Monsters and Magicians (13 page)

He walked onward along the verges of the forest of pine, hemlock, maples, beech, basswood and occasional ginkgo, hacking a mark into a trunk every few hundred yards. He noted that, ever so gradually, the grassy lea downslope was narrowing on either side of the stream arid that the stream itself was growing

narrower, deeper and faster-flowing. In the distance ahead the wall of trees looked to be solid, but as he neared he could discern the reality.

The glen he had been following for most of the day ended in a narrow, water-filled declivity, the swift-flowing stream finally leaping out over a rocky lip to fall fifty feet into a broad pool at the base of a steep, precipitous cliff. The ground below was invisible under a deep carpet of needles from the towering, straight-boled pines, whose upper reaches had aided in giving the appearance from afar of an unbroken wall of trees.

Fitz looked down the almost vertical cliff face and hissed between his teeth. Glances to right and left through the mists of water spray indicated that at no point was the dropoff any lower than it was here. He uncased and tried his binoculars. Yes, a long way off to the south, the cliff-line did seem to converge with a ridge, but it was a really long way south, maybe feu-enough to put him back in the range of the Teeth-and-Legs, and this time lacking either speedy transport or his big elephant gun. Besides, that far a passage through even moderately heavy forest and its associated brush-thickets could conceivably take days, even as much as a week, for one lone man to hack his way through, and Puss was certain to strongly dislike the delay.

He peered down the cliffside again; it didn't look to afford a descent any whit easier or safer on the second look than it had on the first. Where not covered with soggy-looking mosses and lichens, the rocks all were shiny*wet and crumbly, like sandstone. There were plants—pine seedlings, vines and

herbs—but not a one he could see that looked as if it could bear more than its own weight.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he doffed the pack and unlashed the coil of rope. On the verge of looking for a secure anchor up where he was, he suddenly snapped, aloud, "Damn me for an idiot! It hasn't been even two full days and I clean forgot what Danna showed me how to do. That's the best way I can think of to get down this in one piece. Of course, how Sir Gautier and Cool Blue will get down is another question, but from what I've gotten to know of that little Normal, I guarantee you he'll find a way to do it."

When he had tied the coil of rope back into place on the pack frame, he removed his pistol-belt and secured it too to the pack, then emptied his pockets of every iron or steel item and stuffed them in a side compartment of the pack. All this accomplished, he closed his eyes for a brief moment, concentrating to recall the exact mindset required, remembered it, and smiled to himself.

Setting his mind just so, he willed the pack to rise It did not; it just sat there and glared at him. He tried once again. The contrary pack still sat in place on the dead leaves and coarse pebbles. Consciously forcing down his emotions, he carefully ran his hands over his body, finding nothing of the iron or steel which he and Danna had found were inimical to the practice of lifting things with their minds . . . nothing, that is, until his hands reached his boot tops. With the brace of boot-knives stowed away in the pack with the other ferrous items, he tried yet again, wondering just what he would or could do if his newfound talent failed to work this time, too.

But this time the laden pack frame rose. He halted its rise at his waist level, then took a strap in hand and towed it, now light as a helium-filled balloon, to the lip of the cliff; there, he gave it a gentle push and mentally triggered a slow descent. Gradually, as he watched,, the load sank until it was pressed deeply into the bed of pine-tags.

After he had released control of the pack, Fitz gulped once, resisted an impulse to sign himself, then bade his own body to rise from the ground. When more than a foot-distance of empty air lay between his boot-soles and the pebbly soil, he willed himself forward, toward the edge of the steep, high, treacherous cliff. All too soon he was past the last of that top, was hanging unsupported over terrifyingly empty air, the needle-covered ground and his pack looking horrifyingly far below his all-too-vulnerable flesh and bone.

Ever so carefully, he willed his body to sllooowlly descend. And it did just that, even more slowly than had the pack. Once again standing with his boot-soles pressed upon hard, solid ground, Fitz realized why his jaws had been aching so severely and with effort unclenched his teeth.

