Part Two
Chapter 18
THRESHOLD OF FIRE
Monwyrt patted his stomachs contentedly.
He had just engorged himself with roast thriddahype and baked weodthuf, the latter the result of a satisfactorily successful experiment. He'd spitted the tuber, hung another from the tripod, and pushed a third into a slit made in the suspended roast, planning to sample each. But the best result was obtained with one that he had accidentally dropped into the campfire. The hull came out charred and inedible, of course, but the pith proved to be thoroughly cooked, soft and savory. His original attempts only managed to warm the bulbs, which was something, but the roots had retained their crispness and slightly bitter taste. He had tossed the rejects to an appreciative grunddwellan.
He looked around himself with delight. This camp was in by far the most scenic spot he had ever come across, not even excepting that high pass over the mountains he had discovered en route to the Low Entrance to the caves.
He sat in a cleft in the mountains. From one direction came the waterway he had been following (for how long now? - he could not remember), now a roaring cascade. The forest was heavy back that way, and he had found it abounding with game. He had decided to take advantage of the opportunity, and set up camp to dry and smoke meat to pack along later. He was afraid he would need to take as much food along as he could carry.
For in the other direction lay the end of the mountains. Standing beside his fire, he looked out over the precipice of a soaring waterfall, plunging straight down the face of a massive cliff which decisively terminated the mountains as if they had been cut off with a huge knife. A small pool lay at the base of the cliff, as though the water had to collect its wits after the dizzying drop before proceeding, and then the stream wound away more or less lazily into the forest again.
But the forest down there soon failed, and from atop the cliff Monwyrt could see the stream emerge on the other side of the forest, shining, flowing out into a shallow but immense valley, stretching out endlessly beyond his eyesight. At that moment the sun was sinking into the hazy distance, and the panorama before him seemed suspended in indecision between its day and night hues, momentarily settling on a bewildering blend of yellows, reds, and greys.
A few steps forward, and he could hear the tireless, deafening shush of the falls, but from where he stood now he could hardly make it out. The treowdwellans behind in the forest were heralding the onset of night, and when he turned back to his fire he was surprised at how dark the camp had become already. He stooped, tended his fire, turned the strips of thriddahype hanging over the spits in the smoke, and rolled himself in the skin for the night.
Monwyrt was content. He had made up his mind to follow the stream in a matter of a moment, but it had been made up absolutely, and he had not regretted his decision once in the hand-days since. The stream had been a lively companion, a sure guide, and a generous provider to the footloose wanderer. He had come to feel a close comfort arising from his relationship with it. The constant murmuring seemed to whisper meaningful secrets to his emotions; the playful bubbling entertained his ears; the wonderful coolness quenched his doubts for all time.
He had encountered innumerable grunddwellans of every kind, as well as many thriddahypes and the unavoidable sphex and treowdwellans. He became quite accomplished at greeting them in thought, and they very much seemed to understand (excepting only the sphex). They paid him the ultimate compliment, he thought, in utterly ignoring his presence; save when he would offer them something to eat, which they would accept without fail. He once had a thriddahype take a weodthuf bulb right out of his hand, and he felt he could never forget the innocent expression of acceptance he saw in that beast's eyes at the time. "Of course I will take food from you," the eyes seemed to relate. "Why would I refuse?"
He was conscious of just how much he belonged in the forest. Not that he needed it, or it him, exactly, but he felt a vague but undeniable sense of appreciation for the relationship. Not that he could put it into words, but of course words themselves had very little value to him any more. Now, the stream was leading him out of the forest, and that relationship was about to end. He wondered how it would affect him.
Next day, he planned to break camp, descend the falls, and continue his chase of the dewdrop. He didn't rightly understand why - everything he would ever need was available at this camp, if he chose to stay - but he had to go. Every question, every important question, that he had ever asked had been answered for him - by his masters, by the Waeccelang, by the forest itself - except for his daydream about the fate of that dewdrop.
He had not found any obvious clues to this answer in his travels so far, but he had in his mind an idea taking shape nonetheless. At the bottom of the world, somewhere, was a huge pond, his imagination told him: a pond into which all the streams of the mountains ran. His Traeppedelferean brain told him that the pond would be dark (of course it was underground: how else would those underground streams of the caves come to be?) and still - still with a silence befitting the utter end of the world.
This murky image fascinated Monwyrt. It haunted him. It became the primary goal of his life, although he would never consciously admit it even to himself, to find this pond and look on it with his own eyes.
And so it became necessary for him to leave the mountains, and the forest, behind.
