Yahan handed up the reins and dodged back from Ro-cannon's steed, which leaped like a released spring into the air. All that day the three steeds flew wildly, tirelessly, toward the hunting-grounds they sensed or scented to the south, and a north wind hastened them on. Forested foothills rose always darker and clearer under the floating barrier of mountains. Now there were trees on the plain, clumps and groves like islands in the swelling sea of grass. The groves thickened into forests broken by green parkland. Before dusk they came down by a little sedgy lake among wooded hills. Working fast and gingerly, the two midmen stripped all packs and harness off the steeds, stood back and let them go. Up they shot, bellowing, wide wings beating, flew off in three different directions over the hills, and were gone.

"They'll come back when they've fed," Yahan told Rocannon, "or when Lord Mogien blows his still whistle."

"Sometimes they bring mates back with them—wild ones," Raho added, baiting the tenderfoot.

Mogien and the midmen scattered, hunting hop-flyers or whatever else turned up; Rocannon pulled some fat peya-roots and put them to roast wrapped in their leaves in the ashes of the campfire. He was expert at making do with what any land offered, and enjoyed it; and these days of great flights between dusk and dusk, of constant barely-assuaged hunger, of sleep on the bare ground in the wind of spring, had left him very fine-drawn, tuned and open to every sensation and impression. Rising, he saw that Kyo had wandered down to the lake-edge and was standing there, a slight figure no taller than the reeds that grew far out into the water. He was looking up at the mountains that towered gray across the south, gathering around their high heads all the clouds and silence of the sky. Rocannon, coming up beside him, saw in his face a look both desolate and eager. He said without turning, in his light hesitant voice, "Olhor, you have again the jewel."

"I keep trying to give it away," Rocannon said, grinning.

"Up there," the Fian said, "you must give more than gold and stones… . What will you give, Olhor, there in the cold, in the high place, the gray place? From the fire to the cold…" Rocannon heard him, and watched him, yet did not see his lips move. A chill went through him and he closed his mind, retreating from the touch of a strange sense into his own humanity, his own identity. After a minute Kyo turned, calm and smiling as usual, and spoke in his usual voice. "There are Füa beyond these foothills, beyond the forests, in green valleys. My people like the valleys, even here, the sunlight and the low places. We may find their villages in a few days' flight."

This was good news to the others when Rocannon reported it. "I thought we were going to find no speaking beings here. A fine, rich land to be so empty," Raho said. Watching a pair of the dragonfly-like kilar dancing like winged amethysts above the lake, Mogien said, "It was not always empty. My people crossed it long ago, in the years before the heroes, before Hallan was built or high Oynhall, before Hendin struck the great stroke or Kirfiel died on Orren Hill. We came in boats with dragonheads, from the south, and found in Angien a wild folk hiding in woods and sea-caves, a white-faced folk. You know the song, Yahan, the Lay of Orhogien—

Riding the wind,

    walking the grass,

    skimming the sea,

    toward the star Brehen

    on Lioka's path…

Lioka's path is from the south to the north. And the battles in the song tell how we Angyar fought and conquered the wild hunters, the Olgyior, the only ones of our race in Angien; for we're all one race, the Liuar. But the song tells nothing of those mountains. It's an old song; perhaps the beginning is lost. Or perhaps my people came from these foothills. This is a fair country—woods for hunting and hills for herds and heights for fortresses. Yet no men seem to live here now…"

Yahan did not play his silver-strung lyre that night; and they all slept uneasily, maybe because the windsteeds were gone, and the hills were so deathly still, as if no creature dared move at all by night.

Agreeing that their camp by the lake was too boggy, they moved on next day, taking it easy and stopping often to hunt and gather fresh herbs. At dusk they came to a hill the top of which was humped and dented, as if under the grass lay the foundations of a fallen building. Nothing was left, yet they could trace or guess where the flightcourt of a little fortress had been, in years so long gone no legend told of it. They camped there, where the windsteeds would find them readily when they returned.

Late in the long night Rocannon woke and sat up. No moon but little Lioka shone, and the fire was out. They had set no watch. Mogien was standing about fifteen feet away, motionless, a tall vague form in the starlight. Rocannon sleepily watched him, wondering why his cloak made him look so tall and narrow-shouldered. That was not right. The Angyar cloak flared out at the shoulders like a pagoda-roof, and even without his cloak Mogien was notably broad across the chest. Why was he standing there so stall and stooped and lean?

The face turned slowly, and it was not Mogien's face.

"Who's that?" Rocannon asked, starting up, his voice thick in the dead silence. Beside him Raho sat up, looked around, grabbed his bow and scrambled to his feet. Behind the tall figure something moved slightly—another like it. All around them, all over the grass-grown ruins in the starlight, stood tall, lean, silent forms, heavily cloaked, with bowed heads. By the cold fire only he and Raho stood.

"Lord Mogien!" Raho shouted.

No answer.

"Where is Mogien? What people are you? Speak—"

They made no answer, but they began slowly to move forward. Raho nocked an arrow. Still they said nothing, but all at once they expanded weirdly, their cloaks sweeping out on both sides, and attacked from all directions at once, coming in slow, high leaps, As Rocannon fought them he fought to waken from the dream—it must be a dream; their slowness, their silence, it was all unreal, and he could not feel them strike him. But he was wearing his suit. He heard Raho cry out desperately, "Mogien!" The attackers had forced Rocannon down by sheer weight and numbers, and then before he could struggle free again he was lifted up head downward, with a sweeping, sickening movement. As he writhed, trying to get loose from the many hands holding him, he saw starlit hills and woods swinging and rocking beneath him—far beneath. His head swam and he gripped with both hands onto the thin limbs of the creatures that had lifted him. They were all about him, their hands holding him, the air full of black wings beating.

It went on and on, and still sometimes he struggled to wake up from this monotony of fear, the soft hissing voices about him, the multiple laboring wing-beats jolting him endlessly on. Then all at once the flight changed to a long slanting glide. The brightening east slid horribly by him, the ground tilted up at him, the many soft, strong hands holding him let go, and he fell. Unhurt, but too sick and dizzy to sit up, he lay sprawling and stared about him.

Under him was a pavement of level, polished tile. To left and right above him rose wall, silvery in the early light, high and straight and clean as if cut of steel. Behind him rose the huge dome of a building, and ahead, through a topless gateway, he saw a street of windowless silvery houses, perfectly aligned, all alike, a pure geometric perspective in the unshadowed clarity of dawn. It was a city, not a stone-age village or a bronze-age fortress but a great city, severe and grandiose, powerful and exact, the product of a high technology. Rocannon sat up, his head still swimming.