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"Deliver the message as you heard it from the Noble Matho Lorcas."
"Instantly, Force!" The footman inclined himself in a stiff bow, and faded in
a dazzle of halations.
The two returned to the aircar and clambered aboard. Without ceremony the
pilot clamped the ports, opened the throttle and the ancient aircraft,
creaking and vibrating, lurched up and away to the east.
With the pilot, who identified himself as Tiber Flaussig, talking over his
shoulder and ignoring both altimeter and the terrain below, the aircraft
cleared the ridges of the First Scarp with a hundred yards to spare. As if
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afterthought the pilot lifted the craft somewhat higher, although the land at
once fell away a thousand feet to become an upland plain. A hundred sprawling
lakes reflected the clouds; scour and deep-willow grew in isolated copses,
with a gnarled catafalque tree here and there. Thirty miles east the
Second Scarp thrust crags of naked rock up past the clouds. Flaussig,
discussing certain outcrops below, declared them rich sources of such gems as
tourmaline, peridot, topaz, and spinel - all protected from human exploitation
by reason of Fwai-chi prejudice. "They claim this as one of their holy places,
and so reads the treaty. They care no more for the jewels than for common
stones; but they can smell a man from fifty miles away and lay on him their
curse of a thousand itches, or a fiery bladder, or piebald skin. The area is
now avoided."
Efraim pointed ahead to the looming scarp. "In a single minute we will all be
crushed to pulp, unless you quickly raise this craft at least two thousand
feet."
"Ah yes," said Flaussig. "The scarp approaches, and we will give it due
respect." The aircar rose at a stomach-gripping rate, and from the engine box
came a stuttering wheeze which caused Efraim to twist about in alarm.
"Is this vehicle finally disintegrating?"
Flaussig listened with a puzzled frown. "A mysterious sound certainly, one
which I have not heard before. Still, were you as old as this vehicle, your
viscera would also produce odd noises. Let us be tolerant of the aged."
As soon as the craft once more flew a level course the disturbing sounds
dwindled into silence. Lorcas pointed ahead toward the Third Scarp, still
fifty miles ahead. "Start now to ascend, in a gradual manner. The aircar is
more likely to survive such treatment."
Flaussig acceded to the request, and the vehicle rose at a gradual angle to
meet the prodigious bulk of the Third Scarp. Below passed a desolation of
ridges, cols, chasms, and, rarely, a small forested valley. Flaussig waved his
hand around the fearsome landscape. "Within the range of vision, around the
whole of the cataclysmic tumble, live perhaps twenty fugitives:
desperados, condemned criminals, and the like. Commit no crimes in Port Mar or
here is where you will wind up."
Neither Lorcas nor Efraim saw fit to comment.
A cleft appeared; the aircar glided through with rock walls close to right and
left and great buffets of wind thrusting the craft from side to side;
then the cleft fell away and the aircar flew over a landscape of peaks,
cliffs, and river valleys. Flaussig waved his hand in another inclusive arc.
"The Realms, the glorious Realms! Beneath us now Waierd, guarded by the
Soldiers of Silence . . . And now we fly across the realm Sherras. Notice the
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castle in the lake . . ."
"How far to Scharrode?"
"Yonder, over the crags. That is the answer given to all such questions. Why
do you visit a place so dour?"
"Curiosity, perhaps."
"You'll learn nothing from them; they're as tight as stones, like all
Rhunes. Below now and behind those great trees is the town Tangwill, home to
no more than two or three thousand. The Kaiark Tangissel is said to be insane
for women, so he keeps captives in deep dungeons where they don't know whether
or not it is mirk, and he visits them during all the periods of the month,
except during mirk when he's off on his prowling."
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"Nonsense," muttered Efraim, but the pilot paid no heed.
"The great spire to the left is called Ferkus -"
"Up, man, up!" screamed Lorcas. "You're running us into the ridge!"
With a petulant gesture Flaussig jerked the aircraft high, to skim that crag
to which Lorcas had made reference; for a period he flew in sullen silence.
Below the ground rose and fell, and Flaussig, disdaining further altitude,
veered back and forth among crystalline crags, grazed precipices, skirted
glaciers and mounds of scree, the better to display his insouciant control
over aircraft, landscape, and passengers. Lorcas made frequent expostulations,
which Flaussig ignored, and at last guided the aircar down into an irregular
valley three to four miles wide and fifteen miles long. At the eastern end a
cascade fell two thousand feet into a lake, with nearby the town Esch. Away
from the lake flowed a slow river, curving across a meadow and under Benbuphar
Strang, then back and forth from pool to pool to the far western end of the
valley, where it departed through a narrow gorge.
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