His first impression was that there were half a dozen horsemen coming toward them along the lake shore. He deliberately repressed the tension that made his heart beat faster at the thought of finally meeting representatives of the Magician. But while still a quarter of a mile away, the horsemen stopped. It was surely impossible that they had not seen Niall and the captain. Perhaps, for some unknown reason, the horsemen preferred to wait for them.
Five minutes later Niall and the captain were close enough to see that the horsemen seemed unaware of their presence. They were removing something from the backs of their animals, and Niall soon saw that it was a large net. They were stretching this out along the shore.
As Niall came closer, he became aware that these were not normal human beings. They seemed very short and powerful and, as far as Niall could see, were not wearing clothes. At any moment, Niall expected them to break off what they were doing to stare at the strangers. In fact, they continued working at laying out the net as if they were deaf and blind.
Niall remembered the living-dead man who had thrown himself into the river in the spider city, and was struck by a suspicion. And when finally he stood only a few feet away from the toiling men, it became a virtual certainty. These creatures were not alive.
In appearance they were almost identical to one another; they might have been cloned from the same embryo. All were baldheaded, and their powerful bodies were physically perfect, with thick, muscular arms and legs. The faces had character, with strong jaws, broad but well-shaped noses, and lips that would have been sensual if they had not been set in such a straight line. A regiment of them would have struck fear into the enemy. Yet the eyes had no expression. Except for the fact that they were obviously breathing, they might have been zombies or robots.
There was something else that confirmed that they were nonhuman: the area where males have sexual organs was as smooth and bare as a doll’s.
As Niall and the captain watched, these creatures waded into the lake, dragging the net behind them. It was about forty feet long, and must have weighed at least a ton, yet they pulled it as if it were a piece of muslin.
A dozen yards from shore, they were up to their chins in the still water. But they went on until their heads vanished below the surface. Since he had observed the rise and fall of their chests, Niall assumed that they would reappear fairly quickly. But as the minutes went by, he realized he was wrong.
His attention now turned to their steeds, each of which had two large panniers slung across its back. It was immediately obvious that, in spite of bridles, they were not horses. Their heads were more like those of bulls, with short faces, but the large, bulging eyes added a touch of the frog. Their legs were short and obviously very strong, their backs broad and flat. It was apparent that they were bred for strength. Unlike their riders, they were clearly alive, and regarded the captain with suspicion. He, for his part, was not at ease with them — possibly remembering his encounter with the aggressive sheep.
Half an hour went past while Niall and the captain stared out over the smooth water, waiting for the heads to break the surface. In this world in which time seemed suspended, there seemed to be no good reason to move on. Finally, a ripple appeared, followed by the tops of bald heads. But their emergence was slow. The reason became clear as the rest of them became visible, dragging something behind them. The net was bulging with their catch. The creatures inside it were struggling feebly, yet without any real conviction; like the fish Niall had caught in the mud, they seemed almost indifferent to what happened to them.
Niall was astonished to see that the manlike creatures were breathing, and that water was gushing out of their mouths and noses. It seemed likely that when they submerged, they simply went on breathing water instead of air. By the time they reached the shore, the water had ceased, and they were breathing normally.
The net was dragged onto the hard-packed sand, and the apelike beings — Niall was already thinking of them as ape men — opened it. There was a violent movement, and a snakelike creature reared up from underneath the feebly struggling fish, and sank its teeth into the arm of one of the fishermen, then lashed around until it had torn out a chunk of flesh. Niall had seen one in the harbor, and recognized it as a moray eel. For a moment it looked as if the man was not going to react; then he grabbed the eel and squeezed. It divided into two halves as if made of soft putty, both halves falling at the man’s feet. A little pale pink fluid was running down his arm.
The steeds were led forward, and the men began putting their catch into the panniers. Most of them were like the fish Niall had already seen, with plump bodies and huge goggle eyes. Some had the disklike shape of jellyfish, but were white in color, with thin tentacles that stirred protestingly when they were turned upside down. There were also small squids, like those in the sea at home, and black, shiny, sluglike creatures about a foot long, one of which clamped onto a man’s thigh and was promptly peeled off and dropped into a pannier. When each pannier was full, it was covered over with a thick layer of the brown weed. Finally, the net itself was rolled into a long bundle, after which the men lifted it and tied it across the backs of all six animals, whose powerful legs sagged under the weight. Then they were led away by their bridles.
The captain paused long enough to pick up half of the moray eel, which was six inches thick, and tore chunks from it as he walked behind the slow-moving animals.
An hour later, as they left the lake behind, the ground once more became hard and gray, like the lava field they had crossed on their way to Skollen. The pace was necessarily slow, and Niall found himself yawning. It was like walking through a long, gray afternoon. But a few miles beyond the lake, the flashes of lightning became more frequent, and Niall was surprised when he felt drops of water on his face. He looked up at the sky. There was no sign of the rain clouds he would have expected on Earth; instead, the sky above was swirling, as if stirred by a breeze, and the blue electricity was crackling in it.
Niall expected a cloudburst, but all that fell was a light rain. It made his hair and his tunic damp, but was not heavy enough to soak him. Several bolts of lightning hit the ground within a few hundred yards, leaving behind an ozone smell.
This mild storm also had the effect of increasing the light, as if day was about to dawn. The result was that Niall could now see the first sign of a city on the horizon. It was difficult to estimate its distance in the strange twilight, but Niall guessed about two miles. For a moment he was tempted to walk ahead of the slow-moving animals, then decided against it. They obviously knew the best way into the city.
At one point the ground became rougher where the lava had formed runnels. The outermost animal stumbled, and a mass of weed fell off the pannier. The animals immediately came to a halt, and the man leading the nearest came back and replaced the weed on top of the load. Niall had been walking only a few feet behind, and the man’s arm brushed him as he lifted the weed. As Niall had expected, his flesh was cold.
Half an hour later, Niall was able to see the city more clearly, and his heart began to beat faster. The captain, who could sense Niall’s emotions, looked at him curiously, wondering what was exciting him. The answer was that what Niall could see ahead were pointed conical buildings that stretched up into the sky like tall, narrow pyramids. They resembled the buildings he had seen in his dream in the cave of the chameleon men.
As they approached closer, Niall was able to see that the city was surrounded by a dark-colored wall. This was about the same height as the old city wall that divided the spider city. At intervals of a few hundred yards, there were hexagonal towers with tall rectangular windows. It struck Niall as odd to have a wall around a city in this empty land. Who was it supposed to keep out? What it seemed to suggest was that whoever built it was paranoid about the fear of attack. Slowly, Niall became aware that the wall they were approaching was not built of stone. This wall had lines that ran parallel to the ground, and were about six inches apart.
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