“I hope no koprit birds come after me,” Evillia said, laughing. She and Lofosa wore matching red-orange tunics — almost the same shade as the shoveler skink’s lure — with two rows of big gold buttons, and red plastic necklaces with gold clasps.

Radnal smiled. “I think you’re safe enough. And now that the lizard is safe, for the time being, shall we go-? No, wait, where’s freeman vez Maprab?”

The old Strongbrow emerged from behind a big, wide-spreading thornbush a few heartbeats later, still refastening the belt to his robe. “Sorry for the delay, but I thought I’d answer nature’s call while we paused here.”

“I just didn’t want to lose you, freeman.” Radnal stared at Benter as he got back onto his donkey. This was the first apology he’d heard from him. He wondered if the tourist was well.

The group rode slowly eastward. Before long, people began to complain. “Every piece of Trench Park looks like every other piece,” Lofosa said.

“Yes, when will we see something different?” Moblay Sopsirk’s son agreed. Radnal suspected he would have agreed if Lofosa said the sky were pink; he slavered after her. He went on, “It’s all hot and flat and dry; even the thornbushes are boring.”

“Freeman, if you wanted to climb mountains and roll in snow, you should have gone someplace else,” Radnal said. “That’s not what the Bottomlands have to offer. But there are mountains and snow all over the world; there’s nothing like Trench Park anywhere. And if you tell me this terrain is like what we saw yesterday around the Bitter Lake, freeman, freelady”-he glanced over at Lofosa-“I think you’re both mistaken.”

“They certainly are,” Benter vez Maprab chimed in. “This area has very different flora from the other one. Note the broader-leafed spurges, the oleanders-”

“They’re just plants,” Lofosa said. Benter clapped a hand to his head in shock and dismay. Radnal waited for him to have another bad-tempered fit, but he just muttered to himself and subsided.

About a quarter of a daytenth later, Radnal pointed toward a gray smudge on the eastern horizon. “There’s the Night Demons’ Retreat. I promise it’s like nothing you’ve yet seen in Trench Park.”

“I hope it shall be interesting, oh yes,” Golobol said.

“I loved the scene where the demons came out at sunset, claws dripping blood,” Nocso zev Martois said. Her voice rose in shivery excitement.

Radnal sighed. “Stones of Doom is only a frightener, freelady. No demons live inside the Retreat, or come out at sunset or any other time. I’ve passed the night in a sleepsack not fifty cubits from the stonepile, and I’m still here, with my blood inside me where it belongs.”

Nocso made a face. No doubt she preferred melodrama to reality. Since she was married to Eltsac, reality couldn’t seem too attractive to her.

The Night Demons’ Retreat was a pile of gray granite, about a hundred cubits high, looming over the flat floor of the Bottomlands. Holes of all sizes pitted the granite. Under the merciless sun, the black openings reminded Radnal of skulls’ eyes looking at him.

“Some holes look big enough for a person to crawl into,” Peggol vez Menk remarked. “Has anybody ever explored them?”

“Yes, many people,” Radnal answered. “We discourage it, though, because although no one’s ever found a night demon, they’re a prime denning place for vipers and scorpions. They also often hold bats’ nests. Seeing the bats fly out at dusk to hunt bugs doubtless helped start the legend about the place.”

“Bats live all over,” Nocso said. “There’s only one Night Demons’ Retreat, because-”

The breeze, which had been quiet, suddenly picked up. Dust skirled over the ground. Radnal grabbed for his cap. And from the many mineral throats of the Night Demons’ Retreat came a hollow moaning and wailing that made the hair on his body want to stand on end.

Nocso looked ecstatic. “There!” she exclaimed. “The cry of the deathless demons, seeking to be free to work horror on the world!”

Radnal remembered the starbomb that might be buried by the Barrier Mountains, and thought of horrors worse than any demons could produce. He said, “Freelady, as I’m sure you know, it’s just wind playing some badly tuned flutes. The softer rock around the Retreat weathered away, and the Retreat itself has taken a lot of sandblasting. Whatever bits that weren’t as hard as the rest are gone, which explains how and why the openings formed. And now, when the wind blows across them, they make the weird sounds we just heard.”

“Hmp!” Nocso said. “If there are gods, how can there not be demons?”

“Freelady, speak to a priest about that, not to me.” Radnal swore by the gods of Tartesh but, like most educated folk of his generation, had little other use for them.

Peggol vez Menk said, “Freelady, the question of whether night demons exist does not necessarily have anything to do with the question of whether they haunt the Night Demons’ Retreat — except that if there be no demons, they are unlikely to be at the Retreat.”

Nocso’s plump face filled with rage. But she thought twice about telling off an Eye and Ear. She turned her head and shouted at Eltsac instead. He shouted back.

The breeze swirled around, blowing bits of grit into the tour guide’s face. More unmusical notes emanated from the Night Demons’ Retreat. Cameras clicked. “I wish I’d brought along a recorder,” Toglo zev Pamdal said. “What’s interesting here isn’t how this place looks, but how it sounds.”

“You can buy a wire of the Night Demons’ Retreat during a windstorm at the gift shop near the entrance to Trench Park.”

“Thank you, Radnal vez; I may do that on my way out. It would be even better, though, if I could have recorded what I heard with my own ears.” Toglo’s glance slipped to Eltsac and Nocso, who were still barking at each other.

“Well, some of what I heard.”

Evillia said, “This Night Demons’ Retreat was on the sea floor?”

“That’s right. As the dried muck and salt that surrounded it eroded, it was left alone here. Think of it as a miniature version of the mountain plains that stick up from the Bottomlands. In ancient days, they were islands. The Retreat, of course, was below the surface back then.”

And may be again, he thought. He imagined fish peering into the holes in the ancient granite, crabs scuttling in to scavenge the remains of snakes and sand rats. The picture came to vivid life in his mind. That bothered him; it meant he took this menace seriously.

He was so deep in his own concerns that he needed a couple of heartbeats to realize the group had fallen silent. When he did notice, he looked up in a hurry, wondering what was wrong. From a third of the way up the Night Demons’ Retreat, a cave cat looked back.

The cave cat must have been asleep inside a crevice until the tourists’ racket woke it. It yawned, showing yellow fangs and pink tongue. Then, with steady amber gaze, it peered at the tourists once more, as if wondering what sauce would go well with them.

“Let’s move away from the Retreat,” Radnal said quietly. “We don’t want it to think we’re threatening it.” That would have been a good trick, he thought. If the cave cat did decide to attack, his handcannon would hurt it (assuming he was lucky enough to hit), but it wouldn’t kill. He opened the flap to his saddlebag just the same.

For once, all the tourists did exactly as they were told. Seeing the great predator raised fears that went back to the days of man-apes just learning to walk erect.

Moblay Sopsirk’s son asked, “Will more of them be around? In Lissonland, lions hunt in prides.”

“No, cave cats are solitary except during mating season,” Radnal answered. “They and lions have a common ancestor, but their habits differ. The Bottomlands don’t have big herds that make pride hunting a successful survival strategy.”