The Gifts of Asti | Page 4

choked highway curved and they were suddenly fronted by a desert of sere desolation, a desert floored by glassy slag which sent back the sun beams in a furnace glare. Varta shaded her eyes and tried to see the end of this, but, if there was a distant rim of green beyond, the heat distortions in the air concealed it.
Lur put out a front paw to test the slag but withdrew it instantly.
"It cooks the flesh, we can not walk here," was his verdict.
Varta pointed with her chin to the left where, some distance away, the mountain wall paralleled their course.
"Then let us keep to the jungle over there and see if it does not bring around to the far side. But what made this--?" She leaned out over the glassy stuff, not daring to touch the slick surface.
"War." Lur's tongue shot out to impale a questing beetle. "These forgotten people fought with fearsome weapons."
"But what weapon could do this? Memphir knew not such--."
"Memphir was old. But mayhap there were those who raised cities on Erb before the first hut of Memphir squatted on tidal mud. Men forget knowledge in time. Even in Memphir the lords of the last days forgot the wisdom of their earlier sages--they fell before the barbarians easily enough."
"If ever men had wisdom to produce this--it was not of Asti's giving," she edged away from the glare. "Let us go."
But now they had to fight their way through jungle and it was hard--until they reached a ridge of rock running out from the mountain as a tongue thrust into the blasted valley. And along this they picked their slow way.
"There is water near--," Lur's thought answered the girl's desire. She licked dry lips longingly. "This way--," her companion's sudden turn was to the left and Varta was quick to follow him down a slide of rock.
Lur's instinct was right, as it ever was. There was water before them, a small lake of it. But even as he dipped his fanged muzzle toward that inviting surface, Lur's spined head jerked erect again. Varta snatched back the hand she had put out, staring at Lur's strange actions. His nostrils expanded to their widest, his long neck outstretched, he was swinging his head back and forth across the limpid shallows.
"What is it--?"
"This is no water such as we know," the scaled one answered flatly. "It has life within it."
Varta laughed. "Fish, water snakes, your own distant kin, Lur. It is the scent of them which you catch--"
"No. It is the water itself which lives--and yet does not live--" His thought trailed away from her as he struggled with some problem. No human brain could follow his unless he willed it so.
Varta squatted back on her heels and began to look at the water and then at the banks with more care. For the first time she noted the odd patches of brilliant color which floated just below the surface of the liquid. Blue, green, yellow, crimson, they drifted slowly with the tiny waves which lapped the shore. But they were not alive, she was almost sure of that, they appeared more a part of the water itself.
Watching the voyage of one patch of green she caught sight of the branch. It was a drooping shoot of the turbi, the same tree vine which produced the fruit she had relished less than an hour before. Above the water dangled a cluster of the fruit, dead ripe with the sweet pulp stretching its skin. But below the surface of the water--
Varta's breath hissed between her teeth and Lur's head snapped around as he caught her thought.
The branch below the water bore a perfect circle of green flowers close to its tip, the flowers which the turbi had borne naturally seven months before and which should long ago have turned into just such sweetness as hung above.
With Lur at her heels the girl edged around to pull cautiously at the branch. It yielded at once to her touch, swinging its tip out of the lake. She sniffed--there was a languid perfume in the air, the perfume of the blooming turbi. She examined the flowers closely, to all appearances they were perfect and natural.
"It preserves," Lur settled back on his haunches and waved one front paw at the quiet water. "What goes into it remains as it was just at the moment of entrance."
"But if this is seven months old--"
"It may be seven years old," corrected Lur. "How can you tell when that branch first dipped into the lake? Yet the flowers do not fade even when withdrawn from the water. This is indeed a mystery!"
"Of which I would know more!" Varta dropped the turbi and started on around the edge of the lake.
Twice more they found similar evidence of preservation in flower