With the aid of the new snowshoes their pace improved considerably. So did their spirits, boosted not only by their improved method of travel but by the hysterical image Ananthos presented as he shuffled along on six of the carefully wrought shoes, picking his way as uncertainly and carefully as a water sender trying to cross a pool of mud.
They also improved Bribbens' morale. While they kept him no warmer, the enormous shoes on his webbed feet gave him tremendous stability.
Jon-Tom moved up to march alongside Ananthos. It was the morning of their eighth day in the mountains.
"Could we have missed it?" His breath made a cloud in front of his face. The cold fought implacably for a rout& through his clothes. The crude parka hastily fashioned by the Weavers was no substitute for a goose-down jacket. There was a real danger of freezing to death if they didn't find warmer country soon.
"i don't think so." Ananthos indicated the precious scroll he kept in a protective, watertight tube strapped to his rear left leg. "i can only rely on the chart the court historians made for us. no weaver has been this far south in many years, there was no reason for doing so and, for obvious reasons, no desire to do so."
"Then how can you be so sure we haven't passed it?"
"i can be only as sure as the charts, but the tales say if one but continues south, as we have, following the lowest route through the mountains, he will come upon the iron cloud, that is, if the tales are true."
"And if there is an iron cloud at all," Jon-Tom mumbled.
A leg touched his waist, but Ananthos' reassurances were stolen by the wind.
Despair is sometimes the preface to hope. On the ninth day the weather took pity on them. The snow ceased, the storm clouds betook themselves elsewhere, and the temperature wanned considerably, though it did not rise above freezing.
As if to compensate they were confronted with another danger: snow blindness. The brilliant Alpine sun ricochetted off snowbanks and glacier fronts, turning everything to shocking, adamantine white.
They managed to fashion crude shades from Ananthos' supply of scarves. Even so they were forced to keep their gaze to the ground and their senses at highest alert, lest the next snowbank turn out to be just the fatal side of some nearly hidden chasm.
Another day and they started downward.
Two weeks after departing Gossameringue they found the iron cloud.
They were climbing a slight rise, bisecting a saddle between two slopes. For days they had seen little color but varying shades of white, so the highly reflective black that suddenly confronted them was physically shocking.
Across a rocky slope of crumbled granite patched with snow was a mountainside that appeared to have been deluged with frozen tar. It was encrusted with ice and snow in occasional crevices.
Clearly the immense, smooth masses of black which jutted like an oily waterfall from the flank of the mountainside were composed of material much tougher than tar. They resembled a succession of monstrous bubbles piled one atop another without bursting. Holes pockmarked the blackness.
It was the metallic luster that led Flor to exclaim in surprise, "Por dios, es hematite."
"What?" Jon-Tom turned a puzzled expression on her. "Hematite, Jon-Tom. It's an iron ore that occurs naturally in formations like that," and she pointed to the mountainside, "though I never learned of any approaching such size. The formation is called mammary, or reniform, I think." "What is she saying?" asked Clothahump with interest. "That the 'iron' part of the name Ironcloud is taken from reality and not poetry. Come on!"
They descended the gentle slope on the other side of the saddle and made their way across the stony plateau. The huge black extrusion hung above them, millions of tons of neariron as secure as the mountain itself. Viewed against the surrounding snow and sky, it did indeed look much like a cloud.
But where were the fabled inhabitants, he wondered? What could they be like? The holes which pierced the masses overhead hinted at their possible abode, but though the party surveyed them intently there was no hint of motion from within.
"It looks abandoned," said Talea, staring upward.
"Don't see a soul," Pog commented from nearby. They slid their burdensome backpacks off while examining
the inaccessible caves above. Climbing the granite wall was out of the question. Not only did the massive formation overhang but the smooth iron offered little purchase. Without sophisticated mountaineering gear there was no way they could reach even the lowest of the caves.
It was clear enough how the invisible inhabitants managed the feat, however. From the rim of each cave opening hung a long vine. Knots were tied in each roughly six inches apart. The profusion of dangling vines, swaying gently in the mountain breeze, gave the formation the look of a dark man with a beard.
