Still the darkness gathered. The jar filled, became black and horrible.
Upon the tables the figures stirred, rose in godlike glory, faces radiant. As one they turned toward the contained darkness, contemplating it for a moment with deep satisfaction. Then into each deific face came a frightened comprehension, and a growing horror.
As they approached Murgin, Jaer’s captors gave her less of whatever drug it had been; she woke from her dreaming to feel the pain of bound limbs, of hunger and thirst, the beginning of apprehension not yet strong enough to be terror.
They came to a place of dead trees, a mile or more of grey trunks set in dun earth with no leaf or green among them and only the vultures and kites circling far overhead to show that anything still lived in this place. Then came the place where the trees had been felled, and they went as if between the horrid knuckles of ancient giants. Finally the hooves of the animals pounded across the black pave, mile on jarring mile, harsh ringing of hoof on stone until the animals arrived at last, blown and shivering, before the gates of Murgin. One of the company made a wordless cawing, as from a tongueless throat, and the gates grated open into broad, bare corridors lit with acid light, floored with stone, roofed with stone, into which no light of the sun ever came nor light of the moon ever peered.
They rode along bare corridors which twisted and branched deep into the mount of the city. Those they passed stood silent and bowed against the walls. The beat of hoof on stone was the beat of hammer on metal, an anvil struck relentlessly. They wound their way upward, the horses labouring, stopping at last outside an iron door set with bloodstones in the great Seal of Separation. These doors opened silently, and Jaer was dragged across an expanse of black floor to be flung down before a high dais with three carved thrones on which red-robed figures crouched beneath the weight of high iron crowns.
The robed one who had carried her threw itself before the thrones, prostrate and trembling. A gasping whisper came from the dais, so freighted with age, agony and exhaustion that it might evoke pity, but it breathed with such obscene gloating that the pity turned upon itself, became an instinctive revulsion. An image formed in Jaer’s mind of a serpent, crippled and maimed, yet with all its venom and malice intact, crawling relentlessly after a tiring prey. The voice was made more terrible by a second voice, as like to the first as an echo, the two whispering together, interrogating the messenger who had brought Jaer and answering that interrogation while the messenger itself trembled and was silent.
‘Did it go to Byssa?’ breathed the first voice, ‘to Byssa to meet the one we had been told would come there? The one the old women saw in the dreaming dark? Had the old women heard it first on the sea? And then near Delmoth? And then by the River Del, coming toward Byssa?’
‘Oh, yes,’ responded the second voice. ‘The old women saw it in the dreaming dark, coming toward Byssa. A strange one. Power all around it. Did our messenger go to Byssa to meet it? To find it? To catch it?’
‘No,’ breathed the first. ‘No. Our messenger was tricked, was delayed, was unwise. Our messenger knew the will of that but did not do the will of that. Is this not so?’
The prostrate figure trembled, trembled and was silent. A sigh came from the dais. Almost, for a moment, Jaer might have believed that sigh. For a moment.
‘Where was the one we sought? The old women were given drugs, potent drugs, the drugs of dreaming. What did they see? The far places of Anisfale, Far, too far. This was not the one we sought near Byssa. Again the dream. The town of Yenner-po-Tau. Far, too far. Ah, but wait. One old woman speaks. She says, “No, not Yenner-po-Tau. The forests instead. The forests of Ban Morrish!” ‘
‘Where was our messenger? Oh, our messenger had not dared to fail again, our messenger had been wise, so wise. Our messenger had gone with dogs through the canyon of the River Del, had found a trail, had followed it into the forests.’ The voice tittered. Jaer wanted to vomit. Her head swam with the residue of the drug they had given her. The voices reciting to one another what was obviously already known went on, dizzyingly. She could not understand the obscene laughter in the voices, the sense of anticipation. Of what?
‘Then the old woman spoke of the forests of Ban Morrish. Then we sent word to our messenger. “Search,” we said. “Seek, find, for the one we seek is near you in the forest of Ban Morrish.” Did our messenger hear? Lo, one is now brought before us. But was this one alone? Where is the one of power, the strange one, the one sought? This does not look like the one we sought. Were there not others? Where are those others? Did our messenger not bring them? This is a sad and dreadful thing.’
‘Sad and dreadful,’ echoed the other voice. ‘Our messenger has failed.’
‘Nooo,’ moaned the figure on the floor. ‘Nooo. I have brought the one you sought. Even when the dreamers could not find it, Lithos found it. Even when the directions failed, Lithos did not fail. Lithos found it. Lithos sent me with it. Lithos says it is the one. It is here!’
‘Oh, no,’ tittered both voices. ‘The messenger has failed. Let the messenger look on the reward. The reward our messenger may not receive.’
At the side of the dais a huge stone moved, pivoted upward to stand like some massive monument at the end of a black pit. From the depths came a low mutter, a kind of growling as of some malign conversation among unthinkable creatures. The messenger
