Lost Lands of Witch World (44 page)

She peeled another and gave it to me, before she prepared two more for herself. The banks here were steeper and higher, the water steadily rising. We finished the last of our breakfast and then began to swim.

In this I was no match for Orsya, nor did I try to keep level with her, but conserved my strength, content to hold her in sight. Lucikly she paused to tread water now and then, looking about her for those guide marks she had mentioned the night before.

Once she motioned me toward the bank with a sharp gesture and on reaching me, gave a sharp jerk to my shoulder, ordering me to hold my breath. We went below surface.

“A Rus watcher on the heights,” her thought explained. “They are keen-eyed, but water distorts all which lies within it. If the Rus drops no lower, I do not think we need fear.”

A moment later her hold on me relaxed and I was able to break surface. But we kept close to the right-hand bank. This seemed to me as wild and desolate country as that which held Loskeetha's domain, even if it lacked the growth of strange fleshy-leaved plants, and our road was a waterway instead of rock.

Down the walls of the river banks looped vines, some thread-fine, others as thick as my wrist. Orsya's warning to me to avoid them was not needed, for they were so loathsome looking that no one could believe any virtue existed in them at all. They were a very pallid green with a sickly oversheen, as if they were wrought of some living rot. From them came such a stench of decay as to make one choke, dare he draw a heavy breath near them. I noticed that, though they tendriled down from above, as if seeking water, yet those strands which had touched the river surface were withered into thin skeletons. The more wholesome water must have killed them.

Things lived among those vines, though none of them did I ever see clearly. They moved in fluttering runs under the leaves, the shaking of the foliage marking their progress, but did not come into the light and air. Nor had I any desire that they do so.

“Ah, not far now.” Orsya's thought carried a feeling of relief.

She treaded water where the river bank made an outward curve. The vines were less thick here and out of their noxious wreathing protruded a weatherworn lump. But was it a lump of rock? I reached Orsya and peered up in a more detailed examination.

Not a rock—some hand had worked there for a purpose. It had been, I thought, meant to be a head. But whether of man or animal, monster or spirit, no one now could say. There were two deep pits for eyes, and to see them from below as I did (the head being inclined so it looked down while we stared up) gave one a
disturbing sensation that, from those holes, something still did measure all below.

“A watcher, not of our time, and one we need not fear, whatever once may have been its purpose. Now—” She swam but a short space on before she turned to me again.

“For a Krogan this would be no task, Kemoc. But for you . . . ” She was plainly doubtful. “We must enter here under water, and for a space beyond remain so. I do not know how well equipped you may be for such a venture.”

I flushed; it was plain she considered me the weaker party, one she must tend. Though logic told me that in the waterways she had the right of it, still my emotions could not be altogether governed by logic.

“Let us go!” I breathed deeply several times, expelling all I could from my lungs and refilling them. Orsya bobbed below, to search out that hidden entrance and see if it was still open. Now she reappeared just before me.

“Are you ready?”

“As I ever shall be.”

I took the last breath and dived. Orsya's hand on my shoulder pointed me forward into darkness. I swam with what speed I could muster, my lungs bursting, the need for reaching the upper air so great it filled my world. Then I could stand it no longer and headed up. My shoulder, the back of my head, struck against solid rock. I kicked, sending my body on, felt my arm scrape painfully, and then—my head broke water, and I could breathe again!

But I was in utter darkness. And, as soon as my first gasps of relief were ended, I felt a rising unease. There was nothing but water about me, and the dark, pressing in thick and stifling in spite of the chill cold.

“Kemoc!”

“Here!” By so much had that terrible feeling of isolation and loss been broken.

Fingers scraped my upper arm and I knew she was close beside me. Her words pushed aside the dark and made this all a part of a real—if different—world again.

“This is a passage. Find a wall and use it for your guide,” Orsya told me. “There are no more underground waterways—at least now as far as I was, when I first came here.”

I splashed about until my outstretched fingertips touched rock.

“How did you come here—and why?”

“As you know, we communicate with other water dwellers. A Merfay told me of this and showed me the opening below. He came hither to hunt quasfi; there is a great colony who have taken shell rooting in here. A stream washes down and brings with it such food as the quasfi relish and these have grown to an unusual size. Since I have a liking for strange places I came to see, and found that I was not the first who was not Merfay or quasfi who traveled herein.”

“What did you find, then?

“I leave that for you to see for yourself.”

“You
can
see it? This dark is not everywhere?”

Again I heard her soft laughter. “There is more than one kind of candle, Kemoc from overmountain. There are even those suited to a place such as this.”

But still a dark passage held us as we swam on. Then I became aware that the dark was not quite so thick beyond and that the graying gradually increased. It was not as bright as any torch or lamp, but compared to what we had come from, it was as passing from midnight to dawn.

Then we were out of the tunnel into a space so large, and yet so dim, that I could only guess at its size. A hollow mountain might have held it. The light was not diffused throughout, but spread in patches of radiance from underwater, approaching a short stretch of pebbled beach not too far away.

I swam for the beach. It presented to me such a promise of safety as I had not thought to find. As I waded out on it I saw that the light came from partly open shells which were in great clusters, rooted to the rocks under the surface.

“Quasfi,” Orsya identified them. “To be relished not only by Merfays; but the deeper dwellers are more tasty.”

She left in a dive which took her out of my sight. I stood dripping on that small patch of dry land and tried to learn more of this cavern. I could detect no sign of any intelligent remains here. Whatever Orsya promised to show me did not lie within my present range of vision.

The Krogan girl came out of the water, her hair plastered tight to her skull, her clothing as another skin on her body. She had a net bag in one hand—I was reminded of how she had carried one during our flight to the mountains—and from the bag glowed the light of the shellfish. But as she left the water it faded and by the time she joined me was almost gone.

