On the broken hill-slope overlooking the Valley of Fire, in the two great caves known as the Cave of the Bears and the Cave of the Hyenas, the tribe of the Children of the Shining One now dwelt secure and began to recover heart. Before each cave-mouth, tended night and day, burned the sacred flame, its tongues licked upwards in gold and scarlet with a radiance from which all the tribe, with the sole exceptions of Bawr, the Chief, and Grôm, his right hand and councilor, were wont to avert their eyes in awe whenever they passed it in their comings and goings. Only from a distance would they presume to look at the flames directly; and ever as they looked their wonder and their reverence grew. Their trust in the protection of the Shining One came to have no bounds, for night after night would the great red bears return, prowling in the mysterious gloom just beyond the ring of light, with their dreadful eyes turned fixedly upon their former habitation, only to be driven off ignominiously when Grôm rushed at them with a shout and a flaming torch above his head. And night after night would the troops of the hyenas come back, their monstrous-jowled heads swinging low from their mighty shoulders, to sit and howl their devilish laughter 98 above their ancient lair, only to slink off in cowed silence when the Chief would hurl a blazing brand among them. When the beasts were thus discomfited and abashed, the boldest of the warriors would go leaping after them and bring down the hindermost with spears. So it came about that presently the great animals knew themselves beaten, and sullenly withdrew to the other side of the hills.
It was just this country at the other side of the hills which most appealed to the restless imagination of Grôm. Within the valley––which widened out, as it receded from its fiery gateway, to enclose league upon league of fertile plain––was good hunting, along with an abundance of roots, fruits and edible herbs. But in Grôm’s heart burned that spirit of unquenchable expectation which has led the race of Man upwards through all obstacles––the urge to find out ever what lies beyond. So the saw-toothed line of these dark, volcanic summits drew him irresistibly, with the promise of unknown wonders hidden behind them.
During these few weeks since coming to the Valley of the Fire, Grôm had been tirelessly experimenting with the bright element, trying this kind of fuel and that, one after another, in order to learn what food was most acceptable to it. He learned that certain substances it would devour in raging haste, only to fail and die soon after; or not truly to die, he imagined, but to flee back unseen to its dancing, flickering source at the valley mouth. Other substances he found that it would consume slowly, but pertinaciously. While 99 into yet others, such as dry turf and punk, it would eat its way and hide, maintaining therein for a long time a retired but potent existence, ready to leap into radiant life under certain provocation. His invention stimulated by these experiments, he had made himself several hollow tubes of a thick green bark whipped about with thongs, and had stuffed them with that mixture of turf and punk which he found best calculated to hold the furtive seeds of fire alive.
With one of these slow torches alight, and several spare ones slung over his shoulders, Grôm set out to cross the pointed hills and seek new wonders in the lands beyond. The tall girl, A-ya, went with him. This not being customary in the tribe, they gave reasons. Grôm said that he needed the girl because she alone knew how rightly to serve and tend the Shining One in combat. It was a good reason, but he was amazed to find in his heart so deep a desire for her that he was ill-content whenever his eyes could not rest upon her. There was no one in the tribe with whom he could discuss this strange emotion, for no one, not even the wise and subtle-minded Chief, would have comprehended it––romantic love not yet having come openly to these men of the Morning of Time. So Grôm gave the lesser reason, which all, including himself, could understand. As for the girl, she said that whatever her lord commanded she must needs obey, which she did with a most seemly readiness. But in her heart she knew that if her man had commanded her to stay behind, she would have obeyed only so long as he remained 100 in sight, and would then have followed him.
Like Grôm, the girl carried two flint-headed spears. Both wore clumsy but effective slivers of flint, for knives, in their girdles of twisted skin. The girl, besides her weapons, carried a substantial burden of strips of meat dried hard in the sun, in case game should prove scarce or elusive in the land beyond the hills. But when they had got well out of sight of the caves, Grôm turned, relieved her of her burdens which, according to tribal conventions, it was her duty to carry for her man, and gave her instead the light but precious tube of fire.
As they ascended the ragged slopes, vegetation grew sparse, and when toward nightfall they gained the pass which Grôm was making for––a deep cleft between two steep red and purple peaks––the rock beneath their feet was naked but for a low growth of flowering herbs and thorn. The pass was too high for the aloe and mesembryanthemum to flourish, and the lava-bed which floored it was yet too new to have clothed itself in any of the larger mountain-loving trees. Here they passed the night, in a shallow niche of rock with a fire before it; and the fire being visible from a long way off, no prowlers cared even to approach it.
On the following day they traveled swiftly, but the pass was long. It was near sunset again when at last the rocks fell away to either side, and they saw spread out below their feet the land which they had come to explore.
It was a vast, rolling plain, golden-green with rank, 101 cane-like grasses, dotted with innumerable clumps of trees, and laced with full watercourses which lay in spacious loops of blue and silver. Here and there lay broad, irregular patches where the grass did not flourish, and these were of vivid emerald-green from some unknown growth.
Along the horizon to the north sparkled a great water. And half-way down the steep, toward the right, smoked and smouldered a shallow, saucer-shaped crater from whose broken lower rim a purple-brown serpent of comparatively recent lava descended in sluggish curves across the intense green.
Somewhat to the girl’s apprehension, Grôm seemed anxious to investigate the smoking crater, but the only practicable path down the mountain led them away from it, so he was content to leave it for another time and another, perhaps less repellent, approach.