“What’s going on here, Master Hiero?” Gimp asked as they picked their way to a burned-over mound where a forest giant had fallen in flames the previous night. From this eminence, whence tiny curls of acrid smoke still rose into the sunlight, they looked out over the late battlefield.
Far away, rolling and undulating, the land stretched, blackened now and scorched by the cleansing flames. But in the remote distance, yet well before the crags and lofty sand dunes of the desert proper, the fire had come to a halt. Even with unaided eyes, they could see that the strident ochers, repellent mauves, and sickly orange hues of the House’s crop were still in existence. From a quick glance around, Hiero figured that the House somehow had saved about a third of its realm. He pulled out his far-looker and adjusted the lenses, The edge of the fired area was five miles off at least.
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.