by Andre Norton
Equipped with supplies, I sped down the short space to the well, but saw no sign of Ayllia. I hung over to peer down to the bottom of the shaft. She was not there either. But I was almost certain she had gone this way.
As my boots rapped against the floor of the shaft I looked around for the pack which had fallen ahead of us. There were many marks on the pavement, the gritty dust of these lower levels stirred and scuffed—more than could result from just our coming and going. The working party, had they come this way? I had not noticed too much on our entrance, but now I studied each foot of the way with care as I retraced the passage to where it gave upon the road entering the base of the tower.
I was now away from that sound or vibration which made floors and walls sing faintly on the upper levels, so I heard a sound ahead. Not the warning roar of the arrival of a transport, but a cry which I thought must be human. And I was greatly tempted to call out to Ayllia, save that suspicion warned me she might be in some danger which it was better not to walk into blindly.
As I started down the dusty passage leading to the entrance I thought I saw movement ahead. I slowed, listened. If something or someone was coming toward me perhaps I would have to retreat, but if it went the other way I could follow.
Then in a small pool of glimmer I saw Ayllia. She was being dragged along by two figures shorter than she, creatures I could not see clearly. As I watched one of them dealt her a vicious blow across the shoulders which sent her staggering on. And they straightaway closed in on her again. She kept her feet but she went as one who was either only semiconscious or completely cowed, offering no resistance.
They were very close to the road tunnel and a moment or two later they were gone into it. I started to run, the heavy water bottles inflicting bruises as they banged my ribs, battering me as that blow had done for Ayllia.
At the tunnel I hesitated once more. Not only did I listen for the roar which would precede one of the transports, but I was undecided as to which way Ayllia and her captors had gone. Deeper into the towerways, or out into the country?
Though I listened and peered, I could find no clue. But at last I decided that it would be out. I hardly thought that those who inhabited the city would, by choice, take the dangerous road here. It was more likely to be the way of some invader.
Yet I was plagued as I began backtracking with the fear that my logical reasoning was at fault, that instead of following Ayllia I was heading in the opposite direction.
It was not until I was safely off that narrow footway and out in the night that I had confirmation as to the wisdom of my reasoning. That came when my foot struck against an object in the dark and sent it spinning into a shaft of moonlight—for I had not emerged into the blackness of complete dark but into a silvered world where a moon hung full and very bright.
What I had kicked into view was a packet I knew well, seeing as how I had made it up with my own hands, some of Utta’s healing herbs tied into a small sack. That had not fallen from my pack when we had entered this place because, until I had opened it to share the food with Ayllia, the carrier had been well tied. Therefore, someone had opened the pack hereabouts and dropped this.
I went to one knee and felt around. If anything else had been dropped, I did not find it. I could only believe that those who had taken Ayllia also had the pack, had opened it for inspection and lost this.
The workers in the cavern, the shadow figures I had seen with Ayllia—I decided they were alike. They certainly had human bodies, even if they were over-small. I had an impression, when I took time to call to mind and assess all I had seen, of very thin legs and arms. And I thought of those of Escore—the Thas—bloated bodies, spider limbs, creatures who veered so far from the human they were now utterly loathsome to us who dwelt in the outer world above their tunnels and burrows.
Had Thas found their way through the gate? But their use of fire as a tool—that was no Thas doing.
So those I had trailed had come this way, but now where? In the bright moonlight, and I could not be too far behind them, could I track them? The packet had lain well beyond the edge of the road turning to my left as if those I sought had struck out between that highway and the next tower.
The ground had a hard surface, but across it were drifts of the ashy sand. Neither was good for my purpose but I quested on, searching for any hint of trail. And I found it, far plainer than I had hoped. This was another roadway, though cruder than those feeding into the towers. It was apparent that heavy weights had passed here to wear ruts in the soil. And where that upper crust had been broken, I found prints of feet. Some of the sharpest were from boots—Ayllia’s, or so I believed. The others were smaller and narrower. The toes, instead of being rounded, speared out in points, unlike any I had seen. But they all pointed ahead and I followed.
That trail ended in a space where a new marking began and more and wider ruts cut very deep. I could only think of some vehicle which had carried a weighty cargo. There was no attempt to hide it and I marched along beside it.
The ruts approached the next road but did not cross it, rather paralleled it back into the country through which we had come on our way to the towers. This part of the land was more rolling and rougher than that we had traversed. The road was cut through hills, whereas the ruts veered and wove a way around such obstructions. It was impossible to see far ahead; I listened, hoping to hear something to tell me those I trailed were near, needing a warning if I were not to march blindly into captivity.
The hills rose higher all the time and crags of rock protruded from them—or what I thought to be rock, until taking shelter behind one when I thought I heard a noise, my hand rested on its surface, and detected a pattern of seam. And a closer look told me that these were not of nature’s forming, but the work of man or some intelligent creature. These hills were not of earth but the remains of buildings half hidden by the shifting of the ash-sand dunes.
