For the guardians were the only barrier, as we all had been told from childhood, that stood between mankind and The Nameless. The calling was hereditary, limited to certain families. Dedicated at birth to their lifelong task, the guardians learned their secrets from their fathers, and imparted not a syllable of them to anyone outside the craft so long as they lived. It was thought that perhaps only those of select blood lines had minds capable of holding these secrets without going insane; it was thought—oh, many many things were thought of the guardians! Generally aloof, wrapped in the cloak of esoteric knowledge, they lived among us as superior beings, complex where we were simple, sober where we were light-hearted, supremely important where any one of us could be replaced by a score of others.
Over The Nameless the guardians had power, and kept them confined to their stark and blighted-seeming country beyond the Fearful Forest. I never knew a man so daring or so rash as to ask any sort of impertinent question of a guardian, whether about his work or his cabalistic secrets or his terrible charges. The less said or even thought of The Nameless, the better.
So the guardians moved between the glens and the jagged cliffs, revered by men and shunned by beasts of prey, accepting food and comforts and at times a mate from our ranks; the sole protection of humanity from their age-old enemies....
The Nameless!
Suddenly I realized I was approaching the limits of the Fearful Forest. I peered keenly at the great mutilated tracks in the mold. Yes, it was still Halfspoor I followed, and here was Laq's mark too.
I think it was then that I began to feel fear, when I knew that I should have to skirt the country of The Nameless. It never entered my head that Halfspoor would go straight on across the blackened plain; surely not even a bear would pass too near the forbidden lands. But he was evidently going to have a distant look at them, and so perforce I must have one likewise.
Soon the trees thinned a little, and daylight crept toward me from between their boles. Then in a few moments I stood on the edge of the woodland. I began to sing to myself in a tuneless mumble. There was very little joy in me, and I felt I would be happier with some man-made noise, even such noises as came from my unskilled throat.
One sweeping glance I gave the plain before me. There were the slimy pools with their odious tufts of weeds and strings of water vines emerging like sentient things of evil. There were the undulating bare stretches of black dead soil from which nothing sprouted. And beyond, strange cragged rocks and cairns upreared haphazardly in profusion for many thousands of paces, until at last the raw red cliffs leaped up to cry a halt to them and all this barren, frightful country ... beyond the cliffs, what man knew what might be?
One glance, and then I flung myself into a pile of touchwood, scattering the punk in blinding, billowing clouds and bruising my shoulder on a hidden stump. As I had heard the thin twang of a bowstring, I now heard the quick heavy crump of an arrow striking a tree, just before my face was buried in the crumbling tinder. I rolled over behind a log, eyes full of the dry powdery stuff and nostrils twitching against the longing to sneeze. My own bow was in my hand and an arrow nocked before I rubbed my vision clear; then I peered cautiously over the log in the direction whence the shaft had come.