Here, far underground, the fungi were stranger even than those on the surface. It was as if the House saved its more delicate and cherished outgrowths for this hidden realm. And it was obvious that they needed no light, for many of them glowed with an evil light of their own making.
A broad, dark pool, full of floating scum, had formed where the floor had actually sunk or collapsed near the east wall of the great cave. Water trickled steadily over and down a broad area of slimy rock, for this wall was unfinished, indeed hardly even smoothed down by the craftsmen of long ago. An underground spring must have burst forth in ages past and still flowed into the pool, leaving by some hidden outlet.
Around this sinister tarn, which was many yards in extent, there grew a forest of tail, gently tapering spires of soft, living matter. Several men's height they were, colored with pallid and crepuscular shades, ugly, faded violets, insipid yellows, and debauched, bleached oranges. On top of some of them glowed round areas of foxfire and dim phosphorescence. This was the light, the priest realized, which he had glimpsed far off when they first entered the cavern.
As he watched this buried, obscene parody of a living wood, Hiero was moved by its allure as well as by its horror. Totally alien and awful were the purposes of the House, but it could still create an eldritch beauty. He checked his mind sharply at this thought and examined his own reasoning, fearing a mental trap, an allurement into which the entity called the House might be subtly trying to draw him.
But there was no contact, and he knew he was truly free. Besides, somehow he had the feeling that this was a place of utter privacy to the House, a hidden chamber of repose which the monster deemed inaccessible and utterly safe. How he knew this, he could not have said, but perhaps his terrible struggle with the lord of the fungi had allowed him to fathom, if only unconsciously, its emotions and thought processes; he had thus established a strange rapport with his enemy.
At first he thought nothing moved, and he was about to emerge himself when he caught a flickering shadow out of the corner of his eye and instantly froze. The forest of fungoid spires was truly alive!
The things' movements were so slow and rhythmic he had almost missed them, but now that he watched carefully, he could see it all. The unnatural forms were not rooted or fixed, not even as much as a mushroom, but were moving, ever so slowly, about on their broad bases. As he watched, fascinated, he saw that it was like a mockery or simulacrum of some stately dance, or even a solemn religious service. The weird beings, plants or whatever they were, would approach one another slowly until their sides touched; then a rippling motion seemed to run up and down their entire length. Those whose crowns glowed with the pale phosphorus seemed to deepen that glow in these encounters. Too, as they approached each other, a clot of slime or soft, bulging flesh developed at their bases and then dissolved as they retreated in the same, almost imperceptible fashion, to begin their peculiar gyrations anew with a fresh partner.
The ghastly things were sentient in some way, of this he felt sure. Just as the great slime molds he had met far above were able to sense enemies or their food, so too were these living fungi able to feel, to react, perhaps even to know. Had he revealed himself, he was sure that he would have been detected, if not even captured and slain. He drew back further into the shadows of whatever vast machine was giving him shelter.
The living cones, or fungus candles, for they were thinner than a normal cone shape, partially masked the black rift of the tunnel which opened on the far side of the water. It was a tunnel, of that he was sure. Its sides were regular and smooth, too rounded to have occurred naturally. Once, in remote ages, it might have been a major entrance to the underground hiding place of the great missiles. But the slime and muck which coated the lips of the entrance proved that nothing human had passed that way for many long years.
Well, he had learned all he could. He quietly slid further back, away from the stagnant water and the evil, living spires of mold. When once out of sight, he began to run, always angling toward the south. One portion of his brain, meanwhile, had kept a ceaseless watch on the inchoate but collected mental force which he knew represented the Unclean horde. Since they had steadily advanced, there was only one place from which they could be coming, and that was one of the tunnels in the southern wall. A fairly clear road must exist to it from the surface, and the Unclean leaders would be moving into and down it as rapidly as possible.
