Of Omens and Night-gaunts

Chapter Five

In the foothills of the Great Bleak Mountains, two hundred miles north of Theelys and three weeks later, as evening settled in and a pair of great kites soared on high, eyes sharp for unwary rabbits, the dreamers added their own lengthening shadows to the greater darkness beneath an overhanging outcrop of rock and spread their blankets in preparation for the night.

They freed their single yak from the trappings of its light-framed travois and tethered it where the new spring grass stood green in the fading light. It was not an especially cold night but Hero threw a blanket over the yak anyway. The animal was his, Eldin's mount having fallen foul of a rock viper's bite five days gone; and since then the dreamers had walked while the animal pulled the weight of their various necessaries upon its rough but sturdily constructed travois.

This last day had been harder than the rest of the journey, for they had climbed constantly up through the steep foothills until now, with the night, they were come at last to the feet of the Great Bleak Mountains. Tomorrow would be that much harder.

So, to fortify themselves in advance, they roasted a rabbit over a wood fire and brewed up a pan of sweet tea from the Ossaran Steppes, talking in low, weary tones while the silence of die night deepened and the stars began to show beyond the Up of the overhang. As they rested on their blankets a shooting star raced down across blue-black heavens of dreamland.

"An omen," murmured Hero.

His companion merely grunted. "A star," he answered after a while. "Only a star, falling out of the sky."

"An omen nonetheless," the younger man insisted.

Again Eldin grunted. "As you wish," he said. Then: "A good omen-or a bad one?"

A shrug in the fire-flickered darkness. "Who can say?"

Disgruntled, the older man snarled: "Then why worry about it?"

"Oh, omens are worth watching out for."

"Huh!"

A moment or two later, as Hero settled himself down and pulled his blanket up to his chin, Eldin began to cough. Long and wrackingly he coughed, and when it seemed that he might never stop his companion stirred himself to ask: "Are you all right, old friend?"

The coughing subsided. Eldin spat onto a rock beside the guttering fire. He dabbled his finger in the spittle and showed it to Hero. In the dying light from the fire the younger man saw traces of frothy red.

"Now that's what I call an omen," said Eldin, and he laughed low and bitterly.

At noon the next day they set the yak free and with a slap on its rump Hero said his farewell to the animal. It trotted away back down the slope that had steepened all through the morning, only pausing at a defile to turn its head and look back. Then it snorted, tossed its head once and was gone, around a rocky spur and lost from sight.

From now on it was to be a climb, not sheer yet by any means but steep by any man's judgment. High overhead were the snows, melting on the lower slopes but still heavy in the peaks of this section of the Great Bleak Range. Icy water rushed down from above, a wide waterfall in the main, for way up ahead in the peaks the Tross had its secret source.

Midway through the afternoon they took a break, ate a meal, drank tea and talked as they had talked a hundred times since leaving Theelys after a week's debauchery at Ebraim Borak's expense. Of money they still had plenty, were rich by any dreamer's standards, but Borak had promised much more. This was the topic of their conversation: "I can understand the Ossaran paying good money for this mysterious wand-which must after all be worth many times what he's willing to pay for it-but how can he be sure we'll ever bring the thing back to him?" Eldin squinted at his younger companion, scowling through the smoke of their small fire.

"Where else could we sell it-and who could afford to buy?" Hero answered realistically. "A wand, that's all it is-a stick or a rod-and you can't eat wands, you know. And damned if I'd know how to use it. But when we take it back to Ebraim Borak, then we'll have money for life. And we do know how to use that! Oh, Borak's sure enough we'll deliver it ... if we ever get it."

"Maybe," the other dreamer grunted, "but there are plenty of rich Lords in dreamland. If we were dishonest men" (at which Hero chuckled), "we might easily-"

"Easily what, Eldin? Sell Borak out to some rich Lord? Do you know what that rich Lord would do? Throw us in a cell and have us tortured until we told where we got the wand, that's what! And then, when we told? He'd have us put to death! How do you suppose these rich Lords got to be so rich?"

"Yes, I know, I know," Eldin rumbled, "but they're not all bad. Still, there's that about this quest that worries me sorely. I mean, if the job's to be so easy, why didn't Borak come and do it himself?"

"What? A cultured city gent up here in the heights of the Great Bleak Mountains? Battling the elements and venturing along unknown ways and all-"

"All rubbish!" Eldin finished it for him. "An Ossaran, 'cultured,' indeed!"

"Spoken tike a true expert," Hero laughed derisively. "And what, pray, would a bloodstained thief of a marooned dreamer know about culture?"

"Huh! I've a suspicion I'm a pretty smart fellow in the waking world," Eldin muttered.

"Oh? Well I wouldn't know. But anyway, I think your questions are all easily enough answered. No, this job Bor-ak's given us will not be the simple thing he made it sound. And yes, there are certain dangers other than those he mentioned. If there weren't, someone else would have stolen the wand long ago."

"But that's just it! What dangers can there be? A few cliffs to climb and maybe a gaunt or two to wing us away in the dead of night? A handful of snow leopards and a doddery old priest guarding a stone god in a cavern temple? To dreamers such as you and I, surely these are mere irritations?"

Hero nodded. "Aye, so it would seem. And yet I'm sure that it won't be at all easy. And don't scoff at such things as night gaunts. In Celephais I talked to a prospector who once had a brush with gaunts when he was climbing in the Heights of Lerion. He was panning streams for gold at the time.

"Well, he camped one night in a saddle between two ridges-and woke to find himself already aloft, in a great flapping of leathery wings! Two of them had him between them, and they were heading north. He put up such a fight in the dark that he soon made them lose height, and before very long he felt his feet dragging over solid ground.

"He broke free from one of the gaunts, got out his knife and stabbed the other, wounding it. He was winded when the injured creature fell with him, but not much. He jumped up and cut the head off the gaunt, then hid in a cave till morning. When it was light he went out and found the carcass of the one he'd killed-its carcass and its head ..." Hero paused to pull a sour face.

"Go on," again his friend prompted him. "And?"

"There was no face on the gaunt's head!"

Eldin grunted and nodded. "I've heard that said of gaunts before: that they have no faces." He shuddered involuntarily.

"Well," Hero continued presently, "finally the old prospector got down out of the hills and made his way back to Celephais. He'd been away such a long time that his wife gave him hell!"

Eldin grunted again. "Huh! Precipices and snow leopards-old priests and secret temples-bitter cold mountain heights and faceless night-gaunts ... what in the names of all the gods are we in this for, David?"

"Money, old friend," the other reminded him, pouring out two more tiny cups of tea with one hand and buttoning his brown jacket more warmly about this throat with the other. "We're only here for the money ..."

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