The Shadow People

by Margaret St. Clair

  One man had control of each of the victim's arms, and the third had pulled his tongue from his mouth and was jabbing at it with some instrument. The flapping noise came from the beating of the victim's heels against the sand as he writhed in pain and tried to free himself.

  All four fled silently when I came abreast of them, the torturers and the tortured. They hardly seemed to look at me, but from later experiences, I think they were running from the sword. Why they were torturing him, whether they had any reason at all, it is impossible to say. Such scenes are common in Underearth. Torturers and tortured change roles easily.

  What impressed me the most about the incident was its noiselessness. Even in his pain the victim had been silent. The four men had fled like figures in a dream. I might have thought I had imagined them, except that they left ridges and dents in the sand.

  They had run off to the right, where there seemed to be another of those openings in the rock. But now I was getting to the end of the cavern. I could see the rock closing down ahead.

  The roof had grown lower. In front of me were three large, pitch-black openings, ranged like doorways in the rock. They all had the look of major thoroughfares, with the edges worn smooth either from traffic or the flow of some ancient river; and each of them was wide enough for a girl to have been carried through it. I had to take one of them, or go back to one of the low openings I had previously scorned.

  As far as I could see, there was absolutely no reason to prefer one of the three ways to another. On impulse I started down the extreme right-hand one.

  It was much darker in this new channel than it had been in the cavern. The walls did not phosphoresce at all. I walked forward in darkness so profound that it seemed to impede the beating of my heart. Would even Otherworld denizens use a highway that was so impenetrably black? It was possible, of course, that it would grow lighter after a while.

  I went forward a little farther. I disliked the feel of this channel more and more. Finally, I decided to turn back and try one of the other ways. I didn't know whether I was being cowardly or wise.

  This time I chose the opening on the far left. It was very slightly less dark than the first passage had been, and it seemed wider. I hadn't gone very far in it when the sword began to vibrate, very pleasantly and melodiously, in my hand.

  It was like the purring of some sweet-throated tiger, or the humming of some big happy bee. I found it wonderfully reassuring; it didn't occur to me, even for a moment, to wonder whether something external had set the sword to vibrating. It was exactly as if it had spoken to me and told me I was taking the right way.

  All the same, I decided to try the middle passage as a check. It turned out to be the lightest of the three passages, though that is not to say it was in any respect really light. I walked along it for some fifty feet. The sword was silent. Good, I would take the left-hand way.

  The sword repeated its humming approval as I entered it.

  The way led generally downward. Sometimes there were patches of fox fire on the walls, but often I moved in utter darkness. Sometimes the passage was wide, wide enough for several men to have walked through it abreast, and then it would narrow to the width of a hall door. There were many alternatives and twists, and the sword guided me surely through them all.

  Once, in a particularly dark spot, it began to vibrate warningly in my hand. I tapped the rock in front of me with the blade, and found there was a great hole in the floor, from which came dimly and far below the sound of rushing water. Fortunately, the passage was wide at that place, and there was plenty of room for me to detour around the opening. I wondered whether the heroes of saga, who thought of their swords as living and looked in their blades for counsel before they went to war, had had swords like mine.

  It was bitterly cold. The sweat of my exertions seemed to freeze on my back. The rock heaps I clambered over were often glazed with ice. I was getting tired, and when I came to a hollow in the floor between two higher points, I decided to try to sleep or rest. The rock was a little warmer there.

  I lay down on my back, with the hilt of the sword in my hand. I thought it was safe enough. I had neither heard nor seen any Underearth people since I entered the passage. But I felt guilty to be resting while Carol was still unfound.

  The rock was so hard that I did not think I could sleep. I was tireder than I had realized. I was asleep and dreaming almost as soon as I lay down.

