream?” Hiero asked. But he was smiling at her and, encouraged, Luchare somewhat timidly smiled back. “So you made a deal, and I got put out to stud. For a bracelet. Well, it’s a nice one, I’ll say that.”
She wrenched herself loose, her breast heaving violently. “Oh—you
—man! I suppose you think I liked the idea of your making love to her! And I never heard of the bracelet until this morning!” She tore the lovely thing off and threw it at him as hard as she could. He was barely able to get his arms up and catch it to prevent a broken nose. Then he ran to her, for she was weeping bitterly, hands pressed to her eyes, the tumbled, corkscrew curls hanging around her face like some odd but beautiful foliage.
Come on, love, he thought. I was only fooling. You felt sorry for her, didn’t you?
She gulped and buried her face in his chest again, choking back the sobs before she could even use her mind.
Yes, of course I did. Any real woman who was honest would. She’s never had a man and she fell in love with you. When she said to me (it was hard to understand her at first, too) that I’d have you always, but could she have just one night, well, I forgot any jealousy. But it was still the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and don’t you forget it!
“Oh, Hiero,” she said aloud, her voice sad, “do you know what her last thought this morning was?” Maybe mine will be the first male. Do not forget me, you who have him for always. “I almost cried right then.”
He patted her back and made encouraging masculine noises. “Don’t cry, love,” he said. “I’m not mad. Besides, I did have a delightful dream.”
She looked up, saw that he was grinning at her, and finally managed a smile. “Look, I don’t want to hear any more about it, all right?”
At this point the seamen appeared in marching gear and order, coming out into the open near them, jabbering, and craning their necks as they saw the burned-over waste for the first time. Blutho and Gimp halted them and came over to join the two. Brother Aldo returned as well, leading Klootz, and Gorm emerged from the shadows of a giant tree’s base. AM were now ready, and Hiero took up his place in the lead again. But though the bear still went with him, the priest now rode upon the bull morse. Klootz’s eyes gleamed with pleasure and he bugled, a hoarse, bellowing cry which echoed under the cloudy heavens and through the humid air until the echoes died away into silence beneath the arches of the mighty wood.
Hiero looked back, hoping for a glimpse of the wood sprite whose dream he had shared, but he saw nothing. Once from the now silent forest, a golden burst of song rang out, but whether it was Vilah-ree or not, he never knew.
They will follow us along the edge of their realm, came Aldo’s thought from the rear of the column. They wish to know if the House is alive and think you can tell them. So the queen told Luchare.
It’s alive, he sent back. But I hope we can avoid it, 1 made no impression before. Are we carrying coals?
Yes, in a clay pot. We can kindle fire in seconds and we have many arrows ready, on my order to Gimp.
Let’s hope they won’t he needed.
They marched south at a steady pace along the wood edge, which towered like a rampart of green, with brown bark only rarely glimpsed. Occasionally, small bursts of flame off to their right showed them where the tree women still set fire to patches of unfired blight, working their way south on a general level with the column. Eventually even this ceased, however. They stayed a quarter of a mile out in the waste; and tramping over the bare burn, which was only gently rolling, the men made very good time.
They halted for a brief meal and then went on. Toward evening, the long-gathered clouds released a torrential bath upon their heads, and visibility became so poor and the newly bared earth such a glutinous mud that it was obviously silly to carry on. They made camp under the trees and had trouble even there in getting a fire to light. Eventually one was got going, under a lean-to, and they managed a savory stew for supper. The rain was warm, though, and all there were seasoned travelers, to whom a little extra water meant nothing.
It rained most of the night. When dawn came, they knew they were reaching the end of the forest at last. The trees themselves were changing. Palms and acacia-like shrubs began to appear in quantity. The real broad-leafed giants dwindled and soon no longer occurred at all. The heat steadily increased. To the south, wide, grassy plains became dimly visible, rolling through thinning copses of trees to the distant horizon. On their left, the outlying fingers of the eastern desert drew nearer, and with the desert came the all-too-familiar livid colors of the fungus belt. Down there in the south of the forest, the fire had hardly touched anything, for the House had not come so close to the trees, indeed was a number of miles away. Perhaps the absence of the great trees made the area less attractive to it.
