by Andre Norton
When night came they ate again and made their beds in grass nests.
With sun-warmed and dried blankets, Sarita found it hard to keep awake. Little by little the tensions of the past days were leaving her, but it left a weariness which made it difficult even to raise her hand.
She crept in beside Valoris, knowing she could no longer fight her exhaustion. If there were to be any guards this night, was her last dull thought, the animals would have to provide them —Rhys was already rolled in his own blanket.
When she roused at last, the sun was up and there was no weight beside her. Valoris had crawled away.
Sarita sat up abruptly. It would seem that Rhys had also slept late, for she could see his covered form still on the other side of the fire, having chosen to leave the lean-to for her and the child.
She got to her knees, her uneasiness growing. Not too far away the donkeys and the goats were grazing, then Berry threw up her head and trotted toward the lake. But Valoris, always drawn to the company of the animals, was not to be seen.
The lake —the fish — !
Sarita was on her feet instantly, remembering his interest in the fish, and she ran toward the water, not stopping to put on her boots, her much-mended chemise flapping. Nor did she heed the rasp of the rocks on her bare feet as she crossed to the water's edge, where Valoris had been yesterday, fascinated by the water life below.
"Valoris!" she screamed, forcing herself to look down at the placid, reflective surface. Ripples raised by a light wind ran across it, but she could still see the sandy bottom. There was no small
body there. She jumped in all the same, gasping at the chill. It was shallow enough, but she knew that to search the entire lake was beyond her power.
"Valoris!"
"What's to do?"
Rhys stood on the rocks from which she had just leaped, only short underdrawers covering his slim body. Then in a moment he, too, was in the water, his hand out to steady her when she slipped on a stone.
"I woke — " somehow she choked out the words " — he was gone! Yesterday he saw the fish —he might—"
The ranger made no answer, save to pull her ashore. His voice was curt and she cringed. "You cannot be sure of that, Sarita. Do not think of the worst before it is proven."
She dragged and screamed at him as he pulled her back to camp. He shook her so fiercely that her head wobbled on her neck.
"Be quiet—you waste breath for nothing! Let us see what is to be done."
He let go of her so suddenly she crumpled to the ground.
"Clothe yourself," he ordered. "You cannot go searching nearly bare."
She looked down at her body and flushed, but it was no time for modesty. Valoris was the important one. She began to dress as Rhys had commanded. The ranger had already thrown on his own clothing.
He did not wait for her, instead he was circling slowly about the now dead fire, eyes intent upon the ground. Sarita realized he was searching for a trail.
Suddenly the ranger swung away to where Lopear now grazed and Sarita followed him. There was a strip of ground where a tuft of grass had been vigorously pulled from its roots. Valoris!
He always went to Lopear the first thing in the morning with some grass he had pulled, the donkey receiving it gravely, as if they performed some private rite.
So he had fed Lopear—but there was still the lake and the fascinating fish!
Only Rhys was not heading in that direction. He went down on one knee, and she crowded closer to see what had caught his attention. There was another bare spot, a small depression as if something had been picked up —a stone moved. Valoris had always been fascinated by her sling and at times he had brought her stones he thought would be good ammunition.
Rhys sat back on his heels. He was plainly studying the stretch of ground before him as a scholar would worry out the meaning of a page of ancient, crabbed writing.
"Come.” He did not wait to see if she were following. He did not need to —Sarita was treading on his very heels.
There was a flutter of rag from a thorny bush. Berries hung plump and purple all around and Sarita could now see the signs of harvesting quite well. There was also damp earth here and the print of a small foot was very clear.
"Valoris!" She put into that call all the authority she could, but no small voice piped in return.
Rhys cast ahead. To her ever growing hope the trail did not lead lakeward, but instead to the rock wall of the valley.
Here was the head of a brilliantly blue flower which had been plucked and then dropped. Rhys was down on his knees again by a pile of rocks directly against the cliff. He began picking up stones, tossing them to one side. What had been a small hole was rapidly being uncovered to show a wide opening. Valoris had crawled in there? But he did not like the dark. Why—?
Rhys had a space large enough to enter on hands and knees and she did not hesitate to follow him. Beyond that opening they could stand erect, and Sarita, looking about her, gasped.
This place was not hidden in darkness. Along the rock wall on either side curled and curved lines of a strange bluish light which, when she peered closer, she saw must rise from veins of crystal.
They stood at the mouth of what must be a tunnel. Rhys pointed to the floor beneath their boots. Earth and dust had shifted, but Valoris' prints were plain to see. Sarita opened her mouth to call the child's name —only to have Rhys stop her.
Ahead she could make out dim objects lying on the floor in a clutter. Stones fallen from above? Was Valoris following a dangerous path?
At the same moment she knew why Rhys had denied her call. The uneasiness she had felt ever since she had set foot on the way up LodenKail was growing stronger. It was not fear of dark evil — no, just that they were venturing into a place which was not for their kind.
Rhys took a quick step to the left, but did not avoid kicking a partly rounded object. It skittered sidewise to strike against the wall and slew about.