Would he find game? He did not know. Would there be, at least, weodthuf, or berries? He had no idea. And so, he had spent the last hand-day preparing as much sustenance as he could carry to take along on his quest. The only thing he could be sure of, and he was thankful for that, was an adequate supply of water. He would not have to carry the bulky and rather heavy water-bladders; which meant he could take that much more food. But how much would he need? He couldn't even guess. He would be glad just to get started.
It was a sparkling morning when he arose the next day. He didn't even bother to open the inner lids, it was that bright already, and the sun was not up over the mountains yet. Monwyrt was soon loaded up and ready to go. The bulk of his baggage he had already cached in the rocks near the base of the falls, in preparation for this day. He strode to the edge of the cliff, took one last farewell look at the camp, the forest, and the mountains, and lowered himself over the edge.
The cliff was a sheer wall of glistening and seamless stone in appearance, but actually it was riddled with splits, cracks, and jutting shelves all along its face. Nevertheless, scaling it was a daunting proposition, to be sure. But Monwyrt was equal to the task. The Traeppedelferes are born to stone; they have an inate understanding of the substance; and Monwyrt, as a sure-footed hunter, was not intimidated by the height of the drop or by the irregularities of the hand-holds and foot-rests. He climbed down as he would out of a sceadutreow: hand to hand and hardly pausing.
Even though he made good progress of it, the descent did take a while, and the sun was high enough in the sky to be emerging from behind the cliff by the time Monwyrt finally reached the bottom. He took stock of his cuts and scratches, re-packed his skin to include the other provisions, and sat down to rest for a few moments in the cool spray beside the pool. A truhthalig, a glinting spark in the sunlight, suddenly leaped up out of the water and fell back again with a splash.
"That's a good omen," Monwyrt thought, "and a clear signal. I shall begin my new run with the cold confidence of the truhthalig." He rose, and strode lightly into the low forest.
He was somewhat relieved to discover this country to be little different from the mountains. Less precipitous, of course, and now and again he would come upon an open glade full of nothing but some stalky shoulder-high growth unknown to him. But along the stream, the ground was stony and the way was clear. His mind was put completely at ease when he suddenly caught a taste of game in the air. Thriddahype! Now he could want nothing, if there was game to be found; and he continued his journey reassured.
By the middle of the next day, the forest around him was thinning out. The weodwiht and weodasur blanketing the forest floor at the feet of the sceadutreows gave way to that tall, brittle stuff, which seemed to cover the land ahead as far as Monwyrt could see. He paused to look wistfully back at the mountains. Above the leaves of the forest he could see the blank wall of the cliff, and the delicate line of the waterfall issuing from the point of a severe notch in the top of that wall, disappearing into an invisible mist before reaching the bottom. He looked down at the stream at his feet - the same water that had come over the falls - and he watched it run on down its course.
Then he went on.
The banks of the stream still provided the best path; particularly now that he was approaching the stalk-covered plain; but here and there Monwyrt was distressed to find soft spots. Very little was as alarming to the mountain folk as the sinking of the ground beneath their feet, so accustomed were they to their stone halls and trails, and Monwyrt found himself constantly crossing and re-crossing the shallow stream in an effort to avoid the moc. Once or twice he had to resort to leaving the stream-bank to find higher, and firmer, ground; only to be rewarded by having to push through those dry, scratching stalks. It was slow work compared with running through the open forest of the mountains, and it seemed to him that he was getting nowhere.
But always the stream reminded him that um, he was moving down with the water, and from time to time he would glance back over his shoulder and note the shrinking of the mountains. And the stream itself was not so bad; it had a life of its own, and seemed to carry a bit of the forest along its bed with it. Little patches of weodasur bloomed defiantly every now and again just up from the water's edge, an incongruous splash of color against the relentlessly dull dun of the stalks. And other small unknown sprouts lined the banks of the stream as well, one of which Monwyrt mistakenly thought was weodthuf. But when he pulled it up he had found that its root was a disappointingly small and discouragingly black bundle of pods, rather than the plump pink bulb he had expected. It had had the same bitter scent as weodthuf, but much more intense and biting. His tongue shriveled at the scent of it. He threw it away with disgust.
At nightfall he discovered that the stalks were of some use to him, as he trod them down to make room for a camp. They were so dry they snapped off beneath his feet, and he had to take care not to let the sharp stubs cut him, but when he laid the broken shafts down in bundles they made a most comfortable mat on which to unroll his skin. He also discovered that they burned quite readily; a little too readily. His spearcastan strike soon exploded into a searing blaze, which burned itself out almost as quickly as it had started. He had to leap to stamp out the flames spreading from stub to stub in his little clearing, and he decided at once to forego a campfire that night.
