After a while, Kickaha said, “Nothing.”
“I’m afraid so,” Anana said. She turned around to look over the vista outside the sea-land, and she clutched his arm.
“Look!”
Kickaha’s eyes sighted along the line indicated by her arm.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It looks like a big dark rock, or a hill, to me.”
“No, it’s moving! Wait a minute.”
The object could easily have been hidden by one of two mountains if it had been on the left or right for a half a mile. It was moving just beyond a very broad pass and going up a long gentle slope. Kick-aha estimated that it was about twenty miles away and of an enormous size.
“That has to be the palace!” he said. “It must have come through a pass from the sea-land!”
The only thing damping his joy was that it was so far away. By the time they got down off the mountain, traveled to the next pass and got through it, the palace would be even further away. Not only that, they could not depend upon the two mountains to guide them. By the time they got there, the mountains could be gone or they could have split, into four or merged into one. It was so easy to lose your bearings here, especially when there was no east or north or south or west.
Still, the range that circled the sea-lands would be behind them and it changed shape very little.
“Let’s go!” he said, and he began to let himself backward over the lip of the little plateau.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT WAS ELEVEN days later. The trio hoped that within a few days they would be in sight of the palace. The twin peaks between which it had gone had become one breast-shaped giant. Deep hollows had formed around it, and these were full of water from a heavy rain of the day before. It was necessary to go about ten miles around the enormous moat.
Before they rounded it, the mountain grew into a cone, the hollows pushed up, spilling the water out. They decided to climb the mountain then to get another sight of Urthona’s ex-abode. Though the climb would delay them even more, they thought it worth it. The mobile structure could have headed on a straight line, turned in either direction, or even be making a great curve to come behind them. According to Anana’s uncle, when it was on automatic, its travel path was random.
On top of the mountain, they looked in all directions. Plains and ranges spread out, slowly shifting shape. There was plenty of game and here and there dark masses which were groves and forests of traveling plants. Far off to the right were tiny figures, a line of tradespeople on their way to the sea-land.
All three strained their eyes and finally Kickaha saw a dot moving slowly straight ahead. Was it an army of trees or the palace?
“I don’t think you could see it if it was composed of plants,” Anana said. “They don’t get very high, you know. At this distance that object would have to be something with considerable height.”
“Let’s hope so,” Kickaha said.
McKay groaned. He was tired of pushing themselves and the animals to the limit.
There was nothing to do but go on. Though they traveled faster than their quarry, they had to stop to hunt, eat, drink, and sleep. It continued on at its mild pace, a kilometer an hour, like an enormous mindless untiring turtle in tepid heat looking for a mate. And it left no tracks, since it floated a half-meter above the surface.
For the next three days it rained heavily. They slogged on through, enduring the cold showers, but many broad depressions formed and filled with water, forcing them to go around them. Much mileage was lost.
The sixth day after they’d sighted the palace again, they lost Anana’s beast. While they were sleeping, a lion attacked it, and though they drove the lion off, they had to put the badly mauled hikwu out of its misery. This provided for their meat supply for several days before it got too rotten to eat, but Anana had to take turns riding behind the two men. And this slowed them down.