  I dreamed of daylight, exquisite bright colors, translucent blue-green waves breaking in creamy froth on a sunny beach. The dream shifted to beds of bright flowers, and then back to the waves crashing on the beach. The roaring of the waves turned to an ominous whir. I was suddenly awake, my eyes open on darkness, clutching the hilt of the sword, which was vibrating angrily in my hand.

  Before I could get to my feet, I felt a stunning blow on the tendons of my shoulder, between my neck and my collar bone. It was my sword arm; for a moment I couldn't lift the sword at all, and when I could, I couldn't raise it much above the level of my thigh. Still, it was some defense; and I was able to scramble to my feet and look around me before I was struck again, this time a hard slash on the back of my head. Blood began to run down my neck and along my back under my clothes.

  I managed to transfer the sword to my left hand. I struck out with it awkwardly, still dizzy from the blow on the back of my head. There seemed to be at least three attackers. One, perhaps a woman, lurked in the background, her head dimly silhouetted against a patch of fox fire. She seemed to urge the others on with meaning looks and arched, foolish eyebrows. But I could not see well enough to be sure of any of this.

  It was plain, at least, that they dreadfully feared the steel of the sword. They winced aside from it as if it were burning hot. I managed to cut one of them badly with the blade. The others ran then, with him stumbling after them.

  I didn't go after them, though I supposed they would be lurking for me in the darkness somewhere ahead. I stood leaning on the sword, panting and weak, while I recovered myself. I wondered how they, who so hated steel, had managed to cut my head with "something that seemed as hard and sharp as a knife. (I later found that they had attacked me with a favorite weapon of theirs, owl talons bound with sinew to the head of a wooden club.) None of the wounds I got in Otherworld, then or later, ever infected, though I was often weak and sick. It seems odd. I suppose the low temperature had something to do with it.

  At last, I roused myself to go forward. I thought of eating, but I decided I might need the food more later. I could stand my hunger for a while.

  I kept stepping in something sticky. In one of the lighter places in the passage, I saw that the stickiness was blood from the man I had wounded. There was no other sign of the beings that had attacked me as I slept.

  I had to keep stopping to rest. By preference, I did this in one of the spots where fox fire gave a certain wan light. The constant darkness tended to erode my awareness of myself; to see my hands, even dimly, helped me realize I still had a body. At one of these halts, I saw a saucer of meal resting on a ledge in the rock.

  What was it doing here? I picked up the dish and examined it. It was an ordinary saucer, plastic I think, but the meal it held was unusual. It looked like very coarse corn meal, dull brick-red in color, and it had a faintly phosphorescent glow.

  For some reason, it looked awfully good to me. I picked up a handful of the meal, sifted it through my fingers, carried a pinch of it to my lips.

  There was a squeaking somewhere near me. Suddenly I remembered Fay's warning against eating or drinking while I was in Otherworld. I put the dish down carefully, convinced that I had been about to do something very dangerous. But there had been no sound from the sword.

  Chapter Five

  I slept once more before I came on the cavern with the feast. The cavern was quite large; dripping water had made a curtain of stalactites down the middle that partly hid its interior from anybody who stood at the entrance. The lower part of the walls was dimly and regularly luminou
s with chunks of fox fire. I suppose the beings who assembled in the cavern tended to bring pieces of fox fire with them when they came.

  I didn't at first realize that there was anybody in the cavern. I was well into it before I saw movement on the rock floor in front of me. They, for their part, were so absorbed in what they were doing that I was almost among them before they noticed me at all. There must have been twenty or thirty of them—a large gathering for the Silent People.

  They scattered when they perceived me. They scurried away in all directions, like crabs or rats. I was to observe on other occasions a certain shamefacedness in them when they feasted, as if a remembered human taboo faintly disturbed them at such times. Even if I hadn't been carrying the sword, they would not have attacked me immediately.

  As it was, I was halfway across the cavern before I heard them coming on me from behind. I trusted the sword to protect me, but I didn't want to fight with so many of them, if it could be avoided. So I went forward at a half-run, stabbing over my shoulder at them with the sword. I wounded one or two of them, I think. But, of course, they made no sound.

