Lin Carter - The City Outside the World by Lin Carter Read Free Book Online Page A

frightened eyes. The reek of burnt dragon meat was thick and sour on the dry, cold air.
    He holstered his gun and stooped, entering the cave again. Valarda was curled up in her blankets, her back turned towards him so that he could not see her face.
    No one said anything.
    Ryker returned to his fur cloak and pretended to sleep.
    But he lay awake for hours staring into the green-lit gloom, remembering the silken softness of her body against his own, and the honey sweetness of her mouth under his kiss.
    II
    The Caravan Road
    6. The Oasis Town
    dawn had lit the cave-roof with its pale luminance before Ryker got back to sleep, and when at last the others roused him it was near midday.
    He went out to check on their lopers, and was surprised to find them unmolested. They had tethered the beasts at the foot of the cliff wall of the mesa, some distance up a narrow ravine where they could feed on the rock lichens and podweed. The slioth had not investigated the ravine, apparently.
    As for the cliff dragon, its body was gone. Either the bolt from Ryker's power gun had not slain it outright, and it had dragged itself off to its lair, or its fellow scavengers had carried it away to feast in private.
    Ryker thought it likely the beast had limped away on its own. Such reptiles are notoriously hard to kill, having brains so small it takes them hours to realize they are dead—an old hunting joke—and two hearts.
    Nobody spoke over breakfast. And there was utterly no reference made to last night. It was as if none of it had even happened. Valarda did not meet his eyes, and served his meal with a cool reserve.
    Ryker was just as glad. The embrace, the kiss, they had been one of those things and meant nothing. And he was in a surly, taciturn mood and felt little like conversation. The little imp, Kiki, however, had a twinkle of mischief in his green eyes as the boy demurely asked how he had slept.
    They rode on that day, due west, following the curve of the meridian.
    There had been some discussion about this, but not much. The girl informed him that they wished to reach the oasis of Yhakhah, where it was their intention to join a caravan traveling north.
    This oasis town—actually, little more than a more-or-less permanent camp—stood at the northernmost terminus of the old waterway called Nilosyrtis, at the southern tip of the Casius Plateau. Now, it was the most logical place to go from where they were, perhaps; but Ryker still wondered why Valarda wished to venture into those parts. No matter what she had said to him, it simply could not be true that they wanted to travel north from that point. For north lay nothing: the barren cliff wall of the Casius, the bleak and uninhabited tableland itself, and then endless leagues of empty desert which stretched clear to the pole.
    There was no city or encampment of the People north of Yhakhah. So where was she going?
    There was more to all of this than met the eye, he knew. But he was in this, now, up to his neck. And there wasn't much else for him to do but go along, if only for the ride.
    All that day they skirted the soaring cliff wall of the great mesa, riding west, carrying as much food and water as they could store. From time to time, Ryker eyed it curiously. The mesa meant something to Valarda and her old grandsire—if that is all he was. The Earthling recalled the curious emotion with which they had viewed it the previous evening. They had seemed—what?—appalled?, crestfallen?, saddened?
    Now, why should that be? The mesa of Alcyonius Nodus was as it had ever been, a barren tableland of dead, sterile rock. And it had been thus for millions of years, surely, or anyway since the great oceans of prehistoric
    Mars began to dry up. Once, perhaps , it had been a broad and fertile island, against whose cliffy shores the lost oceans had burst in shattering spray. But that was long ago.
    They rode west, then north awhile until the mighty wall of the great pleateau darkened the horizon to the