However, there was plenty of wild game. Beasts resembling deer and creatures like large-horned antelope grazed in herds here and there, only moving slowly out of the men’s way. Most were unfamiliar to Hiero. Once they came upon a short-tailed, striped brute, half as big as Klootz, which was feeding on the carcass of something fully three times the morse’s size. They wisely skirted this scene, and the huge carnivore, which looked like a cross between a bear and a ten-times-magnified lynx, was content, or possibly replete, only growling in tones of thunder. That night they built both large fires and a high stockade, making camp early in order to construct the latter. The bellowings and roarings all about them made this move seem a wise one. This was evidently not a country which either knew or feared men.
The next morning dawned clear and hot, the humid air perfumed like a breath of summer. Flowering grasses scented each step. On this day they turned and marched east, and all the leaders were in front. The time had come, by all their reckonings, to search for the Lost City. Maps were no longer of use.
As they advanced out into the semi-scrub, semi-desert area, the colors of the House drew inexorably nearer. Soon they could distinguish individual growths, gnarled objects like giant, oil-brown shelf fungi mostly, and squat puffball things of dirty purplish red and yellow, whose pocked surface exuded some shiny substance equally repellent. The things were unlike the northern growths, but the hardened muck did not exist here, evidently not having been needed. They had lost all traces of the great fire, in fact, for it had never come this far to the south.
Hiero called a halt. “I’m not putting our necks into that damned, horrid thing’s trap without a very careful search,” he said. He indicated the first huge magenta puffballs. “Those things aren’t half a mile away. That’s quite close enough, judging from my own experience.”
Aldo looked thoughtful. “We should, by all that’s holy, be almost on the very site you’re looking for, Hiero. In fact, we may be right on top of it. I can’t see anything to indicate this wasn’t always a plain, but that’s true of many buried cities.” He patted the priest’s shoulder. “I hope you’ve also thought that it may be hopelessly buried, son. We’ll do our best, but who knows when those symbols were copied onto the maps, and maybe recopied a hundred times over?”
Luchare refused to be discouraged. A curious ally, as unexpected as he often was, was the bear.
“We can’t have come this far, under such leadership, to find nothing!” the girl cried. Her faith rebuked Hiero’s own, and he said so out loud.
“Well need a careful search, but let’s look in an expanding arc. Gimp, you and Blutho tell the men we’re hunting a city under the ground. Any scrap of human occupation, any sign, anything at all, should be marked down at once.”
Gorm’s slow thought was as stubborn and cool as ever. There have been many humans here once. I feel it in my hones. Somewhere, not far away, the human city is hidden.
Hiero had been afraid the men might panic over the thought of a pre-Death city being uncovered due to the possibility of disease or radiation, but Gimp reassured him.
“They’ve seen you and Brother Aldo do such wonders, Master, I don’t doubt they’d jump into a fire if so be it was you said to.” Hiero had been touched, more than he believed possible, by this affirmation of the seamen’s trust and liking.
Everybody spread out now, except in the direction of the blight. No one was anxious to get too close to that barrier of evil-looking growth, and the seamen gave it a wide berth.
A
fter some hours, the group had become so widely scattered that Hiero grew nervous about them. Some of the men were little more than dots on the southern horizon. There were few animals in apparent evidence out in this dry scrub area, but who knew what lurked beyond the next bush? He had Gimp sound the ship’s bugle in the recall, and felt better when the men straggled back again with no losses in about a half hour. He ordered a rest and meal while he took counsel again with the Elevener, his girl, Gorm, and Captain Gimp. The sky was clear, but new thunder-heads piling up in the south gave warning of more rain to come.
“There’s only one conclusion that I can draw,” Hiero said reluctantly. “If the maps are correct and the city is not a mile beneath us and is even remotely accessible—well, we’re too far to the west.”
“I fear you’re right. I am reaching the same unwelcome conclusion out of necessity.” Brother Aldo stared at the wall of repulsive fungi rearing itself over the low shrubs and bushes to the east. “We shall have to search more closely that way. And we shall have to be very careful, eh?”
“You’re not going without me!” Luchare seized Hiero’s arm. “Once was enough.”
“You’ll do what you’re told or be spanked.” Hiero’s tone was absent, his gaze bent on the distant but menacing barrier. “We will do exactly what we did before, Aldo. You and Luchare will serve as anchors, so to speak, again. Gorm ought to be better at reaching you this time, having had more practice. He and I will penetrate in that direction. Keep the men ready with the fire arrows.” He had been keeping the bear in touch by mind as he spoke.
This is the best way, Gorm said. We have no choice, he added.
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