Mnathl shook her sleek green head without even turning around to him. "No," she said.
The trip in to Dridihad was a seduction, an enchantment, a bliss. Ericson's strength came flooding back to him. His sick pallor was turning to rich gold. On the second day he whittled, under Mnathl's guidance, a spear and a throwing-stick for it, and on the third and fourth she taught him to set snares and kindle fires with a sliver of onchian. The country grew wilder and more beautiful, the trees taller, the sky a deeper blue, the waterfalls more loud. He tried to question the girl, but she never answered anything except "No", and after a little, in his happiness, he gave up asking questions.
What did it matter, after all? He was learning from day to day secrets that any geographer or ethnographer would have given the best years of his life to learn; the piece of original ethnographic research was becoming a reality; and who, except a fool, questions someone who has not only restored him to life but is giving him his heart's desire?
On the eighteenth day, when Ericson's body had filled out and been turned to a living gold by the sun, they came across the pyramid. It stood in a swale with purple flowers growing around it and a small river flowing around one side, and it was so tall that Ericson, looking dizzily up, swore he saw clouds floating around its top. He wanted to stay and look at it, to record it in his mind, but Mnathl was not impressed. She let him have two hours, and then she urged him on.
"But who built it, Mnathl?" he demanded when he had been pulled reluctantly away. "How did it get here?"
Mnathl seemed to be debating whether to answer him. He could never decide whether she was naturally taciturn, or whether she really grudged telling him things. "My people built it," she said at last. "Deidrithes. Long time ago. Long time ago." She motioned vaguely with her hand.
Something in the gesture made Ericson see with sudden clarity how deep the abysm of the past, even on this young world with the ardent sun, really was. Fyhon was young; but the Deidrithes had been living on Fyhon a long time.
Two days later Ericson, contrary to their usual custom, was in the lead, breaking trail. Mnathl caught him suddenly around the waist and pulled him back, but she was not quick enough. The huge, thick-bodied snake with the red bandings lashed out at him and just fell short. But one glistening fang grazed his foot.