At length, satiated, the seamen stretched out on the soft grass, groaning. Surprisingly, no one was drunk, for the strange wine seemed only to exhilarate. As night fell, under the canopy of the trees, the men were soon asleep, save for the two walking a watch and Hiero and Luchare, who shared the first guard, The bear and Brother Aldo also slept.
It was an utterly still night. No birds called any longer, no animals moved in the undergrowth. Overhead, no life could be detected. The whole forest seemed to lie under some hushed spell. Even the great, rounded piles of moss suddenly seemed tense and expectant to Hiero, as if listening in the dark. One small fire was all that could be got to light, and it sputtered dismally as the far mists of night closed in.
Hiero first felt his legs growing weak, with considerable surprise. But there was no poison! his mind cried out, even as he slumped into the mossy ground. His fading sight showed him Luchare lying next to him and, beyond her, the two sailors, also fallen. And then into his mind came only a green haze, which swirled in clouds and wreaths across his vision. He felt that some secret lay behind it, but what it was remained unreachable.
Then the mists cleared. He opened his eyes and looked into those of Gorm’s “Old One,” the strange creature who had watched, guided, and finally trapped them all.
He lay in a room, long, narrow, and high-ceilinged, which moved under him somehow. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, for such it was, and looked about him in amazement. In a backless chair before him, staring calmly at him, sat the woman, for such she was, whom he had seen first in his own mind and second in that of the bear. She was nude, her small, firm breasts erect and provocative. Other than a necklace and a slim belt, both of which looked like fine metal mesh, she wore no ornaments. Her greenish-white body was utterly hairless, he noted, and the strange covering on her head seemed a cross between oval, green feathers and tiny brown leaves. Yet it was unmistakably part of her, a natural growth, not a cap.
She was indeed very beautiful, yet even as the manhood in him rose to the sexual challenge of her shape, he was also driven off, repelled by her alienness. For she was not really human at all, and the lovely outward appearance of her body seemed a mask for something utterly different. To his still-dazed mind came an unbidden thought. Why, it’s as if a tree or a flower had tried to be a rabbit or a cat!
Now he could see that the room was lit by candles, fat candles, which burned in wall sconces and cast a strange perfume as they burned. Save for the chair, a small table on which stood some wooden goblets and a jug, and the carved wooden bed on which he now sat, the room was empty. And it swayed! Even as he realized suddenly where he must be and the motion of the wooden floor shook him, a thought came into his mind and he knew that his captress was speaking to him.
We (are) in the trees, high, high above, as you (guessed?), /(can) tell (what) you think but not speak/tell/talk back (?) except by an (effort). We do not speak so/thus/in a manner. Her thought was painfully slow, and looking into the green, slanted eyes, Hiero realized that it was actually physically painful to use her mind this way. She was forcing herself to do it, despite the hurt it caused her.
How do you speak, then? Who are you? his mind asked. He was feeling clear of head and he noticed that he still had his sword-knife and dagger. His strange captors had not restrained him in any way, apparently, and he was becoming intrigued as he lost any fear.
She trilled at him. A string of golden syllables came from her lips, as lovely as the rippling of a woodland waterfall, tinkling over polished stones. “Vilah-ree” was as close as he could come in speech, and he said it softly. “Vilah-ree.” Now he knew one source of the continual bird music they had heard.
At his attempt, she shook her head and sang again. Her teeth were dainty and small. Again he tried to imitate her voice and then gave it up. Vilah-ree, he thought, I can’t say your name properly, I fear, not in your language. You’ll have to accept my mind speech instead or let Vilah-ree do.
Then, even as they gazed at one another, the thought of Lu-chare and his companions came to him. What was he doing, talking like an idiot, while his love and his friends were drugged and helpless, God knew how far away! Were they even alive?
The calm expression vanished from Vilah-ree’s face as well, and her full-lipped mouth opened in apparent distress. A stream of golden, chiming notes poured forth as she tried to tell him something. Realizing that it was futile, she fell silent, and he felt her thoughts on the edge of his mind again.
No (you are) wrong! We (have) hurt none of the other/untrans-latable/(earth-plodders?). Look into/at my mind!
As she became more practiced, the flow of message and pictorial communication between them became easier, just as it once had between himself and the bear, though indeed he always felt the bear to be the less alien of the two. Next she showed him the camp where he had fallen into a drugged dream, but now it was guarded by a high fence of some thorny bushes. And around it at intervals stood silent, white figures, so like Vilah-ree as to make it plain they were her people. All, he noted absently, were female, and he thought, God help them if the crew ever wakes up!! Luchare, Brother Aldo, and the bear lay apart, on a great bed of leaves, and even the bull morse slumbered in an angle of the thorn stockade, looking as if he had been newly slain, save for the rise and fall of his great sides.
We need you, my people and I, Vilah-ree thought, when he had satisfied himself that all of his party were well and unharmed. Her golden-pupiled, fathomless, green eyes were close to his as she drew her chair nearer. A faint, lovely scent—of flowers? bark? honey?—came to him, and her strangeness seemed to ebb, leaving her both vulnerable and desirable.
What do you want? His counterwrought deliberately was harsh, as he strove to break through the glamour, the witchery, of her near presence.
She considered him a moment, then rose gracefully to her feet, pale, rounded hips swaying as she walked to the end of the room.
Come—I will show you. She drew aside a long wooden shutter on a track, and sunlight poured into the room. She beckoned with one white arm, and he rose and joined her, striving to mask his wonder as he looked out.
They were in the top of one of what must have been the tallest trees in the great forest. Below them for miles stretched a green canopy of leaves and branches, some of the latter themselves as immense as normal trees. The room in which they stood was partly hollowed out, partly built into one such, in a way Hiero did not quite fathom, but which seemed to be a graft onto the living tree itself, one which Vilah-ree made plain did not injure it. But he had not been brought just to see the beauty of the daylight on the roof of the forest. She pointed, and he looked to the east and saw her enemy.
Far away, fringing the eastern horizon, lay a great, barren expanse of empty sand and rock, its pinnacles and jagged buttes glinting in the morning sun. But closer, between the desert and the forest, part of neither and repelling both, lay something else.
A vast, ugly splotch of color, composed of mauves, dull oranges, oily browns, and sickly yellows, it seemed to have eaten into the green edge of the tree world like a hideous, running sore. Without thinking, Hiero reached into his belt pouch and brought out his far-looker. With the eyepiece adjusted, the strange area was brought up close, and involuntarily he shuddered. It was indeed an evil landscape.