"You think we are approaching that section then?" Hardan laughed and his hands found comforting grip on his sword hilts. "Nothing could lie beyond there save deserted ruins," he scoffed. "Perhaps we could walk along the wall's rim," Kern said, disregarding Hardan's laughter, "until we passed the walled-in section. The ridges on either side crowd up to the wall so it would be our only path." "That'd be better than climbing up again," agreed Hardan. And so, a dozen tortuous bends in the deepening ravine they followed, later, they fronted the soaring smooth-jointed face of a gigantic wall. At their feet the dry bed of the ravine ended in solid granite, and on either hand the ravine's walls lifted sheer for fifty feet and more. Try as they would they could not climb the craggy walls. Apparently they were to be forced to return back along the way they had come and find some new path to the lower crater depths. Ylda cried out and pointed to the lower part of the pierced vertical slab set in the wall before them. The scanty flow of freshets here in the uplands had slowly worn away a larger hole, a process that must have consumed unthinkable centuries, until even a Wetland warrior could have wriggled through. Hardan nodded. He too had seen the opening but did not want to suggest using it. The Aarthman's fantastic tale had affected him more than he cared to admit. Now he knelt down and thrust his head carefully through the orifice. "Just a grassy slope," he called back, his voice loud with relief. "Down by the lake there's a jumble of rock slabs and columns, could be a city. Not even any trees until the upper sea begins." He withdrew his head and slid through feet-first, dropping into a deep wide rocky pocket gouged out by the ravening mountain torrents. Ylda followed, slipping into his arms easily, but her face turned away stiffly as he set her on her feet. Hardan growled and turned away, disgusted at the little sarif's continued show of dislike. "Hurry up, Kern Rensom," he said. The Aarthman's be-whiskered face appeared. Under that brushy brown stubble his brown skin had paled to a strangely green shade. "I don't know," he said uncertainly. "The Drylanders claim this is the abode of Thog Molog. I've seen crude pictures of their god. It's a many-armed ghastly monster bigger than a Drylander's communal _yad_." * * * * * Hardan too sensed the alien silence and remoteness of this close-cropped expanse of sward. Almost he expected to see a flock of the woolly, vari-colored bladts grazing there, so close was the brook-watered grass trimmed to its roots. Something, ancient foul things, must lurk in those brooding ruins and come out in the moonlight to eat. No grass could grow so uniform and short.