I had little time to think of that, for my belief that I had heard a noise proved to be true. There was a hissing, and then a soft crunching. Into the moonlight below my perch crawled a new form of transport. Beside the swift cylinders speeding along the highways this was a clumsy, ill-constructed thing, as if born from another type of brain and imagination.
It had no wheels as the carts of my own world, but huge bands which ran from the front to the back, turning so, their treads spinning on rods projecting from the box body. If it carried driver or passengers they were in that box which was ventilated only by a series of narrow vertical slits spaced evenly around it.
The pace it held was slow, ponderous, steady, and it gave such an appearance of a fortress able to move across the land that I wondered if that was how it had been conceived. But the route it followed was the rutted way to the towers; perhaps it had been sent to fetch those who plundered the cavern.
I kept to my hiding place in the corner of the half-buried wall and watched it crawl on out of sight.
XI
Can one say that there is a “smell” to Power? I only know that one can sniff the evil of the Shadow; whether that be done by the nostrils of the spirit, or ones of flesh I have never learned. But it is true that in Escore I could sense the places of the Dark to be avoided. In this world, however, there was an acrid stench always with one and foreseeing, even to the small extent I had regained it, was blunted. It was as if in passing through the gate I had shed the right to call upon what had once been a shield on my arm.
Now I had no more than my own five physical senses to depend upon, and it was like losing half of one’s sight. Still I tried to see if I could not use even a little of my skills. Since Ayllia was also of my world there was a faint chance that there might exist a mind bond between us, and, using that, I could either gain from her some idea of where she went and the dangers which lay between us, or even, in a good meeting of mind, see through her eyes.
It was a very forlorn hope, but now I settled farther back into the ruined wall and concentrated upon Ayllia, building my mind pic
ture of her, willing an answer.
Only—
What!
I sat up tense, gasping. Not the Vupsall mind. No! But had touched, merely touched, on the edge of a mental broadcast so powerful that that small contact expelled me, buffeted me from its path, for it was aimed in another direction.
Not Ayllia, of that I was certain. Yet, was I also sure that what I had touched was of my world, trained in the Power? The gate—had my thought that others had come through it been right? But . . .
Part of me wanted fiercely to seek again that reassuring contact with the familiar. Another warned caution. I knew Escore history, and over and over had it been said that those who had used the gates were often of the Shadow, or the birth roots from which the Shadow had grown. To open communication with some dark power would doubly doom me.
I could not believe that those half-men of the city, nor those who had crawled past in the movable fortress, were of Escore. We have never depended upon machines. That is what we abhorred in the Kolder, who were in a way half-men, part of the machines they tended. And the Wise Women had believed us right in our choice, for in the last great battle at Gorm it had been mind power which had burnt out and vanquished those welded to metal.
But somewhere and not too far away was at least one from my world. And I longed to go seeking, but dared not until I knew more.
The rutted road of the crawler was very clear in the moonlight. And the sound of its crunching had died away. That was the road Ayllia had gone and the one I must follow. I drank sparingly from one of the water containers and slipped out to walk the ruts.
More and more of the hillocks and mounds around that roadway showed signs of being the remains of buildings. I could well believe that this had once been a city, unlike the tower one, but of some size and importance.
Then the ruts began to run between taller walls and suddenly into a vast open space like a huge crater or basin pocked deep into the earth. Here there were no remains of buildings, rather stretches of glassy material which the crawling tracks dodged around as if the treads of the fortress could not pass over their slick surfaces.
The ruts led to the center of the basin where there was a gaping blackness as if it were a mouth of such a shaft as we had found in the city, but as large as the base of one of the sky-reaching towers.
There was no cover to be found here. If I approached the well in the moonlight I would be as visible as if I sounded a warn horn at the verge of a manor. Yet it was into that hole Ayllia had surely gone. And it was laid on me, as heavily as if it were a geas, that I had a responsibility for her and must free her if I could.
I could not tell what spy searches might be laid about. But just perhaps—
Once more I hunkered down in the shadow of the last vestige of ruined wall. This time I covered my eyes with the palm of my left hand. With the right I touched the wand still thrust through my belt. I had no other thing of Power with me, and if it could add to my limited efforts I needed it badly.
I set the picture of Ayllia in my mind and sent out a search thought.
What I met was blankness. But it was a blankness I recognized and again I was startled into breaking my concentration. Ayllia was mind-locked against any such search. So alerted, I tried, very cautiously, as one might touch with only the tip of a finger, to find the source of the mind-lock. But what I fingered so very lightly was not what I expected to find, rather something entirely alien to all I knew.
A machine with Power? That was an anomaly I could not accept. Power was utterly opposed to machines and always had been. A Wise Woman could handle steel in the form of a weapon if some urgent need arose, as my mother had done upon occasion, though one relied mainly on the Power. But even so much a modification as a dart gun—that meant careful preparation in thinking patterns. We could not ally with a machine!