  The floor was slippery, partly from moisture and partly from the remains of what my attacker had been eating. I had to keep looking down to safeguard my footing. In one of these quick looks I saw the bones of a human forearm. They had been gnawed and picked quite clean.

  My assailants fell behind. I reached the cavern exit unharmed and with no followers. The bones couldn't have been Carol's; they were too small. But the sight made me realize what the reason probably was for her having been kidnapped, and from then on I sweated with anxiety to find her. From then on, I stopped to rest only when I couldn't make myself move.

  It was during one of these forced and infrequent rests that the exile came up to me. I thought him one of the Otherearth people, at first, and got ready to defend myself. Then I saw that he didn't wince from the sword. He was bigger than the others, too, and he carried himself differently.

  He stopped about ten feet away from me, with his hands clasped together under his chin and his neck stretched out. The light was wretched, as always, but it seemed to me that one of his eyes was gone.

  We remained looking at each other for a minute or two, oddly embarrassed about speaking. "Hello," I said finally.

  "Hello," he answered. His voice was flat and loud, like a deaf person's. "What year is it?"

  I told him. He began to weep silently, tears rolling down his cheek from his good eye. "Twenty years!" he said in his flat voice. He was rocking back and forth in his grief, his hands still clasped under his chin. "I've been wandering down here in the darkness for twenty years!"

  His statement shocked me without exciting my pity. "How did you get here?" I asked after a moment. It was all I could think of to say.

  "They brought me. I managed to escape. They've never tried very hard to kill me. I suppose I was more fun left alive.—Twenty years!"

  "Would you like to go back? Back to the light?"

  "Yes." He had hesitated perceptibly before answering. "People they've brought down here, and let live, are just their toys. They do—oh, anything. One of them gouged one of my eyes out once. He wasn't even angry. He didn't seem to enjoy doing it. He did it for no reason at all."

  "You couldn't find your way out, to get back?"

  "No." Once more the hesitation. "They eat human flesh, you know," he said, lowering his voice. "It's their big luxury. That's why they kidnap people. But I've never tasted it, of course."

  I thought of the gnawed bones I had seen, and my fears about Carol. For a moment, the subject was too painful for me to speak about. Besides, I'd rested long enough.

  "Where are you going?" he asked as I started forward.

  "I'm looking for a girl. Have you seen her?" I described Carol to him.

  "Oh. I think so."

  "Where is she?"

  "Ahead." He made a vague outward motion with one hand.

  "She's—still alive?"

  "I think so. I mean, I'd have known, if—but she's in danger. There're preparations they make before eating. They've made those preparations. They could take her at any time."

  My heart gave a painful bound. What he was telling me was, of course, no more than I had already surmised, except for the factor of her immediate danger. But it made me feel worse to hear it stated baldly. I didn't answer him.

  "You think that thing you're carrying will show you where she is, don't you?" he said, trotting along beside me.

  "Yes."

  "I expect it will. But it may get you there too late."

  "Um." I quickened my pace.

  "I know a shortcut," he offered. I felt he was peering at me intently, but it was too dark to be sure. "I'll show it to you if you'll promise to take me back to the Bright World after you find your girl."

  "Where is it?"

  "Ahead. I'll show you when we get there. You go down some rocks and under a waterfall. There's a hole behind the fall that leads right to where she is." He cleared his throat.

  "It seems funny to be talking so much," he said. "They almost never talk. They can hear a pin drop, though."

  This remark didn't seem to need answering. We went forward in silence for perhaps ten minutes. Then he said abruptly, "This is it."

  "The shortcut?"

  "Yes. There's a hole in the floor, do you see? with a rock slide spilling into it. You go down the rocks—they're more stable than they look—and turn left when you get to the bottom. The waterfall is a little way off."