"I DID IT!" he shouted joyously, "By damn, I did it! It works! Dammit, I really can fly! How many other men of my age or any other can fly without some land of mechanical contrivance, huh? But, by God, old Fitz sure as hell can!"

Feeling suddenly very, very tired, he sank down beside his pack, thinking, "Danna can do it too; she could do it before I could and showed me how, for that matter. I wonder if I can pass it on? I'd like to

be able to teach Sir Gautier and Cool Blue and Puss how to do it. If they all could do it along with me, we'd sure get to wherever I'm supposed to be going one hell of lot faster and easier, I'd think."

Reaching around the pack, he unhooked his pistol-belt, buckled it back around his waist, then replaced all of the smaller items of iron or steel into pockets and boot tops before pulling out his canteen and filling his mouth with the water. It was become warm as blood in the closed container, despite the cooling evaporation from the thoroughly wetted cover. He spat the mouthful into the pine needles, emptied the steel bottle and levered onto his feet. Kneeling at the side of the broad pool, he reached out as far as he could and submerged the canteen long enough to fill it, took a long, long drink from it, then submerged it again before replacing it in the cover. On the point of arising, he noted the strange tracks imprinted in the sandy soil right at water's edge.

He thought for a brief moment that they were handprints, there being five digits and an impression that could have been a narrow palm, but then he looked closer to see that the digits obviously mounted claws and that the one on each foot that seemed to be at least partially opposed was on the outside, not the inside of the foot. Where had he seen—and fairly recently, at that!—a print similar to these?

He suddenly remembered, and jumped backward from the pool so violently that he ended up sprawled helplessly on his back for a long moment of terror before he regained his balance and his reasoning took over.

Big as those prints were—they each were much

bigger than his hands—they still were nowhere near the size of those of the nesting crocodile back on the beach. Steeling himself to go back and examine the prints once again, he could easily discern other differences than just size. The digits were, proportionately, longer and slenderer, not intended to bear as much weight; and too, there was no trace of webbing-scuff between the digits. The conclusion to which he finally came was a big lizard of some kind.

"Seems to be nowhere in sight now, whatever it is/' he tried to reassure himself. Nonetheless, before he reshouldered his pack and started on westward, he drew the shot-loads from the two smoothbore barrels of the drilling, replacing them with solids— twelve-bore rifle slugs. He also filled the empty chamber in the cylinder of his revolver.

The waterfall and its pool-basin fed a stream that flowed roughly westward, and Fitz followed the waterway for more than two miles beneath a canopy of pines, some of them towering over a hundred feet, he estimated. There was little low-growth or brush to impede his progress, for so deep and dense a layer of resinous tags was sufficient to effectively discourage or choke out most other plants, that and the shade cast by the spreading branches high above the ground; even so, he quickly learned the folly of proceeding onward without probing his footing with the butt of his staff, for beneath the endless bed of needles—in some places, as much as two feet deep— lay such obstacles as fallen limbs, loose rocks and, not uncommonly, whole boles of fallen pine trees. However, there was no dearth of tree trunks for him to blaze along the way.

Near the confluence of another, smaller stream flowing down from the north to join that which he had followed all day, a very large—over three feet to tip of tail, he guessed—and oddly colored squirrel scolded loudly at him from high up in a tree that Fitz thought looked very much like a chestnut. And as he tramped on along the banks of the enlarged stream, he saw the pines slowly, grudgingly yield up their hegemony to hickories, yellow poplars, sweetgums, smaller varieties of conifers and a real profusion of oaks, many of the deciduous hardwoods clearly of great age, incredibly thick-boled.

The sun, though still bright, was approaching the western horizon when Fitz came out into a small, relatively open spot where another small stream, threading through a narrow, brushy gorge between the two rocky hills that lay to the north, flowed down to add its waters to the now fair-sized stream. Some yards farther west stood an oak that he knew must be six feet thick in the trunk. There was no single limb or branch less than the height of the dangerous cliff his new talent had allowed him to so easily master, and some of the limbs above were thicker than die boles of some of the surrounding trees. Proper precautions being taken, any one of those limbs should provide him a safer and secure, if a bit hard and unyielding, sleeping perch for the night, he thought.

