But, as we told ourselves, all this would be learned the quicker if we caught up with them. They were still some three days ahead of us.

So we crossed the Carzax River in the fisherman's boat, ferrying our mounts and provisions with us. It was a difficult task and the current drew us many miles down river before we reached the other side. The fisherman would collect the boat later. We pulled it ashore, strapped our provisions to our animals and mounted.

It was forest land now, but the trees were the strangest I had ever seen.

Their trunks were not solid like the tree-trunks on Earth, but consisted of many hundreds of slender stems curling around one another to form trunks some thirty or forty feet in diameter. On the other hand, the trees did not reach very high, but fanned out so that sometimes when passing through a particular grove of low-growing trees our heads actually stood out above the trees. It made me feel gigantic!

Also, the foliage had a tinge similar to the ferns of the Crimson Plain—though red was only the main color. There were also tints of blue, green and yellow, brown and orange. It seemed, in fact, that the forest was in a perpetual state of autumn and I was pleased by the sight of it. Strange as the stumpy trees were they reminded me, in some obscure way, of my boyhood.

Had it not been for the object of our quest, I would have liked to relax more and spend longer in that strange forest.

But there was something else in the forest that I was to meet shortly—and that decided me, if nothing else could have done, on the necessity of moving on.

We had been travelling in the forest for two days when Darnad suddenly pulled his mount up short and pointed silently through the foliage.

I could see nothing and shook my head in puzzlement.

Darnad's beast now seemed to move a little restlessly, and so did mine.

Darnad began to turn his dahara, pointing back the way we had come. The peculiar, ape-like beast obeyed the guiding reins and my own followed suit, rather quickly, as if glad to be turning back.

Then Darnad stopped again and his hand fell to his sword.

"Too late," he said. "And I should have warned you."

"I see nothing—I hear nothing. What should you have warned me of?"

"The heela"

"Heela—what is a heela?"

"That-" Darnad pointed.

Skulking towards us, its hide exactly the same mottled shades as the foliage of the trees, came a beast out of a nightmare.

It had eight legs and each leg terminated in six curved talons. It had two heads and each head had a broad, gaping mouth full of long, razor-like teeth, glaring yellow eyes, flaring nostrils. A single neck rose from the trunk and then divided near the top to accommodate the heads.