Yurth Burden Part 5

"I-no, I have not heard of this place. But how could that be?" He was plainly not asking those questions of her, rather of himself. "I knew, knew the way to this place, that it lay here, that it was shelter. How did I so know that?" That last question was aimed at her this time.

"Sometimes things heard sink into the memory so deeply that only a chance happening calls them forth again. Since the House of Philbur, as you have said, was made protector of the secrets of Kal-Hath-Tan it may well be true that this is another sc.r.a.p of knowledge you ingested without remembering clearly."

"Perhaps." By his expression he was not convinced. "I only know it was necessary for me to come here." He stepped forward as one obeying an order he could not refuse, to pa.s.s under the band with its faces on into the Mouth.

But Elossa had one last trial to make. Though her store of energy had been sadly depleted, still she must draw what she could for this testing. She summoned mind-search and loosed a probe into the cave. Stans she could pick up instantly, though she made no attempt to contact him-he was merely a registration of consciousness. There were other flickers of lifelight-far down the scale-perhaps insects or other things for whom the Mouth was hunting ground and home. But nothing approaching larger beast or human.

So rea.s.sured, she followed on into the dark. For dark it was beyond the small ap.r.o.n of light by the entrance. It was not a cave after all-rather the door to a tunnel.

"Stans!" She paused to call out, having no mind to go blindly on alone. In these heights there must be other caves, ones unused by ancient custom, clean of any man-taint. She knew so little about Raski beliefs. But there was a fact which all Yurth accepted: a place which had been the focus for any emotional experience (and that included temples and ancient dwelling places high on such a list) gathered over the years an aura of force to which those sensitive enough to possess the talent of her people were drawn, maybe even influenced by.

Elossa, remembering that, instantly closed her mind. Until she could be sure no such influences lay here she could only depend upon her body senses. And she felt as one crippled as she hesitated before the dark boring.

"Stans!" she called again.

"Hooooo!" The sound was so echoed and distorted that she could not even be sure the Raski had voiced that call. Then it came again.

"Commmmeee!"

Elossa moved on, cautiously and slowly. She so longed to loose the talent. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she saw very pale bits of radiance along the way. One of those moved and she stopped, startled, stared closer.

A moth or some like winged creature near the size of her own palm was struggling in a web, fighting frenziedly for freedom. It was the lines of that web which gave off the faint light. Then there dropped down toward the fighting prisoner a blackish ball to strike full upon the moth.

Elossa shuddered. Now she could see other spots of the pale light-more webs spun to catch the unwary. Perhaps their light was the lure to bring their victims closer.

She kept well away from the webbed walls as she went, still slowly. Her staff was now her protection, for she swung that ahead in a slow sweep from side to side to make sure that the way was open. Imagination kept painting for her a picture in which such a web, only a thousand times larger and thicker, might be set across the tunnel itself.

Stans had gone this way, she told herself. Sense did now, however, banish such erratic trails of fear. How had he gotten so far ahead? He must have quickened pace considerably since he had left her company.

Elossa longed to hear his voice, but something kept her from another call. She walked a little faster. Now the lighted webs were missing. Perhaps they only hung where flying things who had blundered in from the outer world could be enticed.

The darkness was very thick. She felt as if she might reach forth a hand and gather folds of it into her grasp, as one did a shrouding curtain. But the air she breathed was fresh enough and she was aware that there was a small steady current of it now and then touching her cheek.

There came a glow-a sudden leap of red-yellow flames. After the time in the utter dark these seemed nearly as bright as full sunlight and she blinked to protect her eyes against that glare.

Stans stood there, and in his hands was a torch burning bravely. He was thrusting the b.u.t.t end of that into a stone ring jutting out of the wall as if he knew very well what he was doing. His past denials of such knowledge now made Elossa doubly uneasy.

The torchlight revealed a chamber which must have begun as a cave. But here man's hands had also smoothed and labored to pattern the walls. What the light shone the strongest on was a giant face which covered near the whole of the wall directly ahead. The mouth about a third of the way up from floor level was wide open, a dark cavity into which the light of the torch did not penetrate far.

Eyes as long as Elossa's forearm were pictured wide open. Those did not stare blindly ahead as might those of a statue. Rather they had been fas.h.i.+oned of material which gave them a glitter of life so that she felt that the thing not only saw her but derived some malicious amus.e.m.e.nt from her presence.

