“Something ahead!” Thorvald did not
slacken the pace set by the brilliant spot of green they trailed.
Both of the Terrans feared to fall behind, to lose touch with that
guide. Their belief that somehow the traveling disk would bring
them to the end of the mist and its attendant illusions had grown
firmer with every foot of ground they traversed.
A dark, fixed point, now partly veiled by mist, lay beyond, and
it was toward that looming half-shadow that the spinning disk
hurtled. Now the mist curled away to display its bulk—larger,
blacker and four or five times Thorvald’s height. Both men
stopped short, for the disk no longer played path-finder. It still
whirled on its axis in the air, faster and faster, until it
appeared to be throwing off sparks, but the sparks faded against a
monolith of dark rock unlike the native stone they had seen
elsewhere. For it was neither red nor warmly brown, but a dull,
dead black. It could have been a huge stone slab, trimmed,
smoothed, set up on end as a monument or marker, except that only
infinite labor could have accomplished such a task, and there was
no valid reason for such toil as far as the Terrans could
perceive.
“This is it.” Thorvald moved closer.
By the disk’s action, they deduced that their guide had
drawn them to this featureless black stele with the precision of a
beam-controlled ship. However, the purpose still eluded them. They
had hoped for some exit from the territory of the veil, but now
they faced a solid slab of dark stone, neither a conventional exit
or entrance, as they proved by circling its base. Beneath their
boots was the eternal sand, around them the fog.
“Now what?” Shann asked. They had made their trip
about the slab and were back again where the disk whirled with
unceasing vigor in a shower of emerald sparks.
Thorvald shook his head, scanning the rock face before them
glumly. The eagerness had gone out of his expression, a vast
weariness replacing it.
“There must have been some purpose in coming here,”
he replied, but his tone had lost the assurance of moments
earlier.
“Well, if we strike away from here, we’ll just get
right back in again.” Shann waved a hand toward the mist,
waiting as if with a hunter’s watch upon them. “And we
certainly can’t go down.” He dug a boot toe into the
sand to demonstrate the folly of that. “So, what about
up?”
He ducked under the spinning disk to lay his hands against the
surface of the giant slab. And in so doing he made a discovery,
revealed to his touch although hidden from sight. For his fingers,
running aimlessly across the cold, slightly uneven surface of the
stone, slipped into a hollow, quite a deep hollow.
Excited, half fearing that his sudden guess might be wrong,
Shann slid his hand higher in line with that hollow, to discover a
second. The first had been level with his chest, the second perhaps
eighteen inches or so above. He jumped, to draw his fingers down
the rock, with damage to his nails but getting his proof. There
was a third niche, deep enough to hold more than just the
toe of a boot, and a fourth above
that . . .
“We’ve a ladder of sorts here,” he reported.
Without waiting for any answer from Thorvald, Shann began to climb.
The holds were so well matched in shape and size that he was sure
they could not be natural; they had been bored there for
use—the use to which he was now putting them—a ladder
to the top of the slab. Though what he might find there was beyond
his power to imagine.
The disk did not rise. Shann passed that core of light, climbing
above it into the greater gloom. But the holes did not fail him;
each was waiting in a direct line with its companion. And to an
active man the scramble was not difficult. He reached the summit,
glanced around, and made a quick grab for a secure handhold.
Waiting for him was no level platform such as he had confidently
expected to find. The surface he had just climbed fly-fashion was
the outer wall of a well or chimney. He looked down now into a pit
where black nothingness began within a yard of the top, for the
radiance of the mist did not penetrate far into that descent.
Shann fought an attack of giddiness. It would be very easy to
lose control, to tumble over and be swallowed up in what might well
be a bottomless chasm. And what was the purpose of this well? Was
it a trap to entice a prisoner into an unwary climb and then let
gravity drag him over? The whole setup was meaningless. Perhaps
meaningless only to him, Shann conceded, with a flash of level
thinking. The situation could be quite different as far as the
natives were concerned. This structure did have a reason, or it
would never have been erected in the first place.
“What’s the matter?” Thorvald’s voice
was rough with impatience.
“This thing’s a well.” Shann edged about a
fraction to call back. “The inside is open and—as far
as I can tell—goes clear to the planet’s
core.”