The only sounds which had come to his ears since he had left the forest that morning were those of the careless stream, and the swish and light clacking together of the stalks in the breeze. He had heard no chattering of grunddwellens, no shrieking of treowdwellens, no indication of larger game whatsoever. But as the stars began to claim the sky it soon became obvious to Monwyrt that he was not the only living thing out on the plain. Sounds drifted out of the night, sounds of things he could not identify. The sounds of the night creatures were not reassuring to him. They were strange.
Something was by his camp, hidden in the stalks, and it sounded to him like it was very close. It was making a tiny noise, barely audible, but very clear for all that, and maddeningly rythmical. "Snick! snick! snick! snick!" it clicked slowly, endlessly, not slowing or speeding up, never louder, never softer. "Snick! snick! snick!" It sounded to Monwyrt like the meshing of a tiny set of teeth, but what the creature was actually doing he could not guess. He noticed with a shock that the noise was all around him; apparently these creatures were throughout the plain, hidden, all clicking together in unison. "Snick! snick! snick! snick! snick!" It was an eerie thing.
Suddenly, the stalks rustled briskly, noisily, as something rapidly rushed through them. Monwyrt threw off his skin and jumped to his feet in alarm, looking across the plain in the direction of the noise. He whirled as the rustling sound was repeated behind him, then turned quickly, hearing it again in a third direction. The clicking had stopped, all was silent, and Monwyrt could see nothing moving anywhere. He listened tensely, gripping the hilt of his knife, staring out into the darkness. Nothing...
He had stood there, frozen, for several moments that seemed as long as days, when he heard the light "snick! snick! snick! snick!" begin again. He sighed in relief. As mysterious and irritating as the Tiny Clickers were, he felt sure they were not to be feared as much as the Fast Rustlers. He rolled himself up in his skin again, fantastic images of these unseen occupants of the plain filling his head. "Snick! snick! snick!" He passed into an uneasy sleep.
The next day went much as the one before. The night creatures, whatever they were, were apparently content to abandon the plain to the wind during the day, for Monwyrt neither saw nor heard any evidence of them while he walked.
The forest had entirely disappeared into the plain by mid-morning, and Monwyrt became just a little anxious when he realized that the mountains themselves were showing signs of doing the same. The stream began to relax a little, winding about, eddying in pools here and there. He crossed a few tributary streams during the day, the second one out from what he thought of as the High Camp, and his stream was growing into a river before his eyes. He still hop-scotched back and forth across it, looking for the best footing, but he could foresee the time coming soon when he would have to decide at last which bank to keep to.
But, in spite of the hindrance of the tall stalks, the mud, and the meandering of the water, Monwyrt traveled a long distance that day. He ate sparingly of his provisions without breaking stride, and drank his fill from the increasingly turgid stream. By dusk, the still sun-lit peaks of the mountains shone red just above the horizon. Monwyrt again tramped down a clearing in the stalks and made his camp for the night.
The stars appeared, and the Tiny Clickers took up their monotonous litany, just as they had the previous night. Monwyrt listened intently for the Fast Rustlers, but didn't hear any, and eventually he drifted off. "Snick! snick! snick! snick! ...
He awoke with a start. It was pitch black: the stars could no longer be seen, and the plain was in total darkness. The Tiny Clickers were silent. Monwyrt listened breathlessly.
The wind had shifted, and picked up a little. He heard the breeze gently stirring the stalks: softly here, louder over there. The stream lapped reassuringly onto a stone at the water's edge somewhere nearby... but that was all. He guessed that a Fast Rustler had gone through the stalks, awakening him, but it was only a guess. Gradually, the Tiny Clickers resumed their measured communication, and Monwyrt relaxed again. But he could not get back to sleep.
He rose early the next morning. The sun showed itself quickly on the plain, but this morning was dull, shadowed. The sky had clouded over in the night. But the stream was cool and the water was refreshing, as always, and Monwyrt soon felt up to beginning the day's run. He went to his food-pouch, drew out a strip of meat to chew as he began walking, brought it up absently to his mouth - and suddenly threw it down in horror.
It was covered with hairless, legless creatures.