Stans lighted a second torch which he pulled from a tall jar to the left of the face. When he placed that in a twin ring on the opposite side the light was enough to give even more of a knowing look to the stone countenance. The other two walls were bare so that all attention was focused entirely on the leering, jeering face.

Such objects in themselves have little or no natural evil-that comes from without. To say that a carving on the wall was evil was to impute to stone a quality it did not and never had possessed. But to say that an image which had been wrought by those who wished to give evil a gateway into the world was malign was not opposed to that basic truth.

Whoever had carved the face on the wall had been twisted mind and spirit. Elossa had stopped short only a step within the cave room. The illusions which haunted the road to Kal-Hath-Tan had been horrible-born of human suffering to leave the imprint upon the very earth itself. This, this had been cunningly and carefully constructed, not out of great pain of body and shock of spirit, but from a deep desire to embrace all the dark from which man naturally shrinks.

Stans had taken a stand before that face, his arms hanging by his sides, gazing up into those knowing eyes with visible concentration. Almost, Elossa thought, as if he were indeed in communication with whatever power that brutish carving represented.

She kept tight rein upon her talent here, having a feeling that if she loosed even a little-sent out any probe-what might answer would be. . . .

Elossa shook her head. No! She must not allow her imagination to suggest terrors which could not exist. That this may have been a "G.o.d," the focus for some horrible and evil religion, and so have drawn to it the energy sent forth by the wors.h.i.+pers, perhaps even the terror of sacrifices, that was the truth. But in itself it was nothing but cleverly fas.h.i.+oned stone.

"Is this Atturn?" She felt the need to break the silence, to shake Stans out of that concentration. He did not answer. She dared to go forward, and, putting aside the distaste of the Yurth for body contact, she laid her hand upon his arm.

"Is this then Atturn?" she repeated in a louder voice.

"What?" Though Stans turned his head to look at her Elossa felt he did not really see her at all, that his gaze did not meet hers but in some manner still set upon the face.

Then there was a flicker of change in his expression. That deep concentration broke. That he came alive again was the only way she could explain the change in him to herself.

"What?" He swung away from her to look once more at the face, so well lighted by the torches he had set. "What? Where? Why?"

"I asked. . . is this. . . ." Elossa gestured to the face. "Atturn. He. . . it. . . seems certainly to have a mouth."

Stan's hands covered his eyes. "I-I do not know. I cannot remember."

Elossa drew a deep breath. Last night this Raski had tried to kill her as she slept. In the light of morning, after she in turn had been possessed (for what other than possession had sent her sleep-walking then into the path of the sargon) he had saved her life. He had brought them here, plunging through the darkness of the tunnel as if he knew what lay at its end, lighted the torches with the surety of one who knew exactly where to find the waiting brands and the strike stone.

"You know this place well indeed," Elossa continued, determined to pin the Raski to some admission. "How else could you have found those?" She pointed to the torches. "A hidden temple for your ancient vengeance to which you have brought me for slaying."

She did not know why she chose to make that accusation; it was out of her mouth almost before she realized what she said. But the possible truth of it alerted her to a danger which might also be real.

"No!" He threw out his hands as if he were repulsing that gap-mouthed face, repudiating all that it might mean. "I do not know, I tell you!" His voice was heating with anger. "It is not me. . . it. . . is something else which makes me its servant. And. . . I. . . will. . . not. . . serve. . . it!" He said that last sentence slowly and with emphasis upon every word as heavy as a blow he might seek to deliver against an enemy's body. That he believed in what he said now Elossa did not doubt. But that he could summon any defense against the compulsion which had twice ruled him, of that she had no surety at all.

The Raski swung around, his back to the face. There was a demand for belief in his expression. His mouth firmed into a thin line of determination, his jaw squarely set.

"Since I cannot control this-this thing which moves me to its will-then it is better that we part. I should walk alone until I can be sure that I am not just a tool."

That made good sense-except for one thing. The night before she had in turn been moved unknowing, walking in her sleep, straight toward death. Yet her race had bred into them, or she always so believed, mental barriers against any such tampering. No Yurth could master the mind of one of his fellows, nor could he control even a Raski, who had no such safeguards, for more than the building of short-lived hallucinations.

