I suppose perhaps they might, he added to himself—but I know that they did not. I have heard the voices.
He said aloud, “They once held all the country beyond the Gates of Death. Even the place where Kushat stands. The Festival Stones were once a tower like that one. You can see the ruins of others all through the Norlands.”
“But there are no traces left of any cities like this one.”
“No. The metal would have been carried off and beaten into useful things, every scrap of it, ages gone.”
Balin grunted. The pace of the whole column had imperceptibly slowed and the people were bunched together closely now, very quiet, mothers hanging tight to their children, husbands close to their wives. The avenue they had been following led straight in under the edge of the shimmering cloud. The line of demarcation was close ahead now. Now more than a hundred feet.
Balin gave Stark a queer desperate look. He lifted the talisman as though he might be going to hand it to him, or throw it away. Then he set his jaw tight and said something that Stark could not hear, and he took the silk wrappings away so that the crystal lay bare in his hands.
The people sighed. Thanis gave Balin a look of fierce pride. “Lead us,” she said. He held out the talisman in his cupped palms and walked ahead. Stark ceased to watch Balin. Instead he looked up and on either side, going close behind him, his body tensed like a spring, trying to see through walls and hear through silence and feel through the intangible.
Balin paused under the edge of the cloud and nothing happened, except that after a step or two he halted and said with almost childish surprise, “It’s warm.”
Stark nodded. He was still looking warily around, seeing nothing. The city lay in a kind of summer dream, full of sweet color and soft shadow and the drowsy stillness of sleep. Overhead the sky had vanished in a quivering mirage.
And it was warm. Too warm, after the bitter cold. It gave a feeling of ease and pleasant languor. The people began to loosen their cloaks. Then, as they went on, they laid aside their burdens, piling them neatly together with the unwanted garments, mindful that they would have to be picked up again when they returned.
The avenue was wide. On either side the buildings marched, or on occasion fell back to form an odd-shaped square. Here where they were undamaged and free of ice the strangeness of their shaping was more vividly apparent. They gave an illusion of tallness though actually they were not, being limited by the height of the tower. Some of the structures seemed to have no useful purpose at all. They shot up in twisted spires, or branched in weird spiky arms like giant cacti done in pink and gold, or looped in helical formations, sometimes erect, sometimes lying on their sides. Ornaments, Stark thought, or monuments, perhaps with some religious significance. And then it struck him that they were more like the markers in some monstrous game. It was an unpleasant thought. He did not know why he had it. Then he realized that the odd forms were repeated, distributed throughout the checkerboard streets of the city according to an unknown but definite plan.
Passing close by one of the cactus-shapes, he saw that the metal spikes were long and very sharp, and that there were traces on them of some dark stain.
Thanis’ urgent voice said, “Balin! Balin…”
The talisman had been warming and glowing between his hands. Now it shone softly in the growing dusk, under that unnatural sky. And Balin had stopped. His face was ashen. He was like a man in shock. He made a moaning sound and then by sheer convulsive reflex he flung the talisman away from him, exactly as Stark had long ago in the tower. The crystal rolled a little way and lay gleaming.
The people stood still, appalled. Thanis put her hand on Balin’s shoulder and looked frightenedly at Stark. Ciaran watched from between her guards, attentive as a hawk.
Stark said to Balin, “You heard the voices?”
“Yes.” Balin caught his breath and straightened up, but his face was still bloodless. “Clearly, in here.” He touched his head. “I heard them louder and louder and all of a sudden I understood. I understood them, Stark.” He looked around at the enclosing buildings, afraid with no ordinary fear. “This is an evil place.” He shouted at the people. “Go back! Get out. Get out!”
He started to run. Stark caught him. The people hung on the edge of panic. He said to them, “Wait. Stay together.” They milled uncertainly. Those in the back were too far away to see or know what was happening. They only knew that something was wrong. A woman’s voice cried out, shrill with fear. In desperation Stark spoke to Lugh and Rogain. “Keep them together! If we start running we’re lost.” They left Ciaran and went rapidly down the line, shouting in brisk, authoritative voices although both of them were white around the lips. Stark looked at Ciaran. “Here is your chance. Take it if you will.”
She shook her head and smiled, holding up her bound hands. Her eyes looked past him at the city.
Stark shook Balin and said fiercely, “Will you stand now?”
“I’ll stand,” he whispered. “But we must go, Stark. We must get out.”
“All right. But wait.”
Stark went to where the talisman lay. He knew now what it was, and that took some of the terror out of it. Even so his hands shook as he picked it up. If it had not been for all the lives that might depend on it, he would have let it stay where it was till doomsday.
The thing glowed and glimmered in his hands. He looked at it, and the voices burst inside his skull.
Not true voices. Probably these creatures had physical voices, but the crystal was not designed to carry them. It transmitted the thought-words that had to come before the spoken ones. At first they were a weird jumble, amplification of the tiny chitterings he had heard from so far away. Their unhumanness then had shocked him into breaking contact. Now it was overwhelming. Because he knew that his own selfish survival depended on it as well as everybody else’s, he fought it out this time. He hung on until the voices slipped suddenly over the edge of comprehension.
He understood them. Partly. No human would ever understand all of what these minds were thinking and talking about. But he understood enough. The crystal was unselective. It brought him all the flying fragments of speech within its range. Stark’s mind became a sort of camera obscura looking on nightmare, where narrow doorways opened into bright-lit chambers, briefly flashing, each one a shard of lost sanity, each one shining with the phosphorescence of decay. And each one gleeful. That was the worst of it. The laughter. They were happy, these creatures. Terribly happy.
Most of them. Not all. Some of them were disturbed. Some of them had become aware.
Alarm broke the contact for him this time, at least enough that he could push the voices back. He clawed desperately for a grasp at the real world again, not easy since the real world that surrounded him was their world and so not immediately recognizable. There was a pale blur close to him that seemed familiar. It resolved itself gradually into Thanis’ face.
“It’s too late to go,” he said. “They know we’re here.”
He turned to speak to Balin and the others. At the back of the line a woman screamed abruptly. Men’s voices followed, crying out harshly. Lugh appeared, not quite running. “Stark,” he said, and pointed. “Stark…”
Stark moved aside, where he could see down the long wide avenue past the line of march.