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unknown of the Waste. Now ahead we caught sight of heights making a dark blue line across the sky of evening, as if we headed for a mountain chain.
    Here also the land was more hospitable. There were trees where before had been mostly shrubs and stretches of grassland. We came to where the road arched in a bridge over a stream of some size. And it was beside that running water that we camped for the night. In fact Riwal settledus, not on the bank of the stream, but on a bar which thrust out into it. The water was high from the storm, and there was flotsam carried with it, piled around the rocks edging that bar.
    I eyed his choice with some disfavor. To my mind he had deliberately selected a site which would give us little room and which appeared dangerous from the sweep of water. He must have read my expression for he said, “This is chancy land, Kerovan. It is best to take the common precautions when within it—some uncommon ones too.”
    “Common precautions?”
    He gestured at the stream. “Running water. That which is ill-disposed to us, if it be of the Power and not human, cannot cross running water. If we camp so, we have only one front to defend.”
    So reasoned, it was common sense. Thus I pushed rocks and pulled loose drift to clear a space between for us and the horses. Nor did Riwal deny us a fire made from the driest of the drift. The river was falling, but the current was still swift. It held life also, for I saw a dark shape of a length to suggest that the fish of this country were of a huge size, though I was teased by the disturbing suggestion that that shadow beneath the surface did not altogether resemble any fish I knew. I decided that in the Waste it was better not to probe too deeply into the unknown.
    We set a watch, as we would in enemy country. At first, during my tour of duty, I was so uneasily alert that I found myself peopling each shadow with an intruder, until I took my fancies in hand and forced control over them.
    Though the day had been sunless, we did not lack a moon. Its rays were particularly strong, making the landscape all black and silver—silver in the open, black in the shadows. There was life out there, for once I heard the drum of hoofs, and our horses nickered and tugged at theirtethers, as if some of their wild kin had pounded by. Once I heard a distant, mournful cry, like the howl of a hunting wolf. And something very large with wings planed noiselessly over our camp as if to inspect us. Yet none of these were frightening in themselves, for all men know that there are wild horses in the Waste, and wolves run through the dales as well. And there are winged night-hunters everywhere.
    No, it was not those sounds that disturbed me. It was what I did not hear. For I was as certain as if I could see it that out there in the black and silver land lurked something, or someone, who watched and listened with the same intensity that I did. And whether it was of good or ill I could not guess.
    Sun and morning banished such fancies. The land was open, empty, in the daylight. We crossed the hump of the bridge and headed on, while before us the mountains grew sharper to the sight.
    By nooning we were in the foothills, which were ridges sharper than our dales, more like knife slashes in soil and rock. No longer was the road straight. It narrowed to a way along which two of us might still ride abreast, but no wider, and it twisted and curved, ran up and down, as if its makers had followed always the easiest route through this maze of heights. Here, too, the Old Ones had left their mark. Carved on the walls of rock were faces, some grotesque, some human-seeming and benign, and often bands of runes that Riwal busied himself to copy.
    Though no one could read the script of the Old Ones, Riwal had hopes that someday he would be able to do so. We had dawdled so while he copied the runes that noon found us in a narrow vale where we took our rest under the chin of a vast face that protruded strongly