The problem arose from the fact that the shortest cable-vine was a good two hundred feet long. No one thought themself capable of the combination of strength and dexterity necessary to make the climb. Talea considered it, but the thinness of the vine precluded the attempt. Whoever used the vines weighed a good deal less than any in the frustrated party of visitors.
Mudge was agile, but he wasn't fond of climbing. Ananthos was clearly too large to enter the hole, though he stood the best chance of rising to the height.
"We waste time on peripheral argument," Clothahump finally snorted at them, when he was at last able to get a word in. "Pog!"
Everyone looked around, but the bat was nowhere to be seen.
" 'Ere 'e is!" Mudge pointed toward a large boulder.
They ran to the spot to find the bat squatting resolutely on the gravel behind the rock. He looked up at them with determined bat eyes. "
"No way am I going up dere and sticking my nose in one of dose black pits. No telling what might take a notion to bite it off."
"Come now, mate," said Mudge reasonably, adjusting his parka top, "be sensible. You're the only arboreal among us. If I didn't think that vine'd bust under me weight, I'd give a climb a good try. But why the 'ell should one o' us 'ave t' risk that, when you could be up there and back in a bloody minute or two without so much as strainin' your wings?"
"An accurate evaluation of our situation." Caz positioned his monocle tighter over his left eye. He'd steadfastly refused to surrender the affectation, even at the risk of losing the monocle in the snow. "You know, you really should have been up there and back already, on your own initiative."
"Initiative, hell!" Pog flapped his wings angrily. "One more display of 'initiative' from dis crazy bunch and we'll find ourselves meat on somebody's table."
"Now Pog," Clothahump began wamingly.
"Yeah, I know, I know, boss. Go to it or ya'll turn me into a human or worse." He sighed, unfurled his wings experimentally.
"perhaps i could get up there-at least if i can't fit inside, i could attach to a hole above and hang down to, look in." Ananthos sounded awkward, wanting to contribute.
"You know that surface is too slick for you to get a hold on, and if you could you probably couldn't get in and move around in there. Your leg span is too wide. Besides, I think Pog should have a chance at this." Clothahump was firm.
"A chance at what? Meeting my maker in a cold hole in da sky?"
Ananthos looked pained, but Jon-Tom gave Pog encouragement with his eyes.
"If you're all determined den to see poor Pog get his throat laid open, I expect I'll have ta be about da business. I warn ya, dough, if I don't come back alive I'll come back dead and haunt ya all to an early grave."
"Don't take any chances, Pog," Jon-Tom advised him. "Probably you won't find anything, or anyone. Just fly up and check out one or two caves, see if this place is really as deserted as it looks. If it is, maybe you'll leam the reason
why."
"Maybe one of da reasons is hiding in one of dose caves!" snapped the worried bat, gesturing upward with a wing thumb.
"If so then don't hang around to argue with it," said Talea. "You're going up to look, not to fight. Get your bu
tt back down here as fast as you can."
Pog hovered just above the ground, lit on top of the boulder he'd been hiding behind. "No need ta worry 'bout that, Talea lady." He pulled his knife from its back sheath and slipped it between his jaws.
"Wish me luck," he mumbled around the blade.
"There is no need for luck when intelligence and good judgment are exercised," said Clothahump.
Pog made a rude noise, flapped his wings, and launched himself from the crest of the rock. He dropped, skimmed inches above sharp gravel, and then began to climb, using the warm currents rising from the bare plateau to ascend in a steady spiral.
"You think he'll be okay?" Flor shielded her eyes from the glare and squinted at the sky where a black shape was growing gradually smaller. Pog now looked like a toy kite against the pure blue curtain overhead.
"Instinct is a powerful aid to self-preservation."
"Oh?" she said with just a hint of sarcasm. "What book did that come out of?"
Jon-Tom was also leaning back and looking toward the lip of the iron cloud. He just swallowed Flor's remark.
