The next day came early. The two men woke up in the hour before dawn
and after having their fill of good food for breakfast, they readied
themselves for their long trip to Pomperaque.
They made up a list for the rations supervisor to fill for them before
they were to leave Alugean. The list was common to them both and they
were comprised of field hiking packs full of dried meats, fruits and
vegetables, two four-litre water sacks and two electric lights.
When Lloyd and Boyce finished giving Burman and the library steward the
final details of how and when they would be notified about their own
advance on Pomperaque, they left the city, hailed with luck from each
worker within.
It was an unusually hot day and it wasn't yet nine o'clock in the
morning.
Not far from Alugean, they took their first break by a stream and
sucked back a few healthy gulps of water from their sacks.
There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the air felt thick to breathe as
they slowly advanced south.
They took to walking in the shade of the trees that were all around
them on their path, and only after Boyce noticed a dragonfly fanning
itself on a boulder, were both of the men aware that there was a
strange lack of insect life.
The men didn't speak. Boyce just pointed to the big beautifully
coloured insect and Lloyd knew what was on his mind.
It seemed, to the men, that they were stopping every few minutes to
drink their water but they did indeed walk a long distance, losing
sight of Alugean several hours into the afternoon.
All the vegetation around them was dry and brittle, especially that
which was under foot. The trees and shrubs, however, were still green
and were waxy looking, and sap ran sown the bark of some of those trees.
Their feet burned and it wasn't until the late afternoon that they
finally came across a stream that was to give them some relief.
They stayed at the little river for an hour, partaking of its fresh and
crystal qualities, and Lloyd caught, with his bare hands, a couple of
good-sized fish for their supper.
They built a fire and a shading lean-to by the water's edge and there
roasted the fish, then ate them.
When they finished they speculated on the distance that they had
travelled and they looked at their maps, putting them fifty-five
kilometres from the library at Alugean. This surprised both of them
and Boyce joked, remarking that the entire walk must've been down hill.
They knew that they had several hours of sunlight available to them,
but both agreed that the time would be better spent in search of a
proper shelter, where they could sleep that evening.
They doused the fire and scattered the materials of the lean-to,
limiting the evidence that someone was there, in the chance that
someone was following them.
Although no one followed, their caution spurred them into a steady pace
that allowed them to gain a good distance with each passing hour.
It wasn't until dusk that Lloyd caught sight of a large hole in a
hillside, which was overgrown with trees and other vegetation.
Since the sun was sinking quickly, Boyce agreed to Lloyd's decision to
check it out as a possible shelter for the evening.
It indeed was a cave and it was incredibly large, and the floor of the
cave was relatively smooth, as far down as they could see.
Their curiosity was sparked by the looks of the cave opening, and they
couldn't see any ledges or nooks until they went further into the cave.
Then before them they saw a huge hole, that stretched into darkness.
Normality, Boyce threw a rock into the hole but it was never heard
hitting the bottom.
There was light in the cave since the entrance faced towards the west
and the setting sun. They each took out their electric lights anyway,
but the beams of light could not illuminate the other side, if there
was another side.
To their right was a large road, seemingly joined to the smooth surface
that ran through the entrance, so they began to walk on it.
"I wonder where this leads?" Boyce thought to ask, not expecting to be
answered and especially with Lloyd's remark.
"Hell, maybe?" he replied.
This annoyed Boyce, but more from not really having a concept of what
hell was supposed to be. He could not imagine that which had been
described in legend since the dawn of man _ both times.
He sometimes shone the light onto the wall to their right and Lloyd
shone his straight ahead so that they wouldn't fall into nothingness if
the road was to suddenly end.
"Maybe we should head to the entrance, Lloyd. We have been here for
some time."
"I thought I saw my light reflecting off something just ahead. We'll
head back after we check that."
Boyce nodded to resuming and as they neared that which was returning
Lloyd's light, Boyce shone his on the wall again and lit a large black,
cube that didn't look like it was made of stone.
"What is that?"
