Meanwhile, he fed himself, thinking gloomily about Segi and the hours before as he did. A few more nights like that would put paid to both of them! Segi was strictly diurnal, and though Hiero could travel in the dark, it was a terribly dangerous thing to do in this unknown land. He thought of the flying horror of the night and whistled to himself. Never before had he been attacked from the air, unless he counted the great birds from whom he had saved Luchare. But that had been an artificial situation, the creatures being lured by human torturers to their prey.
That devil bat was under no one’s control but its own, of that he was sure. What a place the world was, with things like that in it, unknown until they struck at one!
He eyed the gorge as he saddled Segi, but nothing flew there save some small birds resembling swallows, seeking insects in the drizzle and fog. The chorus of the night had gone too, only an occasional distant howl or roar attesting to the presence of the hungry bellies of their owners as they slunk back to their lairs. Strange birds sang sweetly or called in mocking echoes from the slopes above, the thin patter of the falling water hardly muffling the sound.
Nevertheless, Hiero was very cautious as he dismantled his barricade and led Segi out. But, save for some torn bushes, no trace remained of the brute which had clawed at the barrier. The man mounted, and the big hopper obediently set off down a narrow alley in the towering trees which gave promise of leading to a gentler slope upward.
A long time later, the two were deep in the folds and ravines of the rising hills. Hiero could not have said where he was going and, indeed, seemed to be proceeding at random. His headache had increased, but he paid it no outward attention. Had an observer been there to note what transpired, there would have seemed a strange look in the man’s eyes, one of puzzled concentration, as if some thought were being explained. Or imposed.
It was the beast and not the man who was growing uneasy. Long since, the last bird calls had died away behind them. The thin rain no longer fell, but swirls of increasing fog curled about their bodies now, and visibility had dropped to a few yards in front and to the sides. Great moss-covered stones loomed out of the mist at them and then fell away as they passed. The trees had been largely replaced by monstrous arums and broad-leafed plants like vast rhubarbs. Ferns were everywhere, some with trunks many feet thick and with heads far out of sight in the gray mist overhead. The footing was spongy, and the hopper’s pads made a flat squelching sound each time his weight hit the damp soil underfoot. His eyes rolled nervously and his long mule ears flickered constantly as he sought for some sound over the drip and plash of the water, the noise of laden rivulets trickling into their path from the surrounding gullies and heights far above.
Even a normal man without Hiero’s skills as a woodsman would have been nervous by now, whether or not he possessed any added powers of the mind. But Hiero seemed caught up in a trance. One part of his brain noted absently that they were in the bottom of a deep ravine or canyon which was leading them upward on a slow incline. Yet the fact was simply recorded as having no relevance of any kind. Segi’s snorts and fidgets were firmly but gently controlled, and the big beast, trembling yet obedient, went on at the man’s behest. His mingled affection and years of constant training mastered his fears and his animal awareness that all was not well.
For some hours more, they went on in this manner. The ground underfoot, or rather the mixture of moss and mud, began to level off. The upward incline ceased and now took, after a while, an equally shallow downturn. The dribbles of water through which they splashed began to run gently in the way that they themselves were going.
The silence was not oppressive. Save for their own breathing, the creak of leather, and the splash of Segi’s feet, nothing stirred in the mist about them. Only the lonely fall of water from heights above and the drip from the leaves surrounded them. It was as if they were lost in some strange world of silent fog, some place where active life never came, but which, since the beginning of time, had been given over to the pearl gray of the mists and the silent, watching plants. It did not seem a place that wanted or would endure movement and the bustle of everyday sounds and stirrings. Here there was only the still life of water and plant, moss and stone. Yet they continued, over marsh and boggy stretches, broken by reaches of smooth, wet rock where even the carpets of omnipresent moss could find no rooting. The mist, light in one place and darker in another, curled in ever-thicker coils around them, deadening even the sounds they made, as if trying to blanket them with its own silence.
Presently, Hiero knew, they were to come to a wider place. The pale fog was no thinner, but his inner knowledge was sure, They were no longer in a narrow ravine, but in some opening, a bowl of some sort in the heart of the hills. Here something waited for them, as it had waited for countless others. Here they had been drawn over vast and empty leagues for some purpose by that which ruled this land of mist. All thinking suspended, all purpose stilled, Hiero reined Segi to a halt and looked about him in idle wonder. The mists lifted slowly as he did so, and he saw the water.
Before them, black and smooth, a tarn stretched out of sight until the fog rolled in upon it and hid its farther shores. They were on a low bank, a sort of reef which projected out into the silent water, its basis something firmer than the moss and ooze through which they had come for so long. It was not rock, but mass upon mass of something white and rounded, with here and there a sharp projection rising above the other rotting matter. Stretching out around them as far as they could see was a shore of bones, moss-covered and old, with a few whiter and newer additions. They had come upon a graveyard of a strange and horrible kind.
How many generations, how many lives of the world outside, must have been spent to create that vast and moldering wrack of skeletons, not even the inhabitant of the lake could have said.
There was no discrimination among the relics of the past. Skulls of the giants, with crumbling tusks many yards in length, were piled in heaps, mingled with the slender crania of the hoofed runners on the grass. Savage fangs, half-buried under the lichen and mildew, showed that meat eaters were not exempt. The femurs and hoofs, the occipitals and astragali of hordes of smaller beasts were inextricably entwined through and over the huge ribs and metacarpals of the greatest brutes. From dead eye sockets, the ghosts of reptiles stared in empty equality at the mammals. All of evolution had met in the common fate of their mortality. The only conquerors were the dampness, the mold, and the swirling mist. The only epitaph was silence.
As quiet now as the dead around them, man and hopper waited. Even Segi had stopped his nervous trembling and had lapsed into a cowed stillness. Hiero simply sat, a copper statue on a bronzed steed. The two heads stared before them at the dark lake, seemingly as patient as the hills which held them captive. The mist dripped unregarded from the leather headband of the Metz. He had discarded his now useless hat days before. His dark eyes looked fixedly forward at the water, never wavering, with no emotion stirring in their depths. He was waiting for a summons. Yet when it came, it came so strangely that his body trembled with the shock. For it came in his mind.
Welcome, Two-Legs! You have been a long time upon your journey, as you and yours count time. That which bears you has helped to bring you to me. Leave the animal now. It has served its purpose, or part of its purpose. It has no further use in our dealings together. Follow the shore around to the right and you will be more comfortable. We have much to discuss, we two.