“Yes,” Fanyi assented.
Together they pushed shut that door upon the past and climbed the ladder to the upper level. As they brushed all they could of the debris in the small compartment down the ladder hole to free floor space, Sander came across lengths of wire, pieces of metal that were hardly corroded at all. He recognized them as something the Traders named “stainless steel,” another secret from Before, for such did not corrode easily—neither could it be copied. From these pieces, knowing to his disappointment that he could not hope to carry much, he made a judicious selection. Some of the bits could be worked into dart heads, always supposing they could find a place where he might be able once more to labor at his trade.
Fanyi, for her part, combed through the litter for scraps of material on which appeared lines and patterns that she declared were part of the old art of writing. The most portable of these she tucked into a small sack.
In the end they cleared a goodly space in which, cramped though it might be, they could shelter. The fishers refused to come on deck, though Fanyi coaxed them. The pair settled down instead under the shade of the tilted ship. Of Rhin there was no sign. Nor was there any hint that Sander could see, after a searching survey of that part of the surrounding desert he could examine, of any pursuit by the amphibians.
They shared out a handful each of Fanyi’s dried fruit, allowing themselves and the fishers each a limited drink. Then they curled up to await the coming of dark.
The day was hot, but lacked the baking, drying heat of the outer world, so they managed to doze. Sander awoke at last in answer to a sharp familiar yelp. There was no mistaking the cry of a koyot. He crawled over Fanyi, who murmured in her sleep, ascending the ladder to the deck.
Rhin reared on his hind feet, his front paws planted against the curve of the ship’s side. He yelped again, sharply, with a note that demanded attention. Yet it was not a cry of warning.
Sander swung down by the rope. Rhin nosed at him eagerly. The koyot’s muzzle and the hair on his front legs were wet—or at least damp, with an overcoating of the sea-bottom sand plastered there by moisture. Rhin had found water!
“What is it?” Fanyi appeared above.
“Rhin has found water!”
“Another river?”
Sander wondered about that with foreboding. Since their experience with the amphibians, from now on he would look upon all streams warily. But water they must have, or else back trail west completely.
Now for the first time he wished there was some more direct method of communication between man and koyot, that he could ask Rhin a question and learn what lay out toward the east where the other had disappeared earlier. But he was assured in this much: Rhin already knew the menace of the amphibians; therefore the koyot would not lead them into any ambush. He said as much, and Fanyi agreed.
The sinking of the sun removed the desert’s direct heat. But they still suffered from the rise of salt dust about their feet. Rhin, once more bearing his pack, trotted confidently forward in a direction that, to Sander, only took them farther from the land. However, his confidence in the koyot was such he was sure the animal knew where he was bound.
Before the moon rose, the fishers suddenly pushed to the fore of the small party, loping forward with their usual sinuous gait until they disappeared into a section of towering rocks that must have once been reefs showing above water. They formed knife-edged, sharp ridges, rather than hillocks that could be climbed.
On the other side of one of these, they came to a second deep drop in the sea-desert floor. But edging this was another tumble of those ancient worked blocks. Among them Fanyi’s light (which she had been forced to put to use in this uneven footing) picked out a curving curb. Lying within it was the sheen of water, like a dull mirror that had nothing to reflect.
The pool (Fanyi’s light moved in a circular pattern to pick out its circumference) was an oval, far too symmetrically formed to be of nature’s fashioning. At one side, some of the curbing had given way, allowing the water to lap over and run away in a small riverlet to the edge of the drop, spinning over it in a miniature falls. The drop there was beyond the power of the light to plumb.
Sander tasted the water. Sweet and fresh. He drank from his cupped hands, dashed it over his dusty face. Small rivulets dribbled down his neck and chest, carrying away the grime of the desert. The fishers plunged their muzzles in deep, sucking with audible gulps. Fanyi followed Sander’s example, drank and then washed, uttering at last a small sigh of contentment.
“I wonder who built this,” she said, as she sat back on her heels.
Sander brought out their water bottle, dumped its contents into the sterile sand before he rinsed it, preparatory to refilling. A sweet water spring in the midst of the ocean—or what had been the ocean! But long before that, it had been on land. The sense of eons of vanished ages hung heavy about this curbed pool. Men reckoned seasons now from the Dark Time. And the Rememberers had counted some three hundred years from the end of one world and the beginning of this one.
But how long before that had this sea land been uncovered for the first time so that men—or at least intelligent beings—raised these stone piles that even long ages had not completely worn away, titanic building that raging seas had not entirely erased? He felt dazed when he tried to think of years that must certainly be counted, not by generations of men, but rather by the slow passage of thousands and thousands of seasons.
There was nothing here of that aura of despair and loss that he had felt in the undersea ship. Not even a tenuous kinship linked him with these ancient-upon-ancient builders. Perhaps they had not even been human as he and his kind now reckoned humanity. He wished that Kabor, the senior Rememberer of the Mob, could witness this, though there would be no hint of memory that the sight could awaken within his well-trained mind.
They drank deeply again, leaving the forgotten pool. Twice they had had the good fortune to find water in the desert. Sander could not be sure such luck would hold for a third time. It seemed to him that they had best now angle back west. There was no game to be hunted here. Hunger could strike them as swiftly and in as deadly a fashion as lack of water. The sooner they reached true land, the better, whether they were able to locate Fanyi’s goal or not.
The smith half expected her to protest when he suggested an abrupt swing west. But she did not, though she held her pendant for a long moment or two, focusing the light on its surface, as if by that she could check the path they must go.
Here they could not make good time. The ground was very rough, for the ridges left by old reefs sent them on long or short detours. Their clothing and their bodies, their faces, even their hair, were thick with sandy dust, and the coats of the three animals seemed matted with it. As the night wore on, Sander kept looking ahead for some shelter in which to wait out the day.
After the moon rose, they gained a measure of light. Fanyi snapped off her Before Torch. It was perhaps an hour or so before dawn when Sander felt a sudden drop in temperature. He had been sweating so that the chill of this new breeze made him shiver. They halted for Fanyi to rearrange her belongings and put on her overcloak. Now they could see their breath issuing forth in white puffs.
The change had come so quickly Sander wondered if some kind of a storm was on its way. Although no clouds yet masked the stars above, nevertheless he was anxious for them to find some secure shelter.
Ahead a dark mass projected well above the surface they toiled across. He strained to see that rise better, wondering if they were approaching a one-time island that now stood like a mountain above the denuded plain.
Fanyi flashed her light, holding her pendant directly in its beam.
“That way!” Her voice rang out as she shifted the light to point ahead, toward the dark plateau. She seemed so sure that Sander, for the moment, was willing to follow her lead without question.
6
By dawn they arrived at the foot of a cliff. Falls of dressed stone, stained by rusty streaks, made Sander sure that above them now lay the remains of a Before city. The scattered and shattered debris about them gave warning that devastation had hit hard here. There could be little left of any value above—even if they could make the climb.