Lloyd stopped and looked at it, then went over to it. He touched it
and set his fingers into a groove that he found on the side.
"I don't know, but -- " he pulled on the groove and half the cube,
which was hinged, flew open. "It seems to be opening!"
There was a row of six small levers and beneath those was one large
dusty one. Lloyd tried to move it but it didn't budge.
He sighed then dropped his pack to his feet and drew from it a small
axe, gave the lever a good slam them tried it and he pushed it right
around until it stopped.
There was a sudden rush of air followed by a screaming whirling sound,
and the entire place became lit with dim yellowish light.
They turned to face the direction of the light and were totally
flabbergasted by what they saw.
In the utmost of awe, both stood with their mouths agape and were
silent as their eyes combed the entirety of the huge pit that extended
far below them, with the road on which they stood, spiralling in a
terraced fashion down to the very bottom.
Throughout the immense hole, there were huge machines; dormant and
silent. Only God knew for how many years this place had been abandoned.
Lloyd saw that which had reflected his light earlier. It was a huge
yellow hauling machine, several dozen meters away from them and covered
with faded writing. It had many large, black wheels and a gigantic
load bin, still filled to the limit with whole rocks, many of them
larger than either of the two men.
"This is a mine!" Lloyd began to explain to this companion. "It's
odd, though, that this place would be mined like this?"
"Why do you say that?" Boyce was puzzled.
"This style is called an open-pit mine, yet it's in this small
mountain. That is why I think it's odd. Shafts are usually dug for
mining in mountains or for something that is found very deep!" Lloyd
pointed to the floor of the pit, maybe a kilometre below them.
"I would like to go down there, but we don't have the time. Let's get
back." Boyce suggested.
The shrieking whirl suddenly stopped and there was no more drafty air
flowing about them and the lights went out.
"I suppose that we'll have to go back now?" Lloyd chaffed, picking up
his pack.
They lay back on the flat, even floor of the cave, using their water
sacks as pillows.
Bluish starlight filtered into the cave and it was barely enough to let
them see one another.
They stared up into the dark of the ceiling and thought about what they
had just found.
"What a strange and fantastic place!" said Boyce.
"Have you noticed that this entire road, that runs to the floor of this
mine, has been carved right out of the rock?" Lloyd was formulating a
theory about the odd method of building such a place.
Boyce remained quiet, knowing Lloyd well-enough by now, to let him
continue with his thoughts.
"They must've used lasers, like ours!" he continued. "How else could
they make it's surface so flat and even all the way down?"
"I was thinking, Lloyd ... wouldn't this great hole make an interesting
city -- like the Alugean library?"
They both were quiet for a moment, reflecting on Boyce's idea, until
Lloyd resumed.
"I'd wager that both places were made by the same people!"
The silence that came next lasted until morning when Boyce and Lloyd
were snatched from their dream states by the shrill cawing of some crow
on a boulder outside the mouth of the cave.
Bleary-eyed, the men got to their feet and stretched until they were
fully awake, but still relaxed.
"What a noise to wake up to!" Lloyd complained.
"Oh, leave it be. It's not hurting anything!" Boyce gurgled.
"Besides, at least we can get an early start today."
They left the cave and sat on the big rock that the crow had vacated.
They took some food out of their packs and filled their bowels with the
fuel for a rest.
Their curiosity and sense of awe had made them go back into the mine.
They were in there
only briefly while they took some notes and made some calculations
approximating the overall dimensions of the mine.
They marked the location of this sight on their maps and then proceeded
on their journey back to Pomperaque.
Not very far from the mine there was a wide, rapid-moving river that
they had to cross before they continued their trek overland to the Dark
Forest which spanned most of the northern part of the Virgin Mountains.
It was a part of the land where no one lived since it was too hostile
for any groups of people to settle. Only hunters and criminals roamed
those desolate areas.
Lloyd and Boyce tried not to think of what lay ahead. They were given
the choice of what routes to take and they chose the shortest and most
perilous way.
They were beginning to see more wild life now, some larger than they
had ever seen before.
