"I'm sorry, Earl," she said. "I couldn't help it. It's got so that I seem to be walking in a dream." She looked around, shuddering. "It's so damn quiet. If only something would make a noise. And," she added with feeling, "if only there was something to drink."
"Stay here." Dumarest turned and walked on to the next area of grass. Dropping he reached out with his boot and scraped it towards him. As he tore at the grass explosions blasted the air and shafts rained towards him. His boots were strong and, like his pants, resisted penetration. Picking up the clump of grass he returned to the others. "Chew on this," he said. "It might help."
Dubiously Lallia took the tangled vegetation. It was a mass of thick, juicy strands, the ends seeping where it had broken away. Sight of the liquid inflamed her thirst and she thrust some of the grass into her mouth, chewing and swallowing, sap staining her lips as she helped herself to more.
"It's good," she said. "Have some."
Yalung said, quietly, "Thank you, no. I can continue for a while yet."
"Earl?"
"Later, maybe. Now stick to the path and don't start day shy;dreaming."
They reached the edge of the forest as the sun kissed the horizon, long shadows streaming from the ranked trees and hiding the terrain so that they were clear long before they realized it. Now they walked on close-cropped grass dotted with low bushes, bearing flame-colored berries and thorned leaves. A tiny lake yielded water of crystal clarity, cold but more delicious than wine. Later Dumarest managed to kill a small animal, spearing it with his knife at thirty feet, clean shy;ing the beast and jointing it, using the fur to wipe the blade.
Chewing on the raw gobbets of meat they walked on to where the shimmer hung against the blossoming stars.
They were few and Dumarest looked at them with a strange nostalgia. So had the stars looked from Earth when he had been very young. Not the shimmer and glare so com shy;mon in and close to the Center, but a scatter of burning points separated by wide expanses of darkness. They had formed patterns, those stars, and the broad swath of the galactic lens had traced a shining path across the heavens. But they had been scattered by distance and not, as the stars in the Web, by the cloud of shielding dust.
"Look," said Yalung softly. "A ship."
It fell wreathed in the misty blue of its field, a tiny mote incredibly far, falling as a meteor to a point beyond the horizon. Landing at the sacred place which, so Nimino had said, was protected by strange guardians. The trees? Dumarest didn't think so. They were guardians of a kind but not the ones the navigator had meant.
He paused as a thin trilling stirred the air, the ghostly echoes of a crystal chime, sounding high and shrill and far away.
A sweet and soulful sound, unbearably poignant, arousing memories better left undisturbed.
"Earl!" Lallia came close to him and caught his arm. "Earl, what was that?"
It came again as she fell silent, thin, hurtfully pure. A third time and then the night settled into unbroken silence.
"A signal," said Yalung thoughtfully. "It must have sounded when the ship landed. A summons, perhaps?" He sucked in his breath with an audible hiss. "Look! The sky!"
Ahead, where the shimmer had disturbed the cold beauty of the stars, leaped a vibrant cone of coruscating brilliance. It lasted for perhaps half a minute and then, as abruptly as it had come, was gone.
The ship left at dawn. Lallia watched as it rose, tiny in the distance, the blue mist of its field almost lost against the brightening sky. Her face was haggard as she looked at Dumarest.
"Earl! We're too late! It's gone!"
"There will be others," he said. "Ships must come here all the time."
"They come," agreed Yalung. "But will they take any who ask for passage? Will they be allowed to? This is a strange world."
He halted, brooding as he studied the sky. They had been walking for hours, using the stars as a guide, avoiding the thorned bushes more by instinct than actual sight. They had found no more lakes and there had been no more game.
"How much further do you think we have to go?"
"A long way," said Dumarest. The ship had been small, their progress of the night had been negligible, the faint shimmer in the sky seemed no closer. "A week, perhaps, even longer, but we'll get there in the end."
"If we can stay alive that long." Fatigue had made the woman sharp. "There's something crazy about this place. We've been walking for miles and seem no closer now than we did at the start. Maybe we'll never get closer. We could be moving in a giant circle."
"No," said Dumarest. "Not that."