“Ladder on the inside too?”
Shann squirmed. That was, of course, a very obvious supposition.
He kept a tight hold with his left hand, and with the other, he did
some exploring. Yes, here was a hollow right enough, twin to those
on the outside. But to swing over that narrow edge of safety and
begin a descent into the black of the well was far harder than any
action he had taken since the morning the Throgs had raided the
camp. The green mist could hold no terrors greater than those with
which his imagination peopled the depths now waiting to engulf him.
But Shann swung over, fitted his boot into the first hollow, and
started down.
The only encouragement he gained during that nightmare ordeal
was that those holes were regularly spaced. But somehow his
confidence did not feed on that fact. There always remained the
nagging fear that when he searched for the next it would not be
there and he would cling to his perch lacking the needed strength
in aching arms and legs to reclimb the inside ladder.
He was fast losing that sense of well-being which had been his
during his travels through the fog; fatigue tugged at his arms and
weighed leaden on his shoulders. Mechanically he prospected for the
next hold, and then the next. Above, the oblong of half-light grew
smaller and smaller, sometimes half blotted out by the movement of
Thorvald’s body as the other followed him down that interior
way.
How far was down? Shann giggled lightheadedly at the
humor of that, or what seemed to be humor at the moment. He was
certain that they were now below the level of the sand floor
outside the slab. And yet no end had come to the well hollow.
No break of light down here; he might have been sightless. But
just as the blind develop an extra perceptive sense of unseen
obstacles, so did Shann now find that he was aware of a change in
the nature of the space about him. His weary arms and legs held him
against the solidity of a wall, yet the impression that there was
no longer another wall at his back grew stronger with every niche
which swung him downward. And he was as sure as if he could see it,
that he was now in a wide-open space, another cavern, perhaps, but
this one totally dark.
Deprived of sight, he relied upon his ears. And there was a
sound, faint, distorted perhaps by the acoustics of this place, but
keeping up a continuous murmur. Water! Not the wash of waves with
their persistent beat, but rather the rippling of a running stream.
Water must lie below!
And just as his weariness had grown with his leaving behind the
fog, so now did both hunger and thirst gnaw at Shann, all the
sharper for the delay. The Terran wanted to reach that water, could
picture it in his mind, putting away the possibility—the
probability—that it might be sea-borne and salt, and so unfit
to drink.
The upper opening to the cavern of the fog was now so far above
him that he had to strain to see it. And that warmth which had been
there was gone. A dank chill wrapped him here, dampened the holds
to which he clung until he was afraid of slipping. While the murmur
of the water grew louder, until its slap-slap sounded
within arm’s distance. His boot toe skidded from a niche.
Shann fought to hold on with numbed fingers. The other foot went.
He swung by his hands, kicking vainly to regain a measure of
footing.
Then his arms could no longer support him, and he cried out as
he fell. Water closed about him with an icy shock which for a
moment paralyzed him. He flailed out, fighting the flood to get his
head above the surface where he could gasp in precious gulps of
air.
There was a current here, a swiftly running one. Shann
remembered the one which had carried him into that cavern in which
the Warlockians had their strange dwelling. Although there were no
clusters of crystals in this tunnel to supply him with light, the
Terran began to nourish a faint hope that he was again in that same
stream, that those light crystals would appear, and that he might
eventually return to the starting point of this meaningless
journey.
So he strove only to keep his head above water. Hearing a
splashing behind him, he called out: “Thorvald?”
“Lantee?” The answer came back at once; the
splashing grew louder as the other swam to catch up.
Shann swallowed a mouthful of the water lapping against his
chin. The taste was brackish, but not entirely salt, and though it
stung his lips, the liquid relieved a measure of his thirst.
Only no glowing crystals appeared to stud these walls, and
Shann’s hope that they were on their way to the cavern of the
island faded. The current grew swifter, and he had to fight to keep
his head above water, his tired body reacting sluggishly to
commands.
The murmur of the racing flood drummed louder in his ears, or
was that sound the same? He could no longer be sure. Shann only
knew that it was close to impossible to snatch the necessary breath
as he was rolled over and over in the hurrying flood.
