Children of the Gates

by Andre Norton

  The pace Stans set was one she could match with ease, since the Yurth had long since been a roaming people. He did not speak again, nor had she any reason to break the brittle silence lying between them. Their companionship was too new, too untested. And she had no desire to do that testing.

  Twilight was upon them well before they had even reached the foothills—though those were clear-cut now, looking as stark and barren as the plain over which they journeyed. Stans halted at last, pointing to the left where some stones stood tall as if growing tree-like from the ground.

  “Those can be a windbreak, unless that changes direction.” He spoke for the first time since they had left the ruins. “It is the best shelter we can find hereabouts.”

  Elossa eyed those stones more doubtfully. She had good reason to believe that they were no natural feature of the earth and plain, rather more ruins. The illusions which might cling to such a place were ever in her mind. Even though such manifestations were only hallucinations to be controlled by Yurth training, still the very vividness with which they could paint themselves on the air could not but stir fear, and fear works upon the stability of the most disciplined mind.

  Only Stans was very right, they could not keep on going through the night which was coming so fast. Even a faint promise of shelter away from the wind was to be sought. These are stones only, she told herself. If they hold aught of emotion, an imprint on them strong enough to summon illusions to torment the sensitive, she must armor herself with the truth and dismiss such visions for what they were.

  As the Raski had pointed out, they did afford a windbreak. So when the two travelers hunkered down among the rocks they were, for the first time, out of the push of that cold. Elossa opened her journey bag.

  Food, drink, both were problems they must face now. The supplies she had carried were scanty and not meant to serve more than one for a few days. She broke one of the coarse meal cakes carefully apart and offered half to Stans. There was water in her bottle, though they must limit themselves to sips until they discovered some river or spring in those heights ahead.

  He did not refuse her bounty and he ate slowly as one mindful that every crumb must be found and munched. Of the water he took very little. When he had done he nodded to the hills ahead.

  “The Naxes rises there. Water and game. . . . Also. . . .” Stans paused, frowning, as if his own thoughts had become a puzzle. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and continued, but it was as if he spoke more to himself than to the girl beside him. “There is the cave—the Mouth of Atturn.”

  “The Mouth of Atturn,” she repeated when he again fell silent. “You have knowledge of this place?” The tradition of his House had made him in this generation the guardian of Kal-Hath-Tan. Did he also know more of what lay about the city?

  His frown was more intense. “I know,” he said with such sharpness as to warn her off any further questioning.

  So wrapped in their cloaks they slept behind the stones until Elossa was jerked suddenly out of slumber by some inner warning triggered by the Yurth talent. Over her crouched the Raski hardly visible in the night’s darkness. Some trick of the small starlight from overhead touched upon what he held—a bared knife.

  Elossa rolled to one side as the knife struck down into the earth where she had lain. But the blow intended to bury steel in her flesh, now slicing into the ground instead, threw Stans off balance. She rolled again, setting between them one of the stones. Getting to her feet now, her staff in hand, the girl waited, her heart beating with force enough to shake her body.

  Ruthlessly she reached out with mind-touch. The wildness of thought she so found was near as upsetting as that attack had been. This was like tapping a mind gone insane. Horror and fear held the Raski in tight grip. And she had a glimpse of a distorted monster. He—he thought that was she!

  “Stans!” She cried aloud his name, striving to so awaken him. For it seemed to Elossa that only a man in the hold of a compelling nightmare could be so disoriented.

  She heard an answering cry, wild and beast-like. Then she saw him beyond the stones. He was running, on into the darkness of the night. And he went like a man pursued by an unbelievable source of terror.

  Shaking, Elossa put out one hand to the stone behind which she had taken refuge. What had happened? All she could guess in answer was that uneasy fear which had been hers earlier—that these stones might generate illusion and one such had worked upon the Raski strongly because of his very heritage.

  There was no use in running after him. If the stones were the source of his terror, then once he was out of range, his sanity should again be in control. She opened her mind wide, sent out a questing which lasted only an instant or two since she had no desire to attract any influences which might abide here.

  Stans—he was still in flight. She had no desire to try to compel his return. Such an attempt might only heighten his distortion of mind at present.

  Once more Elossa settled down in the lee of the stones. To all her cautious probing these remained only rock. It would seem that if they did exude some illusions such were a menace to Raski only.

  Though she was uneasy and wanted to stay on guard, she drifted once more into sleep. Then, for a second time, she awoke into dire danger. For she opened her eyes, instantly awake, only to believe for a second or two that she was still caught in some particularly vivid dream.

  This was not the plain where she had fallen asleep by the rocks. Instead she stood leaning on her staff in a narrow valley between two rises of hills. There was a season-killed and dry looking brush about. But in the middle of that, directly before her, crouched a sargon, its snarling echoed from the hill walls as a heavy menace.

  The beast was a young one, perhaps of this season’s litter. But even so immature a sargon was more than a match for any human. While the creature seemed somehow to guess that she must be helpless prey.

  Frantically Elossa summoned the authority of mind control. But it was as if her trained thought was over-slow. She could not hold this raving beast nor turn it! She was going to be torn by those claws. She was. . . .

  Out of the air came a shrill singing sound. The sargon’s flanks quivered as it gathered strength to launch itself upon her. But now it yowled and in its throat showed the shaft end of a crossbow bolt.

  Elossa came to life. She unleashed at the creature the full power of her talent. While, at the same time, she flung herself to one side even as she had moved to escape Stans’ attack.

  The sargon squalled, clawed with one paw at the wound in its throat from which poured a flood of dark blood. Elossa flattened her body tight against the wall of the hill. Between her and the wounded beast there was only a thin growth of brush which the creature could easily break through. But with her thought she prodded as best she could.

