Light was draining out of the sky as the day drew to a close. The wind blew in through naked frames and tugged at a loose strip of paper on the wall. Soon—next year if not this—it would have ripped it free. I pulled at it myself and tore it off; then felt regret. There had been splendor here. The elements were doing their work of destruction in their own good time and needed no help.
Edmund called: “Luke!”
He had opened one of the closed doors and was standing just inside. It was a room which had been more protected than most. The ceiling was almost intact and both windows had glass in them.
It was also smaller and perhaps this had contributed to its preservation. There was dust everywhere but the furniture seemed unharmed and the thick red carpet, except where the moths had taken their meals, was dry and unfaded. Along one wall was a sofa, its covering also moth-scarred but otherwise intact, and several chairs were dotted about. Edmund, gingerly at first, sat in one which had a hooped back supported on wooden struts. I said: “This looks more comfortable,” and headed for one with a high back and sides. It was turned the other way. I pulled it toward me—and stopped in shock.
That which sat in the chair collapsed at my jerk and in a moment was no more than a jumble of bones inside a crumpled heap of cloth, but for one brief instant I had seen it as it had rested for countless years: the upright skeleton with its grinning skull staring out of the window at what had once perhaps been lawn not forest.
Edmund and I looked down in silence. He said:
“Do you think the Disaster killed him?”
“Maybe. But it is more likely he died later. This place was strongly built but the shock that brought down the other part would surely have tumbled him from his chair. Perhaps he lived here afterward, waiting for people to come. Perhaps for years.”
A low table by the chair had an intricately engraved jar of crystal glass, which was empty. Beside it lay an oblong box made of gold. I lifted a lid and found inside small cylinders of a fragile white material packed with dried grass. Or so it seemed, but the smell was not a grass smell; it had a peculiar aromatic richness.
“And this,” Edmund said.
It stood in a corner and I had not seen it because of the shadows there. It was a cabinet of polished wood with a row of metal knobs near the top, containing a square glass screen with darker glass behind it. I knew what it was from a picture I had seen in the Sanctuary: the device by which our ancestors had received moving pictures through the air, across the breadth of the planet and even from the distant Moon. I stared at it in fascination. Under one knob it said BRIGHTNESS, under another CONTRAST. Words which once had meaning. Edmund said:
“A machine.”
“Yes.”
“But you show no horror of it.”
I said quickly: “I did not realize what it was.”
I turned away from the television set. Edmund said:
“You are different since coming back from the Sanctuary. As Martin is since he turned Acolyte.”
I felt the sting of rebuke. We had been the closest of friends and yet I must keep so much from him. Reading my face, he said:
“It does not matter, Luke.”
And I knew that was true. The rebuke was my own, to myself. I would have been jealous if I had thought Edmund put something else before our friendship, but he was not. His smile showed it.
There was a noise on the landing and the peddler came in. He poked about among the contents of the room. Neither the broken skeleton nor the television set got more than cursory glances, but his eyes fastened on the gold box.
“Genuine,” he said, “and heavy!”
He moved to put it in his jacket. I said:
“Leave it.”
His gaze met mine, sharp and calculating. “We’ll split two ways.” He glanced at Edmund. “Three. But let me do the selling. I have contacts.”
“Put it back,” I said.
“But why? That is stupidity. Who owns it?”
I dropped my hand onto my sword hilt. The peddler put down the box, shrugged and went away. We heard him stamp off down the corridor. Edmund said:
“He will slip up here afterward and get it. Or mark the place down for his next trip south.”
“Very likely.”
There would always be greed and meanness and spoiling, and maybe all good things must fall to them in the end; but at least one did not have to take part in it or watch it. In the darkness that was fast deepening, I peered at a picture in a gold frame on the wall. It was small and murky and showed an old and ugly man, but there was something about it, about the patient eyes in the wrinkled face, that caught the heart with its beauty. I read the artist’s name on the brass plate underneath. Even I, knowing little of the craft, could tell that he had been a far greater painter than Margry, this Rembrandt.
When we left I carefully closed the door behind us.
• • •
Our journey continued through several days. We did not find as good a shelter for the night again, but made do. The beasts we saw for the most part kept their distance. Once the peddler took us to a village where he was known and where we could buy food. They accepted our money though the head of the Prince of Winchester on the coins could have meant nothing to them; but silver can always be melted down. The peddler haggled with them on our behalf. They sold us bread and beef, the latter in joints. I wondered what the animals had looked like on the hoof—what sort of hoofs they had, in fact, if they had any—but held my peace, and if Greene had scruples he kept them to himself. After all, who could tell what sort of corn the bread was made from?
The villagers were a rough and dirty lot, poorly fed and clothed in skins. Not all had this protection. I saw an almost naked child, shivering, blue with cold, and gave him a woolen from my pack. Within five minutes one of the men was wearing it. I would have taken it from him and restored it to the child, but Edmund restrained me. The moment we left the child would lose it again. I was not convinced, and he said:
“And be beaten for it, into the bargain. This way he may gain something—a crust of bread thrown to him, maybe, for conscience’s sake.”
“Conscience? In such a one as that?”
“Who knows? And the beating would be well-nigh certain. Have sense, Luke.”
These people were of all kinds—human and polymuf with a few dwarfs—and it was shocking to find that they seemed to make no distinctions: one of the leaders of the tribe had a purple mark covering half his face. But of course they were savages and could not be expected to follow civilized practices. They invited us to stay there that night and I was glad that Greene refused, even though in the end we slept under bushes and awoke in the small hours with rain soaking us.
• • •
Five days after crossing the Burning Lands we were attacked.
We had left the river valley we had followed so long and were heading, west of north, through hilly country. The track passed through a defile which narrowed toward its end. At that point our ears were assailed by a dreadful caterwauling and savages dropped down on us from an overhanging ledge of rock.
They had the advantage of surprise and one of the first half dozen dragged a soldier from his horse before he realized what was happening. They also had superiority in numbers—at least three to one though it was impossible to make anything but a rough guess. But their preponderance ended there. I saw one jump at me and slashed with my sword so that he fell howling. Another, who had first dropped to the ground, came at me from the side and hung gibbering on my horse’s saddle for a moment or two before I chopped him away. Garance reared, and her descending hoof cracked the skull of a third.
The engagement, if one could give it such a name, lasted a very short time—no more than minutes. As soon as they realized we had their measure they fled. Those who had dropped on us ran off down the ravine and the rest, after yowling at us briefly, melted away also, though they were perfectly safe up there from any counterattack. They left a dozen of their fellows behind, some dead, some noisily writhing.