Chapter III

The huge ringed sun of Osar was yet hugging the rim of the ragged Malsalm's peaks to the east when he awoke, shivering despite the thick dampness of his vurth-stuffed covering. Behind him, wedged against the rocky shelf and protected by a down-curving slab of rock, huddled Ylda.

He slipped off his thick shell and heaped it on the girl's sleeping body for additional warmth and stepped out, naked as go the men of the Upper Seas in their moist-walled cities and lush meadows. As yet the sun was not too warm for his sleek-furred flesh.

They had come up from the cliff to a narrow long plateau atop it. A shallow rocky lake was at their feet and a stream came down from a snow-capped peak in the southern distance to feed its chill moistness. Abruptly he remembered the cave and the yellow-haired Dryland giants who trailed them.

A long crevice rifted the floor of the miniature tableland not far from the lake's brim. Perhaps in the rainy season the overflow of the lake found escape there, but now it was dry, a crude staircase dipping down into the gloomy abyss that was the cave they had traversed. Hardan sensed the immensity of the void beneath, the whole cliff must be a honeycomb of caverns and subterranean passages.

The sound of horny bare feet and the rubbing of metal on the leather of harness warned him that the Drylanders had overcome their aversion of the darkness enough to trail them. He caught a glimpse of a moving blob of blackness that could only be them a hundred feet and more below.

Hardan laughed. The rift was walled with heaps of rocky debris, boulders brought down from the poles in glacial eras and sections of splintered igneous rock. He put his arm and shoulder against them and heaved. He sang lustily as he worked.

One after another they fell, the smaller ones entering the crevice and bounding downward to rip the climbing Drylanders from their hold; the others clogging forever the way from below. He rolled a last rounded boulder of green-shot basaltic origin and turned, hand at his sword.

Ylda was standing there, his vurth-padded garment's ugliness in her extended hands. She smiled, her eyes warm in the shadow of her wide-rimmed quilted headgear of vurth. Suddenly Hardan was aware of the growing intensity of the morning sunlight parching his down-covered flesh. In his excitement he had forgotten the blistering sun.

He slipped quickly into the coverall-like covering, its dampness doubly welcome after his exposure to the deadly atmosphere of the Drylands, and went with her to the rim of the narrow flat-roofed ridge where they had climbed.

"We can't go back, Ylda," he told her, his hand pointing out the way they had come up across the arid lands from the Isr River.

Ylda's eyes swung northward and then on around to the south again. She shuddered and Hardan sensed her terror of this molten naked hell of tortured rock and waterless slope that hemmed them in.

"We'll follow this stream up to its source," he went on after a moment, "and then find another that flows westward toward the Gron or the Aba. Nothing to it."

The girl's lips twisted in a tremulous attempt at a smile.

"Hardan," she said, "before you start back with me I must tell you why I was held captive by the rebelling sarifs."

Hardan shook his head, his mind raging. There could be only one reason for her to be in chains. Nitka Porn had wanted her and until she would consent to be his woman she might escape. That could be the only truth, he thought, and he wanted to hear nothing about it.

"But I must tell you, Hardan, before you--before we--leave the mountains. I was going to Lake Gron to meet my lover. He is a Consar, Serid Jern."

"Serid Jern!" snapped out Hardan. "That beak-nosed gray-haired old wastrel! You mean you--he was your lover?"

"But let me explain. It's not what you think. There is nothing wrong. He is a Consar and my father...."

"Enough." Hardan jerked her along by the arm. "I wish to hear no more about it. You are young and knew no better. When we reach Aba I will carry you away in the lawful manner."

Ylda's slight body stiffened and she pulled away from Hardan angrily. "Don't touch me again, ever!" she cried.

Hardan shrugged and headed off up the lake toward the stream that fed it. If the obstinate little sarif girl wanted to follow him let her. He had almost forgotten that he was born into an impoverished Consar family, these last few years, but now he remembered the vast social gulf between them. Yet he would gladly have given up his rank had Ylda agreed to mate with him.

And now she scorned him. It was as though she were the Consar and he the sarif. The months she must have spent with the priests and priestesses of Ung Roth and Zo Aldan had given her a false conception of a woman's place on Osar.

