The Ruins Of Kaldac

It was as deserted inside as it was outside, except for a few small skittering shapes which immediately vanished into the walls. They were about the size of mice but didn't move like them. Blade thought of radiation-induced mutations.

In one room he had found blurred footprints, but they were in ankle-deep dust. Whoever made the footprints had come and gone years ago. Blade found he had the choice of four rooms which were reasonably dry except for the rain blowing in through the windows. He'd picked the one with the least dust, and now he finally stopped pacing and thinking about all the incidents leading up to his arrival in Dimension X. He decided he needed to get some sleep, and he curled up in the corner farthest from the door but closest to the window. After a moment he sat up, unhooked his loinguard, and wrapped it around his left hand. The club and the loinguard were the best weapons he could hope for tonight, and the metal wire was getting cold against his bare skin.

Blade curled up again and started willing himself to go to sleep, in spite of the damp chill. He hoped Lord Leighton's plans to provide him with more survival equipment succeeded, and quickly. Right now he would have given a good deal for a down sleeping bag or even a blanket and thick pile of dry leaves!

By morning the wind had died and the rain was only a drizzle, although the sky was still a depressing gray. A few minutes of vigorous exercises got Blade's blood flowing again. By the time he'd finished exercising, the clouds were begi

At the foot of the hill Blade saw a ruined city, hundreds of crumbling buildings along rubble-choked streets radiating out from a central tower. Beyond the city lay a solid wall of dark green forest. Beyond that Blade saw a line of what could have been either oddly-shaped hills or truly gigantic buildings. At this distance and with clouds still lying low on the horizon, he couldn't be sure.

Everything seemed weirdly lifeless. The city was half-overgrown with bushes and trees, and the forest beyond looked as dense as a jungle. Blade saw no tracks on the ground, no birds in the air. He couldn't hear any birds or insects even when he held his breath to listen, nothing but the sigh and moan of the wind. After a while this eerie silence drove him into action. He hurried around to the other side of the building and looked west.

On this side the hill sloped away more gently, leveling out in an immense grassy plain. The plain began less than half a mile away and continued all the way to the horizon, as flat and featureless as a billiard table. Far off to the north Blade saw what looked like one end of an enormous bridge, with more ruined buildings clustered around it. He couldn't see what the bridge crossed, or any more signs of life than he'd seen elsewhere.

Blade tore off another branch and started tying it with lengths of vine to the first branch, to make a heavier club. By the time he'd finished, his hands were red and sore from the acid sap of the creepers. He'd also decided to go east, exploring the ruined city at the foot of the hill, then cutting through the forest. What lay on the far side of the forest certainly looked more interesting than the plain to the west. The forest would also give him better shelter from the weather and probably more food. He took a last look around the ruined building, then started down the hill.

It didn't take Blade long to see all of the ruined city he needed to see. One rubble-clogged street or one house with its windows and doors gaping like the eye sockets of a skull looked very much like another. Like the building on the hill, the city had been abandoned for generations, possibly centuries. Unlike the building, it had been visited a number of times after its people abandoned it. Blade saw ragged holes in a dozen walls, where fixtures had been pulled or chopped free. He saw rooms swept almost clean of dust. Under an overhanging piece of roof he found the remains of a campfire and a pile of animal droppings no more than a few weeks old. Blade looked briefly for the animals' tracks, then realized the night's rain would have completely wiped them out.

The visitors seldom went above the third floor and apparently never went into the cellars. Blade struggled down some of the crumbling, treacherous flights of stairs and found whole untouched piles of metal waiting for him. Much of it was so rusted or corroded he couldn't tell what it had been, but he found a piece with a sharp point just the right size to be used one-handed. He also found strips of a plasticlike material which he wrapped around one end of the piece of metal to give him a better grip on this improvised knife. A longer strip of the plastic tied around his waist made a belt.

Blade came up from the last cellar faster than he'd gone down. It was definitely inhabited-by ordinary-looking mice and by something considerably larger which never left the shadows in a corner. Blade could only hear its chittering and the scrabbling of claws, on stone, and smell an unbelievably rank odor.

By the time Blade left the city the clouds were almost gone, and it was a bright, if somewhat chilly, day. He could now see clearly that the tall shapes beyond the forest to the east were colossal buildings. They stood so close together that some of them were linked by aerial bridges, and most of them looked nearly intact. Blade was sure that their appearance was deceptive, but the towers would provide better shelter than the ruins. They should also tell him more about the fate of this Dimension and its people.

The moment Blade plunged into the forest, he was back in twilight. The trees grew in such regular order that it was clear they'd been planted that way. No doubt the spaces between the trees were wide enough when the park was laid out. Now, after long years of neglect, the ground between the trees was overgrown with bushes, ferns, and vines. Blade lost a good deal of skin pushing through some particularly thick patches. He kept going, since he didn't want to spend the night in the forest or reach the city after dark if he could help it.

Around mid-afternoon he came out onto the bank of a sluggish, weed-choked stream, with an unmistakable path on the far bank. He probed the stream with a fallen branch and learned he'd be swimming rather than wading across it. He was about to slip into the water when a patch of the weeds started swirling back and forth. Then a long row of black bony spines broke the surface briefly, heading toward Blade. He pulled his foot out of the water just as the creature swam close enough to give him a good look at it.

It looked like a cross between a giant catfish, a piranha, and a stingray. It had spines on either side of its jaws as well as along its back, a large mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, and a long thin tail with a barb on the end. It was at least nine feet long and coal-black except for sickly green eyes.

Blade decided that swimming across the stream might not be such a good idea after all. He started working his way upstream, looking for bridges or fallen trees. He found neither, but eventually he came to the ruins of a small dam. Beyond the dam the stream spread out in a small lake, but over the top of the dam the water was no more than ankle-deep. Blade crossed the top of the dam as fast as he dared go on the crumbling, slimy stones, keeping a watchful eye on the lake. Two sets of black spines rose near the dam only moments after he reached dry land and the path.

Once on the path he moved more easily but also more cautiously. The existence of a path implied the existence of someone to make it, and Blade didn't want to surprise or be surprised by that someone.

So he moved from one patch of cover to the next, looking and listening around him before each move. The path was obviously in fairly regular use, but there'd been too much rain last night even here under the trees to leave any footprints.