  As if it had not seen her part-escape moments earlier, the sargon charged forward, breaking down brush. Blood spouted, as its exertions speeded the flow. Again that wailing in the air and a second bolt drove into the body of frantic beast, placed behind one of its forelegs.

  Sprinkling blood widely, the sargon whirled around. Once more it did see her. It was readying for another spring. She could not control this raging alien mind. No one could make a sargon do other than its own will—or. . . .

  Perhaps it was the feeling that death was very close to her which speeded Elossa’s own thought processes. She dropped her vain attempt to somehow divert the attention of the beast. Instead, with a burst of energy which she rose to only under the lash of fear, she created an illusion. A second Elossa (not too carefully depicted, but at least in the animal’s sight enough like its intended prey to draw its attention) now stood before the sargon. The illusion turned and ran. The sargon squalling aloud in its pain and blood lust swung its heavy body around once more to pursue.

  It must have so presented the unseen bowman with a better target. For with a third shrilling of flight a bolt found its target. The sargon flung up its head, opened its jaw for a great roar. But
it was not sound alone which burst from the beast. Rather a second outpouring of blood fountained down to earth. The creature took one step and a second, and then toppled. Though it still fought to regain its feet and its cries sounded strongly, the end had come.

  Elossa needed the support of the bank against which she had taken refuge. That last outpouring of her talent had weakened her as she had seldom been since the earliest days of her training. It would take much rest until she could once more summon even the lightest of mind-power to her service.

  She lifted her head as pebbles and earth cascaded down the hillside across the narrow valley. Stans half slid down in their wake. She could not test his mood by her only defense, not in her present condition. Though if he meant her harm now he need only have allowed the sargon to have its way. Or was it that some touch of the ancient revenge bred in him still worked to the point that he must take Yurth life by his own hand?

  She stood quietly. In fact she could not have fled, even if she so wished, all the energy having seeped out of her. He paused, watching her across the body of the sargon. Then, without word he knelt to work his bolts out of the still quivering carcass, deliberately cleansing each in a fashion by driving it point down into the earth and plucking it forth again.

  He no longer looked at Elossa. It was as if she were invisible. Nor did he speak. What would happen now? Her distrust of the Raski had awakened once again. Perhaps there was too great a gulf between their two races for any amount of good will to bridge.

  Restoring his bolts to their quiver Stans got to his feet again. Now he did face her. There was a shade of expression on his dark face but she could not read it.

  “Life for life.” He spoke those three words as if they had been forced out of him against his will. What did he mean? That this was in payment of the succor she had given him when he had been clawed by a similar beast on the journey to Kal-Hath-Tan? Or had he saved her now because his attempt in the night had failed and he would be quit of the memory of that? She felt blind when she could not mind-probe for the truth.

  “Why,” she said at last, “why would you take knife to me? Is your hate from the old days still so strong, Stans of the House of Philbur?”

  He opened his mouth as if about to answer and then closed it firmly once more. There was about him an aura of wariness as if he were fronting a possible enemy.

  “Why must you take my life, Stans?” she asked again.

  He shook his head slowly. “I do not kill,” he began and then his head came up proudly and he met her in a fast locking of eyes.

  “It was not I. This is a haunted land. It had secrets of things we Raski have long forgotten, which perhaps even you Yurth, with all your dark powers, never knew. There was another will taking over my body. When it did not win what it wished, it left me. I—” Again he frowned. “I think it is different—not Raski as I know, not Yurth. . . . It is very dangerous—perhaps to the both of us.”

  That this world might have secrets was, indeed, not impossible. Elossa turned her head to look up at the hills about them. They could go back, put into some corner of their minds to be walled there, all that had happened, all they had learned concerning themselves and their people. But she did not believe that was possible. To go on was to venture into the totally unknown. Yet she had a certainty growing within her that this was what could be the only road for her.

  “We must go on,” Stans said. “There is that—it is like

  Kal-Hath-Tan—it draws. Or does not that drawing touch you, Lady? I know that you may have no trust in me now, yet in some manner we are bound together.”

  Elossa tried to summon the talent—to judge—perhaps to feel what he said lay upon him. But she was too exhausted. If she went it would be going blind for a space until her energy was renewed. Resolutely she pushed away from her support.

  “I have found water, also the path to the Mouth,” he said then. “It is not far.”

  “Then let us go.” So she chose a new road for the second time.

  10

  So this was the Mouth. Elossa hitched the carry cord of her supply bag up higher on her shoulder, studying the opening before her. Undoubtedly the place had been, or was, some cave opening, natural in these heights to begin with. But there had been the work of man overlaying that of nature. A portion of rock surrounding the opening had been smoothed to provide a surface into which were deep carven, strange mask-like faces.

  Or were those separate faces? Rather, it seemed to the girl that they were the same face expressing different emotions, mainly, she decided, malignant ones. Now she asked of her companion, breaking the dividing silence which had lain between them since they had begun the climb to this place:

  “You name this ‘Mouth of Atturn,’ who then—or what then—is Atturn?”

  Stans did not glance toward her at all. Instead he faced the dark opening of the Mouth, into which daylight seemed reluctant to reach, with a faint shadow of fascination on his face. The Raski did not answer at once, as if her words reached him so faintly he scarce heard them at all.

  “Atturn?” Now his head did turn slowly, reluctantly. “Atturn—Lady, I do not know. But this was a place of power for the ruling House of Kal-Hath-Tan.” He rubbed one hand across his forehead.

  “One of your legends? But there must be more,” Elossa prodded. Before she entered such a place she wanted to learn all she could. Her experience with Stans in that other underground place beneath the ruins was not such as to encourage her to try a new venture into unknown darkness.

  “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 scrap 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 pass 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 reassured, she followed on into the dark. For dark it was beyond the small apron 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 butt 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.