They knew that they were nearing the Dark Forest because of these
signs. The forest was home of every kind of titan-like animal, many of
which were devilishly ferocious.
They came over a rise and there they rested because, across the small
aspen rose an escarpment a few hundred meters in height. To keep on
schedule, they had to scale the escarpment walls by evening.
Overhead, a black bird was circling, quickly nearing the ground with
each successive round, until it finally came to rest in the top of a
tree between them and the cliffs of the escarpment.
It cried out in dry sounding quavers and flapped its wings in a
silly-looking manner before it dropped itself off the tree and flew
over to the cliffs.
"Funny!" voiced Boyce.
"What?!" Lloyd asked him, thinking that maybe he did something worthy
of being made fun.
"That's the second raven they we've seen today, and I wasn't aware that
they were indigenous to this area."
Lloyd didn't even notice the bird until Boyce pointed-out its presence
to him.
"Maybe it's lost?"
Boyce shrugged at Lloyd's suggestion. He watched the bird fly over the
scarp ahead and he sighed with envy.
"Too bad we don't have wings to fly over that thing!" Boyce said about
the escarpment. "I don't feel up to the climb."
"I can do without it, also, but we can't go around it; that would take
too long."
Boyce looked at Lloyd with a perplexed expression.
"Why did I agree on taking this route, anyway?"
Lloyd grinned and closed his pack while he spoke.
"It's shorter, for one thing." Boyce began. "I wonder, at times, if
we will make it there, by taking this way?!"
He drank some water then slung the sack around his neck and shoulders,
and Lloyd did the same with his pack.
They both got on their feet and looked at the escarpment then started
in its direction, pacing themselves steadily and surely until they were
quickly on the other side of the aspen, and were standing at the base
of the escarpment's towering cliffs.
"Looks high!" Boyce's brief comment drew a look from Lloyd until he
finished his thought. "But -- we can't turn back now!"
He laughed for a moment then looked up.
"You know, if someone told me, back when I was a boy, that I would be
climbing an impossible rock when I was twenty-one, I would have laughed
in their face." Boyce continued to laugh, watching for Lloyd's
reaction.
"At least you're young, my friend. I'm nearly twice your age, so this
trip is that much harder for me!"
"Strange," Boyce began. "this thing, Fate! It made us friends
through your hardship, kept us as friend through my own, and now we're
going to a place where we will engage in battle... and maybe die,
together."
Lloyd gave him a strange look of disgust and shook his head.
"If I didn't know you better, I'd swear that you were still reading
Djenaud Smarte." he said to Boyce.
"Knock, knock ..." Boyce smiled and then gave Lloyd a pat on the back.
"Who'll go first?"
"I will have to go first. I've done more climbing." answered Lloyd.
"Watch where I put my hands and feet and climb up the same way."
Boyce nodded in silence and Lloyd gave him a concerned looks as if to
calm him.
They began to climb the escarpment which was almost a straight vertical
rise of brittle rock. Several times Lloyd lost his footing on the
rocks that flaked off with every inch that they climbed.
They had set for themselves two goals, the first being a wide lege
about half-way up, and the second was the flat summit itself, where
they were to sleep when the evening came.
By late afternoon, after a slow and painful climb that almost claimed
them both, they reached the ledge and took off their packs.
Boyce looked down over the edge and he felt a chill go through him.
"If I wasn't so tired, " he said. "I think that I'd get sick."
Out of breath, Lloyd laughed and looked down himself.
"You never ... you never get used to it, Boyce." He lay flat on his
back and saw how far they still had to go. "We can't rest here for too
much longer or we'll lose the strength to finish the rest of the way!"
He lifted his arm towards the summit and let it drop down again.
"I would rather have gone by caravan." Boyce sighed.
Exhausted, Lloyd grinned and slowly rose to his feet. He helped Boyce
up onto his and they put their packs back on and started up the
cliff-face, gain.
As it was Lloyd's experience in climbing a few times before, the
second-half of the climb was a little easier for him.
Boyce had also found the next part easier to scale, losing his hold
only briefly, near the top.
