CHAPTER XXVIII
Thing in the Forest
"All in good time, Lady Elza, you will know where we are."
Alone, unnoticed, they had departed from the City of Ice on a small flying platform similar to the one they had used before. The night had passed; day, with a new warmth to the sun, came again. Flying low, with Tarrano in a grim, moody silence, and Elza staring downward.
The aural lights were overhead when at the last Tarrano brought the platform to rest. A thick, luxuriant forest. Huge trees with rope-like roots and heavy vines. Others with leaves like the ears of an elephant. And the ground hidden by almost impenetrable underbrush.
They had landed in a tiny glade beside a dank marsh of water, where ferns shoulder high were embanked. It was dark, the stars and the tints of the auroral lights were barely distinguishable through the mass of foliage overhead. Elza gazed around her fearsomely. The air was heavy, oppressive. Redolent with the perfume of wild flowers and the smell of mouldering, steaming soil.
"All in good time. Lady Elza," Tarrano repeated. "You will know where we are presently; we are closer to human habitation than you would think."
Elza's heart pounded. As they were descending she had noticed a glow of light in the sky ahead. As though by intuition now, she seemed to realize that they were not far from the Great City. Her thoughts leaped to me—Jac Hallen—there in Maida's palace. Tarrano's grim, sinister purpose was as yet unknown to her. But she guessed that in it, danger impended for me—for all of us in the Great City.
"Jac! Danger! Jac! Danger!"