Eric Nelson realized that this was what upset him so badly. It was not merely the presence of a big unknown city in this hidden corner of Asia. There were many such.
It was the fact that the city Anshan matched in strangeness the strange beast-and-human folk of the valley L'Lan, that it bulked and glittered here like a city fallen to earth from another, alien planet.
They rode through the enlacing, whispering woods into the bubble-city. And Eric Nelson realized then that this city was old.
He had seen Angkor brooding in its jungles and the thousand towers of Pagan lonesome against the Burmese sky. But this place, though not a ruin, looked infinitely more ancient.
It was the weirdness of the wide windings of forest which interlaced the city that made Anshan seem older than human history. No completely human city had ever been so built. Even aside from the dark silent forest-ways within it, the city was too big for the number of its people. Few people were in its streets, few lights glimmered from the doorways of the bubble-buildings.
Yet men and women, clad alike in silken jackets and trousers, except for a few armed warriors like those they rode with, ran toward their clattering troop. Shan Kar gave them a proud wave of his hand.
"Shan Kar has returned with the outlanders and their weapons!" ran an excited cry.
"I don't get it!" Nick Sloan said, his harsh voice puzzled. "A big city like this — yet they're crazy over a few machine-guns!"
They rode up toward a complex of black, bubble-like buildings surrounded by a wide belt of tall trees, into which all the strange dark forest-windings of the city seemed to lead. The warrior Hoik and his men, with their two captives, went on around the buildings. But Shan Kar drew rein and dismounted.
"You need not talk with me and the other Humanite leaders until morning," he told Nelson. "You must be tired."