The skies were beginning to take on a purple-orange colour as the sun
fell behind the clouds far on the western horizon.
Summoning the rest of their strength they finally reached the flat
summit.
It wasn't until an hour passed, and the sunlight was gone, but for the
dimness left over, that the two men stood on their feet and cleared an
area on which to sleep.
The skies were turning to black velvet, with the diamond stars covering
every space and some galaxies were seen lingering far behind some
brighter stars. Directly overhead, a galaxy of fingernail size seemed
to slowly pass over as they both lay back and watched it.
Meteorites streaked across the sky ever-so-often and Boyce told Lloyd
that they were angels racing one another through the heavens.
It was a clear and beautifully warm night, and a splendidly colourful
borealis shined in the north-western sky.
Neither one knew when they fell asleep, and neither one woke up until
noon the next day, barely noticing that they were being baked by the
sun.
Every bone in their bodies cracked and there wasn't one muscle excluded
from feeling the brunt of their climb.
Nothing much was said between them while they ate. When they were
through, however, Boyce praised God, and turned to Lloyd.
"I just thought of something." he said and Lloyd waited, interest
shining from his eyes. "We could have cut holes into the rock face
with our lasers! The climb wouldn't have taken us half the time!"
"I considered that before we started to climb." Lloyd admitted to
Boyce.
"Why didn't we, then?"
"It would have been too simple and you would not have valued the skill
of the climb if we made it without the hardship and sweat. Climbing
this escarpment is much the same as striving for a goal in life -- you
do understand what I am trying to say?" Lloyd finished.
"Yes, Lloyd, I do! You are teaching me things that you haven't
promised my father you would teach to me. Nevertheless, I am grateful."
The two men spent the day on the escarpment looking at the land that
stretched for miles on each side of the precipice, but their main
interest was in the land that was set directly ahead.
The Krolalin Mountain Range was before them, with the chain of desolate
old mountains at the head of the Virgin Mountains.
They sat on the southern part of the escarpment and stared at the
awesome sight. It was a mammoth forest canopied by clouds.
There was the river before them, flowing through a channel that it dug
out of solid rock over its many years of erosion. Its banks sloped up
from there, on each side, with short underbrush on this side of the
river and the forbidding Dark Forest, on the other side.
Lloyd had Boyce hand him a pack and from it he took a dark cylindrical
case that he opened. He pulled out from it an instrument of glass and
light metal.
He pulled the instrument apart and put it up to his eye, pointing it in
the direction of the river.
Boyce quietly watched him for a while.
"Is that one of those distance aids for the eyes?" he queried.
Lloyd smiled taking the thing away from his eye and showing it to him.
"It's called a telescope. To see further an clearer you pull it out,
like this." he showed him and Boyce knew right away what it could be
used for. "It is compressed for easier packing and travel. A very
handy toy, I might say!"
He handed the telescope to Boyce and told him to look at the river near
the huge rock and tree, an he did. He saw a cable there, stretched
across the river from one rock to another on the other side.
"That's what we're crossing on." said Lloyd.
Boyce gave him an odd look as if asking him, 'why?'.
"We can't swim through that tempest. The current would rip us to
shreds and we couldn't control a float on her either." he said. "That
wire cable is all we have."
"Who put it there?"
"I don't know, really. All I know is that when I was maybe nine or
ten, some hunters came to my father with new of its existence. We came
with a couple of Virunese to see it and it didn't look in very good
shape." Lloyd took a breath that shuddered slightly. "I had to carry
a thick rope to the other side and back in order to strengthen it until
some others were sent to replace it with a new cable."
"Why did you have to carry the rope?" asked Boyce.
"I was the smallest and therefore the lightest, but I could feel the
thing under my weight the further I went." Lloyd smiled reassuringly
and took a gulp of water. "I've been over it a dozen times since then."
Boyce continued to look through the telescope at the other side.
The Dark Forest didn't look any more welcoming closer up and Boyce
wasn't looking forward to going through it.
