by Andre Norton
“Fear.”
For a long startled moment, Simsa thought that that other had also answered simply and with a threat. Then the rest of it, fading in mind touch but still understandable, came through:
“You fear—” It would seem that the other was simply going to ignore Simsa’s demand. “There is a right to fear—”
Again, Simsa was startled, this time into jerking back a space and throwing out the hand that held the rod as a barrier against a wriggling blot struggling freely in space before her.
One of the sand swimmers in all its slimy ugliness, so real that she was almost certain she could touch and feel the soft pulpy body. Then, as instantly as it had made its appearance, it winked out. Hallucinations! Even as the sand swimmer itself had used that talent against her.
“You fear—” Again the words squeezed past her amazement to deliver their message.
No yellow blob this time. There was—the figure was not as clear cut or as well-materialized—perhaps it was too strange and alien to this other that it could not be fashioned sharply. But nonetheless she looked at a ship’s officer.
“It is strange.” That was conveyed to her although the thoughts coming through the zorsal had no expression of bewilderment. “This one—your kind?”
Simsa shook her head vigorously. “No kin.” How that definition would fare in Zass’s receptive thought she could not tell. The zorsals were mainly loners after they reached their second year, their mating being a hurried affair, immediately after which they separated, one sex from the other.
The tenuous form of the space officer did not blink out so quickly. It might be that the alien was either trying to refine it into better detail or was comparing it closely with Simsa to refute her own quick denial that it was like herself.
“What do you?” The first question of all was repeated.
Simsa took a deep breath. She would be guessing, but she believed that this creature wanted from her a deeper reason for her flight—for her fear—not just what had set her wandering across the stone-clad landscape.
“I have—power.” She cupped both hands about the rod of her power staff and held it a little out from her body. “He—wants that power.”
The light that came from the alien body flared as much as if it held one of the lights Thorn had carried months ago, much plainer and sharper than a torch.
And, in answer, for she had certainly not called upon any of the skill of the Elder One, the moon horns, the sun set between them, flashed into life also, giving off a radiance that warmed Simsa’s body where it reflected that gleam from her black skin. Once more, she felt her hair stir and guessed the ends of it were rising. But this time, there was no feeling of being drained. No, she was pulling strength from without, not from depths within her.
The glow of the alien’s body faded into a faint sheen, almost flickered. Now the life in the rod was withdrawing also, still not outward but inward so that she no longer felt any lack in her body. Simsa might have eaten well, drunk deep, slept soft. She was completely restored in her inner strength.
“You—have—the not-haze—” Zorsal folded her wings, shifting from one foot to the other on Simsa’s shoulder. The girl was not sure what was meant by that. Then one of the long spined “arms” moved at the center point, flailing forward, the claw at the end indicating without any mistake the rod.
Simsa clutched her treasure a little tighter. Was the alien striving to take her one weapon? But the claws did not quite touch the horned disc at the end, only held so for a few breaths, as if the creature were in some odd way measuring it. The joint creaked again and once more the long arm folded back as might that of an insect of her own home world.
The creature hitched around somewhat awkwardly, using that pointed end of its abdomen as a pivot. It did not turn its head to look at her again, but the order came clear enough from Zass:
“Come!”
The front appendages dropped to floor level and the back ones moved apart, giving the alien a strange likeness to an animal keeping its head down to sniff out a trail. The upstanding antennae smoothed backward, their tips well down on the wearer’s back. The alien no longer moved jerkily, even though its posture made it appear so, and it moved rather swiftly. Simsa, lingering only to gird up the folds of the cloak knotted about her middle, had to trot in order to keep up.
There was no light except that subdued lumination that came from the large furred body before her. They had entered a tunnel through the rock, smooth of wall and floor, slanting downward after a few more swift strides, so that Simsa had to move with caution for fear of a stumble, the clawed feet of her guide apparently finding this surface less slick than it looked to the girl.
At spaced intervals, there were other openings, but, though she peered into each as they passed, Simsa could see nothing. Therein the darkness was complete.
The gradual curve of the descending way became steeper and Simsa tried to find, first on one wall and then the other, some manner of handhold to which she might cling if she slipped. She was about to appeal to her guide when she was aware of a splotch of brighter radiance on the floor. Before she could step aside, her foot pressed a thick stuff which clung, even when she stepped, almost leaped, ahead.
When she planted the light-smeared foot again, she found that her skin clung to the stone and steadied her, yet it yielded easily enough when she would move forward. Then she noted that a second large drop oozed from the thick body before her. For a moment, she was revolted and would have tried to wipe the first coating from her foot with an edge of the cloak, but then, as if Zass had told her, she knew that this was not waste from the body ahead, but a gift meant to aid her.
Sure enough, as the creature deposited a third and final discharge, it turned and thrust its foreclaws deep into the mass, drawing them forth brightly shining. Then it flung these out to both walls, where they caught and held. The alien doubled its body in upon itself as if it were deliberately striving to break its own narrow waist, to bring chest and abdomen together, then hurled itself forward, the clawed forearms outheld to catch at something ahead.
