"Go!"
He gestured.
Gaynor continued to defy him.
Scholar Fi moved his mouth again, this time in a kind of echoing whisper. About a dozen crystal spears came crashing down a foot or two from the Nazis. We stood there and watched as Gaynor gave the command to retreat. Slowly the party disappeared into the darkness.
"We are unlikely to see them again," said the Off-Moo. "Their time will be taken up with defending themselves rather than attacking us."
Fromental's eyes met mine. Like me, he did not share the scholar's confidence.
"It's perhaps as well we're traveling to Mu Ooria," he said. "We should at least report this."
"I agree," said the scholar. "And because of the circumstances, I suggest you take the voluk, rather than go on foot. We have no clear idea how closely the time flows coincide in this season, so it is as well to be cautious." He was not expressing anxiety, rather common sense.
Fromental nodded his huge head. "It will be interesting," he said.
"What is the volukl" I asked him, after we had parted from Scholar Fi.
"I have never seen it," he said.
When he returned me to my quarters, Ravenbrand was waiting for me. My hosts were telling me to be prepared for the worst.
I slept fitfully for what seemed a few hours, but my dreams were confused. I saw a white hare running across the underground landscape, running through sharp crags and looming inverted pillars, running towards the towers of Mu Ooria, pursued by a red-tongued, jet-black panther. I saw two horsemen riding across a frozen lake. One horseman wore armor of silvered copper, glaring in the light from a pale blue sky. The other, who challenged him, wore armor of black iron, fashioned in fantastic forms, with a helm on his head that resembled a dragon about to take flight. The face of the black-clad horseman was my twin. I could not see the face of the other horseman, but I imagined it to be Gaynor, perhaps because I had encountered him most recently. As I fell in and out of these dreams, I wondered about my doppelganger, who had clearly not wanted me to interfere in the Off-Moo's defense. Was I deluded? Was it only I who could see him? Was there some Freudian explanation to my dreams and visions? And if what I saw was real, how was it possible? I consoled myself that in Mu Ooria I might learn a little more of the truth. Oona, for instance, would be glad to educate me. And there, I decided, I would ask for help in returning to my own Germany, to join in the fight against an evil which must soon engulf the whole of Europe and perhaps the world.
I had been awake for only a short time when Fromental called for me. I was surprised to see that he was carrying a sword at his hip and a bow and quiver of arrows on his back.
"You're expecting attack?" I asked.
"I see no point in not being ready for trouble. But I believe Scholar Fi's optimism is probably well founded. Your cousin and his band will have much to occupy them in the Lands Beyond the Light."
"And why do you travel to Mu Ooria?" I asked him.
"I hope to meet with some friends of Lord Renyard's," he said. And would not be drawn further.
I had wrapped my sword in a cloth and bound it up so that I,
too, could sling it over my back. I had a few provisions and changes of clothing and was now wearing my own familiar outfit, complete with deerstalker, which looked even more incongruous than Fromental's kepi.
After we had breakfasted on some rather bland broth, he led me through the twisting streets until we stood at last on the banks of the river, in a kind of cut where the waters were calmer. Scholar Fi and a group of Off-Moo were already on the harborside, apparently in lighthearted conference.
My own astonished attention was drawn to what was moored there. At first I thought the thing alive, but then I guessed it to be cunningly fashioned from some kind of crystalline stone, predominantly of dark marOone and crimson. The massive vessel seemed to have been carved from a single ruby. Yet the stone was light as glass and sat easily in the waters like a ship. The voluk looked like some mythical sea beast drawn up from the depths where it had long since petrified. As I regarded its fishy, reptilian face, all flared nostrils and jowls and coiling tendrils, I imagined that it looked at me. Was it alive? I had a nagging memory .. .
On the voluk's back was a large, flat area, created by a kind of enormous saddle, making a platform, a raft large enough to take fifteen or twenty passengers and steered by two massive sweeps, one on each side.
I was impressed by the size as well as the complexity of the carving and remarked on it to Fromental as we followed the Off-Moo crew up the gangplank to where they took their places at the oars. The Frenchman was amused by this. "It's nature's hand, not the Off-Moo's, you must blame for this monster. They draw these remains from their lake and find that with only minor modification, they can employ them as rafts. But, of course, they're rarely used, since they have to be dragged back upstream. Clearly, by putting a voluk at our disposal, our hosts are showing they believe the situation to be serious."
"They expect attack from Gaynor, when they are so easily able to defend themselves? Have they a means of seeing into the future?"
"They can see a million futures. Which in some ways is the same as not seeing any. They trust their instincts, I suspect, and know Gaynor's type. They know he will scarcely sleep until he has been revenged for what happened out there. They have survived for so long, my friend, because they anticipate danger and are ready to counter it. They will not underestimate men such as Gaynor. Whatever lives out there in the Lands Beyond the Light seems dangerous enough, from what I've learned. But the Off-Moo know that periodically one of the creatures unites the others in a truce, long enough to try to attack Mu Ooria. They can see that Gaynor and Klosterheim have the intelligence and motive to succeed in creating some kind of alliance of the darklands tribes. All hate Mu Ooria because at some stage Mu Ooria has welcomed them and then banished them to the outer darkness."
"Are we all eventually banished there?"
"By no means. Wait until you get to Mu Ooria herself!" Fromental clapped me on the back, clearly relishing the wonders he would soon be showing me.
Scholar Fi approached us as we settled into the shallow seats at the center of the raft. He was gracious. He hoped we would return, he said, and let them all know how we fared. Then he went ashore, the gangplank was raised, and the slender Off-Moo, in their nodding conical cowls and their flowing pale robes, lent their strength and experience to the sweeps, guiding us out of the calm water and into the black, star-studded channel of the main river.
At once the current caught us. The crew had little to do but keep the monstrous hull on course. We moved with alarming speed, sometimes striking white water as the river narrowed between high banks and seemed to pour even deeper into the core of the planet.
Not, of course, that we were any longer on the planet, as we knew it. This was the Mittelmarch, which obeyed the laws of Elfland.
The dark waters were surprisingly clear and it was often possible to see to the bottom, where the rock had been worn to an artificial smoothness. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that we were actually moving along a man-made canal. The light grew increasingly bright as we neared the lake and the temperature also grew warmer, suggesting that this inland sea was the source of the Off-Moo civilization. It was to them what the sun and the Nile were to Egypt.
Although both banks were visible most of the time, the shadows and strange shapes of the rocks, the way the light from the water constantly varied, made it seem that the river course was populated with all kinds of monsters. Gradually I became used to the phantasmagoric nature of the swiftly passing landscape. But then, as I admired a grove of slender stalagmites which grew just on the edge of the water, like Earthly reeds, I was sure I saw an animal of some kind.