In the wake of having seen the possibly sinister tracks by the pool earlier in the day, and recalling the warnings of Puss and Cool Blue, he felt distinctly edgy at again stripping himself of all his weapons beneath the shade of the massive oak, and constantly looked about him, his eyes peering deep into thick-

ets of brush, his ears striving to detect any untoward noises, body tensed to spring for drilling or revolver.

This time, he raised both himself and the pack together, though he suspected that if while flying he was compelled to lay hand to one of the firearms he would drop like a stone and the pack with him, no doubt. How could he find or buy weapons that incorporated no iron or steel . . . ?

On a hunch, Fitz left the pack sitting securely on a thick limb while he rose even higher in search of he knew not what. But when he found it, he recognized it for what it was on first sight.

At some time in the dim past, some titanic force had snapped off the one-time crown of this particular oak and limbs had then grown from out the trunk just below the shattered stump. All of these new-growth limbs had, of course, reached up toward the sun, the source of life, and as they had flourished and grown in length and thickness, putting out branches of their own, they had almost hidden the area which once had been the upper reaches of the oak's main trunk.

Presently, in the heart of the profusion of limbs and branches, there existed a declivity of sorts that was actually longer than the thickness of the lower trunk. It was filled to some depth with dead leaves, acorn, chestnut and hickory-nut shells, squirrel droppings and remains, fleas and other insects.

Fitz considered sinking down to the pack and bringing up the blaze-dulled machete to use in cleaning out this arboreal Augean stable, then, grimacing in chagrin, thought better on the idea—touching the machete with its steel tang and blade, he would lack

the power to keep himself aloft and, should he by mischance fell from here, he might not have the time to drop the tool and reestablish weightlessness before he made violent contact with the hard ground sixty or eighty feet below.

Hanging in the empty air, Fitz stared at the decaying, flea-hopping mass of animal and vegetable matter, all become or well on the way to becoming humus. This place would no doubt be more than a little uncomfortable for him through the night, but it could easily be made almost foolproof insofar as felling out of it was concerned and, best of all, he doubted that from the ground his presence therein would be even suspected, far less seen. True, a predatory beast might scent him, but it then would have to climb up at least forty feet of thick-barked bole before reaching any limbs and, hopefully, he would hear and be warned by the rasping of claws as the creature climbed.

But if he slept in this uncleaned mess, he would be a virtual flea circus until he could find a place and time safe enough to immerse himself and wash body and hair free of the maddening parasites. However, to simply plunge his arms into it or lack it out would be to end with the same infestation, so how?

From a crevice between two limbs, the chisel-teeth of a long-deceased squirrel winked at him, grinning at his dilemma. Almost without conscious volition, Fitz raised the small skull from its resting place to see it discolored and porous with the effects of tannin and advanced decay, the antennae of what looked to be a large woods-roach wiggling from out an empty eye socket. Hissing with disgust, he floated

the thing and its passenger out into empty air and abruptly released his control of it, watched it plunge to the ground and shatter on impact with a knobby root.

"Goddammit, I'm dense as this tree trunk anymore," he exclaimed. A layer at the time, he proceeded to "think" the years' worth of debris and detritus up from the place of its lengthy lodgement, float it out to random spots among the tree boles and release it to shower down to the ground. When he was down to bark and wood, he floated up the pack, fumbled within it for a few moments, then thoroughly dusted the uncovered area with insecticide. Only then did he begin to prepare for his night's stay.

His meal of canned spaghetti and meat and a handful of raisins washed down with water from his canteen was filling if not very satisfying. As long as there was light, he sat in his aerie and sharpened his machete, but as the light began to fail, he spread his poncho over the floor of the declivity, unrolled his sleeping bag and, after anchoring the bag to convenient limbs or branches with lengths of rope, took off" his boots, loosened his clothing and zipped himself in with his knives and his pistol, though he felt safer this night than he had on any other, camping out in this place.