Hemarist, da tall human lady had called it. No, dat wasn't right. Hema… Hematite. Like in a tight spot, which is what you gots yourself into, Pog thought to himself. He was high above the rocky plain now. The figures of his companions were sharp and distinct against the gray gravel. He could tell they were watching him.
Waiting ta see how I get it, he thought miserably.
He circled before the lowest of the globular projections. His personal sonar told him nothing moved inside any of the several caves he'd flown past. That at least was a promising sign. Maybe the place was deserted.
Black iron, huh? It looked like a vast black face to him, with no eyes but lots of little mouths ready to swallow you, swallow you whole. Pretty soon he was going to have to stick his head into one of 'em.
Why couldn't ya have listened ta your mudder, he berated himself, and gone inta da mail soivice, or crafts transport; or aerial cop work?
But nah, ya had ta fall hard for a pretty piece o' fluff who won't give ya da time o' night, den get stinking drunk and apprentice yourself ta a half senile, sadistic, hard-shelled, hard-headed old fart of a wizard in da faint hope he'll eventually turn ya inta something more presentable ta you lady love.
He thought of her again, of the smoothly elegant blend of feathers from back to tail, of the slightly cruel yet delicate curve Of beak, and of those magnificent, piercing yellow eyes which turned his guts to paste when they passed over him. Ah, Uleimee, if ya only knew what I'm suffering for ya!
He caught himself, broke the thought like a ceramic cup. If she knew what you was suffering she wouldn't give a flyin' fuck about it. She's the type who appreciates results, not well-meaning failures.
So gather what's left of your small store of courage, bat, and be about your job. And don't think about whether when your time's up, old Clothamuck will have forgotten da formula for transforming ya.
But, oh my, dat cave mouth looming just ahead is dark!
Empty, dough. His eyes as wen as his sonar told him that. He fluttered next to the opening for a while, wrestling with the knowledge that if he didn't explore at least one of the caves his mentor would simply force him to return and try again.
He drifted cautiously inside. He sensed the echo of his wing beats pushing air off the tunnel walls. Then he settled down to walk.
The floor of the cave was carpeted with clean straw, carefully braided into intricately patterned mats. They appeared to be in good repair. If this iron warren was abandoned, it hadn't been so for long.
The tunnel soon expanded into a larger, roughly ovalshaped chamber. It was filled with a peculiar assortment of furniture. There were lounges but no chairs, and high-backed perches. The lounges suggested creatures that walked, as did the climbing vines dangling outside each cave opening, but the high-backs pointed to arboreals like himself. He shook his head. Deductive thinking was not his strong suit.
The utensils were also confusing rather than enlightening. A little light reached the chamber from the cave opening, but his sonar was still searching the surroundings as though it were pitch dark. His heart beat almost as rapidly. Finish dis, he told himself frantically. Finish it, and get out.
Several additional chambers branched from the back of the one he was studying. He would begin with the one immediately on his right and work his way through them. Then Clothahump couldn't say he'd made only a superficial inspection and order him to return.
It turned out to be a pantry-kitchen arrangement. It was discouraging to find that whoever had lived in the cave was omnivorous. In addition to instruments for preparing meat and fruit there was also a surprising garbage pile of small insect carcasses and empty nuts.
It was an eclectic and indiscriminate diet. Perhaps it also included bats. He shuddered, drew his wings tighter around his small body. One more room, he told himself. One more, and den if da boss wants more info he can damn well climb up and look for himself.
He entered the next chamber, found more furniture and little else. He was ready to leave when something tickled his sonar. He turned.
A pair of huge, glowing yellow eyes stared down at him. Their owner was at least seven feet tall and each of those luminous orbs was as big around as a human face. Pog stuttered but couldn't squeeze out word or shout.
"Hooooooo," said the voice beneath those fathomless eyes in a long, querulous, and slightly irritated tone, "the hell are yoooooo?"
Pog was backing toward the chamber exit. Something sharp and unyielding pricked his back.
"Tolafay asked you a question, interloper! Better answer him." The new voice was completely different from the first, high and almost human.
