This was no creature as I knew, rather a tendril of the growth about us. Across Murri’s back, where it had tightened, the fur was wet and slimy and patches of hair missing.
He spat out that which he held in his mouth, and pawed at his jaws from which the spittle ran yellow. I feared that there had been poison in that thing he had chewed apart, for he behaved as a kotti who had swallowed a fur ball, vomiting a watery substance.
This I saw only with half an eye, as it were, for I was alert for another of the vine nooses. They appeared to spring out of the piece of ground we had cleared and were certainly vines, for the ends, still rooted, were putting out small leaves, of the same sickly yellow, veined in red.
I chopped, swung, chopped again and again. Then the ends which came wriggling up to the surface from the dank soil vanished. We at last had a space in which to breathe. I nursed skin across which one of those flesh-stripping horrors had passed, leaving welling blood behind it. The sting of that contact was worse than all the torment I had suffered from the insects in the salt land.
There was still no sign of any malons. Yet to venture deeper into this mass was an invitation to the lurking horror beneath the surface of the ground. I wondered if it was the vibration of our footfalls which had alerted it or if it had some other method of sensing prey. Perhaps even some of the leaves which walled us in acted as eyes, ears, or similar organs for what lay beneath the surface.
Still someone had managed to get farther on, as the signs, fast being swallowed up by fresh growth, showed. And I knew that Shank-ji, at least, had won his prize from this haunted place.
Our exertions had carried us past the first of the now netted buildings and now we were offered safety for a bit, for we came out of the massed stuff unto a circle of the clean sand such as covered the land beyond the bubble.
I examined Murri’s back but the suckers of the vine had not injured him beyond loosening the fur in patches. And he had stopped his heaving. My own wound was small enough and I could not see that it was poisoned in any way—or so I hoped.
“Brother—” I laid my hand on Murri’s head.
“I live—but bad here—
With that I could heartily agree. Now I set out making the round of that place of sand where apparently none of the growth could find rootage. To the right of the place we had entered, there were again signs of another’s passage. To make certain this was the way, there was a nauseating odor on the air. I had been told that spoiled or rotted malon produced such. Thus the “garden” which we sought must lie in that direction.
But for this moment we were content to sit in our pool of safety and only look towards what might be the second stage of a battle, and perhaps an even more difficult one.
Chapter 26
THE SIDE OF THE BUILDING around which we had come to find this island of safety was bare of vine. Just as the other was so tightly coated with it. There had been a pattern incised there as I had seen in the city we had visited, though this had no bright color, rather stains as if vines had once clutched there but had been broken away.
I slung my staff across my shoulder and went to run my hands over that pattern. What I had suspected at first sighting was true, there were finger- and toeholds here for the climber. Slipping off my boots I began that ascent hoping so to view what might lie ahead. The top of the house had been rounded and over part of it crawled the vines. I edged around these so that I was still in the clear.
Ahead there was a bank of the tough growth, but beyond that again another stretch of sand. Through a hole in the growth I could see a line of malon vines, each trained over a trellis. On them the rounded globes of fruit, some already the deep purple of fully ripe.
I shared what I had learned with Murri. He was washing his face over and over, trying to rid himself of the last signs of that vine attack. With a growl which fully expressed his opinion of the whole business, he got ready to plunge into the struggle toward the garden I had sighted.
Though we went with care, we did not see any sign of those root tops wriggling out of the dank soil. And when we came to the clearing of the malons, the sand stretch there was divided into squares, every other one being earth in which one of the vines was planted.
There was a strong stench of rotted fruit. While the ground around each looped-up vine was a mush of fallen malons. Of those still on the vines the ones which had turned the full color of ripeness were useless to me, for the picking must be done at almost the very moment the purple streaked the bronze fruit, entirely encircling the globes.
On the nearest of the vines I noted three such which looked promising. How long I must wait until they were ready I did not know. Even as I stood there two others fell from their stems to squash on the piles already there.
We moved out on the sand, but kept away from the mess of stinking fruit. Murri lay down, his nose covered by his paws. I wished I could do likewise, for the odor of this place, even as the haze on the fire mountains, was dense enough to sicken one.
I had my eye on a fruit well at the end of one vine which I thought I could pull down within reach with my staff and moved near as I could get to that without venturing into the mess on the ground.
It was then that I saw a shaking and quiver of the spoiled fruit. Three of the last fallen tumbled away, shaken from below, and there showed for an instant the pointed end of one of the threatening suckers. This then must be their usual food. But I was warned by the sight of them feeding.
It was the nature of the malon that the last stage of ripening came so quickly that one could actually see the spread of the darker color. I was ready, my staff out, and I angled one of its edges as a hook about the branch, pulling it down. Freed by this movement the malon took to the air and I caught it, having dropped my staff into the mush on the ground.
With my prize safe to hand I cleaned my staff in the sand and tried again with the same success. Together we turned to find our way out of this place of hidden menace.
We made it to the circle of sand by the building. The path down which we had cut our way was already being closed by a lacing of smaller vines. However, we had learned our lesson and we cut our way past those sorry remains of the one who failed, gaining the outer door and the safety of the sand dunes beyond, the malons in the fore of my jacket.
If I expected congratulations for my feat I would have been disappointed. The commander of my escort turned the malons I delivered around and around in his hands as if seeking some flaw in the offering. However, the major stroke against me was that I came accompanied by Murri and this time I demanded what little rights a contestant had that from hereon he would be my traveling companion.
There was a great deal of muttering and side-looking at me over this. Only tradition held fast. The person of the candidate between his trials was sacred and he could not be opposed unless he had failed.
Perhaps if I had been Shank-ji I would have been afforded a banquet in Twahihic’s major city, presentation to the Queen, and a general flood of good wishes for my last trial to come. But I was as well pleased to take the trail back to Vapala as soon as possible.
When days later the guard which had been waiting for me at the border took over escort, I again spoke for Murri. This time the sandcat entered the Diamond Queendom openly and not by stealth.
I learned that I was the first to return and that news had arrived that two of the contestants had already been lost. That Shank-ji was not one of them was cheering to those around me and they openly spoke of his gaining the crown.