The helmeted, sword-armed warriors who rode around him were like no ordinary Asiatic tribesmen, but Asia was vast and held queer racial survivals in its hidden places. The uncanny community of men and beasts here surely had other explanation than that the beasts were as intelligent as the men.
"Anshan!" called Shan Kar, from where he rode at the head of the mounted band.
Nelson perceived that they were riding down a gentle dope of the moonlit plain toward a city whose lights glimmered near the shore of the valley L'Lan's big woods-bordered river.
He didn't like the way the city looked in the moonlight. It was not large, an oval stretching along the river less than a mile. But it looked so strange, too much like the disturbing impression he had obtained in his vague glimpse of distant Vruun.
It was a city interpenetrated by forest, by the low, dark woods that bordered the river. The forest came into Anshan as though by right, was woven into its design in wide windings of dense foliage.
"What kind of place is this?" demanded Nick Sloan, startled. "Those domes and towers are black glass!"
Black glass? It could not be that, surely. Yet every surface shimmered blackly and brilliantly in the moon, as though vitreous.
Like big bubbles of glittering jet, the spherical buildings loomed above the enlacing foliage. The round, slim towers, with queer openings and balconies at their tops, pointed skyward like ebony fingers.
Lights within the city were reflected by a thousand curving surfaces of glass, were splintered and shattered into broken beams and sparkles.
"This place doesn't belong on Earth at all!" Li Kin exclaimed.