unlight on the stone around
them the day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at Lur's mane until
he roused.

There was a regularity to the rocks piled about their sleeping place
which hinted that they had lain among the ruins left by man. But of this
side of the mountains both were ignorant, for Memphir's rule had not run
here.

"Many dead things in times past," Lur's scarlet nostril pits were
extended to their widest. "But that was long ago. This land is no longer
held by men."

Varta laughed cheerfully. "If here there are no men, then there will
rise no barbarian hordes to dispute our rule. Asti has led us to safety.
Let us see more of the land He gives us."

There was a road leading down from the ruins, a road still to be
followed in spite of the lash of landslip and the crack of time. And it
brought them into a cup of green fertility where the lavishness of
Asti's sowing was unchecked by man. Varta seized eagerly upon globes of
blood red fruit which she recognized as delicacies which had been
cultivated in the Temple gardens, while Lur went hunting into the
fringes of the jungle, there dining on prey so easily caught as to be
judged devoid of fear.

The jungle choked highway curved and they were suddenly fronted by a
desert of sere desolation, a desert floored by glassy slag which sent
back the sun beams in a furnace glare. Varta shaded her eyes and tried
to see the end of this, but, if there was a distant rim of green beyond,
the heat distortions in the air concealed it.

Lur put out a front paw to test the slag but withdrew it instantly.

"It cooks the flesh, we can not walk here," was his verdict.

Varta pointed with her chin to the left where, some distance away, the
mountain wall paralleled their course.

"Then let us keep to the jungle over there and see if it does not bring
around to the far side. But what made this--?" She leaned out over the
glassy stuff, not daring to touch the slick surface.

"War." Lur's tongue shot out to impale a questing beetle. "These
forgotten people fought with fearsome weapons."

"But what weapon could do this? Memphir knew not such--."

"Memphir was old. But mayhap there were those who raised cities on Erb
before the first hut of Memphir squatted on tidal mud. Men forget
knowledge in time. Even in Memphir the lords of the last days forgot the
wisdom of their earlier sages--they fell before the barbarians easily
enough."

"If ever men had wisdom to produce thi