Yet touch here told me Ayllia was held in a pattern of mind-lock familiar to me, but that it was created by a machine! Could there have been some welding here of Escore knowledge with that native to this world to produce a monstrous hybrid?
To enter that hole ahead knowing no more than I did of what faced me there was utter folly. But neither could I turn my back on Ayllia. So was I one torn in two directions, unable to make up my mind. And such a state was so alien to my nature that I was perhaps easy prey to what followed, my mind so occupied with my dilemma that I was not ready, my safeguards down.
What struck was that seeking I had met before edge on. For a moment I received an impression of shock to the sender as great as that I had earlier experienced. And after that slight recoil, came a pouring out of a need so great that it actually pulled me on, out of the hollow where I had taken refuge, into the open. It was a current such as I had felt to a lesser degree in the hall of the gate.
My resistance awoke and I tried to fight with all I could summon, so I was a swimmer floundering in water rushing me madly toward sharp rocks of perilous rapids. And that which drew me on seemed triumphant, showing a kind of impatience which would not allow me any return of my own will.
Thus I came to the hole, which was a great mouth to gulp me down. And I saw a platform a little below me. But that did not fill the whole expanse, only a small wedge of it. Perhaps it was awaiting the return of the crawler that it might be lowered into the depths. Below I could see nothing else and it seemed to me this well reached so far toward the core of the earth that it was the length of one of the towers in reverse.
Beyond the waiting platform was the beginning of a stair circling down, hugging the wall of the shaft. I tried to fight the compulsion which drew me on, but there was no chance to free myself and I began the journey into the depths.
I discovered quickly that I must not look into the dusk below, but must keep my eyes on the nearer wall to fight the giddiness which struck at me.
Time had no meaning; my world narrowed to the wall, the abyss on the other side into which I must not look. And it seemed to me that this lasted for hours, days. The wall was smooth in parts, with the slick look of those glassy patches in the basin; then again it would be rock, but rock dressed to a uniform surface.
The moonlight which had been silver bright in the outer world no longer reached me, and now I went more slowly, feeling my way from step to step. But never was I released from that drawing.
At last, when I felt for the next step, I met solid level surface. I leaned, shaking, against the wall, daring now to turn my head and look up to where the outer world was a segment of light, then around me in the dark. I was afraid to venture away from the wall I could touch and which so afforded me a sense of security, if there could be any security in such a place as this. But the pull on me never faltered.
So I began to feel my way along, hand to wall, testing each step before I took it. I was, I thought, perhaps a quarter of the way around that space from the point where I reached the bottom, before my hand on the wall met empty space. And it was into that opening the current drew me. But again I sought frantically for a wall and kept my fingers running along it, tapping one boot toe ahead, lest I end up in a pit trap.
After that first burst of recognition the mind beam which had entrapped me took on a mechanical sending. I longed to probe for what personality might lie behind it, but I was afraid to so open myself to invasion. It was known that an adept could take over a lesser witch or warlock, and such bondage was worse than any slavery of the body. It was what I had feared and fled in Escore, and to succumb to it here would mean I was wholly lost for all time.
There was a sound ahead, a faint hissing. Then there appeared a line of light which widened as I blinked against the glare. I had an open door and I walked through in spite of a last resistance to the pull. But, as I stepped into the light, the compulsion vanished and I was free.
Only I had no time to take advantage of my release, for as I swung around to retreat, the halves of the door were already nearly shut—too narrow a space was left for me to wriggle through. I stood, wishing for some weapon. . . .
As in the cavern of the stored transports, I stood on a balcony or narrow upper runway; before me was a scene of activity I could not take in all at once. There was a board or screen on which lights flashed, flickered, died, or flashed again in no discernible pattern. From that came a tinkling which was not of human speech.
The screen appeared to divide the whole of the space below into two parts, though there was an aisle with a low wall running from some point immediately below where I now stood, to a narrow arch in the screen.
On either side of that wall were cell-like divisions, all having partitions about shoulder-high and each like a room. Some of these were occupied, and seeing those occupants I recoiled until my back struck against the door now tightly closed behind me. I had thought those figures in the cavern, and with Ayllia had had some odd outlines which half denied humanity. Now I saw them in full light and knew that, though they might be travesties of men, they were such as made them worse than the monsters of Escore. My last hope that I might find here some others caught by the gate vanished.
They were small, and their skin was a pallid gray which in itself was repulsive. Where the half-men of the towers had had heads capped with metal, these had a thin thatching of yellow-white hair, but it had fallen from the scalps in places, to leave bare red splotches which looked sore and scabby. They wore clothing which fitted so tightly to their bodies and limbs that it was almost a second skin. This was uniformly gray, but of a darker shade than the flesh beneath it, so that their hands showed up as pallid sets of claws, for they were thin to the point of near skeletons.
I saw, when I forced myself forward a step or two again to look at them, that their faces had a great uniformity, as if they were all copies of a single model—save that here or there they were further disfigured by puckered scars or rough and pitted skin.