Why should he want us to do that? Kickaha thought. Does he know about the trap inside the gate, know that we’ll be stuck there if he doesn’t go away as I’d planned? Is he hoping we’ll decide to run the trap and so get ourselves killed? He will wait outside the boulder while we agonize inside, and he’ll get his sadistic amusement thinking about our dilemma.
Clearly, Urthona thought he had them in his power, and clearly he did. But he was not going to expose himself or get closer.
That’s the way to manage it, Kickaha thought. Be cagy, be foxy, never take anything for granted. That was how he had survived through so much. Survive? It looked as if his days were about ended.
“Walk to the boulder!” Urthona shouted. “At once! Or I burn you a little!”
Anana went to Kickaha’s other side and helped Orc move him. Every step flicked pain through Kickaha, but he shut his mouth and turned his groans into silence. The smoke still spread over the air and made him cough again and caused even deeper pain.
Then they passed the tree where the Horn was sticking out from a partially burned branch.
“Has Urthona come out from the trees yet?” he asked. Anana looked around slowly, then said, “No more than a step or two.”
“I’m going to stumble. Let me fall.”
“It’ll hurt you,” she said.
“So what? Let me go! Now!”
“Gladly!” Orc said and released him. Anana was not so fast, and she tried to support his full weight for a second, they went down together, she taking most of the impact. Nevertheless, the fall seemed to end on sharpened stakes in his chest, and he almost fainted.
There was a shout from Urthona. Red Orc froze and slowly raised his hands above his head. Kickaha tried to get up and crawl to the Horn, but Anana was there before him. “Blow on it now!” he said. “Why?” Red Orc and Anana said in unison. “Just do what I say! I’ll tell you later! If there is a later!” She lifted the mouthpiece to her lips and loudly blew the sequence of seven notes that made the skeleton key to turn the lock of any gate of the Lords within range of its vibrations.
There was a shout from Urthona, who had begun running toward them when they had fallen. But as the first note blared out, and he saw what Anana held in her mouth, he screamed.
Kickaha expected him to shoot. Instead, Urthona whirled and, still yelling, ran away toward the woods. Red Orc said, “What is happening?” The last of the golden notes faded away.
Urthona stopped running and threw his beamer down on the ground and jumped up and down.
The immediate area around them remained the same. There was the clearing with its burned grasses, the boulder on top of which the darkly clothed stranger sat, the fallen tree, and the trees on the edge of the clearing.
But the sky had become an angry red without a sun.
The land beyond the edge of the clearing had become high hills covered with a rusty grass and queer-looking bushes with green and red striped swastika-shaped leaves. There were trees on the hills beyond the nearest ones; these were tall and round and had zebra stripes of black, white, and red. They swayed as if they were at the bottom of a sea responding to a current.
Urthona’s jumping up and down had resulted in his attaining heights of at least six feet. Now he picked up his beamer and ran in great bounds toward them. He seemed in perfect control of himself.
Not so with Red Orc, who started to whirl toward them, his mouth open to ask what had happened. The motion carried him on around and toppled him over. But he did not fall heavily.
“Stay down,” Kickaha said to Anana. “I don’t know where we are, but the gravity’s less than Earth’s.”
Urthona stopped before them. His face was almost as red as the sky. His green eyes were wild.
“The Horn of Shambarimen!” he screamed. “I wondered what you had in that case! If I had known! If I had known!”