A few steps farther on, the floor vanished in a great hole as dark as any of the doorways they had passed. Simsa gasped. The rock dweller had swung across with the ease of one long accustomed to such feats, but she could not follow.
Or—could she?
Light blazed up beyond and she saw the alien waiting at the far edge of that trap. That increase of light displayed to Simsa against the left wall a ledge, so narrow that only if one turned one’s head against the rock and squeezed along its surface could one pass that way.
The girl made sure that her cloak was knotted as securely as possible with the power rod in its fold still pressing warmly against her flesh. She studied the toehold path, liking nothing she could see of it, before taking a first cautious step forward. Perhaps it would have been easier to face the wall and not the abyss as she made her hesitant way onward. Except that a stubborn core of the Burrows Simsa was determined to look at danger in all its blackness, not to turn her back upon it.
She had no way of telling how deep that hole was. It appeared utterly black. The alien and Zass, who had already winged to the other side, were quiet; thus the dark was also silent except for her own breathing, which was in time with the fast beating of her heart.
That black hole so near her feet seemed to have a power of drawing her, so that she scrambled with outstretched arms on either side trying to find some hold, no matter how tiny, to sustain her. Thus she inched along. She was near enough to the far side where her two companions waited to feel the beginning of relief when the silence was broken by a sound. As if in the depths of that blackness something stirred—perhaps a creature winged as Zass but greater in size, beating those wings, about to take to the air.
Zass responded with a squawk that Simsa readily identified. It was not surprise—rather fear. Yet the zorsal did not fly away, but, on the floor of the farther side of the hole, jigged from one foot to th
e other, its mouth a little open, still uttering no sound. The alien creature which had been her guide this far raised one of those long jointed arms in a quick beckoning gesture, urging the girl to hurry. Simsa, her head snapping around so that she faced that well of darkness and what might move in its depths, slipped along one foot and then the other. The anchoring substance that the creature had exuded was wearing thin. She was losing her sense of being firmly rooted each time she put her weight fully on one leg so that she might either extend the other or draw it to her. Below, that sound grew louder. She could imagine wings stepping up action—some grotesque horror about to climb the air—for there was a distinct upper-reaching current from the hole.
Two more steps—
Zass gave tongue at last, a screech that meant defiant warning. The black in the hole appeared to possess more density, but the girl could not be sure whether she saw with her eyes or in a picture raised by fear to unnerve her just as she was so close to steady footing. Certainly there was movement from below, and she could see a kind of circling in the dark which was not unlike the whirling of the sand stream when those horrors that dwelt within it were minded to seek the world beyond.
She clamped her teeth hard, refusing to be panicked into a misstep now to carry her down into—that!
One step. She brought up her eyes, refusing now to watch. The movement of dark within dark reached her as a sick giddiness. Instead, she forced her head around again and eyed the goal toward which she edged.
Out of the hole arose what looked like the spray of a fountain. Was it liquid or a reddish light formed of so many brilliant sparks that it could well seem a liquid? Against all her determined will, Simsa’s attention was drawn to it. Like the whirling of the dark that appeared to give it birth, it caught and held the eyes—drew—
Pain, so sharp, so intense that Simsa could not suppress a choking cry following upon its first throb. On her bare right arm was a wink of light, a drop, a spark, of that which was playing higher and higher, spreading out farther and farther to encompass the whole of the dark well.
She caught her breath in a second sob and, with one of the greatest efforts she had ever made, tore her gaze from the enchantment of that fountain and took the final step which brought her to the safety of the tunnel floor. But she slipped and began to topple back into the column of silver-red flame.
Once more, those claws locked on her flesh, this time on one shoulder, sliding her along the floor, her flesh scraped raw by the harsh stone. On her arm that spark still lived and ate into her flesh viciously.
Beside her on one side squatted Zass, her wings fanning, uttering small mewling cries of distress. On her left settled the ponderous green body. The claw passed from her shoulder to the wrist of her painful arm. That was drawn upward even as the alien crouched yet lower. Then the girl felt the scraping of those mandibles across her skin and she shuddered in spite of the pain that already bit into her. That touch repelled her as much as if one of the tentacles of a river dweller had grasped her. A liquid flooded the place where the spark clung and drops of a strong-smelling gel ran sluggishly down her forearm from the point of claw contact.
The angry fire in the spark was quenched, though Simsa felt still an ache such as a bad bruise might well leave. The claw grasp loosened and Simsa swiftly withdrew her arm. Although this touch had been for her benefit, and she had no doubt of that, still the contact had brought distaste, even nausea.
She had no trouble seeing that the alien had left a gob of gel over the wound and that it was hardening, for she could feel the pull of it on her skin. Again the long, furless, doubled-jointed arm swung out, but not this time to grasp any part of her; rather, it struck her almost with the force of a blow, pushing her farther from the spouting fountain, on down this new portion of the corridor.
For a moment, she sprawled from the vigor of that shove and then she raised from all fours to her feet and came halfway around. Zass, with a second croaking call, took to the air while the inhabitant of these ways, again on all fours, butted the side of its head against Simsa, sending the girl on. She received a fleeting message, far less clear than the others, yet warning enough.
