“They’re not really important. As far as we know, nobody’s lived in them since long before our tribe came to this part of Zelana’s Domain.”
“Is that why you left them out when you were building your map back in Zelana’s cave?”
“Not entirely,” Red-Beard conceded. “Those places make the old men of the tribe edgy for some reason. Chief White-Braid didn’t come right out and tell me not to put them in my model, but I know him well enough to be fairly sure it wouldn’t have made him too happy if I had.”
“Is there something about them that frightens him?”
“I’m not sure if ‘frightened’ is the right word, Keselo. Maybe it’s just some old superstition. Those of us who live here in the Land of Dhrall take our superstitions very seriously. We avoid graveyards, and we always apologize to any animals we kill during the hunt. I’m not sure if it does any good, but it’s the polite thing to do, and it doesn’t cost anything. The cliff villages were here when our tribe first came to this part of Dhrall. Whoever built them was obviously not of our tribe. We don’t build our lodges out of stone, and we choose places that’re more convenient. Why all this sudden interest?”
“Curiosity, I guess,” Keselo admitted. “We have many ancient ruins down in the Empire, but they’re usually located on land more suitable for farming. Have you ever explored one of those villages?”
Red-Beard laughed. “Why would I want to do that? I’m a hunter, and I’m supposed to chase animals—or fish—to keep the tribe eating regularly. I don’t waste my time wandering around in ancient, empty villages or in the caves that crawl off in all directions under these mountains.”
“You have caves here as well?” Keselo was a bit startled about that.
“All mountains have caves, Keselo,” Red-Beard told him with a faint smile. “Everybody knows that. I have a theory, if you want to hear it.”
“Of course.”
“Mountains could be what happens when Father Earth eats something that doesn’t agree with him. When he burps, mountains pop up.”
“That’s absurd,” Keselo said, trying not to laugh.
“If you’ve got a better theory, I’d be happy to hear it,” Red-Beard said mildly. “Anyway, a burp isn’t anything but air that boils up out of a man’s stomach, so Father Earth’s mountains have chunks of empty air in the middle of them—burps that didn’t quite manage to make it to the surface, you understand.”
“Would you please be serious, Red-Beard?”
“‘Serious’ isn’t really very much fun, Keselo. All right, then, if you’re going to insist, the old men of the tribe tell us that those old villages are cursed and that we’re not supposed to go near them or even talk about them. Old men get very peculiar sometimes. Whoever it was that built them or lived in them isn’t around anymore. Either they all died or they just packed up and left. If they died, the villages are probably haunted, and if they ran away, something quite awful must have frightened them off. In either case, the old men of our tribe seem to think that staying away from the ruins might not be a bad idea.” He shrugged. “There’s probably nothing in them that’s worth very much anyway, so I don’t waste my time exploring. I’ve got better things to do with my time.” He squinted on down the ravine. “Most of us in the tribe more or less go along with what the old men tell us, but every now and then, somebody gets an overpowering urge to snoop around in the ruins, and he almost never comes back again.”
“Doesn’t that sort of suggest that the old men of your tribe might know what they’re talking about?” Keselo suggested.
“Not necessarily,” Red-Beard disagreed. “Our tribe’s been at Lattash for hundreds of years, and even places made of stone start falling apart after that long. Walls fall down, ceilings collapse, and for all I know, whole villages that used to be there fell down into those burp-holes under the mountains. It’s not always ghosts or curses that kill the snoopers, Keselo. It’s more likely that it’s just natural decay.”
“Are the villages only on the south side?” Keselo asked. “Rabbit and I didn’t see any of them on the north side as we were coming up here.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Red-Beard told him. “It’s always seemed to me that those old villages were built in places where they couldn’t be seen from the bench on the same side of the ravine. The people who used to live in the village probably did that on purpose. There were most likely unfriendly people back in those days too. Unfriendliness has been around for a long, long time. The closest one of those villages is only a few miles back down on the north side of the ravine. It wouldn’t be hard to find if you were on the north bench. There’s an old dead tree snag just above it on the rim of the ravine, and that snag sticks out so much that if you happened to be on the north bench, it should be clearly visible.”
“Maybe if there’s a lull in this war, I’ll go on down and have a look,” Keselo mused.
“What for? There won’t be anything there but some tumbled-down old buildings, and it might be very dangerous.”
“Curiosity again,” Keselo confessed. “It’s a failing of mine.”
Work continued on through the night, and by morning the Maags had quite nearly removed all the stone blocks on either side of the steadily narrowing central stairway.
Keselo and Rabbit were standing unobtrusively off to one side when Narasan joined Sorgan at the front of the gap. “I’d say that’s about enough,” he said to Hook-Beak. “I think it’s time to start building the fort, don’t you agree?”
“I’ll go along with you there,” Sorgan agreed. “If the snake-men down below start charging up the stairway now, we won’t be ready for them, so you’d better get your people to work on that fort.” He peered through the smoke at the work crews below. “Ho, Ox!” he shouted.
The bullnecked Maag who was supervising the work crews climbed up one of the dozen or more rope ladders Sorgan’s men used to stay clear of the increasingly crowded central stairway. “Aye, Cap’n?” he responded when he was about halfway up the ladder.
“The Trogites have all the building blocks they need,” Sorgan told him. “Call in the lookouts, and send most of the men on up here. Then tear what’s left of the stairway apart. Throw the blocks on down the slope. If the snake-men are trying to sneak up through the smoke, that might just make them a little nervous.”