In the end he was ejected into blazing, blinding light, into a
suffocation of wild water as the bullet in an ancient Terran gun
might have been fired at no specific target. Gasping, beaten, more
than half-drowned, Shann was pummeled by waves, literally driven up
on a rocky surface which skinned his body cruelly. He lay there,
his arms moving feebly until he contrived to raise himself in time
to be wretchedly sick. Somehow he crawled on a few feet farther
before he subsided again, blinded by the light, flinching from the
heat of the rocks on which he lay, but unable to do more for
himself.
His first coherent thought was that his speculation concerning
the reality of this experience was at last resolved. This could not
possibly be an hallucination; at least this particular sequence of
events was not. And he was still hazily considering that when a
hand fell on his shoulder, fingers biting into his raw flesh.
Shann snarled, rolled over on his side. Thorvald, water dripping
from his rags—or rather streaming from them—his shaggy
hair plastered to his skull, sat there.
“You all right?”
Shann sat up in turn, shielding his smarting eyes. He was
bruised, battered badly enough, but he could claim no major
injuries.
“I think so. Where are we?”
Thorvald’s lips stretched across his teeth in what was
more a grimace than a smile. “Right off the map, any map I
know. Take a look.”
They were on a scrap of beach—beach which was more like a
reef, for it lacked any covering comparable to sand except for some
cupfuls of coarse gravel locked in rock depressions. Rocks, red as
the rust of dried blood, rose in fantastic water-sculptured shapes
around the small semi-level space they had somehow won.
This space was V-shaped, washed by equal streams on either side
of the prong of rock by water which spouted from the face of a
sheer cliff not too far away, with force enough to spray several
feet beyond its exit point. Shann, seeing that and guessing at its
significance, drew a deep breath, and heard the ghost of an
answering chuckle from his companion.
“Yes, that’s where we came out, boy. Like to make a
return trip?”
Shann shook his head, and then wished that he had not so rashly
made that move, for the world swung in a dizzy whirl. Things had
happened too fast. For the moment it was enough that they were out
of the underground ways, back under the amber sky, feeling the bite
of Warlock’s sun.
Steadying his head with both hands, Shann turned slowly, to
survey what might lie at their backs. The water, pouring by on
either side, suggested that they were again on an island. Warlock,
he thought gloomily, seemed to be for Terrans a succession of
islands, all hard to escape.
The tangle of rocks did not encourage any exploration. Just
gazing at them added to his weariness. They rose, tier by tier, to
a ragged crown against the sky. Shann continued to sit staring at
them.
“To climb
that . . . ” His
voice trailed into the silence of complete discouragement.
“You climb—or swim,” Thorvald stated. But,
Shann noted, the Survey officer was not in a hurry to make either
move.
Nowhere in that wilderness of rock was there the least relieving
bit of purple foliage. Nor did any clak-claks or leather-headed
birds tour the sky over their heads. Shann’s thirst might
have been partially assuaged, but his hunger remained. And it was
that need which forced him at last into action. The barren heights
promised nothing in the way of food, but remembering the harvest
the wolverines had taken from under the rocks along the river, he
got to his feet and lurched out on the reef which had been their
salvation, hunting some pool which might hold an edible captive or
two.
So it was that Shann made the discovery of a possible path
consisting of a ledge running toward the other end of the island,
if this were an island where they had taken refuge. The spray of
the water drenched that way, feeding small pools in the uneven
surface, and strips of yellow weed trailed in slimy ribbons back
below the surface of the waves.
He called to Thorvald and gestured to his find. And then, close
together, linking hands when the going became hazardous, the men
followed the path. Twice they made finds in the pools, finned or
clawed grotesque creatures, which they killed and ate, wolfing down
the few fragments of odd-tasting flesh. Then, in a small crevice,
which could hardly be dignified by the designation of
“cave,” Thorvald chanced upon quite an exciting
discovery—a clutch of four greenish eggs, each as large as
his doubled fist.
Their outer covering was more like a tough membrane than a true
shell, and the Terrans worried it open with difficulty. Shann shut
his eyes, trying not to think of what he mouthed as he sucked his
share dry. At least that semi-liquid stayed put in his middle,
though he expected disastrous results from the experiment.