"Then why are we so far? We-" She broke off and then said, wonderingly. "Look, Earl. Birds."
"The first we have seen," said Yalung quietly. "But -are they birds?"
They came from the direction in which they were head shy;ing, winged motes against the sky, wheeling and circling before swooping down at the travelers. There was something odd about them. Dumarest watched as they came, eyes like jewels and feathers rustling like metal, wide wings throwing shadows on the ground. They were big, their wings ex shy;tended fully twenty feet, their bodies as long as the height of a man. Their beaks were glinting spears and their clawed feet stretched as if to engulf barrels. From halfway down their bodies stretched limbs ending in long, prehensile finger-like claws. Three of them landed just ahead, the rest circling watchfully above.
The guardians?
Dumarest studied them as they stood, wings folded, ap shy;parently waiting. Mutated biological mechanisms, he thought, fed on a diet heavy in metallic oxides and silicon. That would account for the rasping of the feathers, the sparkling gleam of bone and scale. Multilimbed creatures produced in order to fly, to walk, to grip and tear. Or perhaps they were a natural sport of this peculiar world. It didn't matter. To resist them would be suicide.
"They are barring our path," said Yalung. "A warning?"
"We can't turn back!" Lallia's voice held near-hysteria. "Earl, we can't turn back!"
Dumarest looked at the other winged shapes circling over shy;head. Reenforcements, perhaps, if they should somehow manage to overcome the three ahead. With lasers they could have killed them all but they had no weapons aside from his knife. And, even if they could have destroyed the birds, would that end their danger?
Slowly he walked forward to stand before the three silent images. They were like statues of burnished metal and shin shy;ing crystal, the idols of some ancient temple, utterly remote from human comprehension. The light of the rising sun shone redly from their eyes, beyond them the enigmatic shimmer quivered in the silent air.
Dumarest said, "We are survivors of a wrecked vessel. We wish to go to the field, there to obtain passage from this world."
A voice, cold, emotionless, echoed wordlessly in his mind, in the minds of them all.
"It is understood. Do not resist."
Wings lifted, flexed as they beat the air, the rustle of feathers a tintinnabulation. Lallia gasped as she was picked from the ground, hair flying as she turned in the grip of prehensile fingers. Yalung was next, his yellow face impassive as he was carried away. Dumarest followed, feeling the firm grip on his body, the sighing rush of air past his face. Around the three the other birds formed an escort as they first climbed then leveled in whispering flight.
Far below the ground swept past like an unrolling carpet.
The bushed plain, dotted with tiny lakes few and far be shy;tween. A circle of spine-bearing trees, a swampy morass suc shy;culent with livid grasses steaming with oozing mud, a rear shy;ing mound of stone surrounding a mass of scree and then, finally, a thick growth of timber at the side of which rested the unmistakable expanse of a landing field.
It swelled as they plummeted towards it, the bare ground torn and scarred from the impact of tremendous energies, tiny figures working to level the surface. Dumarest looked at them as the ground hit his feet and the bird which had carried him winged away. They were simple creatures with wide jaws and spadelike forepaws, clawed feet and a flat tail. Where they passed freshly turned soil rested flat and smooth behind them.
He lifted his eyes. The perimeter fence was high and stronger than any he had previously seen. A mesh of thick bars fifty feet high, so close that it was almost a solid wall. A single gate broke it where it faced the expanse of timber beyond.
As Dumarest watched it opened and a figure passed through.
"God!" Lallia's voice was a whisper at his side. "Earl, what is it?"
"A guardian." Yalung had no doubt. "One of those the navigator mentioned. It can be nothing else."
From the tip of the cowl to the hem of the trailing robe the figure was twelve feet tall, incredibly broad, the figure bulking beneath the muffling robe of glinting metallic fiber. The face was shadow in which transient gleams of varie shy;gated color flashed and died in winking splendor. The hands, if the creature had hands, were hidden in wide sleeves. There were no signs of feet or locomotive appendages.
Dumarest had the impression that the thing was entirely unhuman. That the robe was worn for concealment and that the figure bulking beneath was completely alien.