surely some saw the strange couple. As surely, none recognized Hanse the thief
in his warlike attire and under the helm, for anyone who knew him or knew of him
would never expect to see him so accoutred and so accompanied.
Under a frowning parlous sky, in an eerie almost-silence kept alive and made
bearable only by insects, they went away out of the Maze, and out of Sanctuary,
and up to Eaglenest. And into Eaglenest they went, all dark and ancient now that
place of ghosts and gods. Their way was lit by the nimbus of a goddess, whose
hand remained soft in Hanse’s.
A place of gods indeed, for they went through the manse and out the back and the
world changed.
Here was an eerie sky shot through with ribbons of gold and pale yellow and
citrine and marred by clouds whose underbellies were mauve. Here was a weird
vista from the nightmares of poison. Stone formations rose in impossible shapes,
bent and snaked along the ground to rise again; ugly rockshapes in red and burnt
ochre and siena, imitating vines fighting their way through an invisible stone
wall or plants tortured into convoluted shapes by alkali or lime.
The strange stone-shapes stretched out and out to become only shadows on a
plain, a vista that stretched out gray to meet that nacreous sky. And there was
no sound. Not the faintest hum of a single lonely insect; not the merest peep of
a nightbird or the scuttle of tiny feet or of fronds whispering in a night
breeze. Here was no sun and yet no night, and no flora or fauna either.
Here were only Hanse, armored and armed, and Mignureal, and here came Vashanka,