So preoccupied was he, that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord.
"Cold again so quickly, Maskull?"
"What do you want?" he asked absently, still looking over the side. "It's extraordinary how drawn I feel to all this."
"You wish to take a hand?"
"I wish to get down."
"Oh, we have a good way to go yet… So you really feel different?"
"Different from what? What are you talking about?" said Maskull, still lost in abstraction.
Oceaxe laughed again. "It would be strange if we couldn't make a man of you, for the material is excellent."
After that, she turned her back once more.
The air islands differed from water islands in another way. They were not on a plane surface, but sloped upward, like a succession of broken terraces, as the journey progressed. The shrowk had hitherto been flying well above the ground; but now, when a new line of towering cliffs confronted them, Oceaxe did not urge the beast upward, but caused it to enter a narrow canyon, which intersected the mountains like a channel. They were instantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above thirty feet wide; the walls stretched upward on both sides for many hundred feet. It was as cool as an ice chamber. When Maskull attempted to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw nothing but black obscurity.
"What is at the bottom?" he asked.
"Death for you, if you go to look for it."
"We know that. I mean, is there any kind of life down there?"
"Not that I have ever heard of," said Oceaxe, "but of course all things are possible."
"I think very likely there is life," he returned thoughtfully.
Her ironical laugh sounded out of the gloom. "Shall we go down and see?"
"You find that amusing?"
"No, not that. What I do find amusing is the big stranger with the beard, who is so keenly interested in everything except himself."
Maskull then laughed too. "I happen to be the only thing in Tormance which is not a novelty for me."
"Yes, but I am a novelty for you."
The channel went zigzagging its way through the belly of the mountain, and all the time they were gradually rising.
"At least I have heard nothing like your voice before," said Maskull, who, since he had no longer anything to look at, was at last ready for conversation.
"What's the matter with my voice?"
"It's all that I can distinguish of you now; that's why I mentioned it."
"Isn't it clear - don't I speak distinctly?"
"Oh, it's clear enough, but - it's inappropriate."
"Inappropriate?"
"I won't explain further," said Maskull, "but whether you are speaking or laughing, your voice is by far the loveliest and strangest instrument I have ever listened to. And yet I repeat, it is inappropriate."
"You mean that my nature doesn't correspond?"
He was just considering his reply, when their talk was abruptly broken off by a huge and terrifying, but not very loud sound rising up from the gulf directly underneath them. It was a low, grinding, roaring thunder.
"The ground is rising under us!" cried Oceaxe.
"Shall we escape?"
She made no answer, but urged the shrowk's flight upward, at such a steep gradient that they retained their seats with difficulty. The floor of the canyon, upheaved by some mighty subterranean force, could be heard, and almost felt, coming up after them, like a gigantic landslip in the wrong direction. The cliffs cracked, and fragments began to fall. A hundred awful noises filled the air, growing louder and louder each second - splitting, hissing, cracking, grinding, booming, exploding, roaring. When they had still fifty feet or so to go, to reach the top, a sort of dark, indefinite sea of broken rocks and soil appeared under their feet, ascending rapidly, with irresistible might, accompanied by the most horrible noises. The canal was filled up for two hundred yards, before and behind them. Millions of tons of solid matter seemed to be raised. The shrowk in its ascent was caught by the uplifted debris. Beast and riders experienced in that moment all the horrors of an earthquake - they were rolled violently over, and thrown among the rocks and dirt. All was thunder, instability, motion, confusion.
Before they had time to realise their position, they were in the sunlight. The upheaval still continued. In another minute or two the valley floor had formed a new mountain, a hundred feet or more higher than the old. Then its movement ceased suddenly. Every noise stopped, as if by magic; not a rock moved. Oceaxe and Maskull picked themselves up and examined themselves for cuts and bruises. The shrowk lay on its side, panting violently, and sweating with fright.
"That was a nasty affair," said Maskull, flicking the dirt off his person.
Oceaxe staunched a cut on her chin with a corner of her robe.
"It might have been far worse… I mean, it's bad enough to come up, but it's death to go down, and that happens just as often."
"Whatever induces you to live in such a country?"
"I don't know, Maskull. Habit, I suppose. I have often thought of moving out of it."
"A good deal must be forgiven you for having to spend your life in a place like this, where one is obviously never safe from one minute to another."
"You will learn by degrees," she answered, smiling.
She looked hard at the monster, and it got heavily to its feet.
"Get on again, Maskull!" she directed, climbing back to her perch. "We haven't too much time to waste."
He obeyed. They resumed their interrupted flight, this time over the mountains, and in full sunlight. Maskull settled down again to his thoughts. The peculiar atmosphere of the country continued to soak into his brain. His will became so restless and uneasy that merely to sit there in inactivity was a torture. He could scarcely endure not to be doing something.
"How secretive you are, Maskull!" said Oceaxe quietly, without turning her head.
"What secrets - what do you mean?"
"Oh, I know perfectly well what's passing inside you. Now I think it wouldn't be amiss to ask you - is friendship still enough?"
"Oh, don't ask me anything," growled Maskull. "I've far too many problems in my head already. I only wish I could answer some of them."
He stared stonily at the landscape. The beast was winging its way toward a distant mountain, of singular shape. It was an enormous natural quadrilateral pyramid, rising in great terraces and terminating in a broad, flat top, on which what looked like green snow still lingered.
"What mountain is that?" he asked.
"Disscourn. The highest point in Ifdawn."
"Are we going there?"
"Why should we go there? But if you were going on farther, it might be worth your while to pay a visit to the top. It commands the whole land as far as the Sinking Sea and Swaylone's Island - and beyond. You can also see Alppain from it."
"That's a sight I mean to see before I have finished."
"Do you, Maskull?" She turned around and put her hand on his wrist. "Stay with me, and one day we'll go to Disscourn together."
He grunted unintelligibly.
There were no signs of human existence in the country under their feet. While Maskull was still grimly regarding it, a large tract of forest not far ahead, bearing many trees and rocks, suddenly subsided with an awful roar and crashed down into an invisible gulf. What was solid land one minute became a clean-cut chasm the next. He jumped violently up with the shock. "This is frightful."
Oceaxe remained unmoved.