Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

At this point, human travelers would have shaken hands or embraced. But the chameleon men had no equivalent of the word “goodbye.” In any case, they were not saying good-bye; as Niall walked swiftly downhill, he was as aware of their presence as if they had been walking beside him. But when he looked back a few minutes later, they had already vanished.

Something about the bleak moorland ahead of him made Niall feel uncomfortable. It was not simply that these miles of coarse gray grass reminded him of the gray mold that covered the broken trees in the valley of the elemental, but that he had the same disturbing sense of being observed by hostile eyes. But he could see only a few ravens circling overhead.

Since there was no longer the slightest trace of a path in this monotonous wilderness, he decided to make his way to the top of a hill that would afford a view of the way ahead. It was higher than he expected, and as he stood on the weatherworn granite that protruded from the dry turf at the summit, he could look back more than twenty miles to the snow-capped mountain above the sacred lake.

This brought to mind a question he had been intending to explore further: the source of the stream that polluted the sacred lake. The chameleon men had no idea of where it began, which meant that it lay beyond their territory.

Since Niall’s contact with the chameleon men had implanted in his mind a clear and detailed image of their domain, he was able to infer that if the stream flowed directly from west to east, its underground course should pass fairly close to the hill he was standing on. And since, sooner or later, Niall had to turn his steps to the north, there seemed no good reason why he should not do so immediately. Pulling his cloak around his shoulders, since the wind was growing chilly, he made his way down the northern slope of the hill.

He had not far to travel; within half a mile he felt under his feet the tingling sensation that told him he was crossing an underground stream. At this point he turned west again, and began to follow its course. What puzzled him was that the stream beneath his feet seemed smaller than he expected — at a guess not more than six feet wide — while his impression from the size of the sacred lake was that it must be fed by a river, or at least more than one tributary.

The countryside that stretched ahead of him was bare and treeless: low hills covered with coarse grass, and valleys full of gorse and brambles. And since the Sun was less than an hour from the horizon, Niall began to think about finding somewhere to sleep. It had been a long day, and he had walked over twenty miles; his legs were beginning to ache. Now that he was no longer with the chameleon men, he had become subject once more to ordinary human tiredness.

But it was not simply this that made him feel oddly depressed. After the domain of the chameleon men, with its trees and streams and autumn flowers, this moorland landscape seemed drearily lifeless. He had not observed a single elemental since he left his companions, and this did not surprise him. Elementals, he had noticed, possessed a certain joyousness; they seemed to love nature, and lived off its vitality. In his present surroundings there was very little vitality.

Following the stream beneath his feet, he found himself walking along a low ridge with a view of the valley below, with a peaty brown lake full of dying sedge. The ridge led to a plateau a few hundred yards wide, in the center of which was a tall stone, perhaps twelve feet high, surrounded by dense, prickly bushes. Niall was tempted to camp at the foot of the stone, where the bushes would protect him from observation. But when he came closer, he observed a kind of yellowish moss on its surface, which seemed to resemble the face of an old man. Suddenly convinced that this was the home of an elemental, he stared at it intently, as if trying to force it to reveal itself. At that point, the rock seemed to turn into a hostile face that glared back at him, angry at this encroachment on its territory. As clearly as if his senses were still attuned to those of the chameleon men, he perceived that the rest of the elemental was sunk up to its shoulders in the turf; moreover, it seemed inclined to emerge and make Niall feel sorry for intruding. He turned and walked on without delay, relieved that the naturecraft he had absorbed from the chameleon men had saved him from choosing this spot to sleep; the elemental certainly would have found some way of making him pay for his blunder, if only by sending him vivid nightmares.

The sun was now close to the horizon, and when, still following the underground stream, he descended into the next valley, it was dark with shadows. Tempted to curl up under the nearest bush, he was discouraged by the unevenness of the ground, on which it was necessary to tread carefully to avoid twisting his ankles on gorse roots. And when he stumbled over a boulder that stuck up like a large egg out of the ground, he decided to sit down and rest his feet. This was such a relief that he was tempted to remove his backpack and close his eyes. But the encroaching darkness made him decide to resist the fatigue and press on.

When he reached the top of the next ridge, he was relieved to find the landscape ahead still bathed in evening sunlight. He was looking down on a basinlike valley that faced toward the west; it was at least a mile wide, and in its center was a lake that looked golden in the sunlight, but which, as he descended the slope toward it, proved to be of a striking pale green, which suggested either that it was stagnant or that its surface was covered with some green vegetation like the algae that covers ponds. A moment later, he noticed a stream that flowed into it from the far side of the valley, disposing of the notion that it might be stagnant.

But could this be the source of pollution of the sacred lake? He found it hard to believe — this lake looked somehow too peaceful and inviting. Even the grass that swept down to its edge was as fresh and green as the lake itself. It looked the ideal place to camp for the night.

By the time he reached the edge of the water a quarter of an hour later, the sun was touching the horizon. At close quarters, he could see that the color was due to tiny green particles. He dipped in his hand and cupped a little of the water in the palm; it was quite clear, and the fragments looked like particles of moss. This, then, was almost certainly not the source of pollution, in which case, he must have been following the wrong underground stream.

Since the ground shelved toward the lake, he decided against sleeping too close to the water. Instead, he began walking back up the southern slope until he found a spot where the ground flattened into a slight hollow. Within minutes the sun had dipped below the horizon, and he was in darkness. He flung his backpack on the ground, then sank down beside it and stretched out on his back, his arms beneath his head. The sense of relief was enormous.

But when the tiredness had drained out of his body, he realized he was hungry. He sat up in the dark and fumbled with his bag. The string that tied the neck was extremely tight, a circumstance to which he owed the fact that the contents were now dry. He switched on the flashlight and took out the flask of drink. As he had hoped, it contained mead — the kind he had drunk on the boat that had brought him to the country of the spiders, which was sweet and smelled of honey. He gave a chuckle of pleasure as it ran down his throat and spread warmth to his stomach. Next he opened the parcel of food. This contained a hard, unsweet pastry biscuit — a crunchy variety of which he was particularly fond — and some goat cheese. He spread the cheese with his knife. His mother had also included a waxed paper box that contained small green cucumbers pickled in vinegar, and even a jar of salt. He ate three of the biscuits and half the cheese before his hunger was satisfied. He also drank about a third of the mead, which he found induced a pleasant light-heartedness. While he was eating, the Moon rose, making the flashlight unnecessary.