beauty of the music. Then they gasped when they saw the Spirit Rider suddenly appear on the fortress wall, shimmering like an apparition. Then, once again, the mural and the wall dissolved into nothingness.
As the solid stone dissolved there were loud cries of alarm as the Kyranians found themselves looking
People clutched each other, the tables, the benches-anything to prevent themselves from plunging into the unknown.
Safar himself didn't know what was going to happen next. And when the music and then the scene changed his nails dug into his palms until they bled.
First came the familiar throb of the harvest drums. The conch shells wailing. The rhythmic slap of bare feet on sand and open palms on naked chests. And then they were looking down on the beautiful people of Hadin dancing before the smoking volcano. Their lovely harvest queen leading them in song:
Her lips the moon;
Surrender. Oh, surrender.
Her eyes are stars,
Her heart the sun;
Her sex a rose;
Surrender. Oh, surrender.
Night and moon. Stars and Sun.
Honey and rose;
Lady, oh Lady, surrender.
Then the volcano erupted and the Kyranians screamed and turned their eyes away as the island people died their agonizing deaths.
Thankfully, the scene finally dissolved, giving way to a myriad of bubbling lights of many colors. The music took on a playful note and when the living picture realized itself, they saw an old sea turtle swimming comically over and through rolling waves of dark emerald.
There were a few giggles of relief. Some of the younger men and women cheered loudly for the turtle.
Another shift in the music occurred as the turtle came to land and painfully climbed onto a black rocky shore. There were birds everywhere, birds of all possible varieties.
A studious young Kyranian made an educated guess and shouted the name of this country: 'It's Raptor-the land of the birds!'
Several scholarly men and women in the crowd murmured agreement.
The instruments took on the musical personalities of birds they saw. Some soaring with haunting cries.
Some whistling melodious mating tunes. Some hawking and chattering over rocky nests. And everywhere there was the peep-peep-peep, of new life. Nestlings calling for their mothers and fathers to
'feedmeloveme, feedmeloveme, feedmeloveme…'
But just as people were smiling, nodding in empathy at this feathered life, a huge green poisonous cloud swept over Raptor. Enormous ghostbats, shrilling and hungry flew out of the cloud. Followed by shrieking reptiles on leather wings.
Once again the Kyranians had to turn away at the killing horror that was visited upon the land.
This time no one laughed when the turtle paddled frantically away.
Now came the music of forests and rivers. Innocent song of clear-flowing creeks, mossy ponds and flowered paths that wound through an exotic jungle. Sweet pipes carried cooling breezes through the branches of every sort of tree imaginable. Wise oaks, foolish pines, swaying willows and forest giants lifting their aged heads into the very clouds.
They saw all the things the music spoke of and more. The scholarly youth proclaimed the land as Aroborus, the place of the forests. But no one had to hear him to know the answer.
Their attention was riveted on the turtle, pausing just off a gentle, sandy beach. Its blunt head and sad eyes lifted to the skies. Then the Kyranians groaned as the poisonous cloud swept in, bearing all the horrors they'd seen before.
The turtle paddled away, so weak she could barely negotiate the slow-rolling seas.
Now the music took on a hard, desperately driving note. Shimmering scene dissolved into shimmering scene, one after the other. But each one had the same subject: the turtle swimming and bobbing on endless seas. Sometimes the water was the deep green that indicated of enormous depths. Sometimes it was bright blue and cheery. And sometimes it was slate-gray and forbidding, with glistening icebergs shot with eerie rainbow colors: layers of purple and pink and green and sapphire-blue.
And always, in the background, was the poisonous cloud sweeping over the endless oceans. Fish turning up white-bellied, dead in its passage. Seals and otters and even enormous whales shriveling to the bone as they breathed their last.
Dead birds plummeting from the sky in such numbers that it seemed the heavens had become an avian graveyard, opening up to rain a torrent of feathered corpses.
Finally, the turtle climbed up on a pebbled beach. It barely had the strength to pull itself from the foaming surf. By now, no one was surprised when they recognized the long, curving shoreline. It was the same place where the Kyranians had landed three years before.
Someone-it wasn't the student-voiced the name in a low, drawn-out hiss: Syrapis!
The turtle struggled, using the last of its strength to dig a shallow nest with its flippers. Then it squatted over the hole and began to lay its eggs. Each one membrane-white, turning to ivory as it met the air and fell into the hole. The shadow of an embryo turtle showed through the thin shell.
The turtle covered the eggs as best she could, shoveling pebbles and sand. Then she lifted her head and saw the killing cloud drifting overhead.
A single tear formed, then fell.
And the turtle died.
The music stopped and the fortress wall re-formed itself. Leaving a silence moist and thick and twisted like the rough blankets kicked off in a nightmare that refuses to end. As before, there was no sign of the mural.
All eyes turned to Safar. He thought he'd never seen such haunted looks. Such fearful looks. So much begging and pleading for rescue-for deliverance.
Although not one word was said, the silence was like a shout.
Safar said: 'Do you see? Do you finally see?'
And they did.
Safar leaned against the rail, the
He saw the turtle paddle over a ten-foot wave. Disappear into its trough, then climb the watery incline on the other side.
A light hand touched his shoulder. It was Leiria's.
She watched the turtle's progress with him for awhile. And just as it became a dot on the horizon she whispered, 'Gods speed, my friend. Gods speed!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The old goat strained wearily at the harness, hauling a little cart over the broken pavement. Aboard the cart
