Jorian drew his forearm across his forehead and sat down heavily. His heart still pounded from his exertions and from the excitement of this narrow escape. Now that he looked back, he could scarcely believe that he had survived.
Although Jorian was a young man of unusual size, strength, and agility, he entertained few illusions about the chances of a bound, unarmed man's escaping from the midst of his foes, even with the help of magical spells. Having practiced with arms for years and having fought in two real battles and several skirmishes, he knew the limitations of one man's powers. Moreover, spells were notoriously erratic and untrustworthy, and Jorian's break for life required perfect surprise, coordination and timing. Perhaps, he thought, Karadur's Mulvanian gods had helped after all.
He glanced swiftly about, thinking: So this is the afterworld, whither souls released from our own plane are sent for their next incarnations! He stood on a strip of artificially smooth grass, perhaps forty feet wide. The strip was bounded on either side by a broad strip of pavement, in turn about twenty feet in breadth.
More grass lay beyond these roadways. Beyond these lawns rose tree-covered hills, on some of which Jorian thought he discerned houses. The question struck him: Why should anybody in his right mind build two splendid roads side by side?
Then a swiftly rising, whirring, purring, swishing sound drew his attention. It reminded him unpleasantly of the sound of a crossbow bolt, but much louder. In a flash, his roving glance fixed itself upon the source of the sound.
Along one of the paved strips, an object was hurtling towards him. At first he thought it a monster of legend: a low, humpbacked thing with a pair of great, glaring, glassy eyes in front. Below the eyes and just above the ground, a row of silvery fangs was bared in a fiendish grin.
Jorian's courage sank; but, as he backed away from the road, drawing the little knife and preparing to sell his life dearly, the thing whizzed by at incredible speed—a speed like that of a hawk swooping at its prey. As the object passed, Jorian saw that it had wheels; that it was, in fact, no monster but a vehicle. He glimpsed the head and shoulders of a man within, and then the carriage was gone with a diminishing whirr and sigh.
As Jorian, disconcerted, stood staring, another whirr behind him made him spin around. There went another vehicle—and yet another, a huge one with a towering, boxlike body and many wheels. In his own world, he was deemed a man of signal courage; but even the bravest loses his assurance in totally strange surroundings, where he knows not whence or in what guise danger may come.
Trapped between the two roads, Jorian wondered how he could ever escape to join Karadur. The roads extended in either direction as far as the eye could reach, neither converging nor diverging. It seemed as though he could walk along the grassy median strip for leagues in either direction without finding a safe means of exit.
After several more vehicles had passed, Jorian realized that one road was for eastbound traffic only and the other for westbound; and that, furthermore, the cars did not leave the pavement. So he was safe for the nonce. It might even be possible, by choosing a moment when no chariots were in sight, to dash across one of the roads to safety.
Jorian nerved himself to approach one of the paved strips. The road appeared to be made of some cement or stucco, with periodic narrow, black, transverse lines of a stuff resembling pitch. He jumped back as a huge vehicle roared past, buffeting him with the wind of its passage.
Jorian was appalled. He hoped that his soul would never have to live out an incarnation on this plane. One of those vehicles could squash him like a bug. How ironic to escape from the headsman's ax in his own world only to be run over in this! He wondered that anyone here survived long enough to become a driver of these chariots—unless the natives lived their entire lives in them, never setting foot on the ground. Perhaps they had no feet to set on the ground…
An approaching vehicle drew up and stopped with a thin, mouselike squeak. A door opened and a man got out. He had, Jorian saw, normal legs, encased in gray pantaloons that hung down to his shoes. He wore a hat with a broad, flat brim, and from a stout belt depended a small leather case. From this case projected the curved handle of some instrument, which Jorian guessed to be a carpenter's tool.
The man approached Jorian and spoke, but Jorian could make nothing of his words. Although he knew several languages, that of the man in the pantaloons was strange to him.
"I am Jorian of Ardamai, son of Evor the clockmaker," he said. This had been his name until that day, five years before, when he had innocently caught a human head hurtling through the air and found himself king of Xylar.
Staring intently at Jorian's golden crown, the man shook his head and said something else. Jorian repeated his statement in Mulvanian and in Shvenic. Looking blank, the man uttered more sounds.
Then another voice sounded; Jorian jumped, for he had not seen anyone else nearby. The voice, speaking unintelligible words in a squawking, metallic tone, seemed to come from the man's vehicle. The man smiled a forced smile of reassurance, and said something more to Jorian, and went back to his carriage, which soon roared off.
Jorian turned back to his rope and began to coil it around his waist. He recalled his instructions: Walk southeast one league, lower himself back to his own world, and await Karadur, if the holy man had not already reached the rendezvous.
But which way was southeast? Luckily the sky was clear, as it had been in Xylar. The execution had been timed for noon, and little time had elapsed since Jorian had placed his neck upon the block. Soon, however, the sun's motion would make it useless as a directional guide. He would have to risk crossing one of these roads despite the danger.
Looking along the nearest paved strip to make sure that no more vehicles approached, Jorian darted across. He continued to the edge of the lawnlike sward, where plants grew more naturally. He broke off a stem of long field grass, found a patch of bare earth, and set the stem in it upright. Then, with the point of the little knife, he traced a line where the shadow of the grass stem fell. He drew a transverse line, then bisected the near left angle by still another line. That gave him his direction.
As he set out, Jorian paused now and then to cut a tree seedling and trim it to a wand two or three feet long. The first of these sticks he kept, cutting a notch in it every hundred steps. By thrusting the other sticks into the ground every fifty or hundred paces and backsighting, he kept in a fairly straight line. Every thousand steps, he checked his direction with the sun.
When he had cut fifty notches in his first wand, he halted in a gully between two wooded hillsides. Although he had seen houses in the distance, he was thankful that his march had not taken him close to any.
He counted the notches to make sure, unwound the rope from his waist, and took a turn with it around a tree. Then he uttered the Mulvanian incantation that Karadur had taught him:
He felt his feet sinking, as if the solid ground beneath him were turning to quicksand. Then it gave way, and Jorian fell. He fetched up with a jerk, hanging suspended by the rope between earth—his own earth—and the clear blue heavens.
Above him, the two strands of rope arose, diverging slightly, until they faded out a yard above his head. Below, he was disconcerted to see the dark, stagnant waters of the Marsh of Moru. Karadur had told him that their rendezvous would be near the swamp, but he had not expected to come out right over it. To the north rolled the fields and woodlots of Xylar. To the south rose the foothills of the mighty Lograms, and beyond them the snow-topped peaks of that range, which sundered the Novarian city-states from the tropical empire of Mulvan.