  I hesitated. I could see the rock slide well enough, and it certainly appeared to lead into a hole. The exile was bending over, pointing. I thought I could hear the rush of water from below.

  I got down on my knees and leaned out over the opening. I had no great confidence in my would-be guide, and I wanted to know how far down the bottom was before I trusted myself to the rock slope. My right hand was pressed loosely over the blade of the sword.

  The bottom seemed to be a good way down. I was still leaning over, my hands as well as my knees on the rock floor, when the blade of the sword vibrated warningly under my palm.

  Startled, I looked up quickly. The one-eyed man was about to bring a sizable rock down on my head.

  I dodged, and the rock hit my ear a glancing blow. The next minute I was on my feet, the sword in my hand, and its point at the exile's throat.

  "Why did you do that?" I demanded. I was almost too angry to be able to speak. The blow itself wouldn't have been very serious, but poised as I was, I would certainly have pitched over the edge of the opening. And the bottom seemed to be at least thirty feet down.

  "Don't hit me! Please don't hit me!" the exile said, cowering away from me. "I wanted the Glain."

  The answer astonished me. I'd thought he probably wanted to get the sword, or that he might be trying to kill me so he could eat my flesh (I hadn't wholly accepted his profession of innocence on this topic.).

  "What's the Glain?" I asked. "Why would killing me help you get it?"

  "I don't care anything about killing you," he said, with a touch of impatience. "But if I had your sword, I could try to get the Glain. Even if I failed, the sword would still help me to get more to eat."

  "What's the Glain?"

  He didn't want to answer. I made a stabbing motion at his throat with the sword, and he said in a rush, "It's a stone. A talisman. You're safe if you have it. It can do all sorts of things."

  "Where is it?"

  Again he was reluctant to answer. I suppose he thought I was capable of forgetting all about Carol, and going off in search of something he wanted for himself. "The Gray Dwarf has it," he said finally. "Or he knows where it is. If I had it, I could be king down here."

  "I thought you wanted to go back to the Bright World."

  "Go back?" He repeated the phrase five or six times in his loud, flat voice, and then began to giggle, while his good eye wept. "Nobody ever goes back."

  "Why not?" I was thinking of Carol.

  "Because�
�if you'd eaten the atter-corn, you'd know."

  "Atter-corn? Is that the reddish meal they put out in the saucers?"

  "Yes. They grow it on sprouted grain. They let us have it." He lolled his head at me, like a hanged man, and tittered disgustingly.

  Suddenly I couldn't endure him. "Go away," I said.

  "What?"

  "Go away. Go back in the rock. I don't want you near me."

  "Oh, very well!"

  He skipped away noiselessly. At a safe distance, he turned and said, "You think you're so smart, so much better than I am. You're just the same as I am. Elves and men are just the same!"

  It was the first time I had heard the inhabitants of Otherworld called "elves". Other than that, the exile's taunt made little impression on me.

  "You don't care?" he said, much more nastily. "I know something you will care about, though. Your girl's already been killed."

  "Killed?"

  "Yes. Killed and eaten. Those were her bones you saw the elves in the cavern gnawing on!"

  He giggled viciously and bounced into an opening in the rock before I could start after him.

  I didn't altogether believe him. His malice was patent, and besides, the bones I had seen in the cavern were so small they must have belonged to a child. Carol could be—must be—still alive.

  All the same, he had dealt me a staggering blow. For a moment I was too dazed and weak to move. The sword trembled in my hand. At last, I roused myself to go on.

  Chapter Six

  Not long after my encounter with the exile, I began to have hallucinations. They came on gradually—the result, I suppose, of loss of blood and insufficient food and sleep. They were slow and reasonable at first.

  The low passages I moved through appeared to broaden and become more luminous. First corridors, then caves, and at last caverns, bigger and bigger caverns, until I felt they were as vast as continents. Ahead of me there were usually glowing clouds, faintly reddish, as if angry fires a long way off had colored them.