Shantaks in the queen's dome is fed in the dark).
The next day, saying that she wished to look over all the various mines for herself and to visit the scattered farms and quaint onyx villages of Inquanok, Carter hired a yak and stuffed great leathern saddle-bags for a journey. Beyond the Gate of the Caravans the road lay straight betwixt tilled fields, with many odd farmhouses crowned by low domes. At some of these houses the seeker stopped to ask questions; once finding a host so austere and reticent, and so full of an unplaced majesty like to that in the huge features on Ngranek, that she felt certain she had come at last upon one of the Great Ones themselves, or upon one with full nine-tenths of their blood, dwelling amongst women. And to that austere and reticent cotter she was careful to speak very well of the gods, and to praise all the blessings they had ever accorded her.
That night Carter camped in a roadside meadow beneath a great lygath-tree to which she tied her yak, and in the morning resumed her northward pilgrimage. At about ten o'clock she reached the small-domed village of Urg, where traders rest and miners tell their tales, and paused in its taverns till noon. It is here that the great caravan road turns west toward Selarn, but Carter kept on north by the quarry road. All the afternoon she followed that rising road, which was somewhat narrower than the great highway, and which now led through a region with more rocks than tilled fields. And by evening the low hills on her left had risen into sizable black cliffs, so that she knew she was close to the mining country. All the while the great gaunt sides of the impassable mountains towered afar off at her right, and the farther she went, the worse tales she heard of them from the scattered farmers and traders and drivers of lumbering onyx-carts along the way.
On the second night she camped in the shadow of a large black crag, tethering her yak to a stake driven in the ground. She observed the greater phosphorescence of the clouds at her northerly point, and more than once thought she saw dark shapes outlined against them. And on the third morning she came in sight of the first onyx quarry, and greeted the women who there laboured with picks and chisels. Before evening she had passed eleven quarries; the land being here given over altogether to onyx cliffs and boulders, with no vegetation at all, but only great rocky fragments scattered about a floor of black earth, with the grey impassable peaks always rising gaunt and sinister on her right. The third night she spent in a camp of quarry women whose flickering fires cast weird reflections on the polished cliffs to the west. And they sang many songs and told many tales, shewing such strange knowledge of the olden days and the habits of gods that Carter could see they held many latent memories of their sires the Great Ones. They asked her whither she went, and cautioned her not to go too far to the north; but she replied that she was seeking new cliffs of onyx, and would take no more risks than were common among prospectors. In the morning she bade them adieu and rode on into the darkening north, where they had warned her she would find the feared and unvisited quarry whence hands older than women's hands had wrenched prodigious blocks. But she did not like it when, turning back to wave a last farewell, she thought she saw approaching the camp that squat and evasive old merchant with slanting eyes, whose conjectured traffick with Leng was the gossip of distant Dylath-Leen.
After two more quarries the inhabited part of Inquanok seemed to end, and the road narrowed to a steeply rising yak-path among forbidding black cliffs. Always on the right towered the gaunt and distant peaks, and as Carter climbed farther and farther into this untraversed realm she found it grew darker and colder. Soon she perceived that there were no prints of feet or hooves on the black path beneath, and realised that she was indeed come into strange and deserted ways of elder time. Once in a while a raven would croak far overhead, and now and then a flapping behind some vast rock would make her think uncomfortably of the rumoured Shantak-bird. But in the main she was alone with her shaggy steed, and it troubled her to observe that this excellent yak became more and more reluctant to advance, and more and more disposed to snort affrightedly at any small noise along the route.
The path now contracted between sable and glistening walls, and began to display an even greater steepness than before. It was a bad footing, and the yak often slipped on the stony fragments strewn thickly about. In two hours Carter saw ahead a definite crest, beyond which was nothing but dull grey sky, and blessed the prospect of a level or downward course. To reach this crest, however, was no easy task; for the way had grown nearly perpendicular, and was perilous with loose black gravel and small stones. Eventually Carter dismounted and led her dubious yak; pulling very hard when the animal balked or stumbled, and keeping her own footing as best she might. Then suddenly she came to the top and saw beyond, and gasped at what she saw.