This was not a matter of hallucinations, it dealt with mental power of sorts on a level totally foreign to Elossa. And that aroused a sickly dread within her. Yurth talent had always seemed supreme, perhaps they had grown unconsciously arrogant in what they knew and could do. Perhaps even, her mind produced a very fleeting thought, it was the burden of the old sin which hovered ever over them as a true necessity to preserve their code of what the talent might and might not be used for.

Was it because she had shrugged aside Yurth Burden that she had somehow also fallen under the command of this unknown factor which Stans recognized and which she must believe had some existence? If that were her fault, then it was true she, as much as the Raski, had a.s.sumed a new burden-or curse-and must learn either to dispel or bear it.

"It moves me also," she said. "Did I not nearly walk into the jaws of a sargon without being aware of what I did?"

"This is not Yurth." He shook his head. "It is somehow of Raski-of this world. But I swear to you, on the Blood and Honor of my House, I know nothing of even any legend of this place, nor how I have been led to where it lies, nor why I am here. I do not wors.h.i.+p devils, and this is a thing of evil. You can smell its stench in the air. I do not know Atturn, if this is Atturn."

Again she must accept that he spoke what was to him the utter and complete truth. Raski civilization had ended once in the great trauma of the destruction of Kal-Hath-Tan, the which she had witnessed herself in a vision. Though the people lived on, some inner spring of their courage, pride, and ambition had been broken. Much which must have been known in the days before the Yurth s.h.i.+p had blasted their city certainly was now lost.

Yet they stood now in a center of power. She could detect its force, like small fingers sliding over the s.h.i.+eld she kept upon her mind, as if something curious and very confident strove to find an answer to the puzzle she presented. The farther they could get from this place, the better.

Elossa swayed. Through that mental s.h.i.+eld, seemingly through her body, too, with a flash of pain as might follow a stroke of enemy steel had come that cry, Yurth! Somewhere-not too far away-one of Yurth blood was in danger, had loosed the call which was the ultimate in pleas, that was used only when death itself must be faced.

Without thinking she instantly dropped her barrier, sent forth her own questing search call. Once more came the other, lower, far less potent.

Which way? She had swung around to face the tunnel opening. Outside-which way? She sent an imperative demand for the unknown to guide her.

For the third time the call sounded. But not from the direction she was facing at all. No, behind her. Elossa pivoted to front the face. The seeing eyes glittered with malice. That call had come from behind-from out of the face! Yurth blood spilt here in some ancient sacrifice, leaving a strong residue of emotion which another Yurth could tap? No, it was too vivid in that first summons. Surely she would have sensed the difference between a reminder of the dead and a plea formed by the yet living. There was a Yurth in peril here somewhere-behind the wall and the evil, open mouth of Atturn.

Now it was Stans' hand which caught at her.

"What is it?"

"Yurth," Elossa answered distractedly, so concentrated on trying to trace that cry that she did not even try to free herself from his unwelcome touch. "Somewhere there is Yurth blood in trouble. Somewhere-there!"

The girl went to her knees before that open mouth in the wall. Recklessly she aimed a thought-probe.

Yurth! Yes, but-something else also. . . alien. . . . Raski? She could not be sure. She forced herself forward and lifted the staff, pointing one end of it into the mouth as if it were a weapon both to attack that which might lie waiting in the shadowed pit of the opening, or defend herself against that which might issue forth.

The shaft slipped in and in. That opening was no shallow one. It was as if it were a second entrance leading perhaps to another way through a maze of threaded caves. She must know. . . .

Elossa closed her eyes, drew steadily upon what energy had returned to her. Yurth-where waited Yurth?

Her thought touched nothing, no mind. Still she was very sure there had been no mistaking that first cry. Where then?

A sound shattered her concentration. Startled, she glanced up from where she crouched with nearly all of her staff fed into the open mouth. Stans swayed, his hands clawed at the breast of his jerkin as if those fingers would forcibly strip the clothing from him, while his face was such a mask of mingled fury and fear that Elossa started back, jerking the staff free of the mouth to hold ready in her own defense.