Sarita gasped. She was looking down at a crumbling skull half encased in the rusted remains of a helm —a crested helm. That crest drew her eyes away from the skull itself. What had been fashioned to crouch there, still unmarked by time, was a monster—an exact copy of the one she had seen in the Fane at Raganfors!
She made a wide detour and stepped squarely on the blade of a sword, so rusty that it went to brown flakes under her tread. Rhys leaned closer to study the skull, but it did not touch it.
His mouth was set grimly as he said, as if attempting to reassure himself, "Long dead."
Sarita caught at the ranger's arm. "The Loden —is that the sign of the Loden?"
She did not wait for an answer but plunged ahead. There was more clutter of broken weapons, of splintered and crumbling bones, but still she was able to see Valoris' prints. A stray thought crossed her mind. It was unlike the boy that he had not been attracted to any of this debris. Instead it seemed he was hunting something more interesting.
The thing — that which had summoned her! Was it lying in wait ahead, now summoning its desired prey?
Sarita began to run. There seemed to be more light ahead. She could hear the noise of Rhy's heels crunching the debris behind her. Then he was shoulder to shoulder with her—
There were more clear signs of battle here. Sarita's throat ached with the need to call for the child. But—if the child were under a compulsion such as she had felt, he would not answer.
More light—together they burst out into a large cavern which held them still for a second in sheer amazement. Here the crystal lines were much wider. Though their light was wan and eerie, still it made visible all that was there.
Directly before them was a level space and entangled there a gruesome mass in which one could not separate the bones of one of the dead from that of his neighbor, they were so tossed and twisted.
Cutting through this was a path clear and straight, its substance made of the blue crystals, looking almost like a stretch of ice.
This led directly to
a dais centered in this hidden domain. Stretched on that was something which gleamed pale blue and pearly white, with rainbow hues running across it. By this crouched Valoris. He was running his hands back and forth along the shimmering stuff, and under his touch it gleamed clearer and brighter.
14
“Pretty- pretty!" Sarita dashed forward up the two steps to the dais and
caught the child, holding him tightly although he squirmed and fought, howling with some of his old temper.
"Want— pretty— " He tried to push himself out of her hold. He was all right— safe, not hurt, not at the bottom of the lake— that was all she could think of at the present.
Kicking, he broke her hold and scrambled on hands and knees back to his treasure.
"Pretty!"
At first the girl thought that what lay there was a long, wide strip of cloth. But cloth was not patterned with scales. . . . Her eyes swept along that length and then—
With a gasp she tried to seize Valoris again, but he scuttled out of reach. That— that was a head! She could trace eyeholes, a snout. But it all lay as flat as if only skin remained, no bones—no flesh.
Rhys was already past her. Drawing his sword he inserted its tip into a wide hole which might have been the mouth, lifting it up. It came easily as if it had no more weight than the cloth she had first thought it.
"Skin—it is only a cast skin. Snakes do so once a year."
"The skin of what?" Sarita demanded. "And if this is a shed skin— what of the owner?"
A puff of dust rose as the head slipped from the sword tip, setting them all coughing.
"Long gone. Sarita—this must be what if left of the Loden!"
"Pretty." Valoris was running his hand up and down on the scaled surface, which gleamed ever the brighter as he wiped the dust from it.
"Pretty!" Sarita commented sharply, and then realized that the child was right. She had seen purses and belts made of snake skin that brought high prices in Raganfors. But this far outshone anything of that kind. The Loden?
Rhys walked along the outstretched length, measuring it in paces. "It was almost two men tall," he commented, and then looked at the battleground below, "and it gave good account of itself. Look here." He knelt and pulled to straighten out what could only be a foreleg. At its tip were holes in a curved pattern of five. "Claws," he commented.
"But—" Sarita looked from the carnage below to the skin. If the creature had survived the battle and shed its skin, where had it gone? Though all that dust was a reassurance that a long time had passed.
"Perhaps it did not like to have its home invaded." Rhys actually smiled. "It went to leave the mess our kind made well behind it-long ago."
Valoris held up the paw Rhys had straightened out. "Pretty!"
Sarita did not hear him, for at that moment she was caught up again in that vast, overwhelming sorrow which had touched her before but now completely enfolded her. She stared at Rhys. There was a glitter in his eyes and he brushed his hand across them.
"This is more than a place of the long dead." He seemed to be picking and choosing words with care. "There was evil here, but it failed." She saw his hand go out tentatively to the skin as if to soothe some ancient pain.
"I do not think this creature was of the Dark," he continued, "no matter what legend says of it. It was a man who bore that monster on his helm."
The feeling of loss and pain was draining from Sarita. She, too, touched the skin. To her surprise it did not feel rough in spite of the visible scales. And her love for beauty, in no matter what shape, awoke. She knew of no weaver, no embroideress, who could produce such glory as this.
"Pretty." Valoris was looking up into her face.
"Yes," she agreed, "it is pretty."
Still she wanted out of there, that place of death where darkness stained the light. There was no fear left, only a rising disgust. She also wondered what manner of man in those long years past had chosen the monster as his symbol. Had they come to slay the Loden? Somehow she was sure they had not succeeded, the discarded skin appeared to answer that. Where the beast had gone —perhaps it was best not to question.
