Here there were too many oddly shaped shadows, strange sounds (though those were far away). It was better to camp, even though our traveling time was thus cut to a crawl, and be sure we were on guard.
By some favor of fortune we did chance upon meager grazing and water each day. Jervon remarked that, though there was no sign of any road, it might be that we had stumbled on some travelers’ route—perhaps long forsaken.
I watched my gryphon anxiously, hoping it might in some way offer a clue as to whether we were headed in the right direction or not. I did not know what I expected, it was mainly hope that kept me at that quest. Only the globe remained ever the same.
Jervon wove a zigzag path ahead of us, still hunting a track. returning always to report he found none. Perforce, because we had to have some goal, we chose to head toward the line of heights in the west—those that loomed purple-black at night and brown by day. They were the only noticeable landmarks.
On the second day Jervon returned at a fast trot from one of his side expeditions. We had kept our horses to a walk for their own sakes and this burst of speed on his part suggested trouble.
“There is an oasis with water where there has been a camp,” he reported, “and recently.”
So slim a chance that that camp had been Kerovan’s. Still I at once swung my mare in that direction, the others with me. The oasis lay in a narrow cleft, cutting below the surface of this sandy waste. It held greenery, dark and withered-looking. The water of the stream was not pleasant appearing either, rather dark and turgid as if it were a stagnant pool, though there was a slow, rolling current. However, our beasts drank greedily as Jervon pointed to where grass had been shortened by grazing and that not long ago.
“There is something else—” He beckoned us to follow him between two bushes.
I sniffed and wished I had not. There was the sweet corruption-smell of death here! The ground was disturbed, a pile of stones covering a narrow, filled-in depression.
“An animal would not be buried.” Elys surveyed the stones. “But that space is too small to hold a man.”
To my relief she was right, only a half-grown child could be in such a short grave. But a child—Kerovan could not have killed a child!
Elys’s eyes were closed, she swayed, Jervon was at her side instantly, his hand out to steady her. She shuddered before she looked at us again.
“Not of our blood—it was not of our blood. Something strange—or perhaps not strange in this land. But whatever it was, it lived as a servant of the Dark.”
I drew back involuntarily. The Dark—that signified the evil Powers and all who served them. Had Kerovan been attacked again by such force, which he spawned in the Waste?
“Leave be!” Jervon’s order came harshly. “There is no need to fear the dead, do not mind search for it. We must not meddle.” It was the first time he had spoken so, with such a show of authority.
She turned away. “You are right. And this is truly dead—for many days I would say.”
“Then Kerovan—” I stumbled over one of the rolling stones. He must not have been responsible for that death, though he could have buried the corpse. I held on to that belief as tightly as I could. I hoped that he had not fronted again—and alone—a dire danger of the Dark.
“I do not believe,” Jervon continued, “that this is a place of good omen.”
The three of us withdrew from that grave place, as far down the cut as we could, allowing our mounts, who showed no distaste for their surroundings, to graze through the hottest part of the day. When the sun was westering we started on.
It was when we topped the far bank of that sinister hollow that what I had waited for so long happened. The gryphon flashed with more than the sun’s reflection. At my cry the others drew rein, while I shifted in the saddle, this way and that, my attention close fixed upon the ball—until I thought I judged in what direction it flashed the brightest.
My companions willingly granted me the lead and I pushed Bural at a faster gait to where a circle of pointed rocks rose abruptly from the sand-drifted ground. Lying to one side there was a mass of dry stuff, which had plainly been dug from the core of the rock huddle. Powdery, disintegrating wood mingled with remains of long-withered vegetation. Perched on the highest point of that moldering heap sat a grinning skull and I thought that I sighted other bits of brittle bones in the decayed mass.
“Someone made camp here.” Jervon slipped from the saddle, went to peer within the circle of rocks. He stirred the dark heap a little with the toe of his boot. “This may once have been a nest lying within that.”
“The nest of something large enough to hunt such prey?” Elys gestured toward the skull.
Jervon stopped to view it the closer, though he did not touch it.
“Very old, I think. Also what laired here once must have been gone for a long time,” came his verdict.
I cupped the crystal between my palms. Now heat flared from it, startling me into a cry of pain. I let the globe fall, to swing at the end of its chain. Though I made no move of body it continued to move. In spite of my disgust and, yes, a growing fear, I, too, dismounted, advancing unwillingly toward the heap of debris, where that hollow-eyed skull rested—by chance or design.
Then . . .
There appeared in the dark eye hollows of the skull (I could not be so preyed upon by illusion even here) an answering fraction of light. My shaking hand was at my mouth, keeping back a cry of panic to which I refused voice.
The crystal now lifted from its place on my breast, pointing outward, pulling the chain that supported it into a taut line, as if it strained for freedom. I had said it would be a guide, now it drew me toward that ancient, time-worn thing of bone.
Unable to control the gryphon, I knelt, my hands going out, in spite of my efforts not to move. I was not going to touch that dry and years-leached bone—I was not!
The crystal became a ball of sparkling light, so bright I could no longer look directly at it. While to my ears, or perhaps within my head, came a very faint sound, like a far-off solemn chanting, such as might mark some ceremony. I wanted to put my hands over my ears and run as far as I could from that skull.
No skull—no! Air curdled about the yellowish bone, took on visible substance, building up a thin and unsubstantial vision of a face, a head. The eyes, the sharply jutting nose—so pointed that it might be likened to a bird’s beak—overhanging a small chin, obliquely set eyes . . . No human face!
There was an urgency in the light-sparked eyes, a demand made upon me—but one I could not interpret. There had been something lost, which must be found. There was danger to be faced—there was—
The wisp of face vanished. While the bone it had built itself upon—I gasped! That, too, was crumbling into ashy powder. I cried out, “What is it that you would have me do? What do you want?”
The chant of that far-off ritual ceased, the terrible demand faded. Now the englobed gryphon lost its blaze of light, fell to rest again near my heart. Of the skull nothing remained.
“It wanted . . .” I stammered, turning to my companions, but I had no real explanation for them.
Jervon’s face was impassive, Elys stared beyond me into that hollow among the rocks from which the skull and the rest had been cleared.
“There was something there!” I was obsessed with what I had seen. But had they also shared my vision?
“One who dies during some task laid upon him for good or ill,” Elys said slowly, “clings to a shadow of life, unwilling to depart to new roads until that task is fulfilled. I think that such a shadow clung here. It is now gone—for good or ill.”