"L'Lan!"
It looked like a valley of dreams to Eric Nelson. It looked like a place he had visited in some former life and had never quite forgotten.
It was a pear-shaped land fifty miles long, completely walled in by towering ranges that stepped up toward stupendous, snow-crowned peaks at the northern, narrow end of the pear.
The pass at whose outlet they sat their ponies was some twelve miles from the northern end of the valley and nearly a mile above its floor. They looked down into a land silvered by the rising moon.
"Where is the city of your own people?" Nick Sloan demanded brusquely of Shan Kar.
The other pointed southward. "That way — out of sight. But Vruun, the city of the Brotherhood, is there!"
He was pointing north of due west. Eric Nelson followed the direction of his finger.
Nelson had already noticed the big river that flowed down the valley, whose every sprawling loop caught the moon. Now he saw a little cluster of lights beside it near the north end of the valley.
Vruun, city of the mysterious Brotherhood? Nelson strained his eyes. He glimpsed around the lights a mass of vague, glimmering structures that were oddly enlaced by the surrounding forest.
Nelson caught his breath. Unless the light tricked him, Vruun could be like no Asiatic city he had ever seen.