They were about the size of his smallest finger. They had several sucking, tube-like tongues below a single staring lidless eye, and the other end was releasing a continuous trail of pectinous ooze. Between was a transparent body through which Monwyrt could witness the internal functions of the vile little parasites. Aghast, he unwrapped the rest of his provisions, only to discover that they were infested as well, ruined, covered with these writhing forms and their slime.
Monwyrt was devastated. There had been enough food in his pouch to carry him another two hand-days at least; now he had none! He glared at the soft, disgusting creatures, and heedless of the possibility of poison (or attack!), brought his heel down on one with a gratifying splat.
His keen taste immediately registered a faint but quite noxious odor, and that odor seemed to be some kind of signal to the other beasts, swarming in a gooey mound over his meat and weodthufs. Instantly, they every one of them began to pull themselves away with their sucking tongues, toward the tall stalks, all of them strangely synchronized, pulling their bloated bodies forward, then releasing their tongues to reach forward again, all together, with a little "snick!" each time.
Monwyrt felt his flesh crawl.
What was he to do? He had no food: even the two-day run back to the mountains would be a trial - but what else was there? He instinctively lifted his head and licked the roof of his mouth. The wind had changed in the night; there was a distant tang, was it... ? He tasted again, and he was sure. Thriddahype! But where?
The wind was not coming from the mountains behind him; it came up the stream-bed he was following. The scent was very faint - how far off was it? He didn't care. He had already made up his mind to hunt at the first identification of the scent. Hurriedly, he packed up his light bundle, shuddered again at the sight of the retreating Clickers, and followed the scent.
Before long he came to the point of a confluence, where another larger stream joined his. The waterway could not be called anything but a river now, but Monwyrt did not hesitate in his decision of which side to take: the thriddahype was most definitely on the other side of this new stream. He was nearly swept off his feet as he waded through the waist-deep current, which terrified him. This was the most water he had ever seen, and he had had no idea it could carry so much force. But he reached the far shore safely, and he tasted the breeze again.
Off in the distance, he thought could see a thing all Traeppedelferes had heard about, but few had ever seen. A dark, round creature, about three hands across, rose slowly above the stalks and blew away on the breeze.
A flotasaec!
Flotasaecs are by all acounts the most utterly repulsive of creatures. Consisting entirely of a more or less empty bag of flesh, they feed by smothering their victims, secreting a vile kind of enzyme through their skin which decomposes the kill, allowing them to assimilate the sustenance back through their skin again by a type of absorption. Having "eaten," they escape when their floppy bodies inflate with gases formed by digestion. They become lighter than air and sail away with no control over their flight other than the ability to release their noxious gas at will. They are even more helpless on the ground, for they cannot inflate unless they have eaten, and they have no legs to move themselves with, nothing but several tube-like sucking protuberances which they use to belaboredly drag themselves around...
The thriddahype scent was stronger now, and in the same direction as the flotasaec, and Monwyrt began using his call. "Here, come here, I want you, run to me," he thought, concentrating intently, as he ran as fast as the crackling stalks would allow. The scent was getting quite strong, and he was surprised that he couldn't see it yet in the wide-open country of the plain. "Come here, here I am..." He reached down, still running, to unsheath his knife, when suddenly, without warning, he tripped over something big which was hidden in the stalks. "Moc!" he swore, sprawling on his face.
Then he felt one, two, no - who knows how many! soft, warm, and sticky masses clinging onto his legs, his back, his arms. He reached back in panic without taking time to stand and ripped a flotasaec off his thigh with a sickening slop! sort of sound. Quivering with revulsion and horror he jumped to his feet and tore the rest off him: slop! slop! slop! slop! Each time it stung a little more.
He quickly looked around - the plain was covered with flat bags, staring at him with lidless eyes the size of his fist, working their way slowly towards him - "Snick! Snick! Snick! Snick!" There was the thriddahype, dead, buried in flotasaecs in various stages of inflation, right where he had tripped over it. A completely blown-up bag lifted off the top of the barely recognizable pile, and to Monwyrt's astonishment and despair immediately began to deflate, shooting directly toward him out of the air. He instinctively stabbed it with his ready knife, and it popped and flopped to the ground, lifeless - but the odor it released was unbelievable! Monwyrt choked, he gasped; he fell to his knees, swooning.
But the flotasaecs near him were still advancing, and more on the carcass were inflating. Monwyrt knew he could not stand the stench of another one - his mind seemed clouded, he couldn't think fast enough. Frantically, he tore two more off of his legs and reached into his bundle for the only other weapon he had.
Fire!
