The Jewels of Aptor Part 16

"I can't tell," said Geo.

Reaching into the bib of its animal skin, it brought out a gray hunk of meat and held it toward them.

Iimmi laughed. "Breakfast," he said.

"That!" demanded Urson.

"Can you suggest anything better?" Geo asked. He took the meat from the beast's claws. "Thanks, gorgeous."

It turned, looked back, and bounded up the bank and into the forest again.

With fire from the jewels, and wooden spits from the woods, they soon had the meat crackling and brown and the grease bubbling down its sides and hissing onto the hot stones they had used to rim the flame. Urson sat apart, sniffed, and then moved closer, and finally scratched his big fingers through his hairy stomach and said, "d.a.m.n it, I'm hungry." They made room for him at the fire without comment.

Sun struck the tops of the trees for the first time that morning and a moment later splashed copper in concentric curves on the water by the rock's edge, staining it further with dull gold.

"You seem to know your way around awfully well. Have you ever been on Aptor before?" Iimmi asked Snake suddenly.

Snake paused for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly.

They were all silent now.

Finally Geo asked, "What made you ask that?"

"Something in your first theory," Iimmi said. "I've been thinking it for some time, and I guess you knew I was thinking it too, Four Arms. You thought Jordde wanted to get rid of me, Whitey, and Snake, and that it was just an accident that he caught Whitey first instead of Snake. You thought he wanted to get rid of Whitey and me because of something we'd seen, or might have seen, when we were on Aptor with Argo. I just thought perhaps he wanted to get rid of Snake for the same reason. Which meant he might have been on Aptor before, too."

"Jordde was on Aptor before," said Urson. "You said that's when he became a spy for them."

They all turned to Snake who stood quietly.

"I don't think we ought to ask him any more questions," said Iimmi. "The answers aren't going to do us any good, and no matter what we find out, we've got a job to do, and seven, no--six and a half days to do it in."

Snake quietly handed the metal chain with the pendant jewel back to Iimmi. The dark man put it around his neck once more and they turned up the river.

By twelve, the sun had parched the sky. Once they stopped to swim and cool themselves. Chill water gave before reaching arms and lowered faces. They even dove in search of their aquatic helpers, but grubbed the pebbly bottom of the river with blind fingers instead, coming up with dripping twigs and smooth wet stones. Soon, they were in a splas.h.i.+ng match, of which it is fair to say, Snake won--hands down.

Hunger thrust its sharp finger into their abdomens once more, only a mile on. "Maybe we should have saved some of that stuff from breakfast,"

muttered Urson.

Iimmi suddenly broke away from the bank toward the forest.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get some food."

The building they suddenly came upon had tongues of moss licking twenty to fifty feet up the loosely mortared stones. A hundred yards from the water, the jungle came right to its edges. The whole edifice had sunk a bit to one side in the boggy soil. It was a far more stolid and primitive structure than the barracks. They sc.r.a.ped and hacked in front of the entrance where two great columns of stone, six feet across at the base, rose fifty feet to a supported arch. The stones of the building were rough and unfinished.

"It's a temple," Geo suddenly said.

And again they fell back to work. What spots of light spilled through the twisted net of jungle stopped at the total shadow beneath the great arch. A line of blackness up one side of the basalt door showed that it was ajar. Now they mounted the steps, moving aside a fallen branch which chattered leaves at them. Geo, Iimmi, then Snake, and at last Urson, squeezed through the door.

Ceiling blocks had fallen from the high vault so that three shafts of sun struck through the continual s.h.i.+ft of dust to the littered floor.

"Do you think it's Hama's temple?" Urson asked. His voice came back in the stone room, small and hollow.

"I doubt it," said Iimmi. "At least not the one we're supposed to find."

"Maybe it's an abandoned one," said Geo, "and we can find out something useful from it."

Something large and dark suddenly flapped through a far shaft of sun.

They stepped back. After a moment of silence, Geo handed his jewel to Snake. "Make some light in here," he said.

The blue green glow flowed from the up-raised jewel in Snake's hand. As the light flared, and flared brighter, they saw that the flapping had come from a medium-sized bird that was perched harmlessly on an arch that ran between two columns. It ducked its head at them, cawed harshly, and then flapped from its perch and out one of the apertures in the ceiling, the sound of its wings still thrumming in echo seconds after it was gone.

There were doors between the columns, and one far wall had not withstood time's sledge. A gaping rent was nearly blocked with vines except for a dim, green-tinted s.h.i.+mmer that broke in here and there through the uneven foliage.

Behind a twisted metal rail and raised on steps of stone, the ruins of a huge statue sat. Carved from black rock, it represented a man seated cross-legged on a dais. An arm and shoulder had broken off and lay in pieces on the altar steps. The hand, its fingers as thick as Urson's thigh, lay just behind the altar rail. The head was completely missing.

Both the hand still on the statue and the one in front of them on the steps looked as though they had once held something, but whatever it was had been removed.

Iimmi was moving along the rail to where a set of stone boxes were placed like foot stones along the side of the altar. "Here, Snake," he called. "Bring a light over here." Snake obeyed, and with Geo's and Urson's help, he loosened one of the lids.

"What's in there?" Urson asked.

"Books," said Iimmi, lifting out one dusty volume. Geo peered over his shoulder while the dark fingers turned the pages. "Old rituals," Iimmi said. "Look here," and he pointed to one of them. "You can still read them."

"Let me see," Geo said. "You know I studied with Eadnu at the University of Olcse Olwnh."

Iimmi looked up and laughed. "I thought some of your ideas sounded familiar. I was a pupil of Welis."

"You were at Olcse Olwnh too?" Geo asked.

"Um-hm," said Iimmi turning the pages. "I signed aboard this s.h.i.+p as a summer job. If I'd known where we'd end up, I don't think I'd have gone, though."

Stomach pangs were forgotten.

"These rituals are not at all like those of the G.o.ddess," Iimmi observed.

"Apparently not," agreed Geo. "Wait!" Iimmi had been turning pages at random. "Look there!" Geo pointed.

"What is it?" Iimmi asked.

"The lines," Geo said. "The ones Argo recited." He read out loud:

"_Forked in the heart of the dark oak the circlet of his sash rimmed where the eye of Hama broke with fire, smoke, and ash._

_Freeze the drop in the hand and break the earth with singing.

Hail the height of a man and also the height of a woman._

_The eyes have imprisoned a vision.

The ash tree dribbles with blood.