“Where are Vilah-ree’s menfolk, my little vixen princess?” His voice was half-angry, half-amused, as he studied the black, defiant eyes. There was a silence, and then she made up her mind.
“There aren’t any. Her people live a long time, though, when they stay in and near their trees. And they need men, poor things, to have children. But the children they do have are always more girls. They hope that someday, somehow, a boy will be born. They don’t even seem to know how they first appeared here or who or what they are. But they know that human travelers pass south and east of here. And sometimes when a lone traveler or just a few camp for the night, they—well…”
“Have a very nice dream?” Hiero asked. But he was smiling at her and, encouraged, Luchare somewhat timidly smiled back. “So you made a deal, and I got put out to stud. For a bracelet. Well, it’s a nice one, I’ll say that.”
She wrenched herself loose, her breast heaving violently. “Oh—you—man! I suppose you think I liked the idea of your making love to her! And I never heard of the bracelet until this morning!” She tore the lovely thing off and threw it at him as hard as she could. He was barely able to get his arms up and catch it to prevent a broken nose. Then he ran to her, for she was weeping bitterly, hands pressed to her eyes, the tumbled, corkscrew curls hanging around her face like some odd but beautiful foliage.
Come on, love, he thought. I was only fooling. You felt sorry for her, didn’t you?
She gulped and buried her face in his chest again, choking back the sobs before she could even use her mind.
Yes, of course I did. Any real woman who was honest would. She’s never had a man and she fell in love with you. When she said to me (it was hard to understand her at first, too) that I’d have you always, but could she have just one night, well, I forgot any jealousy. But it was still the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and don’t you forget it!
“Oh, Hiero,” she said aloud, her voice sad, “do you know what her last thought this morning was?” Maybe mine will be the first male. Do not forget me, you who have him for always. “I almost cried right then.”
He patted her back and made encouraging masculine noises. “Don’t cry, love,” he said. “I’m not mad. Besides, I did have a delightful dream.”
She looked up, saw that he was grinning at her, and finally managed a smile. “Look, I don’t want to hear any more about it, all right?”
At this point the seamen appeared in marching gear and order, coming out into the open near them, jabbering, and craning their necks as they saw the burned-over waste for the first time. Blutho and Gimp halted them and came over to join the two. Brother Aldo returned as well, leading Klootz, and Gorm emerged from the shadows of a giant tree’s base. AM were now ready, and Hiero took up his place in the lead again. But though the bear still went with him, the priest now rode upon the bull morse. Klootz’s eyes gleamed with pleasure and he bugled, a hoarse, bellowing cry which echoed under the cloudy heavens and through the humid air until the echoes died away into silence beneath the arches of the mighty wood.
Hiero looked back, hoping for a glimpse of the wood sprite whose dream he had shared, but he saw nothing. Once from the now silent forest, a golden burst of song rang out, but whether it was Vilah-ree or not, he never knew.
They will follow us along the edge of their realm, came Aldo’s thought from the rear of the column. They wish to know if the House is alive and think you can tell them. So the queen told Luchare.
It’s alive, he sent back. But I hope we can avoid it, 1 made no impression before. Are we carrying coals?
Yes, in a clay pot. We can kindle fire in seconds and we have many arrows ready, on my order to Gimp.
Let’s hope they won’t he needed.
They marched south at a steady pace along the wood edge, which towered like a rampart of green, with brown bark only rarely glimpsed. Occasionally, small bursts of flame off to their right showed them where the tree women still set fire to patches of unfired blight, working their way south on a general level with the column. Eventually even this ceased, however. They stayed a quarter of a mile out in the waste; and tramping over the bare burn, which was only gently rolling, the men made very good time.
They halted for a brief meal and then went on. Toward evening, the long-gathered clouds released a torrential bath upon their heads, and visibility became so poor and the newly bared earth such a glutinous mud that it was obviously silly to carry on. They made camp under the trees and had trouble even there in getting a fire to light. Eventually one was got going, under a lean-to, and they managed a savory stew for supper. The rain was warm, though, and all there were seasoned travelers, to whom a little extra water meant nothing.
It rained most of the night. When dawn came, they knew they were reaching the end of the forest at last. The trees themselves were changing. Palms and acacia-like shrubs began to appear in quantity. The real broad-leafed giants dwindled and soon no longer occurred at all. The heat steadily increased. To the south, wide, grassy plains became dimly visible, rolling through thinning copses of trees to the distant horizon. On their left, the outlying fingers of the eastern desert drew nearer, and with the desert came the all-too-familiar livid colors of the fungus belt. Down there in the south of the forest, the fire had hardly touched anything, for the House had not come so close to the trees, indeed was a number of miles away. Perhaps the absence of the great trees made the area less attractive to it.
However, there was plenty of wild game. Beasts resembling deer and creatures like large-horned antelope grazed in herds here and there, only moving slowly out of the men’s way. Most were unfamiliar to Hiero. Once they came upon a short-tailed, striped brute, half as big as Klootz, which was feeding on the carcass of something fully three times the morse’s size. They wisely skirted this scene, and the huge carnivore, which looked like a cross between a bear and a ten-times-magnified lynx, was content, or possibly replete, only growling in tones of thunder. That night they built both large fires and a high stockade, making camp early in order to construct the latter. The bellowings and roarings all about them made this move seem a wise one. This was evidently not a country which either knew or feared men.
The next morning dawned clear and hot, the humid air perfumed like a breath of summer. Flowering grasses scented each step. On this day they turned and marched east, and all the leaders were in front. The time had come, by all their reckonings, to search for the Lost City. Maps were no longer of use.
As they advanced out into the semi-scrub, semi-desert area, the colors of the House drew inexorably nearer. Soon they could distinguish individual growths, gnarled objects like giant, oil-brown shelf fungi mostly, and squat puffball things of dirty purplish red and yellow, whose pocked surface exuded some shiny substance equally repellent. The things were unlike the northern growths, but the hardened muck did not exist here, evidently not having been needed. They had lost all traces of the great fire, in fact, for it had never come this far to the south.
Hiero called a halt. “I’m not putting our necks into that damned, horrid thing’s trap without a very careful search,” he said. He indicated the first huge magenta puffballs. “Those things aren’t half a mile away. That’s quite close enough, judging from my own experience.”