He paused and calculated various times for a moment. No trace of his mind or that of the others could the enemy now detect. This he felt sure of, for his powers had become such that he could have kept a protective shield over many more than just four minds, even if Aldo were not on guard. In any case, defense was always far less effort than attack, for it could be maintained with and by an unconscious effort of mind. No, he could check on the enemy's progress, but not the reverse. Aldo had been right. Their fear of him was such that they were relying on physical strength and hiding under their mechanical mind screens.
Now he sent messages to his companions to join him, whether they had found anything worth taking or not. He simply stood still and waited, until they came. In a few minutes the white beard of the aged Aldo appeared around a corner, and the other two came only a little bit behind. The priest was so wrought up, he noticed nothing of the small package Luchare carried.
"Look," Hiero said, stooping. He traced a design in the dust of an engine's buttress next to him. It was hard to see in the dim Sight, but there was just enough when he added that of his little lamp.
"Here's where we are. Here's a pool of water over on the east side. The House has an exit here. I'll tell you about that later. Over here," his finger drew yet another circle, "is the southern entrance. S'duna and the Unclean must be coming this way. That elevator machine is broken, and we can't go back. All right, we're going out the way the enemy comes in, to the south. But you'll have to do exactly what I tell you." He paused and grinned, his face quickly looking years younger on the instant. "Even then, there's a good chance it may not work. It depends on two things. One, S'duna's so eager to get me, he'll stop at nothing and, hopefully, not think straight. Two, so will somebody else, not think straight, I mean. Oh, yes, and neither of them knows or is aware of the other at all. That's the equation, and it has to be perfect to work."
Brother Aldo laughed, honest, chuckling laughter. "I see your plan, I think. It may work out totally, but if not, well, there's still a great load off my spirit. Tell me what you want us to do."
Gorm, who had been kept informed simultaneously, sent a quick thought. A terrible idea. Let's hope it works. Luchare simply pressed herself close to him.
"Here's what we do," the priest went on. "You go this way, over to the southwest wall, and hide the best way you know how. I'll find you. I have to go back where I came from. Now hurry!" He kissed the velvet cheek gently and then spun on his heel, erasing every thought but those needed for the task ahead. The Unclean army was very close!
Returning to the evil pool of water was easy, for his own marks in the untrodden dust of centuries were simple to follow. In a matter of minutes he was peering around the corner of another machine at the dark water and the moving nightmare garden (if such it was) of the House. In the dim light, the living candles still moved and stank.
He took a careful aim with his crossbow, lowered it, having once got the range, and raised it again. In the interval he had lighted the oily rags bound around the quarrel from the rekindled firepot. He released the trigger, and with a hiss, the now blazing dart shot across the water and deep into the pulpy substance of the tallest of the moving towers of putrescence.
The reaction was instantaneous. As he had prayed, the horrid things were every bit as inflammable as their fellow fungi far above, up on the earth's surface. The fire raced over the tall, writhing shape in seconds, and the sudden, whipping movements and frenzied gyrations of the mold beast touched and set fire to a half dozen of its fellows in hardly less time. Hiero had been readying another bolt, but so
speedy was the awful destruction he had wrought with only one that he stayed his hand.
At the same time, there came into his brain a terrible shrilling, a piercing vibrato, on an incredibly high wavelength, which rose and fell like the skirling of some demoniac orchestra. He knew he was hearing the death agony of the foul things and, being a kindly man, felt momentary sorrow even for these.
Then he remembered his mission and stepped into the open!
The moving spires, such as were not already alight and writhing in their fiery death throes, were aware of him at once. He had been right, he realized; the creatures were indeed sentient! Immediately they knew him to be the author of their misery. The tall columns bent as one in his direction. He could feel an almost material wave of venomous hatred emanating from them as their fellows blazed and shook all around them. The very slime with which their movements had coated the naked rock was itself flammable, and fresh runnels and gutters of moving fire sought out many of those who were nowhere near their burning fellows.