More than a little heartened by this piece of luck, they kept
on, though the ledge changed from a reasonably level surface to a
series of rising, unequal steps, drawing them away from the water.
At long last they came to the end of that path. Shann leaned back
against a convenient spur of rock.
“Company!” he alerted Thorvald.
The Survey officer joined him to share an outcrop of rock from
which they were provided with an excellent view of the scene below.
It was a scene to hold their full attention.
That soft sweep of sand which had floored the cavern of the fog
lay here also, a gray-blue carpet sloping gently out of the sea.
For Shann had no doubt that the wide stretch of water before them
was the western ocean. Walling the beach on either side were
pillars of stone that extended well out into the water so that the
farthest piles were awash except for their crowns. All were shaped
with the same finish as that slab which had provided them a ladder
of escape. And because of the regularity of their spacing, Shann
did not believe them works of nature.
Grouped between them now were the players of the drama. One of
the Warlockian witches, her gem body patterns glittering in the
sunlight, was walking backward out of the sea, her hands held palms
together, breast high, in a Terran attitude of prayer. And
following her something swam in the water, clearly not another of
her own species. But her actions suggested that by some invisible
means she was drawing that water dweller after her. Waiting on
shore were two others of her kind, viewing her actions with close
attention, the attention of scholars for an instructor.
“Wyverns!”
Shann looked inquiringly at his companion. Thorvald added a
whisper of explanation. “A legend of Terra—they were
supposed to have a snake’s tail instead of hind legs, but the
heads . . . They’re Wyverns!”
Wyverns. Shann liked the sound of that word; to his mind it well
fitted the Warlockian witches. And the one they were watching in
action continued her steady backward retreat, rolling her bemused
captive out of the water. What emerged into the blaze of sunlight
was one of those fork-tailed sea dwellers such as the Terrans had
seen die after the storm. The thing crawled out of the shallows,
its eyes focused in a blind stare on the praying hands of the
Wyvern.
She halted, well up on the sand, when the body of her victim or
prisoner—Shann was certain that the fork-tail was one or the
other—was completely out of the water. Then, with lightning
speed, she dropped her hands.
Instantly fork-tail came to life. Fanged jaws snapped. Aroused,
the beast was the incarnation of evil rage, a rage which had a
measure of intelligence to direct it into deadly action. And facing
it, seemingly unarmed and defenseless, were the slender, fragile
Wyverns.
Yet none of the small group of natives made any attempt to
escape. Shann thought them suicidal in their indifference as the
fork-tail, short legs sending the fine sand flying in a dust cloud,
made a rush toward its enemies.
The Wyvern who had led the beast ashore did not move. But one of
her companions swung up a hand, as if negligently waving the
monster to a stop. Between her first two digits was a disk.
Thorvald caught at Shann’s arm.
“See that! It’s a copy of the one I had; it must
be!”
They were too far away to be sure it was a duplicate, but it was
coin-shaped and bone-white. And now the Wyvern swung it back and
forth in a metronome sweep. The fork-tail skidded to a stop, its
head beginning—reluctantly at first, and then, with
increasing speed—to echo that left-right sweep. This Wyvern
had the sea beast under control, even as her companion had earlier
held it.
Chance dictated what happened next. As had her sister charmer,
the Wyvern began a backward withdrawal up the length of the beach,
drawing the sea thing in her wake. They were very close to the foot
of the drop above which the Terrans stood, fascinated, when the
sand betrayed the witch. Her foot slipped into a hole and she was
thrown backward, her control disk spinning out of her fingers.
At once the monster she had charmed shot forth its head, snapped
at that spinning trifle—and swallowed it. Then the fork-tail
hunched in a posture Shann had seen the wolverines use when they
were about to spring. The weaponless Wyvern was the prey, and both
her companions were too far away to interfere.
Why he moved he could not have explained. There was no reason
for him to go to the aid of the Warlockian, one of the same breed
who had ruled him against his will. But Shann sprang, landing in
the sand on his hands and knees.
The sea thing whipped around, undecided between two possible
victims. Shann had his knife free, was on his feet, his eyes on the
beast’s, knowing that he had appointed himself dragon slayer
for no good reason.
