No rain had come with the storm, yet a twilight chill settled as we followed Fethlin over the boulders and the broken walls. The thunder folded itself away into the sea, leaving an immense silence.
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Darkness gathered. In the hiding place Fethlin had found us-a tiny sunken room, still roofed over, and with a low narrow door-mouth-we crouched around our little fire. Wexl and Peyuan had piled loose stones against the door, now only a small hole remained. The room became very smoky, and even so the orange warmth of the fire leaked away. I did not know what it was we hid from, neither, I think, did they. Old tales and older instinct had combined to make them wary.
They ate oatcake and cheese, and Fethlin set a watch-himself first, Wexl second, and Peyuan last, through the hours of the night. I was not included, whether out of politeness, or because he thought me incapable, I am not sure. I did not argue the point. I curled myself into a corner where a stubborn bush was growing, and slept wearily, not even caring what dreams or memories came.
But it seemed at first an empty, quiet sleep. Once I woke, and saw that Wexl had replaced Fethlin by the door hole.
The second time I woke, things were very different. Wexl was no longer at his post, and beyond the fire were no longer stretched the sleeping shapes of Fethlin and Peyuan. The fire itself was out, yet I was aware of a great glow in the blackness beyond the door.
I stood up and went to the door, and found I could move out of it standing upright. Beyond the shelter, streets of tall buildings stretched away, steps led up and down, obelisks stood straight as spear shafts. I knew then that I dreamed, for this was the city as it had been, not as it had become, and its sisters with it in the terraced hills. Yet there were no lights in any of the palaces, no lanterns swung from poles, no colored lamps went by in the hands of men. Only that great harsh glare that flared eastward, out toward the sea, an unwholesome red beacon of some disaster. I walked out into the city streets, under the shadow of the old walls. I climbed higher and higher into the hills until at last I could look down and see that huge torch burning on the tongue of land that ran out from the beach. There was some movement around it, a dismal mechanical movement. Occasionally the flames would leap very high, and magenta smoke clouds would funnel into the sky. The sea glittered bloodily across the bay.
A dreadful certainty came on me that I would be trapped
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by my dream in the old world with its miasma of calamity. I made that supreme effort, so like the thrust of a swimmer up from some river’s muddy bottom, and my head broke the surface of the dream, and I woke.
At once Wexl’s hand grasped my arm.
“Make no sound,” he whispered. “There is some danger.”
I nodded and he let me go. I sat up. The little fire had been darkened by a heap of loose soil. Fethlin and Peyuan were kneeling by the door hole, staring out, looking this way and that.
Then the noise came, from somewhere outside the shelter. My skin became icy, and my hair prickled. Never had I heard such a noise. Not knowing even what it was, I became sick with fear and loathing. A sort of slithering rustle that seemed like the movement of dry old flesh, dragged inch by flacid inch over the grassy paving of the street. The first thing that came to my mind was that some huge snake was pulling itself around our hiding place. I had never seen these great serpents in the wild, but I had heard the bandits, and later the wagoners, tell stories of them, and remembered the creature the woman had danced with in Ankurum, as wide as her waist and twenty feet long, or more. Despite their terrifying size, they did not eat man, but preferred smaller juicier morsels, such as unlucky hedgehogs. But then the sound came again, and there was something in it that made me certain it was more than a snake; it was too large, and there was nothing sinuous in it, none of the grace of the serpent. And it was coming closer.
I crawled to the door hole and looked out.
Between the broken walls, something came. It stood in the street, flexing its body, turning its head, twitching the long tail backward and forward, with a sound of dry, old flesh scraping on stone.
I had heard of dragons. Now I saw one. Though it was not a true dragon, I realized, when I had begun to reason again.
After I had crossed Aluthmis, I saw the three girls dance in the chiefs hall, and the object of their dance had been the great lizard, large as a wolf, a mutation of its kind. I had thought that horrible and curious enough. Now I saw that Change was not finished with its experiment in size. I told myself that the thing in the street was only a lizard, yet it was hard for me. No wolf-sized creature this. It towered high above the walls, its broad flat head was the length of a man’s body, its tapering thrashing tail as thick as four men roped together. The faintest hint of starlight picked out the dry,
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rustling, black cascade of its scales; its whole body was armored. In its long mouth were well-developed teeth, and a long, black, whiplike tongue. Its enormous eyes turned on their incredible axis, each one a different way. It heaved itself upward on its stumpy legs and came toward us.
Silently, stiffly, we drew back from the hole. But I think there was still a hope in us that it did not know we were there.
Through the chink of the hole we watched the ghastly head lower itself, slide toward the opening, and stop short. It made another sound now, a hissing spitting noise of anger, and the stench of its breath filled up the room, a stink of death, and foulness, and everything decayed. We had flattened ourselves against the walls, and as well we had. The long tongue darted, and flashed in through the doorway at us, large as a snake in itself, blindly questing about the tiny space in spasm. It was how a smaller lizard would catch flies.
None of us thought to strike at the tongue as we stood congealed against the walls. In another moment it was withdrawn. And almost immediately a frantic scrabbling began outside as it started to paw its way in to us.
“We will be killed, Fethlin,” I said, “if we stay here.” I made no effort to keep my voice low; there was no longer any point.
“The roof will fall soon,” he answered. As if to emphasize his words, an avalanche of stones rushed and rattled outside.
“Or it will open the doorway wide enough to see where it thrusts its tongue,” Wexl muttered.
A slab thudded from over our heads and exploded in the street. I felt sick, but a thought came to me.
“There is no moon,” I said, “and the thing has slept by day. Perhaps it is afraid of the light. When it came you doused the fire.”
“True.” Fethlin drew the flint from his belt. He leaned and struck flame from a stone, and shook the flame off into the heaped-up fire. A twig snapped alive. “Our only chance,” Fethlin said. “If light keeps it back from us, then we must run toward the beach; we do not have enough kindling to last the night. It will follow, no doubt, but I do not think such a thing likes salt water, either.”
We pushed the soil off the fire and threw on further branches snapped from the bush in the corner. Peyuan cracked loose four of the sturdiest limbs and gave us one each to dip and use as torches. Outside the thing gave a snuffling cough as smoke irritated its hungry, merciless throat. A rush of red
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flame came suddenly, lighting up the door hole, and the lizard hissed. We heard its awkward flight backward, the crunching as its great paws crushed pebbles. Wexl and Peyuan thrust the stones out of the door-mouth; Fethlin flung the burning stuff after them. The spitting branches in our hands, we burst from cover. I had one glimpse of it, cowering back, yet only a few feet from us, its eyes half-blinded, and saliva gushing a poisonous yellow from its jaws. Then we had turned and were running hard and silent through those streets of white bones, making for the sea.
It followed us. We had known that it must. We saw the sea below, and heard its rustling, unstoppable progress behind us. We found the road and the trees, and by this time our branches had guttered out in our grasp, extinguished by the damp wind from the bay. There was no time to stop and make new fire among the trees, arid no scattered branches ready to hand. But there seemed to be fire enough in my lungs.