The splendor and horror of the sight almost made him a victim himself. One of the awful spires, whose top was as yet aglow with only its own poisonous foxfire, bent until it pointed in his exact direction. Then, from its crown, a dully glowing series of blobs were launched in Hiero's direction. So unexpected was the attack that he barely had the presence of mind to leap aside as the first ball of glowing slime raced his way. Even so, it splattered almost at his feet, and one minute fragment struck his right hand. The pain was savage, and only the instant application of the oil-soaked rag he still clutched made it die down. He hastily backed away, keeping on his toes, so that the next poisonous missiles came nowhere near. Actually, if one stayed alert, he realized, they were easy to avoid.
All the while he was praying for something else. He had provoked the ruler of this foul realm, carefully and deliberately. Where was it? Had he guessed wrong? Mind and body keyed up to the highest degree, he backed slowly away from the inferno of the dying fungi. The stench of the corrupt and burning bodies, and the thick, greasy smoke, made even this close proximity almost unbearable. Where are you, House, damn you? And even as he bent his thought upon it, it came.
He had been watching the gaping mouth of the tunnel beyond the pool, a task made increasingly difficult because of the swirling smoke wreaths and nauseating reek, for he was sure this was the entrance to the creature's lair. Perhaps it was, but there were others.
Almost before he had time to realize it, a surge of filthy liquid overflowed the near edge of the buried, underground pool and sent a wave of fluid corruption racing over the floor in his direction, and the bulging, gelatinous horror of the House began to emerge out of the water. As it grew in size, it sent one bolt after another of mental force at the lone man.
It was well that Hiero had armored himself against this very time. In odd, waking moments, ever since his first encounter with the monster, he had carefully analyzed its Medusa-like power of paralysis, and he had deduced that its true strength lay in an attack on the psyche, rather than on the actual brain. The emotional centers of the body were its targets, not the reasoning process, and in the subconscious alone could it establish its unearthly stranglehold.
One remote corner of his mind registered mild surprise at the relatively modest size of the alien monstrosity. Its brownish, slimy bulk was not too much higher than his own head and scarcely more than five or six yards in total width. It still preserved the odd, four-cornered shape which had made Vilah-ree name it, but the lines moved and shook, the angles continually re-formed in peculiar abhorrent and sickening ways. Hiero saw also that it could move on its blobby base, just as the horrible candle-things did, and that it could move fast. Also now, long, glistening tendrils or pseudopods sprouted from its upper parts and waved hungrily as it slid rapidly in his direction over the floor. And all the while its ravening hatred and power beat upon his mind. His own rapport with the alien growth had become so strong that he understood why it laired so deep here and what actually he had done when he had attacked the fungoid spires. The pool was the center of not so much a garden but more (though not entirely) a harem!
The seal which he had painstakingly set upon his inner being held. Even so, he prayed for strength as he backed away from the water and into the aisle in the machinery from which he had first come. After him flowed the monster, and behind it, in turn, came the remaining spires.
No more did the House use its vile blandishments to make him an ally and thus attempt to lure him within its reach. For it recognized him. Its hatred of the one being who had ever broken its power and had helped destroy much of its awful kingdom overcame it, until its strange composite mind could think of nothing else but to obliterate the impudent minikin before it. What���did the very inner parts of its buried realm, its hidden mates' playground, hold no safety from this feared and dreaded enemy? On, on, and slay! Its speed increased, and its groping, vibrissal pseudo-pods flailed the dead air as it sought to rend him.
Carefully, judging his speed to a nicety, Hiero fled from the thing and its pack of followers. The assaults on his mind he repelled, content merely to ward off the House's attack and not to try to retaliate. Any such trial on his part might serve instead to open new corners of his own brain to fresh and unknown assaults. Who knew of what else the monster was capable if allowed, even for an instant, to forget its mad rage?
Down the silent, dust-laden corridors, under the dim illumination of the glowing bars of millennia-old light, the strange chase continued. The human fled; the living lord of the slime sought to overtake him and extinguish its bitterest foe from the earth. Save for the light footfalls and breathing of the man and the sucking, slithering noise of the fungoid pack's progress, there was utter quiet. The deadly race, to an observer, would have appeared some strange and voiceless charade or shadow show. The squat House and the tall, dozen remaining mold pillars sped on; the man ran; the shrouded, ancient machines were backdrop.