As he weaved from side to side she gained a strange impression that he was fighting, fighting something she could not see, perhaps something which lay within himself. A small fleck of foam appeared at one corner of his twisting lips. He gasped, hoa.r.s.e sounds at first, then words: "Kill-it would have me kill! Death to the sky-devils! Death!"

Now it was he who went to his knees. As if he could not control them, his hands shot toward her, fingers crooked, reaching for her throat.

"No!" That cry was close to a scream. With a visible and terrible effort he swung his body half around, brought both fists down on the upper lip of the stone mouth. There was a crack opening in that stone, blood on his knuckles. The stuff of the face crumbled as if it were no more than sun-dried clay. It sloughed away, not only that protruding portion of the lip where the full force of his blow had fallen but more and more-cracks running up and down- away from that point of contact. Shards of what had seemed solid rock cascaded down into rubble on the floor.

Even those eyes shattered with a high tinkling sound as might come from the cracking of gla.s.s. Those, too, sloughed away, fell to become a powder-glitter. The face was gone. Only a hole framing darkness, into which no bit of the torchlight appeared to enter, marked now the mouth of that G.o.d-or devil, or whatever the face on the wall had been intended to portray.

But with the crumbling of the mask there was a change in the chamber. Elossa straightened, feeling as if she had just loosened, to drop from her shoulders some burden she had not been aware until that moment she carried. What was gone was the presence of evil, vanished with the destruction of the face.

Stans, still on his knees before the hole, s.h.i.+vered. But now his head came up and the conflict which had distorted his face was gone. There pa.s.sed a shadow of bewilderment across his features and then came purpose.

"It would have made me kill," he said in a low voice. "It would drink blood."

Elossa stooped and picked up a bit of the rubble. It seemed strange that Stans' single blow had brought about such complete destruction. Between her fingers this bit had the solidity of stone. Though she applied pressure she could not crush it further.

She might not understand what had happened, but what must be done now was plain. If she were to answer that plea from Yurth to Yurth, she must enter what had been the Mouth of Atturn. Though every instinct in her arose in revulsion against the act.

"You did not kill." The girl once more picked up her staff. "Therefore it did not rule you, even though it tried." She had no idea what that "it" might be. In this place she was ready to accept belief in some force, immaterial perhaps, wedded to the face. Why Stans' blow had been enough to send it into oblivion (if he had, the chance might well be that this freedom was only a temporary thing) she might not understand. But she must accept a fact she had witnessed.

He stared straight at her. His frown was one of doubt.

"This I do not understand. But I am myself, Stans of the House of Philbur! I do not answer to the will of shadows-evil shadows!" There was both pride and defiance in that.

"Well enough," she was willing to agree, "but there lies the road for our taking now."

Elossa had not the slightest wish to crawl into the mouth. Only that age-old compulsion laid upon her race-that no cry for help sent mind to mind could be disregarded-was such that she could not deny it.

It was Stans who wrested one of the torches from its holder and who then, with that in hand, got down to crawl through the mouth. Elossa hesitated only long enough to seize upon another of the unlit brands stacked in the corner of the cave. With that, and her staff under one arm, she followed.

The light of the torch was dimmer somehow than it had been in the cave room, while the pa.s.sage remained both low and narrow, to be negotiated only on hands and knees. Stans' body half blotted out the light ahead, but there was very little to see, save that the walls of this rounded way were smoothed and the flooring under them, though stone, was also free of even dust or grit.

Elossa had to struggle against a rising uneasiness. This was not to be recognized, as she had the atmosphere in the cave room, as from any real cause. It was rather that she was aware that over and around her was solid stone, the weight of which was a threat. The memory of how that which had appeared firm in the form of the face had so easily shattered under Stans' single blow was ever in her mind. What if an unlucky brush against ceiling or side wall brought about such a collapse here, to bury them without hope or warning?

Then she saw Stans' dark body disappear. But the light he had carried, after a swing out of sight, swiftly dropped again to guide her from that worm's path into again a larger s.p.a.ce.

There had been no attempt here to trim walls or smooth flooring. This was a cave nature had wrought. A drift of sand and gravel lay at her feet as the girl stood up beside the Raski. Perhaps one time water had washed its way through here as some earth-hidden stream.

