limbing; we were all just as well pleased that
the actual crossing of Dammerung should be an anticlimax and uneventful.

The sun was just rising when we reached the pass, and we stood for a
moment, gathered close together, in the narrow defile between the great
summits to either side.

Hjalmar gave the peaks a wistful look.

"Wish we could climb them."

Regis grinned at him companionably. "Sometime--and you have the word of
a Hastur, you'll be along on that expedition." The big fellows' eyes
glowed. Regis turned to me, and said warmly, "What about it, Jason? A
bargain? Shall we all climb it together, next year?"

I started to grin back and then some bleak black devil surged up in me,
raging. When this was over, I'd suddenly realized, I wouldn't be there.
I wouldn't be anywhere. I was a surrogate, a substitute, a splinter of
Jay Allison, and when it was over, Forth and his tactics would put me
back into what they considered my rightful place--which was nowhere. I'd
never climb a mountain except now, when we were racing against time and
necessity. I set my mouth in an unaccustomed narrow line and said,
"We'll talk about that when we get back--if we ever do. Now I suggest we
get going. Some of us would like to get down to lower altitudes."

The trail down from Dammerung inside the ridge, unlike the outside
trail, was clear and well-marked, and we wound down the slope, walking
in easy single file. As the mist thinned and we left the snow-line
behind, we saw what looked like a great green carpet, interspersed with
shining colors which were mere flickers below us. I pointed them out.

"The treetops of the North Forest--and the colors you see are in the
streets of the Trailcity."

An hour's walking brought us to the edge of the forest. We travelled
swiftly now, forgetting our weariness, eager to reach the city before
nightfall. It was quiet in the forest, almost ominously still. Over our
head somewhere, in the thick branches which in places shut out the
sunlight completely, I knew that the tree-roads ran crisscross, and now
and again I heard some rustle, a fragment of sound, a voice, a snatch of
song.

"It's so dark down here," Rafe muttered, "anyone living in this forest
would _have_ to live in the treetops, or go totally blind!"

Kendricks whispered to me, "Are we being followed? Are they going to
jump us?"

"I don't think so. What you hear are just the inhabitants of the
city--going about their daily business u