Children of the Gates

by Andre Norton

  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 fashioned of material which gave them a glitter of life so that she felt that the thing not only saw her but derived some malicious amusement 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 “god,” the focus for some horrible and evil religion, and so have drawn to it the energy sent forth by the worshipers, perhaps even the terror of sacrifices, that was the truth. But in itself it was nothing but cleverly fashioned 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 assumed 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 worship 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 ship 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 shield 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 shield, 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 for
th 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.

  11

  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, hoarse 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 glass. 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 god—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, shivered. But now his head came up and the conflict which had distorted his face was gone. There passed 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 passage 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 space.

  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 shining his torch into each fissure he passed. 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 scraping 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 mass.

  Stans worked the butt 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.