Stans swung the torch back and forth. Its light did not reach to any roof over their heads; they might well be standing at the bottom of a deep chasm, while the side walls showed faults and breaks in plenty. There was no indication which of those might mark an exit.

Once more Elossa shut her eyes and centered her talent upon a seeking-thought. No answer. Yet she was sure that that Yurth cry had not been followed by death. That ending would have reached her as a shock since she had held her mind open to pick up the smallest hint of response.

Stans moved slowly along the walls, deliberately s.h.i.+ning his torch into each fissure he pa.s.sed. But Elossa had sighted something else. The drifted sand on the floor did not lay smooth and unmarked in all places. Though it might be too soft to hold any recognizable print yet she was sure that what she sighted well to the left were traces left by the feet of some traveler.

"There." She indicated them to the Raski. "Where do those lead?"

He held the torch closer, then followed the scuffed marks. Those headed directly to another fissure, seemingly no different from the rest.

"This is deeper," he reported, "well able to be a way on-or out."

At least this time they did not have to go on hands and knees, though the way was a very narrow one and in places they had to turn sidewise to struggle through, the rough rock sc.r.a.ping their bodies. Nor did the path run straight as the two others they had followed.

Sometimes they had to scramble up a steep rise, climbing as if the way were a chimney. Again there came a sharply right-angled turn left or right. Then a last effort issued them into a second rough cave.

The torch was sputtering near its end. Elossa was well aware that they had been traveling a long time. She was hungry and, though they had taken sips of water from their journey bottles (filled to the brim at the stream Stans had found before they entered the mouth) there was a dryness which seemed to come from the very air of this maze to plague their mouths and throats.

This new cave was small and what they faced along one side was a wall, plainly built by purpose to be a barrier. The stones which formed it were not laced together by mortar. But they had been wedged and forced solidly into a forbidding ma.s.s.

Stans worked the b.u.t.t of the torch into a niche at one end of that wall, then ran his hands along its rough surface.

"It is tight enough," he commented. "But. . . ." He drew his long-bladed hunting knife to pick carefully with the point at a crevice between two rocks near his shoulder level. "Ahhh. . . ." Holding the knife between his teeth, he wriggled the larger of the two stones back and forth and then gave a sudden jerk which brought it out of its setting.

With that gone two more rattled down and Stans kicked them back toward the way they had come. "It looks stronger than it is," he announced. "We can clear this without trouble, I think."

The s.p.a.ce was cramped so that only one might pick at the wall at a time. They took turns at that labor, pa.s.sing the freed chunks to the other to be cleared away. Elossa's arms and back began to ache. She was as hungry as one at the mid-winter fasting. But at present she had no wish to suggest that they pause either to rest or to share the fast dwindling supplies she carried. To be out of this underground hole was far more important.

When they had cleared a s.p.a.ce large enough to squeeze through Stans collected the torch once again. He thrust that ahead of him into the aperture and a moment later Elossa heard him give a surprised exclamation.

"What is it?" she demanded trying to edge closer.

He did not answer; instead he forced his way beyond and she was as quick to follow. Again they pa.s.sed from cave to man-made way. Not only were the walls of this new and wide pa.s.sage smooth, but they also appeared to have been coated with a substance which gave off the sheen of polished metal. The torchlight brought color to blaze also-ribbons and threads of it wove long, curling strips on the smooth surface. Gem bright those appeared-scarlet, deep crimson, flaunting yellow, rust brown, a green as vividly alive as the new leaves of spring, a blue as delicate as the shading on the snows of the mountains.

There was no design in it Elossa could see, just a rippling of long lines and bands. Nor did the color of any one of those remain the same-yellow became green, blue deepened to red.

At first she had welcomed this change, finding in it a certain relief after the drab gray of the rock. Then she blinked. Was there something alien about those bands, threatening? How could color threaten?

She remembered the colored towers, palaces, walls of Kal-Hath-Tan as it had stood in her vision before death descended upon it. The city had appeared a giant chest of jewels spilled idly across the land. Just as bright as these bands. But there was a difference.

Stans swept the torch closely along the wall fronting them. The bank he chose so to illumine began green, became abruptly scarlet, continued orange, then yellow. He reached out and tapped a nail against that colorful ribbon and Elossa, in the silence of this pa.s.sage, heard the fault answering click-click.