The Dark Forest was densely overgrown with titanic sized trees, the
diameters of which ranged from one to ten meters in thickness. They
were extremely tall, too. So tall in fact that most of the forest
ceiling was constantly hidden in the clouds, which never seemed to
dissipate.
No one knew the actual height of the trees in the Dark Forest because
of the clouds. Over the years, folk lore and tales had formed about
their origin and formation. Mythical civilisations of evil gremlins
were said to have built a city up in the trees and kept it shrouded
from human eyes by the soupy canopy of clouds. The same lore explained
why the entire forest teamed with hostile life; that which was the
gremlin king's way of venting his anger on the world and on mankind.
"We'll stay here today and sleep. Tomorrow, when fresh and strong,
we'll go down there and carry ourselves across to the other side."
Boyce bore a pensive smile to what Lloyd had said.
"Lloyd?" he began. "Exactly how will we get down from here? Will we
have to climb?"
Lloyd grinned at Boyce.
"It's easier climbing down!" he answered and watched Boyce's facial
colour draw away. "Really! -- We will climb down part of the way."
He got on his belly and leaned over to the edge of the cliff and
motioned to Boyce to do the same, and he did. He pointed to a large
ledge that was about the width of a forearm, which continued on to a
piece of this big rock where there was a gentler slope and a path down
to the base.
Boyce shrugged and smacked his lips as he looked beyond the path and
straight down to the base of the escarpment, strewn with rock and
dotted with dry bush.
"That's still a climb!" he said.
"I would guess twenty meters! I like to think of it as a morning
exercise."
They rested on the summit through the rest of the day and talked about
their past decade together, as friends, and they discussed the great
city of Pomperaque and what it would be like when they finally reached
it.
Their second night came to them on the scarp, hardly different in its
beauty than the night before. The only noticeable change was that of
the full moon, which was big and bright.
Each man was silent and rolled about in his own thoughts.
Boyce laboured with the vision of Brook and Dearborne's executions,
being played repeatedly in his mind while his uncle, Manguino, watched
with murder-hungry eyes.
He wiped the tears from his eyes and took the telescope that was
beside Lloyd and put it up to his eye. He aimed the instrument at the
moon and was amazed at the details that he saw on its surface.
Lloyd had his eyes rivetted on the moon, as well. His mind played with
him, showing him the memories of Mercedes' suicide mingled with that of
his own beloved Charnan's death. His tears never formed, though. With
his, at one time's ease to mourn, all he had now was the respectful
love and praise for her.
He never married since his betrothal to her, and rarely did he ever
have relations with women. The only woman since Charnan, who
interested Lloyd in the slightest, was his father's maid-servant,
Torella.
She drew and teased his desires from him, until with her scalding
passion gave her body to him, before she left the Bartlett household
with a wandering artisan.
He never found out whether it was Torella's desire to leave or his
father's desire to expel her; so to keep him from fraternising with the
lower-classed help.
Lloyd's second love was removed from him and since that time he had
never again engaged himself with thoughts of love and passion.
He was deeply depressed and Boyce's voice was the welcomed hammer that
shattered his flagonful of thoughts.
"Have you ever wondered about the moon's perfection, Lloyd?" asked
Boyce and Lloyd responded with a questioning mumble. "There are large
holes on the moon and mountains, larger than any in Krolalin."
Lloyd turned on his side, faced Boyce and reached for the eye-glass.
He looked at the moon and agreed with what Boyce had said.
Boyce continued. "It's strange how it looks so warm and beautiful by
our own eyes, then so
cold and empty with the telescope. The stars, also! They just hang
there, each a sun like our own!" he finished and they both sighed.
"It's truly beautiful!" Lloyd added.
"Remember our studies, Lloyd? Wouldn't it be some life to sail between
those worlds?"
Lloyd expelled some air and he sounded in agreement.
Soon, the men fell asleep and travelled the uncertain routes between
the stars in search of those precious things that they had lost in
their youth.
Those harmonious dreams were fleeting, yet blessed moments of comfort
given them by the love of God.