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bushes, waiting in sticky irritability for the sun to rise even higher and add
another dimension to their discomfort.
Gortn what was the thing that frightened you? Hiero sent. The mind touch you
caught as we started, I mean.
Something new, the bear admitted, as he tried to cover his sensitive nose from
the crowding mosquitoes. Only one, whatever it was; a bad mind, quick, sly,
full of hate for everything not like itself. But not a human, not any animal I
know either. Maybe there was a pause as the young bear reflected maybe, a
little like a frog, but one that thinks!
While the others absorbed this, he added. It went away. Perhaps to find more.
With this parting message, he covered his nose completely with his forepaws
and fell asleep. His thick, biack fur saved him from most of the other bites,
and he seemed
176
HIERO'S JOURNEY
to have the ability to sleep anywhere, at any time.
"We'll have to keep watch," Hiero said to the girl. 'Try and sleep, and I'll
take the first one." He wiped the sweat from his eyes with a filthy hand and
managed to get din in one of them. As he rubbed harder, Luchare pulled his
hand down and from somewhere produced a damp and (relatively) clean cloth with
which she sponged his face, cleaning his eye out in the process.
"There," she said in a tone of satisfaction. "Now keep your dirty fingers out
of it. What do you think Gorm felt, Hiero? Could he be imagining things? This
place is enough to make anyone have bad dreams, even a bear." She looked out
at the brooding land, or rather waterscape, before them. Even under the now
completely risen sun, the silent hulks of the past were not a pleasant sight.
The green vegetation mats of water plants, the vines crawling up the
buildings' shattered faces, the trees and bushes on their pinnacles, all added
to the feeling of desolation.
"He doesn't imagine things," the priest said. He was trying to ignore the
dirty, but enchanting, face so close to his and concentrate instead on what he
was saying.
"There's something here, maybe a lot of somethings. I can't tap the mental
channels, but I can feel thought going on around me, do you understand. Maybe
several kinds of thought. We're going to have to be careful, very careful."
And lucky, very lucky, he added to himself.
Another long day passed. They ate and drank sparingly. The canteens were
running low, and though Klootz and the bear did not seem to mind the lagoon
water, Hiero tested it and it was foul, full of green matter and with a
sickening smell. He did not intend to drink of it except as a last resort.
The sun reached zenith, and the afternoon began and slowly waned. Luchare
finally slept, and so did both animals. Save for the humming insects, which
never ceased their myriad assault, no sound broke the silence. The towers were
empty of bird life, and none appeared in the blue, cloudless sky. Listening on
all the mental channels known to him, the priest could detect no coherent
thought. Yet all around him, intangible and in stealth, some spying, probing
presence seemed to glare at them. A busy undercurrent of activity was at work;
he
THE PERIL AND THE SAGE
177
felt it in his bones, but neither could actually locate nor identify
it.
They had just repacked the raft and were easing the big morse aboard when they
froze in their tracks. The light of late evening still let them see the
buildings around them clearly, but their eyes could detect no movement. The
frog chorus had barely begun.
From out of the distant east, in the direction they themselves wanted to
travel, there came the same strange cry they had heard the previous evening.
The frogs fell silent.
"Aoooh, aoooh, aaaoooooouh," it wailed mournfully. Three times it came, and
then there was silence once more, save for the insect buzz. Slowly the frogs
began again, while the two animals and their human friends stood in the
gathering dark, each immersed in his or her own thoughts.
"Oh, I hate this place!" Luchare burst out. "It's not like the rest of the
world at all, but some dead, wet, horrible wasteland full of moaning ghosts!
The City of the Dead!" She broke into tears, burying her face in her cupped
hands. Her long-held control had finally given way.
Hiero moved to her side and put his arms around her and patted her back, until
at length her wet face was raised to his, a question in the great eyes which
he had no trouble answering. He lowered his head and drank in the wild
sweetness of her lips for the first time. Her strong, young arms rose and
tightened around his neck, and when the kiss finally ceased, she buried her
face in his jacket. He stitl stroked her back, saying nothing, his eyes
staring sightlessly over her head into the gathering night. The bites of a
dozen midges and mosquitoes were unfelt.
"What was that for?" came a muffled voice from his shirt. "A present for a
frightened child?"
"That's right," he agreed in cheerful tones. "I do that to all the scared
brats I meet. Of course, sometimes it recoils on me. I might even get to like
it."
She looked up at once, suspicious that he was laughing at her, but even in the
last light of day, what she saw in his eyes was so plain that her face was
jammed back into his chest once more, as if what she had read in his
expression had scared her. There was another short silence.
"I love you, Hiero," came a small voice from his chest.
178 HIERO'S JOURNEY
"I love you, too," he said almost sadly. "I'm not at all sure it's a good
idea. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's a bad one, a very bad one. I have been
set a task so important that the last sane human civilization may fall if I
should fail to carry it out. I need a further distraction like a third leg."
He smiled down at the angry face which had popped up again.
"I seem to be helpless, however." He tightened his grip around the firm body.
"Win or lose, we stay together from now on. I'd worry more if you were
somewhere else."
She snuggled closer, as if somehow she could bind herself to him. They stood
thus, the world forgotten until a mental voice whose very flatness made it
seem sardonic broke in.
Human mating is indeed fascinating. But we are in a dangerous place to study
it. That is something of which I feet certain.
This acted like a pail of cold water. They almost sprang apart. Studiously
ignoring the bear, who sat looking up at them from the middle of the raft
where he sat next to Klootz, they seized their poles and pushed off into the
humming, croaking dark. The moon bad not yet risen, but the stars were out,
and both of them had excellent night vision.
Once again, a night of toil and discomfort lay before them. Yet they detected
no signs of an enemy, though there were moments when the appearance of one
would have come as an almost welcome distraction. On and on through the
drowned city they poled, hacked, and paddled their way. Hiero fell overboard
once, but popped back up in a second, streaming foul, muddy water, at least
cool for a few seconds.
The moon rose and made their task a little easier. The silent, black buildings
stared down from a thousand ruined eyes as they struggled past. Perhaps they
were following boulevards and esplanades which had once echoed to the tramp of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]