Another stone, large as his fist, struck him between the shoulder-blades. He sprang around and saw only the crumbled facade of ancient Ampridatvir, the empty street, the glistening gliding strip.
A stone hissed six inches from Elai’s head, and at the same instant another struck his thigh.
Ulan Dhor recognized defeat. He could not fight stones with his sword. “We had better retreat …” He ducked a great paving block that would have split his skull.
“Back to the strip,” the girl said in a dull and helpless voice. “We can take refuge across the square.” A stone, looping idly down, struck her cheek; she cried in pain and fell to her knees.
Ulan Dhor snarled like an animal and sought men to kill. But no living person, man, woman, or child, was visible, though the stones continued to hurtle at his head.
He stooped, picked up Elai and ran to the swift central flow of the strip.
The rain of stones presently halted. The girl opened her eyes, winced, and shut them again. “Everything whirls,” she whispered. “I have gone mad. Almost I might think —”
Ulan Dhor thought to recognize the tower where he had spent the night. He stepped off the strip and approached the portico. He was wrong; a crystal plane barred him the tower. As he hesitated, it melted at a spot directly in front of him and formed a doorway. Ulan Dhor stared wonderingly. Further magic of the ancient builders.
It was impersonal magic, and harmless. Ulan Dhor stepped through. The doorway dwindled, fused, and became clear crystal behind him.
The hall was bare and cold, though the walls were rich with colored metals and gorgeous enamel. A mural decorated one wall — men and women in flowing clothes were depicted tending flowers in gardens curiously bright and sunny, playing airy games, dancing.
Very beautiful, thought Ulan Dhor, but no place to defend himself against attack. Passageways to either side were echoing and empty; ahead was a small chamber with a floor of glimmering floss, which seemed to radiate light. He stepped within. His feet rose from the floor; he floated, lighter than thistle-down. Elai no longer weighed in his arms. He gave an involuntary hoarse call, struggled to return his feet to ground, without success.
He floated upward like a leaf wafted in the wind. Ulan Dhor prepared himself for the sickening plunge when the magic quieted. But the floors fell past, and the ground level became ever more distant. A marvellous spell, thought Ulan Dhor grimly, thus to rob a man of his footing; how soon would the force relax and dash them to their deaths?
“Reach out,” said Elai faintly. “Take hold of the bar.”
He leaned far over, seized the railing, drew them to a landing, and, disbelieving his own safety, stepped into an apartment of several rooms. Crumbled heaps of dust were all that remained of the furniture.
He lay Elai on the soft floor; she raised her hand to her face and smiled wanly. “Ooh — it hurts.”
Ulan Dhor watched with a strange sense of weakness and lassitude.
Elai said, “I don’t know what we will do now. There is no longer a home for me; so shall we starve, for no one will give us food.”
Ulan Dhor laughed sourly. “We will never lack for food — not while the keeper of a green booth can not see a man in a gray cloak … But there are other things more important — the tablets of Rogol Domedonfors — and they seem completely inaccessible.”
She said earnestly, “You would be killed. The men in red must fight everyone — as you saw today. And even if you reached the Temple of Pansiu, there are pitfalls, traps, poison stakes, and the ghosts on guard.”
“Ghosts? Nonsense. They are men, exactly like the Grays, except that they wear green. Your brain refuses to see men in green … I have heard of such things, such obstructions of the mind …”
She said in an injured tone, “No other Grays see them. Perhaps it is you who suffers the hallucinations.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Ulan Dhor with a wry grin. They sat for a space in the dusty stillness of the old tower, then Ulan Dhor sat forward, clasped his knees, frowning. Lethargy was the precursor of defeat. “We must consider this Temple of Pansiu.”
“We shall be killed,” she said simply.
Ulan Dhor, already in better spirits, said, “You should practice optimism … Where can I find another air-car?”
She stared at him. “Surely you are a madman!”
Ulan Dhor rose to his feet. “Where may one be found?”
She shook her head. “You are resolved on death, one way or another.” She rose also. “We will ascend the Shaft of No-weight to the tower’s highest level.”
Without hesitation she stepped into the void, and Ulan Dhor gingerly followed. To the dizziest height they floated, and the walls of the shaft converged to a point far below. At the topmost landing they pulled themselves to solidity, stepped out on a terrace high up in the clean winds. Higher than the central mountains they stood, and the streets of Ampridatvir were gray threads far below. The harbor was a basin, and the sea spread away into the haze at the horizon.
Three air-cars rested on the terrace, and the metal was as bright, the glass as clear, the enamel as vivid as if the cars had just dropped from the sky.
They went to the nearest; Ulan Dhor pressed the entry button, and the dome slid back with a thin dry hiss of friction.
The interior was like that of the other car — a long cushioned seat, a globe mounted on a rod, a number of switches. The cloth of the seat crackled with age as Ulan Dhor prodded it with his hand, and the trapped air smelt very stale. He stepped inside, and Elai followed. “I will accompany you; death by falling is faster than starvation, and less painful than the rocks …”
“I hope we will neither fall nor starve,” replied Ulan Dhor. Cautiously he touched the switches, ready to throw them back at any dangerous manifestation.
The dome snapped over their heads; relays thousands of years old meshed, cams twisted, shafts plunged home. The air-car jerked, lofted up into the red and dark blue sky. Ulan Dhor grasped the globe, found how to turn the boat, how to twist the nose up or down. This was pure joy, intoxication — wonderful mastery of the air! It was easier than he had imagined. It was easier than walking. He tried all the handles and switches, found how to hover, drop, brake. He found the speed handle and pushed it far over, and the wind sang past the air-boat. Far over the sea they flew, until the island was blue loom at the rim of the world. Low and high — skimming the wave crests, plunging through the magenta wisps of the upper clouds.
Elai sat relaxed, calm, exalted. She had changed; she seemed closer to Ulan Dhor than to Ampridatvir; some subtle tie had been cut. “Let’s go on,” she said. “On and on and on — across the world, past the forests …”
Ulan Dhor glanced at her sideways. She was very beautiful now — cleaner, finer, stronger than the women he had known in Kaiin. He said regretfully, “Then we would starve indeed — for neither of us has the craft to survive in the wilderness. And I am bound to seek the tablets …”
She sighed. “Very well. We will be killed. What does it matter? All Earth dies …”
Evening came, and they returned to Ampridatvir. “There,” said Elai, “there is the Temple of Cazdal and there the Temple of Pansiu.”
Ulan Dhor dropped the boat low over the Temple of Pansiu. “Where is the entrance?”
“Through the arch — and every place holds a different danger.”
“But we fly,” Ulan Dhor reminded her.