What wrought now within the well could not yet be through with them, not if they lingered near that fiery fountain. Simsa began to run. Her large companion, for all the awkwardness of its person, moved with a swift glide that took it to the fore until, with an appearance of exasperation it snapped out, its mandibles catching the untidy ends of Simsa’s cloak. There they held with the fierce might of a metal trap so that the girl was drawn along at a speed to set her gasping.
They rounded a twisting turn in the tunnel and Simsa near lost her footing at that sharp pull which started her in another direction. Having left the light that the well fountain had given them when it streamed, Simsa could see only dark walls a little away as they passed, and those because of the emanation of the huge body beside her. There were more openings which they passed at racing speed, a second turn, and then ahead was light bright enough so that, even at this distance, it made Simsa blink. For the first time since she had begun her journey past the well, she became aware of the warmth of the rod against her body.
That this thing of power had faded completely out of her mind during her escape from the fountain-thing broke in her thoughts as an unanswerable puzzle. Simsa of the Burrows had begun to believe the rod had no limits. Even the Elder One had not roused in her when the pain in her body had come as a warning. The intrusion of the Elder One into her mind, which she generally half-resented, now completely surprised and frightened her by its absence. Simsa of the Burrows, the girl knew then, had been uppermost during that encounter. She had, from the first moment of finding her likeness and opening herself to that inanimate material which had held for so long, come to depend more and more upon the Elder One—to believe that she was invincible, to resent the knowledge held by her. Now this. Where was the Elder One and why?
The alien bore her steadily along toward the distant light and they emerged from the tunnel into a place so utterly different from the barren rock of this world that Simsa was astounded and could only stare and wonder.
This was not a desert land. If the great basin or hollow was indeed floored with rock, there was no sign of it. Growths certainly large enough to be termed trees were set in ordered rows, an opening—a path—between their ranks directly before the three from the tunnel. The boles were not too large; Simsa could probably have clasped arms about the nearest and interlocked fingers on the far side. In color they were a smooth bluish green, lacking the roughness of bark. But at a height to clear the round head of the alien, who now rose to sit as it had when it first confronted the girl, they branched thickly with fine stems which bore long ribbon leaves of blue, rippling continually, though Simsa could feel no hint of any breeze.
Behind these guardians of the path were masses of shorter foliage changing in color from a deep true blue, through green, to yellow. And those, too, rustled and trembled as if they provided hiding places for all manner of would-be ambushers. Zass gave a cry of triumph, soaring up and out to fly above the trees in the manner of her kind, and when Simsa’s eyes followed her, she saw an oddity about the sky. That haze that had prevailed over the rock land looked much thicker here, though more luminous, and the stifling heat of the outer world was tempered by many degrees.
The tree-guarded path ran straight and even on it, there was no hint of rock or sand, but rather a thick growth of what appeared to be very short-stemmed, thickly packed vegetation in patches of color, some yellow, some green, some blue, and here and there a showing of silver white. The farther the path ran, the taller grew the guardian trees. But those were not high enough to hide what was at the end of the way.
Like unto the rocky upcrops that walled in this oasis of vegetation, there stood a structure: a square cube of blue which shaded to green at its crest. And its green crest was patterned with evenly spaced windows or entrances open to the air with no suggestion of any barriers
in the form of doors. Appearing at some of these were creatures that so well-matched the one accompanying the girl that they could have been cloned. These took off from the openings in easy leaps, propelled by their heavy back legs. They might have been diving down into the mass of growth below them like swimmers entering a sea. Once they were swallowed up by the reach of tree and bush, they vanished completely from sight. None of them had appeared to notice the three who had come out of the dark rock ways.
Zass wheeled and turned, coming back to settle on Simsa’s shoulder, rubbing her furred head against the girl’s cheek.
“It is the place.” The alien accented the explanation beamed through the zorsal by a jerky movement of a clawed forelimb.
“The place? What place?” Since that compelling hold had been lifted from her, Simsa had made no attempt to go farther into the open, to step upon the plant carpet of the road.
“The place of the nest.” Zass’s thought had, the girl decided, an impatient twinge, some emotion of the alien carried through. Perhaps to their guide this was like Kuxortal, so well-known a landmark that the whole world should recognize it.
Having so answered her, the big green creature dropped once more to four feet and scuttled on. Nor did it look back when Simsa made no attempt to follow. She was curious, yes, but her caution had been triggered by the inhabitant of the sand stream, by the well, and certainly by the alien itself. That wariness which had served her so well as a nameless, kinless one in the Burrows came to the fore. Thus she deliberately squatted down on her heels, narrowly surveying all that lay before her. The one who had brought her here appeared to have forgotten her entirely, and suddenly pushed with force between two of the tree trunks into the deep curtain of the foliage and was gone.
Simsa absently rubbed the fountain wound, where soreness still made itself felt. Under the touch of her fingers the jellied stuff stripped away and she looked down to see there was not even the thin line of any hurt. On impulse, she took up the rod in her two hands clasped together and let its head sway forward so that the horn of the moon pointed toward that building. There was no more coming or going at the high windows. It might have been deserted long since.
