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overflowed with odors. Raven thought he could dis'finguish
the smells of earth and green growth, the
damp smell of water when a rivulet crossed the trail,
certain individual flower scents; but the rest was
unfamiliar. Smell is the most evocative of the
senses, and forgotten things seemed to move below
Raven's awareness, but he couldn't identify them.
Overriding all else was the clear brilliant odor of
baleflower. In the past few hours, every bush had
come to full bloom.
Seen by daylight, tomorrow, the land would look
as if it burned.
Time faded. That was a trick you learned early,
from the regimental bonzes who instructed noblemen's
sons. You needed it, to survive the waiting
and the waiting of war without your sanity cracking
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THE NIGHT FACE
open. You turned off your conscious mind. Part of it
might revive during pauses in the march. Surely it
was hard to stop at the halfway point for a drink of
water, a bit of field ration, and a rest, and not think
about Elfavy. But the body had its own demands.
The thing could be done, since it must.
The moon rose over Mount Granis. Passing an
open patch of ground and looking downslope, Raven
saw the whole world turned to silver treetops. Then
the forest gulped him again.
Some eight or nine hours after departure, Kors
halted with an oath. His flashbeam picked out a thing
that scuttled on spiderlike legs, a steel carapace and
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arms ending in sword blades.
"'S guts!" Raven heard a gun clank from a
holster. The machine met the light with impersonal
lens eyes, then slipped into the brash.
"Guard robot," said Raven. "Against carni-vores.
It won't attack humans. We're close now, so
douse that flash and shut up."
He led the way, cat-cautious in darkness, thinking
that Tolteca must indeed have beaten him here.
Though probably not by very long. Maybe the situation
could still be rescued. He topped the final steep
climb and poised on the upper edge of the great
amphitheater.
For a moment'the moonlight blinded him. She
hung gibbous over the Steeps, turning them bone
color and drowning the stars. Then piece by piece
Raven made out detail: mossy tiers curving downward
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to the floor, the ring of towers enclosing the
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THE NIGHT FACE
square of the labyrinth, even the central fountain and
its thin mercury-like jet. Even the gardens full of
baleflower, though they looked black against all that
slender white. He heard a mumble down in the
forum, but couldn't see what went on. With great
care he padded forward into the open.
"Hee-ee," said a man who sat on an upper terrace.
"That's hollow, Bale-friend."
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Raven stopped dead. Kors said something raw at
his back. Slowly, Raven turned to face the man. It
was Llyrdin, who had played chess in a diving bell
and gone exploring for a spaceport in the mountains.
Now he sat hugging his knees and grinning. There
was blood on his mouth.
"It is, you know," he said. "Hollow. Hollow is
God. I hail hollow, hollow hallow hullo."
Raven looked into the man's eyes, but the moonlight
was so reflected from them that they stared
blank. "Where did the blood come from?" he asked
most quietly.
"She was empty," said Llyrdin. "Empty and so
small. It wasn't good for her to grow up and be
hollow. Was it? That much more nothing?" He
rubbed his chin, regarded the wet fingers, and said
plaintively, "The machines took her away. That
wasn't fair. She was only a year and a half hollow."
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Raven started down into the chalice.
"She came up about to my waist," said the voice
behind him. "I think once, very long ago, before the
hollow, I taught her to laugh. I even gave her a name
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THE NIGHT FACE
once, and the name was Wormwood." Raven heard
him begin to weep.
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Kors took out his pistol, unsnapped the holster
from his belt and clamped it on as a rifle stock.
"Easy there," said Raven, not looking back bur
recognizing the noise. "You won't need that."
"The muck I won't," said Kors.
"We aren't going to fire on any Gwydiona. And I
doubt if Tolteca will give trouble . . . now."
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XlI
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THEY REACHED level sward and passed beneath a
tower. Raven remembered it was the one he had
climbed before. A child stood in the uppermost window,
battering herself against the grille and uttering
no sound.
Raven went through a colonnade. Just beyond, at
the edge of the forum, some fifty Instar people were
gathered, mostly men. Their clothes were torn, and
even in the moonlight, across meters of distance,
Raven could see unshaven chins.
Miguel Tolteca confronted them. "But Llyrdin
killed that little girl!" the Namerican shouted. "He
killed her with his hands and ran away wiping his
mouth. And the robots took the body away. And you
do nothing but stare!"
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THE NIGHT FACE
Beodag the forester trod forth. Awe blazed on his
face. "Under She," he called, his voice rising and
falling, with something of the remote quality of a
voice heard through fever. "And She is the cold
reflector ofYnis, and Ynis Burning Bush, though we
taste the river. If the river gives light, O look how my
shadow dances!"
"As Gonban danced for his mother," said the one
next to him. "Which is joy, since man comes from
darkness when he is
born."
"Night Faces are Day Faces are God!"
"Dance, God!"
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"Howl for God, ¥wi bums!"
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