Rurak grinned crookedly through lips that insect-bites had swollen grotesquely. Ahead of him the glistening form of Tis dipped his paddle rhythmically into the liquid scum that floored the sluggish river. Tis was at home here in the watery blue marshes and liquid mud flats of the continent's eastern shore.
Somewhere ahead the huge bulk of the Tekna wallowed atop a marshy island not far from one of the myriad crystalline growths that dotted this three-tailed continent's marshy places. Seeking always the marshy seaboards or inland rivers and lakes these colonies of linked, silicon-based, crystalline cells—sometimes called the "cities" of Earth by imaginative astronomers—spread over miles of area and soared in fantastic towers and spires hundreds of feet into the thick moist air of Earth's heavens.
And toward that crystal signboard beside the Great Sea they were driving their rude dugout to carry the glad news that the new Emperor was found.
Two days had they waited for another flying wing to contact the hilltop and on the second night old Elko Sohm, Tis, and Rurak had slipped away in the darkness and headed eastward. Past native villages of thatch and mud floating upon living rafts of vegetation they raced and through dense water-lanes where the blue and purple of foliage shut off the murky light of the swollen sun....
"Elko Sohm! Rurak Dun!" the cry sounded faintly from the foggy depths of the river behind them.
Tis guided the clumsy boat into the arched cave of a swamp tree's roots and picked up his spear. Elko Sohm grunted as he stripped the oiled leather case from about his sturdy crossbow.
"The voice of a woman," he announced resignedly. "Nitha has for some reason trailed us this far."
"Elko!" the voice called again and now they could see another smaller dugout, stolen perhaps from the same Yzap village where they had found theirs, with but two passengers aboard.
"Here," announced Elko Sohm sadly, "under this tree's roots with water dripping from the moss down along my raw-fleshed back and the swamp vermin chewing away at the little hair left upon my skull."
The tiny craft followed their own ragged trail through the bluish broken scum upon the river and shortly the two dugouts were warped side by side. Nitha was there, well smeared with the sticky blue gum of a swamp tree against the onslaught of insects and with her golden hair bound tight within an ugly skin cap, and with her was an Yzap from the village, called Thod.