Pog glanced over his shoulder, saw eyes not as large as the first pair he'd encountered but larger still in proportion to the body of their owner. Four yellow eyes, four malevolent little angry suns, swam in a dizzying circle around his head. He started to slump.
The sharp thing moved, poked him firmly in the side. "And don't faint on us, interloper, or I'll see your body leaves your gizzard behind…"
'^What the devil's keeping him?" Jon-Tom stared with concern up at the cave where Pog had vanished.
"Maybe they go very deep into the mountainside," Talea suggested hopefully. "It may take him a while to get all the way in and all the way out again."
"Perhaps." Bribbens stared longingly at a small creek that flowed from the base of an icefall across the barren little plateau. "How I long for a boat again." He lifted one of his enormous, snowshoed feet.
"Walking's beginning to get to me. No fit occupation for a riverman."
"If it's any consolation I'd rather be on a boat myself just now," said Jon-Tom.
Then Mudge was gesturing excitedly upward. "Ease off it, mates! 'Ere 'e comes!"
"And damned if he hasn't got company." Talea unsheathed her sword, stood ready and waiting for whatever might drop out of the sky.
Pog drifted down toward them, a black crepe-paper cutout against the bright sky. He was paced by a similar silhouette several times more massive, with a distinctly animate lump attached to its back.
Dozens of other fliers poured from the perforated cloudcliff like water from a sieve. They did not descend but instead blended together to create a massive, threatening spiral above the plateau.
Talea reluctantly placed her sword back in its holder. "Doesn't look like they've hurt Pog. We might as well assume they're friendly, considering how badly we're outnumbered."
"Characteristic understatement, flame-fur." Caz's monocle waltzed with the sun as he craned his neck to inspect the soaring whirlpool overhead. "I make out at least two hundred of them. Size varies, but the shape is roughly the same. I think they're all owls. I've never heard of such a concentrated community of them as this, not even in Polastrindu, which has a respectable population of noctural arboreals."
"It is odd," Clothahump agreed. "They are antisocial and zealously guard their privacy
, which fits with what the Weavers told us about the psychology of Ironcloud's inhabitants. Yet they appear to have established a community here."
Pog touched down on the high boulder he'd so recently tried to hide behind. The flier shadowing him braked ten-foot wings. The force of the backed air nearly knocked Flor oft her feet.
The creature took a couple of dainty steps, ruffled its feathers, and stood staring at them. The high tufts atop She head identified this particular individual as a Great Homed Owl. Jon-Tom found himself more impressed with those great eyes, like pools of speculative sulfur, than by the creature's size.
The lump attached to its back, which even Caz had not been able to identify, now detached itself from the light, high-backed saddle it had been straddling. It slid decorative earmuffs down to its neck, unsnapped its poncho, and leaned against its companion's left wing.
Now the spiral high above started to break up. Most of she fliers returned to their respective caves in the hematite. A few assumed watchful positions.
Jon-Tom eyed the lemur standing close to the owl. It was no longer a mystery who made use of the thin, knotted vines fringing the cave mouths. With their diminutive bodies and powerful prehensile fingers and toes, the lemurs could travel up and down the cables as easily as Jon-Tom could circle an oval track.
Pog glided down from the crest of his boulder and sauntered over to rejoin his friends. "Dis guy's called Tolafay." He gestured with a wingtip at the glowering owl. "His skymate's named Malu."
The lemur stepped forward. He was barely three feet tall. "Your friend explained much to us."
"Yes. Quite a story it was, tooooo." The owl smoothed the folds of its white, green, and black kilt. "I'm not sure how much of it I believe," he added gruffly.
"We have managed to convince half a world," replied Clothahump impatiently. "Time grows short. Civilization teeters on the edge of the abyss. Surely I need not repeat our
whole tale again?"
"I don't think you have to," said Malu. He indicated the watchful Ananthos. "The mere fact that a Weaver, citizen of a notoriously xenophobic state, is traveling as ally with you is proof enough that something truly extraordinary is going on."
The Hour of the Gate Page 16