“Something ahead!” Thorvald did not
slacken the pace set by the brilliant spot of green they trailed.
Both of the Terrans feared to fall behind, to lose touch with that
guide. Their belief that somehow the traveling disk would bring
them to the end of the mist and its attendant illusions had grown
firmer with every foot of ground they traversed.
A dark, fixed point, now partly veiled by mist, lay beyond, and
it was toward that looming half-shadow that the spinning disk
hurtled. Now the mist curled away to display its bulk—larger,
blacker and four or five times Thorvald’s height. Both men
stopped short, for the disk no longer played path-finder. It still
whirled on its axis in the air, faster and faster, until it
appeared to be throwing off sparks, but the sparks faded against a
monolith of dark rock unlike the native stone they had seen
elsewhere. For it was neither red nor warmly brown, but a dull,
dead black. It could have been a huge stone slab, trimmed,
smoothed, set up on end as a monument or marker, except that only
infinite labor could have accomplished such a task, and there was
no valid reason for such toil as far as the Terrans could
perceive.
“This is it.” Thorvald moved closer.
By the disk’s action, they deduced that their guide had
drawn them to this featureless black stele with the precision of a
beam-controlled ship. However, the purpose still eluded them. They
had hoped for some exit from the territory of the veil, but now
they faced a solid slab of dark stone, neither a conventional exit
or entrance, as they proved by circling its base. Beneath their
boots was the eternal sand, around them the fog.
“Now what?” Shann asked. They had made their trip
about the slab and were back again where the disk whirled with
unceasing vigor in a shower of emerald sparks.
Thorvald shook his head, scanning the rock face before them
glumly. The eagerness had gone out of his expression, a vast
weariness replacing it.
“There must have been some purpose in coming here,”
he replied, but his tone had lost the assurance of moments
earlier.
“Well, if we strike away from here, we’ll just get
right back in again.” Shann waved a hand toward the mist,
waiting as if with a hunter’s watch upon them. “And we
certainly can’t go down.” He dug a boot toe into the
sand to demonstrate the folly of that. “So, what about
up?”
He ducked under the spinning disk to lay his hands against the
surface of the giant slab. And in so doing he made a discovery,
revealed to his touch although hidden from sight. For his fingers,
running aimlessly across the cold, slightly uneven surface of the
stone, slipped into a hollow, quite a deep hollow.
Excited, half fearing that his sudden guess might be wrong,
Shann slid his hand higher in line with that hollow, to discover a
second. The first had been level with his chest, the second perhaps
eighteen inches or so above. He jumped, to draw his fingers down
the rock, with damage to his nails but getting his proof. There
was a third niche, deep enough to hold more than just the
toe of a boot, and a fourth above
that . . .
“We’ve a ladder of sorts here,” he reported.
Without waiting for any answer from Thorvald, Shann began to climb.
The holds were so well matched in shape and size that he was sure
they could not be natural; they had been bored there for
use—the use to which he was now putting them—a ladder
to the top of the slab. Though what he might find there was beyond
his power to imagine.
The disk did not rise. Shann passed that core of light, climbing
above it into the greater gloom. But the holes did not fail him;
each was waiting in a direct line with its companion. And to an
active man the scramble was not difficult. He reached the summit,
glanced around, and made a quick grab for a secure handhold.
Waiting for him was no level platform such as he had confidently
expected to find. The surface he had just climbed fly-fashion was
the outer wall of a well or chimney. He looked down now into a pit
where black nothingness began within a yard of the top, for the
radiance of the mist did not penetrate far into that descent.
Shann fought an attack of giddiness. It would be very easy to
lose control, to tumble over and be swallowed up in what might well
be a bottomless chasm. And what was the purpose of this well? Was
it a trap to entice a prisoner into an unwary climb and then let
gravity drag him over? The whole setup was meaningless. Perhaps
meaningless only to him, Shann conceded, with a flash of level
thinking. The situation could be quite different as far as the
natives were concerned. This structure did have a reason, or it
would never have been erected in the first place.
“What’s the matter?” Thorvald’s voice
was rough with impatience.
“This thing’s a well.” Shann edged about a
fraction to call back. “The inside is open and—as far
as I can tell—goes clear to the planet’s
core.”