Always, the priest led his pursuers south, shifting a little back and forth so that it would not be too obvious and straight a road, but never going very far from the line he had chosen. And now, at length, there fell upon his ear a sound for which he had yearned. It was the distant vibration of a legion of people moving, the faint but distinct echo of many feet! The Unclean host was upon them and must even now be debouching into the great cavern!
Still, husbanding his strength, Hiero ran on; and, implacable as ever, the alien master of the mold-things and its last minions followed on his track, centuries-old dust by now coloring them all the same pallid gray.
At a certain intersection of two opposing aisles, Hiero suddenly increased his speed. His careful appearance of fatigue was suddenly shed, as quickly as that of a parent bird whose apparently broken wing has led the searcher far from, its huddled young.
Now he turned and darted away at full speed, taking the House by surprise as he did so. He flashed away toward the south wall and then���barely before leaving the shelter of the machines���darted into a narrow gap between two huge engines and was gone. One instant the House thought it had him trapped, the next he was utterly vanished!
Ravening, the unstable, shifting bulk increased its speed, layers of filth and dust flying as it sped forward in the manner of some Brobdingnagian snail on its rippling base, its slender mates coming on in its wake.
Hiero, now two hundred yards off and well to the left of his former track, peered cautiously out toward the open, the southern end of the ancient cave. What he saw made him draw breath in exultation.
Pouring into the cave, rank upon rank, file upon file, came the massed forces of the Unclean. Even as he watched, the last ones entered the great cave, and the tunnel gaped empty behind them. At least two hundred creatures were already streaming across the open, some of them men in dark uniform clothes, armed with pikes, others Leemutes in their own skins. He recognized red Hairy Howlers, brown Man-rats, and, far off to one side, a clump of the new things he had first encountered on
the ship, the Gliths, their gray, scaly hides glistening. Not far from the entrance itself, marshaling their forces, were a group of men in dark cloaks and hoods. The adepts were preparing for a master stroke, and he smiled grimly as he thought that only one man was the cause of all this preparation! Truly, the enemy had not been properly challenged for a long time.
And then it happened. The first part of his desperate scheme came to fruition, just as he had planned it and willed it, but (down inside) never dared believe it would.
Out into the open from the central passageway, charging along in its blind rage, seeking the hated human and oblivious of ail else, came the House!
From his vantage point, Hiero could see it all, every stage of the weird ensuing drama. All movement ceased instantly out on the quarter mile of open, between the machines and the cavern wall Not a man, not an Unclean mutant, stirred. The little group of hooded masters of evil were frozen, standing with their heads together, as if turned to ice in the middle of their plots.
He spared a glance for the House. It too had checked and come to a halt, and for once its own unstable, wobbly outlines were not moving. A little way out in the open from the street he had just quit, it halted, its acolytes motionless also. Its pursuit was forgotten as it strove to adjust to a new situation with all the power at its command.
I'm right! the priest exulted. The strange, mesmeric power of the House was unaffected by the Unclean mechanical screens, screens which Hiero himself had been unable to penetrate. The House really did not operate on the brain at all, and the blocking power the Unclean scientists had devised was therefore useless against it.
Around him, surging in a way which to his sensitive mind was practically physical, Hiero could feel the ferocious wills of the Unclean overlords struggling to be free. But the only free brains in the House's environs now were his own and those under his protection. The monster's pressure upon his had ceased as it grappled with its new and unexpected foes. It had never had so many creatures to control before and it was having a hard time holding them immobile. Hiero, observing from the "outside," so to speak, could actually feel, with his mind, the House's efforts to maintain its screen as the swarm of enemy beings tried to break the hold it had laid on their bodies.
Hiero Desteen: 01 - Hiero's Journey Page 36