I'd gaped pretty hard at the snake-dog, and the griffin had held my attention, too; but neither of them was anything at all to what I saw now.
It was a girl: tall, high-bosomed, long-legged, with skin as white as the fallen marble columns, and dark copper hair piled up high over a face that was like the one you dream about, that smiles and is lost forever, and you wake up sick with yearning. She was dressed in a flimsy swath of white gauzy stuff that clung to her hips and thighs like wet tissue paper and floated when she moved. She came straight up to the thing that had me cornered and said, "Aroint thee, Vrodelix! An ill greeting for visitors!" It dropped its head and whined like an overgrown puppy.
The girl pushed the monster aside and looked at me. Her eyes were dark blue, and they glistened in the moonlight. I knew those eyes; I'd seen them in the dream.
"Are you a man?" she said. "Or a god?" Her tone indicated that both choices were equally likely. I told her and she nodded.
"I'm glad. I am a mortal woman." She looked across at Roosevelt, who had come up to us. He gave her a courtly bow and the smile.
"But you are a god," she said.
"Only a man, my dear," he said. "Pieter Roosevelt, at your service—and this is Richard Curlon."
She smiled at him, and I felt a strange feeling that somehow I'd missed out on something rare and valuable.
"And I am Ironel, Pieter," she said.
"You live here alone?" Roosevelt was asking.
"Oh, no. Vrodelix is with me." She ran a hand along the sleek, curved neck of the nightmare animal. "And I have other friends—and now, two new ones!" She caught Roosevelt's hand and then mine and smiled from one to the other of us, and we grinned back.
"Tell me about your other, ah, friends, Ironel," Roosevelt said in the gentle, fatherly tone he had adopted with her.
"Of course, Pieter! There is Ronizpel the Climber, and Chazz the Dweller Below, and Arnq of the Spines—and many more!"
"All animals?"
She had to think that one over. "Mostly," she said. "Except for Chazz—I think. But you'll meet them soon. Oh, how glad they'll be you've come!" She stopped, as if she had just remembered something. "But Old Garff—I'm not sure he'll be pleased."
"How long have you lived here?" Roosevelt wanted to know.
"Why—forever." She sounded surprised at the silly question.
"Where are your parents?"
"What are parents?"
"The people who raised you—taught you to speak, to dress yourself so prettily?"
"Why. . . 'tis a novel thought, Pieter! Must one learn to talk as I taught Arnq to weave his nets o'er the Dark Places?" She touched the soft fold of the cloth she wore. "As for my garment—'tis made for me by Arnq, of course." She looked at Roosevelt's nylon suit, touched my sleeve. "I must show him your weaver's work; 'twill set him a task, to make stuff like it." She laughed, pleased by the idea.
"Are there no other people here—like you, and us?" Roosevelt persisted.
"But—we are not like!" Ironel laughed. "You are taller than I, and your hair is short, and your shoulders wide and your chest flat—not like me." She touched her body, ran her hand down her slim waist as if to sense the differences with her fingertips.
"We're men," Roosevelt said, smiling faintly. "You're a woman. Are there other humans of either sex here?"
That seemed to puzzle her. "No, none," she said.
"What do you eat? How do you keep warm in winter?"
"Why—Chazz brings me roots from the deep earth, and Ronizpel knows where the grapes and melons ripen soonest. And when the whiteness falls, I dwell indoors, and Arnq swathes the windows with his finest weaving to hold back the cold."
Vrodelix whined, and while the girl was soothing him, Roosevelt stepped close to me.
"Are we to believe this poor natural maid lives all alone here as she says? Is it possible?"
"It looks that way. For some reason the Blight seems to stay clear of this little patch of ground. You said it was the eye of the storm. The eye of a hurricane is a dead calm."
Ironel was back beside us, smiling. "Come," she said. "Now I'll show thee my playthings!" She towed us across a flagstone walk between tended flowerbeds where black and gold fungus blossoms grew between roses and daisies. We went through an archway and across a tiled hall and up stairs into a wide, shadowy corridor that was blocked twenty feet away by fallen masonry; but the part that was clear was swept clean. She opened a door on a room with a deep black carpet and high, glassless windows with curtains of the same gauzy stuff as her clothing. There was a high bed with a white silk canopy over it, decorated with a floral design in gold thread. She knelt by a big chest with a carved lid and opened it and lifted out a bolt of scarlet cloth.
"Is it not pretty?" she said and stretched a length of it across her body. I had to agree it was pretty.
She took out a smaller box and poured gold coins out on the rug. I knelt to gather them up and discovered that the rug was a layer of moss, as smooth and even as black velvet.
"And these!" she dumped jewels among the coins; they sparkled like hot embers.
"And these are my dearest treasures!" she said, and spilled colored seashells out among them.
She laughed. "And now we must sort them, and put them away. Is it not a fine game?"
Roosevelt picked up a big square-cut ruby with an incised crest.
"Where did you get this?" his voice grated roughly. His eyes bored into hers. She didn't seem to notice the change of pace.
"In the Pretty Place," she said. "There are many more, but I liked these the best."
"Show me!" he snapped.
"Easy, General," I said. "We play the young lady's game first, then yours."
