Iimmi and Geo stood up.
Urson reached the shore, threw himself along the rock, swiped at the hand, and was covered by flailing wings. The membranous sails splashed in the water, there were shrieks, and one white wing arced high, then flapped down again. Two seconds later, Urson rolled from beneath the creatures still struggling half on land and half in the water. He staggered to his feet and started up the rocks again. He slipped, regained his footing, and came on, to fall into Geo’s and Iimmi’s arms.
“The jewels…” Urson breathed.
The struggle continued on the water. Something held them down, twisted at them. Suddenly the creatures stilled. Like great leaves, the three forms drifted apart, caught in the current, and floated away from the rocks.
Then two more forms bobbed to the surface, faces down, rocking gently, backs slicked wet and green.
“But those were the ones who…” Geo began. “Are they dead?” His face suddenly hurt a little, with something like the pain of verging tears.
Snake nodded.
“Are you sure?” asked Iimmi. His voice was slow.
Their…thoughts…have…stopped…Snake said.
Crouching in front of them, Urson opened his scarred hands. The globes blazed through the leaves. The chain and the wet thong hung from his palm to the ground. “I have them,” he whispered. “The jewels!”
Chapter Nine
Snake picked up the beads from the calloused palm, placed one around Geo’s neck, one around Iimmi’s. Urson watched the jewels rise.
Then they turned into the forest; the sound of wings had stopped.
“Where do we go now?” Urson asked.
“We follow rule number one,” said Geo. “Since we know Hama does have a temple somewhere, we try to find it, get the third jewel, and rescue Argo Incarnate. Then we get back to the ship.”
“In three days?” asked Urson. “Where do we start looking?”
“The Priestess said something about a band of Hama’s disciples behind the fire mountain — the volcano we saw from the steps in the City of New Hope.” Geo turned to Snake. “Did you read her mind enough to know if she was telling the truth?”
Snake nodded.
Iimmi thought a moment. “Since the river is that way…we should head”—he turned and pointed — “in that direction.”
They fixed their stride now and started through the pearly leaves.
“I still don’t understand what was going on back at the convent,” Iimmi said. “Were they really priestesses of Argo? And what was Jordde doing?”
“I’d say yes on the first question, and guess that Jordde was a spy for them for an answer to the second.”
“But what about Argo…I mean Argo on the ship?” asked Iimmi. “And what about Snake here?”
“Argo on the ship apparently doesn’t know about Argo on Aptor,” said Geo. “That’s what Jordde meant when he reported to the priestesses that she was bewildered. She probably thinks just like we did, that he’s Hama’s spy. And this one here…” He gestured at Snake. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
When the light failed, they lay together and tried to sleep. But minutes after they had settled, and the white disk dropped from the horizon, Geo suddenly called them up again. In the distant red glow they could make out the volcano’s cone.
Snake made lights with the jewels, and they began to pick their way over the land, now barer and barer of vegetation. Broken trees leaned against broken boulders. The earth grew cindery. The air bore old and acrid ash.
Soon the red rim of the crater hung close above them.
“How near are we?” Urson asked.
“I think we’ve already started the slope,” Geo said.
“Maybe we ought to stop before we go any farther and wait till morning.”
“We can’t sleep here,” mumbled Urson, pushing cinders with his foot. He stretched. “Besides, we don’t have time to sleep.”
Geo gazed up at the red haze. “I wonder what it’s like to look into that thing in the middle of the night?” He began again and they followed. Twenty feet later Snake’s light struck a lavid black cliff that sheared up into the darkness. Going on beside it, they found a ledge that made an eighteen-inch footpath diagonally up the face.
“We’re not going to climb that in the dark, are we?” asked Iimmi.
“Better than in the light,” said Urson. “This way you can’t see how far you have to fall.”
Iimmi started up the lip of rock. Thirty feet on, instead of petering out and forcing them to go back, it broadened into level ground, and again they could go straight toward the red light above them.
“This is changeable country,” Urson muttered.
“Men change into animals,” said Iimmi; “jungles turn to mountains.”
Geo reached up and felt the stub of his arm in the dark. “I’ve changed too, I guess.
“What’s that from?” Iimmi asked.
“Another one of my bits of original research,” Geo explained. “It comes from a poem dating back before the Great Fire. I found it when I was doing research in the tombs.”
“Who was Leonard of Vinci?” Iimmi asked.
“An artist, perhaps another poet or painter,” said Geo. “I’m not really sure.”
“Who’s Christ?” Urson asked.
“Another god.”
There were more rocks now, and Geo had to brace his stub against the wall fissure and hoist himself up with his good hand. The igneous points were sharp on his palm. The lights wavered from time to time as Snake at the lead transferred them from this hand to that. The boy rounded another jutting and the crags sent double shadows slipping down.
Reaching a fairly level spot, they turned to look behind them. They were standing on the brim of a bowl of blackness. The sky was starry and lighter than the plate of velvet vegetation circling before them. They turned again and continued.
Through the night the glowing rim dropped. With it came a breeze that pushed sulfur powder through their hair and made their nostrils sting.
“Maybe we should go around and approach it from the other side,” Urson suggested. “That way the wind won’t be so bad.”
They set their climb at an angle now; soon the wind fell, and they could head straight up again.
The earth became scaly and rotten under their feet. Fatigue tied knots high in their guts so that what was in their stomachs hung like stone.
“I didn’t realize how big the crater was,” Iimmi said.
So much nearer, the red glow, cut off at the bottom by the curve of the edge, took up a quarter of the sky.
“Maybe it’ll erupt on us,” Urson muttered. He added, “I’m thirsty. If Hama is supposed to be behind the volcano, couldn’t we have gone around instead of over it?”
“We’re this far,” said Iimmi. “Why turn back now?” A scab of shale skittered from under his foot. The wind shifted again and they were forced to skirt farther around the crater.
“I hope you’re keeping track how far off course we’ve gotten,” Urson said.
“Don’t worry,” said Iimmi.
The glow from the jewels in Snake’s hands showed pale yellow growths about them on the slope like miniature bulbous cactuses. Some of them whistled. “What are they?” Urson asked.
“Sulfur cones,” said Iimmi. “Deposits of sulfur get caught under the surface, are heated, and make little volcanoes all by themselves.”
After another comparatively level stretch, they began the final ascent over veins of rock and twisting trails that took them up the last hundred feet.