"Wish we could climb them." Regis grinned at him companionably. "Sometime--and you have the word of a Hastur, you'll be along on that expedition." The big fellows' eyes glowed. Regis turned to me, and said warmly, "What about it, Jason? A bargain? Shall we all climb it together, next year?" I started to grin back and then some bleak black devil surged up in me, raging. When this was over, I'd suddenly realized, I wouldn't be there. I wouldn't be anywhere. I was a surrogate, a substitute, a splinter of Jay Allison, and when it was over, Forth and his tactics would put me back into what they considered my rightful place--which was nowhere. I'd never climb a mountain except now, when we were racing against time and necessity. I set my mouth in an unaccustomed narrow line and said, "We'll talk about that when we get back--if we ever do. Now I suggest we get going. Some of us would like to get down to lower altitudes." The trail down from Dammerung inside the ridge, unlike the outside trail, was clear and well-marked, and we wound down the slope, walking in easy single file. As the mist thinned and we left the snow-line behind, we saw what looked like a great green carpet, interspersed with shining colors which were mere flickers below us. I pointed them out. "The treetops of the North Forest--and the colors you see are in the streets of the Trailcity." An hour's walking brought us to the edge of the forest. We travelled swiftly now, forgetting our weariness, eager to reach the city before nightfall. It was quiet in the forest, almost ominously still. Over our head somewhere, in the thick branches which in places shut out the sunlight completely, I knew that the tree-roads ran crisscross, and now and again I heard some rustle, a fragment of sound, a voice, a snatch of song. "It's so dark down here," Rafe muttered, "anyone living in this forest would _have_ to live in the treetops, or go totally blind!" Kendricks whispered to me, "Are we being followed? Are they going to jump us?" "I don't think so. What you hear are just the inhabitants of the city--going about their daily business up there." "Queer business it must be," Regis said curiously, and as we walked along the mossy, needly forest floor, I told him something of the trailmen's lives. I had lost my fear. If anyone came at us now, I could speak their language, I could identify myself, tell my business, name my foster-parents. Some of my confidence evidently spread to the others. But as we came into more and more familiar territory, I stopped abruptly and struck my hand against my forehead. "I knew we had forgotten something!" I said roughly, "I've been away from here too long, that's all. Kyla." "What about Kyla?" The girl explained it herself, in her expressionless monotone. "I am an unattached female. Such women are not permitted in the Nests."