And then I heard a faint, weary voice groan.
“Gods and Avatars, what a black, stinking—”
I gasped aloud, and the voice cut off instantly. Then; “… Lad? Be you there… ?”
I almost fainted from the sudden relief of tension.
“Klygon? Was it you grabbed my leg, then? I almost put my sword through you.”
“Then it was a leg I took hold of! Blessed me! I thought I’d seized upon some crawling horror in the dark—curse this black gloom! I can’t see an inch beyond me nose. Where are you, lad—give me your hand—”
We fumbled through the damp gloom, and caught hold of each other. The little Assassin was soaked to the skin as I was, his black garments slimy with muck from the lake. But he seemed all in one piece, and no more the worse for the surprise ducking than I was. Joy gusted through us both; I clapped his shoulder, laughing a little; he squeezed my arm with rough affection, cursing a variety of gods, saints, immortals, tutelary geniuses and the other quaint denizens of the Laonese heaven.
“Sages and Demigods!” he growled hoarsely. “I had a tight time of it there for a while, boy. Thought my cursed zaiph would fetch me up against the bottom of the world, before the ‘cursed thing would stop! Aye, and if ‘twere not for this wet-muck we landed on, ‘twould of been broken bones and busted skulls for us both, at very least! Ah, ‘tis good to touch you, lad! ‘Tis food and drink, having a stout comrade by your side in this black hole! However do we get back into the light, the upper world again? My steed’s still down there, somewhere, in the black water, same as yours. We can’t fly; that’s certain sure. And we can’t climb, leastways I can’t! These old bones are weary-worn…”
I laughed and said something to the effect that we should take one problem at a time, not all of them at once. Time enough later on to worry over ways to regain our place in the safety of the middle terraces. Right now we were worn out, trembling with the after-effects of our mad fall, and soaked through, cold and hungry and tired. What we needed first was a safe place of refuge, then a bit of fire to dry us out, and something to eat.
“And light!” he groaned. ” ‘Tis like being struck stone blind, this place. Old Klygon, bless his weary wits, feels like a blind grub crawling about in the black bottom of everything. Curse me for a doddering grandsire, I’d sell me place in The World Above for a wee bit of candle no bigger’n me thumb!”
Well, there was no use wasting breath on wishes. So, first, we tried to find out where we were. Going slowly and carefully, we went out farther on the strange, slick, rounded surface, but in the wrong direction, as it proved. For it dwindled in size and sank under the waters of the lake.
In the other direction, however, the hard coiled things grew larger and ascended. I began to conjure up a mental picture of the thing we were on, the farther I crawled along it. In short, I came to realize it was, simply, a root. A root as thick as a man stands tall, and about a quarter of a mile long, but still just a root.
And, of course, it would have to be. For after all, we were at the foot of one of the giant trees which soared miles above us. Such arboreal Everests were surely rooted in the black earth, and their roots would have to be immense in proportion to their towering heights.
Finally we found ourselves on what seemed to be dry land, much higher up the slope. Underfoot dead leaves the size of blankets squelched in rotten muck, and we brushed against toadstools or some similar monstrous fungi that sprouted overhead, looming as tall as fir trees would, back in my native Connecticut. The stench of stale mud and putrid decay was thick about us; moisture hung thick in the black air as any fog; but gradually a dim light grew around us. Was it only that, after a time, our eyes grew adjusted to the pitch-black night, which was not so absolute as we had thought at first? Or was it the dim phosphorescence of decay our straining eyes at length perceived? Probably it was a little of both—at any rate, the dimmest ghost of light we sensed about us, and by the faint glow we discovered we could just barely see.
Shelter was our most basic requirement, and luckily there was no lack of it. The tangled roots of the giant tree made half a hundred hiding places as they coiled and tangled and intertwined. Clambering about the twisted root-system, slipping and sliding on the slick, slimy rootlets, we chose a choice tree-cave. A double-whorl of roots coiled well above water level afforded us a smallish hollow space wherein we could rest without fear of disturbance. The entranceway was narrow, and could be easily blocked by employing shinglelike slabs of bark which lay about, littering the root-area. There was nothing we could do about drying out our clothes, however; for that, we should have to wait for time and our own body-heat to do the job for us. But at least we could rest from our ordeals and recover our strength in relative safety.
There was no lack of drinking water, with a lake-sized puddle of unknown dimensions right at our doorstep, so to speak; and, so long as we did not mind the rather brackish flavor of the scummed pool, we would not have to travel far to quench our thirst.
Food, however, was an immediate problem. In the midterraces aloft there was seldom a problem of food supplies, for edible berries the size of ripe pumpkins, and nuts like bushel baskets grew on the giant trees of the forest, to say nothing of the various kinds of wild game which afforded a wide variety of meat. But here at the bottom of the world, nuts and berries were rare if not unknown, and the species of game with which we were familiar doubtless did not come into this benighted region.
Thus when, at length, hunger drove us from our cozy cave, we faced the problem of hunting unfamiliar game in regions cloaked in almost unbroken gloom, on footing made precarious by reason of the slimy muck of the lake.
For a time we prowled about, climbing the roots, eager to spot game. But none came our way, although undoubtedly grubs and worms and other creatures dwelt here in the realm of darkness. Hunting was a tricky business, because it was easy to lose yourself in the gloom, which made one coiling root resemble every other. So we kept within hailing distance of each other, and blazed our trail with our blades. This trailblazing proved an easy trick—all we had to do was to scrape away a patch of the slimy mold that encrusted everything around us.
We searched for hours, finding nothing more edible than mushrooms. On Earth these spicy delicacies are thumb-sized; here on the World of the Green Star, of course, they were as huge as Christmas trees. It was easy enough to slice away portions large enough to stave off the pangs of hunger, although—raw and bleached white and therefore rather tasteless—they proved singularly unsatisfying fare. We chewed down the moist, flavorless fungi and made the best of things. At least they served to fill the belly, if they failed to delight the palate.
Curled up in our little cave amid the roots, we dozed, trying to sleep. The occasional splash and slither of disturbed water came to us as we sprawled in the darkness.
“What think you, lad? There must be fish in yonder lake,” Klygon mused plaintively. I yawned, trying not to think how tasty fresh fish would be just then.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But, if so, they would be several times larger than a man. I’ve had enough of that lake, thank you. You can try fishing, if you like.”
He shivered distastefully.
“Thank you, lad, but let’s leave it for the morrow. With belly full, even of tasteless fare, I be only speculating. Still… something’s making that splash, now and again. Mayhap with a good spear…”
“We don’t have any spears, good or otherwise.”
“I know, I know! But another few meals on that stringy muck, and I’ll be chewing bark, for want of something tastier.”