Enchanted Pilgrimage

— peacocks, ducks, geese, pigeons. Enough animals and fowl and farmland to feed a substantial population. But there was no one there. At times, as I prowled about, it seemed there was someone watching, and at times I thought I caught sight of figures scurrying out of sight, but no one came forth to greet me, no one watched me leave. They, whoever they might be, were hiding from me."

"We are glad, of course," said Sniveley, "to have heard this tale from you, for it is a most intriguing one. But the question now is what do we do?"

"We have to go on," said Cornwall. "We can't go back across the Blasted Plain. Without horses we would never make it."

"There are the Hellhounds, too," said Gib.

"We can't go back, you say," said Sniveley. "That's because you are dying to see the university. The point of it is that you should not see it, none of us should see it. You have your holy places and we have ours, and many of ours have been desecrated and obliterated. The university is one of the few places we have left, and it is left only because the knowledge of its existence has been closely guarded."

"I don't know about the rest of you," said Mary, "but I am going on. My parents passed this way, and if they are still alive, I mean to find them."

"Your parents," said Jones. "I know but little of them. I searched the Witch House for some evidence of them but found nothing. I would wager that if you strung that witch up by her heels and built a good fire underneath her, there'd be evidence forthcoming. But I had not the stomach for it. Up in my world there is no record of them, of anyone other than myself who has come into this world. But from what little I have heard I would gather they are people from my world. Perhaps people who were born some centuries after me. For witness: I must use a technological contraption to travel here, and there is no evidence they used a machine at all. In the centuries beyond my time investigators from my world may be able to travel here without benefit of machinery."

"There is a great deal in what Sniveley has to say about the university's sacred status," Cornwall said with a judicious air. "We should not intrude where we are not wanted, although the hard fact of the matter is, that we have nowhere else to go. I think everyone is agreed we can't go back. Not only are there the Hellhounds on the Blasted Plain, but now there are the Old Ones as well. By morning they will have retrieved their spears and regained their courage. I doubt very much they'll follow us down the gorge, for their fear of it seems quite genuine; but I would think it might be dangerous for us to attempt to make our way back past them. The best we can say, Sniveley, is that we pledge ourselves to keep our lips forever sealed and that we will commit no desecration."

Sniveley grumbled. "It's nothing I would count on, for most people, given a chance, become blabbermouths. But I suppose it must be accepted, for we are forced to it. I agree we can't go back the way we came."

"It was a wild goose chase all around," said Cornwall, "and I am sincerely sorry that we made it. I feel responsible."

"The fault was mostly mine," said Gib. "I was the one who insisted that I must deliver with my own hands the ax made by the Old Ones."

"It was no one's fault," said Mary. "How could anyone have ever guessed the Old Ones would react as they did?"

"So we go on," said Hal. "I wonder what we'll find."

Somewhere far off a wolf howled, and, listening to the howl in the fallen silence, they waited for another howl to answer, but there was no answer. The fire was burning low, and Hal threw more wood on it.

Up the gorge a twig snapped loudly in the silence and they leaped to their feet, moving away from the fire.

A tattered figure came blundering down the gorge, his staff thumping on the ground as he walked along. The ragged raven clutched his shoulder desperately, and behind him the little white dog limped faithfully along.

"My God," exclaimed Cornwall, "it is the Gossiper. We had forgotten all about him."

"He intended that we should," Sniveley said nastily. "He slips in and out of your consciousness. It is the nature of him. Now you see him, now you don't. And when you don't see him, you never even think of him. You forget him easily because he wants you to forget. He is a slippery character."

"Dammit, man," Jones bellowed at the Gossiper, "where have you been? Where did you disappear to?"

"If my nostrils do not deceive me," said the Gossiper, "there is good roast meat about. A very gorgeous roast. I hunger greatly…»

"Hell," said Jones, "you forever hunger greatly."

37

It was late afternoon and they were almost through the gorge when the first dot appeared in the sky. As they stood and watched, there were other dots.

"Just birds," said Gib. "We are getting jumpy. We are almost there but are convinced from what the Old Ones told us that something is bound to happen. You said we were almost through the gorge, didn't you, Master Jones?"

Jones nodded.

"What bothers me about those dots," said Hal, "is that the Old Ones talked about Those Who Brood Upon the Mountain. And the things that brood are birds, hatching out their eggs."

"You came through the gorge," Cornwall said to Jones, "and nothing happened to you. Nothing even threatened you."

"I'm convinced," said Jones, "that it was only because I was going in the right direction. It would seem logical that whatever's here is here to protect the university. They'd pay no attention to someone who was leaving."

There were more dots now, circling but dropping lower as they circled.

The walls of rock rose up from the gorge's narrow floor, shutting out the sun. Only at high noon would there be sunlight in this place. Here and there trees, mostly cedar and other small evergreens; sprouted from the rock faces of the wall, clinging stubbornly to little pockets of soil lodged in the uneve

"I don't like this place," said Sniveley. "It puts a chill into my bones."

"And here I stand," lamented Jones, "without a weapon to my hand other than this driftwood cudgel I managed to pick up. If I only had the rifle. If that stupid robot had not thrown away my rifle…"

The stupid robot stood unperturbed by what Jones had said—if, indeed, he had heard what had been said. All his tentacles were re- tracted except for the one on his chest, which lay arranged in a box-like fashion.

The dots were dropping lower, and now it could be seen that they were enormous birds with a monstrous wingspread.

"If I only had my glasses, I could make out what they are," said Jones. "But, no, of course, I haven't got my glasses. I persuaded myself that I had to travel light. It's a goddamn wonder I brought anything at all. The only two things I had that counted were the rifle and the bike, and now both of them are gone." "I can tell you what they are," said Hal. "You have sharp eyes, my friend." "He has forest eyes," said Gib. "A hunter's eyes." Hal said, "They are harpies."

"The meanest things in the Enchanted Land," screeched Sniveley. "Meaner than the Hellhounds. And us out in the open."

Steel rasped as Cornwall drew his blade. "You're getting good at that," Hal said nonchalantly. "Almost smooth as silk. If you'd practice just a little."

The harpies were plunging down in a deadly dive, their wings half-folded, their cruel, skull-like human faces equipped with deadly beaks thrust out as they dived.

Hal's bowstring twanged, and one of the harpies broke out of the dive and tumbled, turning end for end, its folded wings coming loose and spreading out limply in the air. The string twanged again, and a second one was tumbling.