On impulse she worked the awl out of her belt and touched its silver knob to the skin. There was a flash, and as she jerked away she saw a tinge of the rainbow light wrap around the knob, appear to sink into it. And at that moment she was sure that Valoris had been led for some important reason to bring them here.
They had difficulty prying the boy from his find, but Sarita wanted him safely out of there, away from the tangle of rusted weapons. When he would not listen to her, Rhys swung him up in a strong grasp, nor did the ranger pay any attention to his screams of rage.
Once they were outside Rhys returned the screaming, struggling boy to Sarita and went to the business of again moving stones. This time he sealed the fissure past any ability of Valoris to reopen it. However, once more outside the child ceased his raging. Instead he made straight for the berry bushes and began cramming the fruit into his mouth with both hands.
They joined him, then moved slowly toward their camp. Sarita drew a deep and thankful breath. Her fear of the lake, and that pall of sorrow which had fallen over her inside the cavern, had left her weary.
As she took Valoris' hand, he came willingly enough until he caught a glimpse of Briar and pulled free to run to the kid.
Busying herself with camp duties the girl continued to keep an eye on him, but he showed no sign of wandering off again. Rhys came up, bow shouldered, with Lopear's hackamore in one hand.
"Yesterday I saw osdeer tracks." He was so much his usual self that she could almost believe what just lay behind them was some kind of dream. "You will be safe enough."
Instinctively she knew he was right. In spite of what lay hidden in the walls which bordered it, the valley was safe. And they needed food. An osdeer would mean hide to patch boots already wearing thin.
It was past noon before Sarita finished the overhaul and washing of all their spare clothing. Valoris, worn out at last, curled up on a blanket and went to sleep as she hummed softly in time to her sewing.
Sewing rooms were never places of quiet. While apprentices were not permitted to chatter freely, there were intervals when Dame Argalas set one of the seniors to reading an edifying book aloud from the guildhouse library. And often they had sung.
Sarita thought of that other life —for it had been another life, as if death had found her at Var-The-Outer and issued her into another existence. She tried to reckon up the days since the taking of the keep and could not be sure of her tally.
The best she could figure was that there had been at least five or six ten-days. So long! These days had slid into each other, marked only by the need to prepare food, mend clothing, and tramp in the wilderness. If they could only have stayed at the lodge! The lean-to behind her now was a very poor exchange for what she now looked back upon as luxury.
If they were to stay here long, they would need better housing. There were not enough trees for building, nor had they the proper tools for such labor. Unwillingly she remembered that cavern to which she resolutely kept her back as she worked. To live there! She could not face clearing out that debris of death —certainly it was a place of ill omen. Where, then?
Sarita got to her feet to stretch, having carefully fitted her bone needle into the padded case. Slowly she turned, surveying all she could see of the valley.
It might be nearly the size of one of the large valley farms. The wildlife here was limited and Rhys had decreed early that they would not hunt the leapers or grass hens for the pot unless circumstances forced them to it.
At least the land was open enough so that they had been able to know from the first there were no larger beasts, except those they had brought with them. But now her eyes caught an irregularity near where Berry grazed. A rock protruding? Sarita shaded her eyes against the sun's glare. It was more than just a rock, she decided, and it abutted the valley cliff. Her curiosity stirred. She wanted no more surp
rises.
Valoris sat up and favored her with a wide grin: another tooth was appearing. Sarita laughed.
"Little lord, you are in a hurry to grow. Now let us go and see what Berry has found — "
With his hand in hers, Sarita plowed through the ragged clumps of grass. Valoris wriggled free and made a grab for a large black hopping insect, the biggest Sarita had ever seen, which took to the air with a powerful thrust of its hind legs. Briar came bleating to join them as they neared his mother.
Sarita stopped short. She had been right in her suspicions —that was no natural ledge of rock. Stone it was, but sat perfectly square, and the blocks which formed it were fitted together with such precision she could hardly distinguish the lines between one block and the next.
She loosed her mind touch —did any peril rest there? But she felt nothing. Valoris ran ahead to hug Berry, but Sarita now passed beyond the child. Those block walls were nearly the height of her shoulder, and as she walked around them she could find no opening. Yet it had been obviously erected for a purpose. It was a square, nearly the size of the lodge.
On impulse Sarita caught the top edge and pulled herself up. Here, too, was a platform of blocks with an unbroken surface —or was it? An eye used to catching flaws in a fabric centered on the middle of the surface.
Sarita strode toward that, realizing that the texture of the stones changed there. Though they were all still a dull gray, there was a difference. She dropped to her knees and ran her fingertips over the area. Where the other stones were rough, this one had a slick surface. Yet to the eye it still looked rough.
Sarita drew the awl and put its point down on one of the lines marking that different square. The meeting of metal with the surface gave forth a ringing sound. Quickly she moved to outline the full block.
It was when she reached the fourth side that the awl point no longer ran smoothly but caught. Another clear, ringing sound sent her scrambling away from the square. It began to move, rising upward perhaps a handsbreath —a trapdoor!