In a very practical way she opened the shells with a knife she borrowed from me. A quick jab dispatched the creatures, and she offered one to me, its own outer covering serving as a plate.

Long ago I had learned that it was not good to be squeamish in such matters. When one was hungry, one ate, whatever one was lucky enough to find. The life of a Border scout did not provide dainty food, any more than it provides warm, soft beds, and uninterrupted sleep.

I ate. The meat was tough and one needed to chew it vigorously. The flavor was strange, not as satisfying as the taste of the roots. But neither was it too unpleasant, and looking at the wealth of quasfi beds about us, one could see starvation was no menace.

Orsya did not throw away the shells we emptied, but put them once more into her net, setting them therein with care, their inner surfaces pointing outward, small stones in the middle to keep them so. Having twisted, turned and repacked, she stood up.

“Are you ready?”

“Where do we go now?”

“Over there.” She pointed, but now I could not say whether our direction led north or south, east or west.

Orsya waded into the water, having carefully made fast the net bag to her belt. As I followed more slowly I saw that once the bag dipped below the surface, it began to give out ghostly light as if the water had ignited the shells.

We headed away from the beach. There were fewer of the quasfi beds now, more dark patches. But under us the bottom was shelving and shortly thereafter we waded, water waist-high. I judged, since I saw cavern walls looming out into the half gloom, that we were now in a rift, leading back into the cliffs.

As the water fell to our knees, Orsya unhooked the bag from her belt and dragged it along at the end of one of its tie cords, being careful to let it go under the surface so its light continued.

The rift widened out again. Once more I saw the glimmer of living quasfi beds. But—I stopped short, straining.

Here were no rocky beaches providing the shellfish with housing space. Instead, they rooted on platforms on which towered, above the waterline, carved figures. These were set in two lines leading from where we stood to a bulk I could only half discern in the limited light.

Water lapped around their feet and lines of dead quasfi, their shells still cemented fast, strung about them, thigh-high, suggesting that in another time the statues had been even further submerged.

They were human of body, although some of the figures were so muffled in cloaks or long robes that their forms could only be guessed at.

Yes, human of body—but they had no faces! The heads set on those shoulders were blank of any carving, being only oval balls, though in each oval were deep eyepits, such eyepits as had marked the carving on the cliff outside.

“Come!” Still trailing her shell bag, Orsya moved forward down the avenue between those standing figures. She did not glance at them as she passed, but headed straight for the dark mass ahead.

But I had an odd feeling as I followed her that through each set of those eye-pits, we were watched, remotely, detachedly, but still watched.

I stumbled, caught my balance and knew my feet were on underwater steps, which led up out of the flood. Before us was a wide platform and on it a building. So poor was the light that I could not be sure of its size. Darker gaps in its walls suggested windows and doors, but to explore it without proper lighting was folly. I said as much to Orsya. It was well out of the water and her quasfi shell lamp would not serve us here.

“No,” she agreed, “but wait and see.”

We stepped together from the top of that stair onto the platform. Once more I halted with a gasp of amazement.

Because, as our feet touched pavement, there came a glow from it, thin, hardly better than the radiance from the shells, but enough to make us sure of our footing.

“It is some magic of this place,” Orsya told me. “Stoop—place your hands upon the stone.”

I did as she bade, as she herself was doing. From the point where my flesh touched that stone (or was it stone?—the surface texture did not feel like it) light gleamed forth even brighter.

“Take off your boots!” She was hopping on one foot, pulling off her own tight foot covering. “It seems to kindle greater from the touch of skin upon it.”

I was reluctant to follow her example, but when she went on confidently and then looked back in some surprise, I pulled off my light boots to carry them in one hand. She was right; as our bare feet crossed that smooth surface, the glow heightened, until we could really see something of the dark structure before us.

There were no panes in those windows; the doorway was a wide open portal. I wished that I had the sword I had dropped back by the river. Orsya had returned my knife to me and there was a good eight inches of well-tried blade, but in such a place imagination is quick to paint perils which could not be faced by so small a weapon.

I saw no carvings, no embellishments about the doorpost, nothing to break the severe look of the walls, save the stark openings of the windows. But, as we ventured inside, the light which followed the pacing of our feet, flared up to twice the brilliance. The room in which we stood was bare. Fronting us was a long wall, and set into that were ten openings. They had doors shut tight, nor could I see any latch, any way of opening them. Orsya crossed to the one directly facing us and put her hand against it, to find it immovable.

“I did not come so far before,” she said. “There was an old warn-spell then—today it was gone.”

“A warn-spell!” I was angered at the danger into which she had brought us. “And we come here without weapons—”

“A warn-spell very old,” she returned. “It was one which answered to our protective words, not to
theirs
.”

I must accept her explanation. But there was one way to test it. From left to right I looked along that row of closed doors. Then I spoke two
words
I had learned in Lormt.

T
hey were not Great Words, such as I had used when the power had
answered
me, but they would test and protect the tester.

As they echoed along that narrow room where we stood, the light under our feet blazed so high my eyes were dazzled for a moment and I heard Orsya cry out softly. Then followed on the roll of those
words
a crackling, a splintering, low and far off thunder. And in that new light I saw the door to which my companion
had set her hands was now riven, falling apart in flakes. Orsya leaped back as they struck and crumbled into powdery debris.

Only that one door had been so affected. It was as if Orsya's touch had channeled whatever power the words had into striking there. I thought, though I could not be sure, for it all happened so quickly, that the breakage had come from the very point where her fingers rested.

Now came an
answer
—not such a one as had before, but a kind of chanting. It was quickly ended, and of it I understood not a word.