No sooner had he struck the spearcastans together than the dry stalks ignited. The wind whipped the flames, Monwyrt hastily grabbed a bundle of stalks and lit it like a torch, shoving it toward the flotasaecs closest to him, at the same time doing his best to stay out of the fires. The disgusting beasts sizzled and curled, dead the moment the fire hit them. Several were just in the process of floating away when the wildfire roared beneath them.
Monwyrt watched with astonishment as they swelled rapidly, split, and exploded mid-air in a ball of fire when the gases were suddenly exposed to the flames. In moments his attackers were reduced to charred flaps of flesh.
The flames soon burned out underfoot, and Monwyrt sat down to inspect his wounds. Where the flotasaecs had touched him his skin was bruised and sore. His feet and legs had been burned in several places, besides, and his back - Moc! there was still one on his back! He reached around and siezed it, and it was only after he had thrown it far out toward the fire that he realised it was his pack, not a flotasaec after all.
Luckily, the fire had advanced past that point, and his skin was undamaged. He shakily got up and retrieved the bundle, and looked around himself.
The plain was a smoldering desert. The fire had burned all the way down to the river already, and, although it was not making much headway into the wind, downwind it roared away unchecked, leaving nothing but the white ashes of the stalks behind. His morwetraeppe's training in fire control had not prepared him for anything like this, and he stared helplessly at the blaze speeding away from him.
"Oh, well," he said with a shrug, to no one, appreciatively eyeing the smooth, level ground before him. "It's only the stalks, and it makes much easier walking with them gone!"
The question of food remained unresolved, however, and his mind inexorably returned to this question before long. He walked back to the river bank, and noted that some of the sprouts right next the water had been spared by the fire. He took a deep drink of water, and splashed some up on his sore legs. He spied some of those sprouts he had taken before to be weodthuf.
He rinsed off a few of the black pods in the river, then made up his mind to try them. With a little imagination, he thought, he might actually make himself believe he was eating weodthuf. Tentatively, he put one in his mouth. Not bad! He bit it with a little crunch. A bit tough, perhaps, but again, not bad!
He paused. No nausea, it seemed. It didn't seem to be poison; in fact, he suddenly realised, he felt pretty good! He seemed surprisingly full of energy, considering what he'd just been through - what was this stuff? He ate another one. What a discovery! These things were wonderful! and he had discovered them. He would call them... he considered it a moment. He would call them weodwyrt! Weodwyrt! perfect.
He gathered up all the weodwyrt he could find, popped a couple more in his mouth, stowed the rest, and set off on a dead run. He felt so good, so strong, the way was clear; why not run? He tossed more of the little black pods into his mouth as he ran, and ran, and ran.
He ran as he had never run before. The easy, loping, continuous stride of the morwetraeppe, chewing up distance by sheer endurance, was escalated into a glorious dash across the smoking plain. The footing was smooth, soft, even warm. Monwyrt soon gave up looking ahead altogether: he closed his eyes, luxuriating in the wonderful sense of speed. There had never been a place like this in the experience of any hunter where one could just run, run, run, on a flat, open, and unending surface; and Monwyrt was enraptured, enchanted. Time, pain, distance, hunger - they all just melted away in the exquisite heat of the run. There were no thoughts in his head; he had become nothing but sensations, he fed on the delectible rythmic blur of movement, and his strength grew as he fed, and his exertion and speed increased with his strength.
How long had he sprinted? It felt like a mere moment, but it seemed like seasons to his memory. He could run like this forever; this is what he was born to do. No, that's not true, he had not been born at all; he had run forever, and he would always continue to run...
Moc! was that thunder? No, it was too loud to be thunder. There it was again! He whirled around - the mountains were gone! That was it, the mountains had fallen.
Avalanche!
He threw himself onto the ground, digging his fingers into the soil. Look out! another boulder came hurtling down. He dodged it by the thickness of his skin, no more. He broke out in an icy sweat, his fingers ached, he held on for all he was worth, but how much longer could he manage to cling there, ducking the landslide?
The stinging dust, let loose just before the last cataclysmic release of stone, was pinging off his shoulders - no, not dust, not dust! The avalanche was over; he had made it! Ouch! What was that, then, if not dust? Ouch, it was hitting his back, and legs; everywhere.
Sphex! Hordes of sphex, stinging, swarming, covering his body! The sky was black with them! He writhed on the ground, rolling over and over, trying to crush them, he was crushing them! but still they kept stinging, stinging, stinging!
Monwyrt rolled, slapping at his legs and neck, crying out in pain and fear, until at last he gave out, defeated, passing into a lifeless unconsciousness.
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