The path indeed led straight ahead and slightly down, with the same lines of high natural walls as before; but on the left hand there opened out a monstrous space, vast acres in extent, where some archaic power had riven and rent the native cliffs of onyx in the form of a giant's quarry. Far back into the solid precipice ran that cyclopean gouge, and deep down within earth's bowels its lower delvings yawned. It was no quarry of woman, and the concave sides were scarred with great squares, yards wide, which told of the size of the blocks once hewn by nameless hands and chisels. High over its jagged rim huge ravens flapped and croaked, and vague whirrings in the unseen depths told of bats or urhags or less mentionable presences haunting the endless blackness. There Carter stood in the narrow way amidst the twilight with the rocky path sloping down before her; tall onyx cliffs on her right that led on as far as she could see and tall cliffs on the left chopped off just ahead to make that terrible and unearthly quarry.
All at once the yak uttered a cry and burst from her control, leaping past her and darting on in a panic till it vanished down the narrow slope toward the north. Stones kicked by its flying hooves fell over the brink of the quarry and lost themselves in the dark without any sound of striking bottom; but Carter ignored the perils of that scanty path as she raced breathlessly after the flying steed. Soon the left-behind cliffs resumed their course, making the way once more a narrow lane; and still the traveller leaped on after the yak whose great wide prints told of its desperate flight.
Once she thought she heard the hoofbeats of the frightened beast, and doubled her speed from this encouragement. She was covering miles, and little by little the way was broadening in front till she knew she must soon emerge on the cold and dreaded desert to the north. The gaunt grey flanks of the distant impassable peaks were again visible above the right-hand crags, and ahead were the rocks and boulders of an open space which was clearly a foretaste of the dark arid limitless plain. And once more those hoofbeats sounded in her ears, plainer than before, but this time giving terror instead of encouragement because she realised that they were not the frightened hoofbeats of her fleeing yak. The beats were ruthless and purposeful, and they were behind her.
Carter's pursuit of the yak became now a flight from an unseen thing, for though she dared not glance over her shoulder she felt that the presence behind her could be nothing wholesome or mentionable. Her yak must have heard or felt it first, and she did not like to ask herself whether it had followed her from the haunts of women or had floundered up out of that black quarry pit. Meanwhile the cliffs had been left behind, so that the oncoming night fell over a great waste of sand and spectral rocks wherein all paths were lost. She could not see the hoofprints of her yak, but always from behind her there came that detestable clopping; mingled now and then with what she fancied were titanic flappings and whirrings. That she was losing ground seemed unhappily clear to her, and she knew she was hopelessly lost in this broken and blasted desert of meaningless rocks and untravelled sands. Only those remote and impassable peaks on the right gave her any sense of direction, and even they were less clear as the grey twilight waned and the sickly phosphorescence of the clouds took its place.
Then dim and misty in the darkling north before her she glimpsed a terrible thing. She had thought it for some moments a range of black
mountains, but now she saw it was something more. The phosphorescence of the brooding clouds shewed it plainly, and even silhouetted parts of it as vapours glowed behind. How distant it was she could not tell, but it must have been very far. It was thousands of feet high, stretching in a great concave arc from the grey impassable peaks to the unimagined westward spaces, and had once indeed been a ridge of mighty onyx hills. But now these hills were hills no more, for some hand greater than woman's had touched them. Silent they squatted there atop the world like wolves or ghouls, crowned with clouds and mists and guarding the secrets of the north forever. All in a great half circle they squatted, those dog-like mountains carven into monstrous watching statues, and their right hands were raised in menace against mankind.
It was only the flickering light of the clouds that made their mitred double heads seem to move, but as Carter stumbled on she saw arise from their shadowy caps great forms whose motions were no delusion. Winged and whirring, those forms grew larger each moment, and the traveller knew her