Let her have her soft-bellied old lover in Gron Lake. She'd get her fill of battling the half-dozen other sarif girls he'd collected there already....

Hardan's knuckles whitened on the handles of his swords, and he cursed all the Serid Jerns of the Wetlands.

* * * * *

Abruptly he came to a halt. Beside the rough trail he followed a peculiar-looking dwarfish creature lay sleeping at the stream's brink. His body was hairless, save on the top of his skull and under his nose and on his cheeks, and he was weaponless save for a short thick bow and a club. A cloak of muddy green covered his tattered unpadded coveralls.

Hardan stirred the sleeping creature with his toe and it sat up. He spoke to it in Tarnish, and in the scanty tongue of the great Dryland Apes. And at this the sunken monkeylike little eyes blinked with a certain measure of intelligence. It rose to its meager six feet of height and faced him.

"I am called Kern Rensom," he cried shrilly. "I am from Aarth," his puny arm made an indefinite circling motion. "Long ago we came to Osar to conquer it all."

Hardan grinned. "Little Drylanders like you better keep hid or the winged soraps will carry you off. You couldn't lick a couple of bladts."

The little Aarthman's arms and body flashed into movement so swift that Hardan could not see what was happening. He felt himself flying through the air and jolted down a dozen paces away, his breath gone. He heard Ylda's amused laughter, and the sound spurred him to bound to his feet and leap toward the little man.

Ylda cried out in protest--the Aarthman had drawn no weapon but stood with arms folded--and Hardan's pace slowed. He could not run through a man who would not protect himself.

"Take up your club!" he cried savagely, "or one of my swords!"

The little man grinned impishly, his wide mouth red in the uncouth tangle of his scrubby brown whiskers.

"Try to hit me," he invited.

Hardan's anger overcame his scruples. He swung his right hand sword in an arc that would have bit a respectable nick out of the Aarthman's shoulder. And the sword seemed to freeze in midair!

He fought against the paralysis that froze his muscles. Sweat salted his face and body as he threw all his strength into the effort, but he could not stir. Nor could he move his legs or the other arm. After a long moment of struggle he recognized his efforts were useless and ceased his frantic mental commands. And in that instant his body was free again.

"Are you a man or one of the devil-things of Thog Molog?" he demanded fearfully, sheathing his blade.

"I am like yourself, Hardan Synn," said the little man, amused. "But I have mental power that you of Osar cannot comprehend. It is the only weapon of Aarth we are permitted to use."

"You--you called me by name!" Hardan cried out. "Now I know you are of Thog Molog's foul brood. Only a devil-thing could be at once so puny and so hideous."

"You are wrong, Hardan," and now Kern Rensom used words that were a blend of Dryland and Wetland speech. "I can look into your mind and understand what you think. Even now I can tell you that you misjudge Ylda Rusla."

"No!" broke in the girl, "please keep silent, strange man."

Kern Rensom shrugged. "As you wish," he said. He turned to Hardan again.

"Perhaps you can come with me to my home valley before returning to Aba." He laughed at the unspoken refusal in Hardan's brain. "We have a small lake in the crater covered with an upper sea of vurth," he added.

"Why not?" demanded Ylda. "For too long have I breathed the harsh upland air. To move unencumbered through the soft dampness of the vurth sea would be heaven."

Hardan nodded doubtfully. "Very well," he said. "But remember it means the revolting sarifs may escape beyond the Blue Balsalms."

"I hope they do," flashed Ylda, "and you do too. Most of the sarifs are good people. Even if Nitka Porn and a few others escape punishment the innocent ones will escape."

"That's settled then." Hardan turned to the Aarthman. "Lead off, Kern Rensom."

* * * * *

And so they started off eastward across the mountains and bare reddish-veined slopes of the blue ridges, the tiny Aarthman leading. All forenoon they walked, pausing often beside the stream to soak their padded garments and gather the sparse scattering of brown-husked berries from bushes in the sheltered angles of the little watercourse.