For a moment his eyes clashed with mine; then he relaxed, smiled, laughed aloud. He got down on his knees and started picking up seashells and placing them in a careful heap.
She led us down into a wide, moonlit avenue, almost roofed over by vines. Vrodelix paced beside her, making hissing sounds and acting increasingly nervous as we came closer to the fallen buildings at the far end.
"Poor beast, he remembers the Thing-with-eight-legs and the Fanged Ones," Ironel said. "They frightened him, ere he slew them."
She pointed to a tall, mold-blackened building nestled up against the barricade of rubble. "Vrodelix mislikes me to go there—but with you by me, naught can imperil us."
"The State Museum," Roosevelt said. He looked at the instrument strapped to the underside of his wrist, but if it told him anything he didn't say so.
We went through a weed-choked entrance, crossed a hall that was carpeted and walled with vines, went up a wide, curved staircase. The second floor was in better condition. There were glass-topped cases here, dusty but intact. Old paintings hung on the walls, mold-spotted faces in strange ruffs and plumed helmets peering down from leafy shadows, but their stiff expressions looked more frightened than arrogant. We went on into the next room, where formerly elaborate uniforms with knee-boots and capes with moth-eaten tiger-skin facings hung on decaying dummies with vacant, horrified faces. Fancy saddles and tattered regimental flags were displayed along with lances and dueling pistols and hand-tooled matchlocks, all draped with spiderwebs.
"Now—you must close your eyes," Ironel said, and took our hands. Her fingers were slim and cool and soft. She watched to make sure I followed instructions, then led the way up three steps, and across more floor, around obstructions, then down again. I was just beginning to wonder how long the blindman's bluff went on when she stopped and said, "Open your eyes!"
Colored moonlight streamed down through a stained-glass window on a gray stone floor leading away to an altar with slim columns and a gold canopy and silver candlesticks. A silver-mounted reliquary box lay there. There was a stone sarcophagus before the altar, with the carved figure of a Crusader on it, dressed in full armor, his hands crossed over the hilt of his sword that lay on his chest like a crucifix.
"Dost like my Pretty Place?" Ironel asked in a breathless voice.
"We like it very much indeed," Roosevelt said softly. "Will you show me where you found the signet stone?"
"Here." Ironel turned to a brass-bound coffer sitting on wooden trestles to the left. Roosevelt lifted the lid. The soft light winked on rings and armlets and brooches—a magpie's trove of trinkets. Ironel lifted a chain of soft gold links and held it against her, then dropped it and took a tiny silver chain with a dangling amethyst.
"This is prettier," she said. "Do thee not think so, Pieter?"
"Much prettier, my dear." His eyes moved past her, roving over the details of the little chapel, back to the dial on his wrist. He started toward the altar, and Ironel made a distressed sound and caught at his hand.
"Pieter—no! Thou must approach no closer!"
He gave her a smile that was more grim than comforting.
"It's all right," he said in a soothing tone. "I mean only to have a look at it." He brushed her hand away.
"Pieter—you mustn't! Bad things will happen if we intrude there! Canst thou not feel it in the very air?"
He wasn't listening. He took another step—and stopped. Far away, something rumbled. The floor trembled, and a piece of glass cracked in the window. I stepped to his side.
"You're a guest here," I said. "Maybe you'd better play house rules."
He shot me a look like a harpoon. "I'll decide that," he said, and started on.
I caught his arm. It was like grabbing an oak rail. He strained to pull free and I strained to hold him back. Neither of us seemed to be gaining.
"The girl says 'no,' General," I said. "Maybe she has a reason."
"Come to your senses, Curlon," he said, still sounding calm. "Remember what we came here to find!"
"You said yourself the equation is in delicate balance," I said. "Take it slowly, until you know what you're doing."
There was another rumble, closer this time. I felt the floor move under my feet. The griffin raked his talons on the floor and yowled. Ironel whimpered; I heard a sound from above, looked up in time to see a safe-sized stone dropping at me. I dived to the side; the smash was like switch-engines colliding. Rock chips flew like shrapnel. Roosevelt whirled and ran for the altar. The griffin hissed and reared to strike at him, but Ironel shrieked and the animal crouched back, his ears flat and Roosevelt ran past him. I started after him and a marble pilaster crashed down between us. The floor was heaving like jelly, with broken stone and fragments of ceiling mosaic and stained glass and ironwork and chunks of statuary dancing on it like water drops in a hot skillet. Roosevelt ran into the thick of it; stones fell around him like bomb fragments. A small one hit him on the shoulder, but he stayed on his feet, staggering now but still trying to reach the altar. He was six feet from it when the canopy over it sagged and went down. One of the columns fell. It barely brushed him, but it threw him ten feet. He skidded in the dust and lay still, a broken doll. The rumble died away. A few stray pebbles clattered down into silence.
Ironel went to her knees beside Roosevelt. She touched his face. "Is he dead?" she whispered.
I checked him over. There was a nasty dent in his skull. His breathing was shallow and rasping, but his pulse was solid.
"He's badly hurt," I said. "But not dead—yet."
With Ironel's help I got him on my back, carried him back to her sleeping room, and laid him out on the bed in the dark.