Then we came to a picture which defied my comprehension for many
minutes. It was a place of high walls and inclosures, over which
flocks of the curious stiff-winged birds flew; and many of the tallest
inclosures were toppling, while fire raged in among them (I knew it was
fire by the marvelous crimson and scarlet of the colors, dimmed though
they were), and great clouds of smoke rolled out.
There were others. I disliked them, I loathed them, but I could not
keep myself from looking intently at each one. It was impressed on me
that this was no legend, but a true thing that had happened in the far
olden times. These were my people dying, at the hands of others of my
people. I could not understand, but I could feel the truth of this
thing.
Men slaying men! The legend of Sunset Fields had not lied!
On the second wall there was an enormous picture, full seven paces
long and as high as the roof, and this one I could not grasp though I
studied it for a long time. It was a place such as this plain--once
there must have been many such, in the far olden times--from the center
of which there sprouted up a great mushroom, like those in the Fearful
Forest, but all creamy-white and so big as to shatter the imagination.
I cannot say how huge it was. All our glens and valleys would be hidden
in the shadow of such a mushroom. Though I looked at it until my eyes
watered, and Dy-lee had to light his third flambeau, still I could
not understand how such a thing could grow in the midst of the tall
inclosures.
The next picture I could grasp, however. They were of ruins, like those
below which we stood, and all among the ramparts and broken walls were
the bodies of men. Some calamity had laid its dreadful hand on the
place. I wondered if the giant mushroom had been to blame, wreaking
this havoc as it grew.
And now the pictures were different. No more men slaying men, or tall
majestic structures spearing the very sky with their tops, but only
ruins and blackened plains, raw cliffs and far-flung wastes, the
wreckage of great metal things I did not recognize, and among them a
few, a very few human figures, prowling like jackal-rats furtively in
the chaos. These pictures were all very ancient, with their dye-stuffs
flaked and marred by time.
* * * * *
There was a view of a prairie, waving with orange grass, on which moved
men who might have been my own tribe. Naked, with bows and hatchets,
they stalked an animal something like a cave cat, which had a great
mane of hair all down its back. I touched this picture and nodded to
Dy-lee. He pointed to me. He knew that these were my kindred. And this
picture too was older than the oldest man of the glen-folk, for it was
much dimmed and discolored.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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