the southern horizon at the end of the time of the long light, up and over ridges where the forces of freezing and thawing had split away boulders, some as tall as the cliffs of the valley. Now and then he would rest, sucking the moisture from the pebbles in the damp low areas, once chewing long and satisfyingly on a dried tuber. He slept after a respectable warrior's run of two full circles of Du. His pace was slowing only slightly after two more double circle warrior's runs and a sleep. He felt lean and fit, no longer heavy, and his pauses were more frequent as he sucked moisture. Ahead of him there was a change in the sky, a layer of what seemed to be cloud far away on the horizon. At times, now, his feet were padded by soft layers of fine sand in the swales. When he saw—as Du made circle after circle, the circles becoming a bit lopsided, with the great source sinking lower and lower on the southern horizon—the first of the spiked brothers clinging to a dry pile of sand, he was heartened. The cloud formation now rose high in the southern sky, hiding Du in the evenings, bringing the gloom of twilight to the barrens. There were times when he smelled the smoke of the land of fires. He had thinned down to his best fighting weight and his movements were effortless, strong, tireless. He added the soft, juicy pulp of the spiked brothers to his meager diet, being careful to separate a small finger carefully from the parent brother and, although the spiked brothers were far down the scale of development and dumb, politely thanking the brother for his contribution.
He was, because of his use of the warrior's pace, well ahead of his projected schedule. He slowed his pace, for now he moved through areas of fine ash which, if he ran, billowed up into clouds to coat the fine tendrils protecting his nostrils. He rarely saw the source now because of the billowing clouds of smoke, clouds that ranged in color from the blackest of blacks through grays and dirty yellows to odd, metallic greens and reds near the earth. Fitful winds began to blow, often bringing the smoke over him. Underfoot, the rocks had taken on a sharpness that tested even his hardened pads. The first steam vent he passed spewed forth boiling water rich in minerals, strong tasting, but quite satisfying after it had cooled in the runoff from the vent. There he slept, warmed by the heat, soaking up liquid into every cell until, once again, he felt heavy. He had to wait for food until he had penetrated a deep valley of boiling vents and the spear canes began to grow. The tender shoots of the cane made delicious munching, and he carried a handful of green canes with him for sucking and chewing along the way as he climbed to the top of a ridge and saw, spread before him, the awesome land of eternal fires. Fortunately, fire activity was at a low. Thermal currents caused winds to gust and eddy, sometimes lifting the smokes so that he could see, across a great rift, the outlines of the mountains of fire. Only once, as he crossed the rift and began to climb the cinders of the mountain slopes, did the earth shift under his feet, and then not too severely. However, he was beginning to feel the heat even before he reached the ash-covered saddle between two mountains of fire and saw, to both his left and his right, steams of molten rock pouring from the peaks. Although the ash-covered rock underfoot was warm to the pads of his tough feet, it was not yet time to put on the sandals. Both pairs of the sandals were well soaked, having been left in the runoff of a boiling vent during his last sleep. Ahead of him a mountain belched and rumbled and fresh pillars of smoke rose into the sky. As he moved forward, he seemed to become surrounded by a ring of fiery mountains. Once before he had penetrated this far into the land of fires, and there had seemed to be no way open to the south. He remembered his grandmother's chanted instructions.
'Between two smoking mountains Du shows his face at evening over a lake of fire—'
Ahead, however, there were only fiery mountains and the eternal smokes. He squatted to rest, chewed on a cane. Which two mountains?
There were many, spaced so closely together that their rolling, fiery belchings blended into one sea of molten rock. As for Du, he was not to be seen through the thick smokes.
He slept. It was a warm, secure sleep. Nothing lived there in that acrid, heated, smoked, steamy barren other than Duwan the Drinker. He awoke with Du high in the northern sky and began to make his way across the saddle between two mountains, moving always toward the east, quartering the slope, nearing the stream of molten rock that moved sluggishly down from the peak. It took a long time, for the rocks were jagged, sometimes needle sharp. By evening he was feeling the hot breath of the molten rock on his skin, and then, as if by a miracle, the smoke cleared for a moment and there was Du, shining redly between two distant, smoking mountains. Beneath the kind face of the source glimmered a huge lake of fire.
Encouraged, he moved forward to see that the mountain's face was broken, that the stream of molten rock poured thickly and redly into a fissure. Below that fissure he was able to leap across a chasm at the bottom of which glowed the fires and now the rocks began to burn his feet, so he put on a pair of the sandals and ran toward the last sight of Du, the sandals smoking as they absorbed the heat of the stones.
He seemed to fly down the slope, taking huge strides, his lungs pumping, for he had long since used up the energy stores from the source. Ahead he saw white, dense smoke and slowed his pace, but the smoke was soft to his nose. Steam. A hot spring poured out of the side of the mountain. Although the water boiled and steamed, it cooled on contact with the air and was rich, tasty. He drank and rested. His sandals were burned all the way through. So far, it was exactly as his grandmother had said. He put on the second pair of sandals and ran until his way was blocked by a lake of fire, his skin shriveling under the impact of the fierce heat. He turned to the west, climbed a slope, and, on the last remaining layers of the sandals left the smoking, hot ground for a field of smooth ash that gradually hardened until he was walking on a rippled, hard surface warmed but not heated to painful intensity. The way to the south was open before him, only emptiness in the distance.
Once he stopped to look back at the land of eternal fires, the natural barrier that protected his valley from any enemy. Forbidding as the barrens over which he was marching were, the landscape to the north was far more terrible. For the first time in his life he could appreciate the courage, or the desperation, of the Great Alon and the ones who followed him. Had he, himself, been leading, not knowing what lay beyond those fiery, shaking, smoking mountains, he would never have mustered the determination necessary to enter that zone of fire. But then, he added, to himself, he didn't have the Enemy at his rear with sword and arrow and spear.
He had been on the march for enough circles of Du to make up a time of long light, and he had traveled far, and, to judge from the landscape of barren rock around him, he might as well have stayed near the valley. Only the attitude of Du in the sky had changed, the source now remaining below the zenith even in the morning, sinking out of sight below the southern horizon off to the west in the middle of the marching period. He counted the dim and darks, but, not having the knowledge nor the talent of Manoo the Predictor, he could not relate those odd activities of Du to real time, so that he was not only lost in a barren, endless desert of cooling rock, he was lost in his sense of time. Only that natural ability, that sense of attraction in his very blood, made it possible for him to continue ever southward, never deviating from that line except to skirt impassable features of the land. It was always there, and he did not even have to think to know when he had his back directly to the north. The standard valley day was measured by one full circle of Du during the time of the long light. He estimated that he had traveled for a length of days corresponding to one full period and to the middle days of another period of long light when he first began to know the chill during the times of dimness. Four estimated days after that, he donned dim-time clothing when Du was below the horizon, packed it away when the source came with his heat. Then, after more estimated days, Du was performing in an odd fashion, ducking below the southwestern horizon to reappear on the southeastern horizon in glory. He was beginning to be concerned, for his grandmother had said that he would be in a land of snows while