“Ladder on the inside too?”
Shann squirmed. That was, of course, a very obvious supposition.
He kept a tight hold with his left hand, and with the other, he did
some exploring. Yes, here was a hollow right enough, twin to those
on the outside. But to swing over that narrow edge of safety and
begin a descent into the black of the well was far harder than any
action he had taken since the morning the Throgs had raided the
camp. The green mist could hold no terrors greater than those with
which his imagination peopled the depths now waiting to engulf him.
But Shann swung over, fitted his boot into the first hollow, and
started down.
The only encouragement he gained during that nightmare ordeal
was that those holes were regularly spaced. But somehow his
confidence did not feed on that fact. There always remained the
nagging fear that when he searched for the next it would not be
there and he would cling to his perch lacking the needed strength
in aching arms and legs to reclimb the inside ladder.
He was fast losing that sense of well-being which had been his
during his travels through the fog; fatigue tugged at his arms and
weighed leaden on his shoulders. Mechanically he prospected for the
next hold, and then the next. Above, the oblong of half-light grew
smaller and smaller, sometimes half blotted out by the movement of
Thorvald’s body as the other followed him down that interior
way.
How far was down? Shann giggled lightheadedly at the
humor of that, or what seemed to be humor at the moment. He was
certain that they were now below the level of the sand floor
outside the slab. And yet no end had come to the well hollow.
No break of light down here; he might have been sightless. But
just as the blind develop an extra perceptive sense of unseen
obstacles, so did Shann now find that he was aware of a change in
the nature of the space about him. His weary arms and legs held him
against the solidity of a wall, yet the impression that there was
no longer another wall at his back grew stronger with every niche
which swung him downward. And he was as sure as if he could see it,
that he was now in a wide-open space, another cavern, perhaps, but
this one totally dark.
Deprived of sight, he relied upon his ears. And there was a
sound, faint, distorted perhaps by the acoustics of this place, but
keeping up a continuous murmur. Water! Not the wash of waves with
their persistent beat, but rather the rippling of a running stream.
Water must lie below!
And just as his weariness had grown with his leaving behind the
fog, so now did both hunger and thirst gnaw at Shann, all the
sharper for the delay. The Terran wanted to reach that water, could
picture it in his mind, putting away the possibility—the
probability—that it might be sea-borne and salt, and so unfit
to drink.
The upper opening to the cavern of the fog was now so far above
him that he had to strain to see it. And that warmth which had been
there was gone. A dank chill wrapped him here, dampened the holds
to which he clung until he was afraid of slipping. While the murmur
of the water grew louder, until its slap-slap sounded
within arm’s distance. His boot toe skidded from a niche.
Shann fought to hold on with numbed fingers. The other foot went.
He swung by his hands, kicking vainly to regain a measure of
footing.
Then his arms could no longer support him, and he cried out as
he fell. Water closed about him with an icy shock which for a
moment paralyzed him. He flailed out, fighting the flood to get his
head above the surface where he could gasp in precious gulps of
air.
There was a current here, a swiftly running one. Shann
remembered the one which had carried him into that cavern in which
the Warlockians had their strange dwelling. Although there were no
clusters of crystals in this tunnel to supply him with light, the
Terran began to nourish a faint hope that he was again in that same
stream, that those light crystals would appear, and that he might
eventually return to the starting point of this meaningless
journey.
So he strove only to keep his head above water. Hearing a
splashing behind him, he called out: “Thorvald?”
“Lantee?” The answer came back at once; the
splashing grew louder as the other swam to catch up.
Shann swallowed a mouthful of the water lapping against his
chin. The taste was brackish, but not entirely salt, and though it
stung his lips, the liquid relieved a measure of his thirst.
Only no glowing crystals appeared to stud these walls, and
Shann’s hope that they were on their way to the cavern of the
island faded. The current grew swifter, and he had to fight to keep
his head above water, his tired body reacting sluggishly to
commands.
The murmur of the racing flood drummed louder in his ears, or
was that sound the same? He could no longer be sure. Shann only
knew that it was close to impossible to snatch the necessary breath
as he was rolled over and over in the hurrying flood.
