Read Online In Green's Jungles by Gene Wolfe - Free Book Online Page B

crack in the pavements of the streets they traversed, and these became thicker and thicker, and taller and taller, too, until it seemed almost that the City of the Inhumi had never been, or that it was mere illusion; for its distant towers streaked the cloudy sky with green and gray, but near to hand only the cruel leaves of the saw grass and the contorted limbs met the eye.
    They came to a steep stairway after long walking, and the man with the black sword, who had supposed that he trod level ground, was amazed to behold a lower city beneath the City of the Inhumi, a place of slimes and dank caverns dotted with orange and purple fungi, through which a broad river wandered, its black waters as smooth as oil but softly flowing.
    "This is the time for wariness," the man of the Vanished People told him.
    And another said, "You would be safe from the inhumi, I assured you, and you were safe. There are things worse than inhumi here."
    Yet another told him, "You have been safe, but you are safe no longer."
    Even as he stood at his side, he saw the one who had given him his sword descending the stairway before him; and he followed him. There was a walkway beside the river, narrow in places and narrower yet in others. And in some wholly crumbled away, leaving only small stones that rolled beneath the feet of the man with the black sword, threatening to carry him into the water.
    "How we deceived ourselves!" the man of the Vanished People who had been his guide said. "We thought we were building here for the ages. Another thousand years, and everything you see will be gone."
    "How many of us are there?" the man with the black sword asked. He looked about him as he spoke, and saw no one.
    "There are two of you," the man of the Vanished People said; and as he did, the man with the black sword saw a corpse face down in the water. He halted then, drew the sword, squatted on the crumbling walkway, and tried to pull the corpse to him with the hooked end of the sword; but he succeeded only in laying open its back, a gaping wound without blood and without pain.
    At last, by leaning over the water farther than he dared, he was able to catch the hand of the corpse and move it toward him, but a maggot as thick as his thumb emerged from the cut that he had made, and lifting its blind white head struck at him like a serpent. He jerked backward, nearly falling, then slashed at the maggot and contrived to push away the floating corpse, although the point of his sword sank into it to a depth of four fingers.
    "What did you want with your brother?" the man of the Vanished People asked him.
    And he said that he had hoped to bury the corpse and pray for the dead man's spirit.
    "So I feared. I will not go with you into the sewer you are to clear for us. You must go alone, save for such men as he. Come."
    They went on, and saw more corpses floating in the quiet water; and as they walked the city closed itself above the river until the strip of daylight that shone upon the dark water was no wider than the man's hand. "This must be a terrible place at night," he said.
    "This is always a terrible place now," the man of the Vanished People told him, "and you are going into a place where it is always night."
    As if the voice of the man of the Vanished People had somehow revealed them, the man with the black sword saw eyes, green eyes and xtdlow, that studied him unblinking from the shadows and from the water.
    At the point at which the strip of daylight vanished altogether, there was an altar of bronze and stone. The image behind it was so worn and battered that the man with the black sword could not tell whether it had originally taken the form of a man or a woman, of a beast, a star, or some other thing.
    "This was our g(ddess of purity," the man of the Vanished People told him.
    "Would it help me to pray to her?"
    The man of a.-, Vanished People shook his head.
    "I will pray to her just the same," the min with the black sword decided. He knelt and said many