“At last, brave Sharn could bear no more. He fell with Sword in hand, steadfast until the end. The victory was won by bright Lugonn whose Spear had caused the crater’s lake to boil and liquefied the rocks and conjured sparkling dew that merged its tears with ours. And thus the votive offerings of Man and Blade were chosen for the consecration of the Grave. We marched away, the voices of our minds raised up in Song for one last time in honor of the Ship and also him who there was offered up to captain it upon its voyage to the healing dark. There, comforted within the Goddess’s womb, they wait the coming of the light…”
The Firvulag raised his cup and drained it. He stretched his arms with a pop and crackle of ligaments and sat staring at Felice with a whimsical expression.
Madame Guderian said, “Within this ancient tale are certain pieces of information that repay our study. You will have noted the reference to aircraft. These are clearly machines of some sophistication, since they were able to leave the moribund Ship prior to its entrance into Earth’s atmosphere. Given the advanced technology implied by the encapsulation of the passengers within the intergalactic organism, one can hardly assume the smaller craft to be simple reaction-engine fuelers. It is more likely that they were gravo-magnetically powered, like our own eggs and subluminal spaceships. And if so…”
Richard interrupted, wide-eyed. “They’d probably still be operational! And Pegleg said his people marched away from the Grave, so they must have left the aircraft there. Son of a bitch!”
“Where are they?” cried Felice. “Where’s this Grave?”
The little Firvulag said, “When a person dies among us, the remains are taken by the family or friends to a secret place, one that none of the mourners has ever seen before. After the interment ceremony, the grave is never visited again. Its very location is blotted from the mind lest the remains be disturbed by the Foe or by irreverent rascals who would steal the funerary offerings.”
“Quaint customs,” Richard said.
Felice wailed, “Then you don’t know where the Ship’s Grave is?”
“It’s been a thousand years,” the little man replied.
Richard flung the ladle into the stewpot with a dang. “But, dammit, it’s gotta be a whackin’ great crater! What’d he say? ‘A cup of liquid sky too wide to see across.’ And it lies east of Finiah.”
“We have been searching,” Madame said. “Ever since I first heard the tale three years ago and conceived the plan, we looked for the Ship’s Grave as best we could. But understand the terrain, Richard! The Black Forest lies beyond the Rhine to the east. In our day it was a minor range, a picturesque parkland full of hikers and carvers of cuckoo clocks. But now the Schwarzwald mountains are younger and higher. There are portions well above twenty-five hundred meters, rugged and dangerous to cross and a notorious haunt of les Criards, the Howling Ones.”
“And do you know who they are?” inquired the Firvulag, smirking at Richard. “They’re the people like me who don’t like people like you. The snotty ones who won’t let King Yeo-chee or anyone else tell ’em who their enemies are.”
Madame said, “We have, over the past years, done a precarious exploration of the middle portion of the Black Forest range, north of Finiah. Even with the help of friendly Firvulag such as our good friend Fitharn, the project has been fraught with peril. Ten of our people have been killed and three driven mad. Five more vanished without a trace.”
“And we lost some of our lads to the Hunt, too,” Pegleg added. “Guiding humans just isn’t healthy work.”
Madame went on, “Forty or fifty kilometers east of the Black Forest begins the Swabian Alb, a part of the Jura. It is said to be full of caves inhabited by monstrous hyenas. Not even the malign Firvulag care to dwell in this territory, although it is rumored that a handful of grotesque mutants eke out a pathetic livelihood in sheltered valleys. Yet it is in this inhospitable country that the Ship’s Grave is most likely to be found. And with it, not only workable flying machines but perhaps other andent treasures as well.”
“Would there be weapons in the aircraft?” Felice asked.
“Only one,” said the Firvulag Fitharn, staring into the fire. “The Spear. But it would be enough, if you could get your hands on it.”
Scowling, Richard said, “But I thought the Spear belonged to the guy named Lugonn, and he was the winner of the fight!”
“The winner received the privilege of sacrificing himself,” Madame explained. “Lugonn, Shining Hero of the Tanu, raised the visor of his golden glass helmet and accepted the thrust of his own Spear through his eyes. His body was left at the crater, together with the weapon.”
“But what the hell good would this Spear do us?” Richard asked.
Fitharn spoke softly. “It isn’t the kind of weapon you might think. Any more than the Sword of our late hero, Sharn the Atrocious, which the obscene Nodonn has had in his thieving clutches in Goriah for forty years, is any kind of ordinary sword.”
“They are both photoaic weapons,” Madame said. “The only two that the exotics brought from their home galaxy. They were to be used only by the great heroes, to defend the Ship in case of pursuit or, later, in the most exalted forms of ritual fighting.”
“Nowadays,” said Chief Burke, “the Sword only serves as the trophy of the Grand Combat. Nodonn’s had it so long because the Tanu have won the contest for forty years running. Needless to say, there’s little chance we’d ever be able to get our hands on the Sword. But the Spear is another matter.”
“Christ!” Richard spat in disgust “So to make Madame’s plan work, all we have to do is mount a blind search over two-three thousand square kloms crawling with man-eating spooks and giant hyenas and find this antique zapper. Probably clutched in some Tanu skeleton’s hand.”
“And around his neck,” Felice said, “is a golden torc.”
“We will find the Ship’s Grave,” Madame stated. “We will search until we do.”
Old Claude hauled himself to his feet with some difficulty, limped over to the pile of dry wood, and picked up an armful. “I don’t think any more blind hunting will be necessary,” he said, tossing the sticks onto the blaze. A great cloud of sparks soared into the Tree’s black height.
Everybody stared at him.
Chief Burke asked, “Do you know where this crater might be?”
“I know where it has to be. Only one astrobleme in Europe fits the bill. The Ries.”
The stout fighter with the pipe smacked his own forehead and exclaimed, “Das Rieskessel bei Nordlingenl Naturlich! What a bunch of stupid pricks we’ve been! Hansi! Gert! We read about it in kindergarten!”
“Hell, yes,” sang out another man from the crowd. And a third Lowlife added, “But you gotta remember, Uwe, they told us kids a meteorite made the thing.”
“The Ship’s Grave!” one of the women cried out “It it’s not just a myth, then there’s a chance for us! We really might be able to free humanity from these bastards!” An exultant shout went up from the rest of the crowd.
“Be silent, for the love of God!” Madame implored them.
Her hand were clasped before her breast almost prayerfully as she addressed Claude. “You are certain? You are positive that this, this Ries must be the Ship’s Grave?”
The old paleontologist picked up a branch from the woodpile. Scuffing an area of dust flat, he drew a vertical row of X’s.
“There are the Vosges Mountains. We’re on the western flank, about here.” He poked, then slashed a line parallel to, and east of, the range. “Here’s the Rhine, flowing roughly south to north through a wide rift valley. Finiah is here on the eastern bank.” More X’s were drawn behind the Tanu city. “Here’s the Black Forest range, trending north-south just like the Vosges. Same basic geology. And beyond it, slanting off to the northeast, the Swabian Jura. This line I’m drawing under the Jura is the River Danube. It flows off east into the Pannonian Lagoon in Hungary, someplace over under the woodpile. And right about here…”