In the end he was ejected into blazing, blinding light, into a
suffocation of wild water as the bullet in an ancient Terran gun
might have been fired at no specific target. Gasping, beaten, more
than half-drowned, Shann was pummeled by waves, literally driven up
on a rocky surface which skinned his body cruelly. He lay there,
his arms moving feebly until he contrived to raise himself in time
to be wretchedly sick. Somehow he crawled on a few feet farther
before he subsided again, blinded by the light, flinching from the
heat of the rocks on which he lay, but unable to do more for
himself.
His first coherent thought was that his speculation concerning
the reality of this experience was at last resolved. This could not
possibly be an hallucination; at least this particular sequence of
events was not. And he was still hazily considering that when a
hand fell on his shoulder, fingers biting into his raw flesh.
Shann snarled, rolled over on his side. Thorvald, water dripping
from his rags—or rather streaming from them—his shaggy
hair plastered to his skull, sat there.
“You all right?”
Shann sat up in turn, shielding his smarting eyes. He was
bruised, battered badly enough, but he could claim no major
injuries.
“I think so. Where are we?”
Thorvald’s lips stretched across his teeth in what was
more a grimace than a smile. “Right off the map, any map I
know. Take a look.”
They were on a scrap of beach—beach which was more like a
reef, for it lacked any covering comparable to sand except for some
cupfuls of coarse gravel locked in rock depressions. Rocks, red as
the rust of dried blood, rose in fantastic water-sculptured shapes
around the small semi-level space they had somehow won.
This space was V-shaped, washed by equal streams on either side
of the prong of rock by water which spouted from the face of a
sheer cliff not too far away, with force enough to spray several
feet beyond its exit point. Shann, seeing that and guessing at its
significance, drew a deep breath, and heard the ghost of an
answering chuckle from his companion.
“Yes, that’s where we came out, boy. Like to make a
return trip?”
Shann shook his head, and then wished that he had not so rashly
made that move, for the world swung in a dizzy whirl. Things had
happened too fast. For the moment it was enough that they were out
of the underground ways, back under the amber sky, feeling the bite
of Warlock’s sun.
Steadying his head with both hands, Shann turned slowly, to
survey what might lie at their backs. The water, pouring by on
either side, suggested that they were again on an island. Warlock,
he thought gloomily, seemed to be for Terrans a succession of
islands, all hard to escape.
The tangle of rocks did not encourage any exploration. Just
gazing at them added to his weariness. They rose, tier by tier, to
a ragged crown against the sky. Shann continued to sit staring at
them.
“To climb
that . . . ” His
voice trailed into the silence of complete discouragement.
“You climb—or swim,” Thorvald stated. But,
Shann noted, the Survey officer was not in a hurry to make either
move.
Nowhere in that wilderness of rock was there the least relieving
bit of purple foliage. Nor did any clak-claks or leather-headed
birds tour the sky over their heads. Shann’s thirst might
have been partially assuaged, but his hunger remained. And it was
that need which forced him at last into action. The barren heights
promised nothing in the way of food, but remembering the harvest
the wolverines had taken from under the rocks along the river, he
got to his feet and lurched out on the reef which had been their
salvation, hunting some pool which might hold an edible captive or
two.
So it was that Shann made the discovery of a possible path
consisting of a ledge running toward the other end of the island,
if this were an island where they had taken refuge. The spray of
the water drenched that way, feeding small pools in the uneven
surface, and strips of yellow weed trailed in slimy ribbons back
below the surface of the waves.
He called to Thorvald and gestured to his find. And then, close
together, linking hands when the going became hazardous, the men
followed the path. Twice they made finds in the pools, finned or
clawed grotesque creatures, which they killed and ate, wolfing down
the few fragments of odd-tasting flesh. Then, in a small crevice,
which could hardly be dignified by the designation of
“cave,” Thorvald chanced upon quite an exciting
discovery—a clutch of four greenish eggs, each as large as
his doubled fist.
Their outer covering was more like a tough membrane than a true
shell, and the Terrans worried it open with difficulty. Shann shut
his eyes, trying not to think of what he mouthed as he sucked his
share dry. At least that semi-liquid stayed put in his middle,
though he expected disastrous results from the experiment.