Toward noon they left the swift little stream and crossed a steep slope of treacherous yellow shale and broken rock to a slope that carried them down toward a vast sunken bowl, an extinct crater, in whose heart the misty outlines of a small lake nestled grayly. That it was roofed with vurth there could be no question, and thereafter Hardan forgot most of his suspicions that the stranger meant them evil.

"It was there," Kern Rensom said, his finger pointing out a squatty ovoid of darker rock, "that our ship from beyond the stars landed. It was broken, and all save two women and one man died."

"You came from up there?" demanded Ylda. "Then you are of the race of the true gods, Zo Aldan and Ung Roth?"

The Aarthman shook his head. "No, we are mortals. I have read your mind and learned about your gods. Perhaps your gods, too, were mortals from another world who landed here safely on Osar."

Hardan's ears tingled at such heresy. And yet he was forced to admit what the little man said was logical. He knew that many of the wisest Wetlanders did not believe in Thog Molog and the devil-things, nor did he suppose the Drylanders believed in the power of Zo Aldan and Ung Roth. It was true the two gods had come from the outer moons in a strange metallic ship.

"Why then," he asked, "did you not conquer the Drylands? Was it not for that you came to Osar?"

Kern Rensom tugged at his scrubby beard. "We were too few at first. And when there were a thousand of us we tried to use the weapons and tools we had sealed away, but we had forgotten. All the juice that powered them had seeped away. Nor could we repair them."

"But you have books," insisted Hardan. "They would tell you."

The little man was shamefaced. "While we waited; hunting, building our city, and tilling our fields, we forgot how to read. For many centuries we have lived on a level but little above that of the Drylanders."

Hardan swore with amazement. Despite their wonderful mental power these Aarthmen were little better than ignorant savages. Perhaps if he could bring a few wise men from the Wetlands to this valley and have them work with the Aarthmen they could reconstruct that forgotten language and learn to build ships that flew in the air.

With great ships like theirs the journey from Wetland to Wetland would be simple and all Osar would be opened to them. No longer would they be forced to haul sleeping tanks of water by slow wagons across the dry-grassed plains....

* * * * *

The trail wound aimlessly, it seemed to Hardan, down into the vast circular abyss of the crater. And after a time, as they neared the lower slopes, he saw the Aarthman scratch his shaggy brown head in apelike fashion, and stop.

"You've lost your way," he told Kern.

Kern Rensom nodded. "I escaped from a small band of Roons, the Drylanders who dwell on the slopes above our craters, two days ago. I was hunting on the northern side and was forced to circle southward to where you found me."

"But if we continue downward we must come to your city," Hardan said, puzzled. "Why do you hesitate?"

"All Smeth Valley is surrounded by a high wall, Hardan, built by my people. But on the southern inner slope for more than a mile an ancient, higher wall was there. A wall circling down to the lake.

"Since we came to Smeth Valley only a few men have ventured beyond that wall, and of them all only one returned--a madman!"

"You think we are approaching that section then?" Hardan laughed and his hands found comforting grip on his sword hilts. "Nothing could lie beyond there save deserted ruins," he scoffed.

"Perhaps we could walk along the wall's rim," Kern said, disregarding Hardan's laughter, "until we passed the walled-in section. The ridges on either side crowd up to the wall so it would be our only path."

"That'd be better than climbing up again," agreed Hardan.

And so, a dozen tortuous bends in the deepening ravine they followed, later, they fronted the soaring smooth-jointed face of a gigantic wall. At their feet the dry bed of the ravine ended in solid granite, and on either hand the ravine's walls lifted sheer for fifty feet and more.

Try as they would they could not climb the craggy walls. Apparently they were to be forced to return back along the way they had come and find some new path to the lower crater depths.

Ylda cried out and pointed to the lower part of the pierced vertical slab set in the wall before them. The scanty flow of freshets here in the uplands had slowly worn away a larger hole, a process that must have consumed unthinkable centuries, until even a Wetland warrior could have wriggled through.

Hardan nodded. He too had seen the opening but did not want to suggest using it. The Aarthman's fantastic tale had affected him more than he cared to admit. Now he knelt down and thrust his head carefully through the orifice.

"Just a grassy slope," he called back, his voice loud with relief. "Down by the lake there's a jumble of rock slabs and columns, could be a city. Not even any trees until the upper sea begins."