More than a little heartened by this piece of luck, they kept
on, though the ledge changed from a reasonably level surface to a
series of rising, unequal steps, drawing them away from the water.
At long last they came to the end of that path. Shann leaned back
against a convenient spur of rock.
“Company!” he alerted Thorvald.
The Survey officer joined him to share an outcrop of rock from
which they were provided with an excellent view of the scene below.
It was a scene to hold their full attention.
That soft sweep of sand which had floored the cavern of the fog
lay here also, a gray-blue carpet sloping gently out of the sea.
For Shann had no doubt that the wide stretch of water before them
was the western ocean. Walling the beach on either side were
pillars of stone that extended well out into the water so that the
farthest piles were awash except for their crowns. All were shaped
with the same finish as that slab which had provided them a ladder
of escape. And because of the regularity of their spacing, Shann
did not believe them works of nature.
Grouped between them now were the players of the drama. One of
the Warlockian witches, her gem body patterns glittering in the
sunlight, was walking backward out of the sea, her hands held palms
together, breast high, in a Terran attitude of prayer. And
following her something swam in the water, clearly not another of
her own species. But her actions suggested that by some invisible
means she was drawing that water dweller after her. Waiting on
shore were two others of her kind, viewing her actions with close
attention, the attention of scholars for an instructor.
“Wyverns!”
Shann looked inquiringly at his companion. Thorvald added a
whisper of explanation. “A legend of Terra—they were
supposed to have a snake’s tail instead of hind legs, but the
heads . . . They’re Wyverns!”
Wyverns. Shann liked the sound of that word; to his mind it well
fitted the Warlockian witches. And the one they were watching in
action continued her steady backward retreat, rolling her bemused
captive out of the water. What emerged into the blaze of sunlight
was one of those fork-tailed sea dwellers such as the Terrans had
seen die after the storm. The thing crawled out of the shallows,
its eyes focused in a blind stare on the praying hands of the
Wyvern.
She halted, well up on the sand, when the body of her victim or
prisoner—Shann was certain that the fork-tail was one or the
other—was completely out of the water. Then, with lightning
speed, she dropped her hands.
Instantly fork-tail came to life. Fanged jaws snapped. Aroused,
the beast was the incarnation of evil rage, a rage which had a
measure of intelligence to direct it into deadly action. And facing
it, seemingly unarmed and defenseless, were the slender, fragile
Wyverns.
Yet none of the small group of natives made any attempt to
escape. Shann thought them suicidal in their indifference as the
fork-tail, short legs sending the fine sand flying in a dust cloud,
made a rush toward its enemies.
The Wyvern who had led the beast ashore did not move. But one of
her companions swung up a hand, as if negligently waving the
monster to a stop. Between her first two digits was a disk.
Thorvald caught at Shann’s arm.
“See that! It’s a copy of the one I had; it must
be!”
They were too far away to be sure it was a duplicate, but it was
coin-shaped and bone-white. And now the Wyvern swung it back and
forth in a metronome sweep. The fork-tail skidded to a stop, its
head beginning—reluctantly at first, and then, with
increasing speed—to echo that left-right sweep. This Wyvern
had the sea beast under control, even as her companion had earlier
held it.
Chance dictated what happened next. As had her sister charmer,
the Wyvern began a backward withdrawal up the length of the beach,
drawing the sea thing in her wake. They were very close to the foot
of the drop above which the Terrans stood, fascinated, when the
sand betrayed the witch. Her foot slipped into a hole and she was
thrown backward, her control disk spinning out of her fingers.
At once the monster she had charmed shot forth its head, snapped
at that spinning trifle—and swallowed it. Then the fork-tail
hunched in a posture Shann had seen the wolverines use when they
were about to spring. The weaponless Wyvern was the prey, and both
her companions were too far away to interfere.
Why he moved he could not have explained. There was no reason
for him to go to the aid of the Warlockian, one of the same breed
who had ruled him against his will. But Shann sprang, landing in
the sand on his hands and knees.
The sea thing whipped around, undecided between two possible
victims. Shann had his knife free, was on his feet, his eyes on the
beast’s, knowing that he had appointed himself dragon slayer
for no good reason.