He withdrew his head and slid through feet-first, dropping into a deep wide rocky pocket gouged out by the ravening mountain torrents. Ylda followed, slipping into his arms easily, but her face turned away stiffly as he set her on her feet. Hardan growled and turned away, disgusted at the little sarif's continued show of dislike.

"Hurry up, Kern Rensom," he said.

The Aarthman's be-whiskered face appeared. Under that brushy brown stubble his brown skin had paled to a strangely green shade.

"I don't know," he said uncertainly. "The Drylanders claim this is the abode of Thog Molog. I've seen crude pictures of their god. It's a many-armed ghastly monster bigger than a Drylander's communal _yad_."

* * * * *

Hardan too sensed the alien silence and remoteness of this close-cropped expanse of sward. Almost he expected to see a flock of the woolly, vari-colored bladts grazing there, so close was the brook-watered grass trimmed to its roots. Something, ancient foul things, must lurk in those brooding ruins and come out in the moonlight to eat. No grass could grow so uniform and short.

So they moved together, speaking no more, through the hushed silence of growing dusk, into the shadows of the vast vertical mass of the ancient wall that dipped southward. They searched for a way to scale that soaring obstacle, vainly.

The rim of the upper sea, the false sea that was vurth floating lightly above the true sea far below, they reached and Hardan felt the tingling thrill of a stranger returning home as the delicate moist tendrils contacted his exposed flesh. He heard Ylda's sigh of sensuous ecstasy as she sucked in the dank richness of the confined atmosphere, and he heard the Aarthman breathing unsteadily as though half-choked.

"How you can stand this pea-soup," came the little man's strangled voice, "is beyond me. It's like walking underwater; yet breathing."

Hardan laughed and slipped out of his cumbersome padded garb. Now he could climb the wall or fight more freely. The intangible unseen menace of the walled city and fields now struck him with returned power. He bound the suit into a pack on his shoulders and set about examining the damp and crumbling wall. The moisture had loosened its ancient bonding material and he found many foot and hand holds.

Swiftly he angled upward, his two companions following the way he had found. Once he ran into a section of intact wall and was forced to turn back, and Ylda swung upward along a new series of crevices, leading the way. Hardan now brought up the rear instead of Kern Rensom.

The vurth ended, and even as they saw that less than twenty feet lay between them and the wall's top, a hideous gagging squelching sound, like a mud-wallowing drunkard venting his addled rage, sounded from below.

Hardan turned to look down, his sword in his right hand and his feet jammed in a shallow crack.

A vast bulk, indistinct in the failing light of the vanished sun, and rendered yet more vague by the aerophytic sea that washed around its lower body, reared there. Hardan sensed that the greasily smooth hide, wet and slime-covered, was slate-gray, liberally splotched with patches of ghastly pale yellow. He saw an inner gaping maw, its huge inner jaws covered with bony serrated ridges, and in a deadly fringe about this mouth a score or more of specialized tentacles stretched like multi-jointed arms upward.

"Climb swiftly!" roared Hardan, "while I hold it back."

The tentacles slithered nearer, their gray snaky flesh ending at the tips in sucker-like yellow-tinged discs. Hardan swung his weapon down at the nearest and from the severed tentacle tip a steaming purplish ichor spurted. And with its wound the burbling mouthings from below redoubled.

The Wetlander sprang upward, a questing tentacle brushing his heel as he found a new vantage point several feet higher, and then he sliced through this leathery appendage's tip as well.

But now three of the tentacles wormed together at him, and though his blade slashed off two of them, the third found his naked flesh and the suction discs ripped at him. He clung to the wall, his discarded sword clattering downward, but relentlessly the monster was dragging him from his precarious perch.

He heard a sob at his side and his other sword was drawn from its sheath even as his left hand lost its grip. Then he was released, the tentacle tip yet clinging to his flesh, and he found Ylda tugging at his arm. The Aarthman lowered his bow and Hardan pushed the trembling girl up to him.

A moment later they were all three safe a scant four feet above those questing hungry ropes of flesh, and Ylda was in his arms....