Princess of Amathar (8 page)

"What do we do now?" he asked.

"Let's just wait a moment and see if our eyes adjust to the darkness," I replied. I said this just to have something to say, because as anyone who has ever done any cave exploring can tell you, your eyes do not adjust to complete darkness. The complete absence of light precludes any vision what so ever. Nevertheless, when we had waited for a little while, Malagor and I were both able to discern the shape of the passage ahead. There was a faint and indistinct light coming from far away down the corridor. We continued on our way.

As the two of us walked along, Malagor had tended to follow the left side of the corridor and I the right. It wasn't long before we realized that we had moved farther and farther apart, and that the hallway was gradually widening. About the same time that we made this discovery, the surface of the wall changed abruptly from the smooth stone we had grown used to, to a bumpy soft material. It must have had a great acoustical quality, for I could no longer hear our footsteps. I was just thinking that the hallway had widened form its original five feet or so to well over twenty, when the hallway ended by opening into a huge room.

The size of this room was impossible to measure from our present vantage point. It seemed to be endless in any direction, and we could not judge the height of the ceiling either. I was standing there thinking about what to do next, when Malagor tugged at my sleeve. I asked him what the matter was, and in answer, he grabbed my head with his hands and turned it to my right. In the distance I could see a light. It was like a swinging lantern in the distance that blinked on and off occasional.

"I have an idea what that is," I said. "Let's go." Even though Malagor and I were both inclined to move quickly toward the source of the distant light, we didn't move as quickly as we might have. The pervasive darkness was somewhat disorienting, and we could never know when there might be some obstruction that we might run into in the darkness. We managed to make a slow trot across this room, which now appeared to at least a mile across and possibly much larger. It didn't seem long before we got close enough to the moving light to tell that it was indeed just what I suspected it was--the swinging sword of Norar Remontar battling some enemy. We managed to reach him just as he had finished striking down the only remaining foe. His sword began to fade into darkness.

"What’s all this?" I asked.

"This is a band of Kartags," said Norar Remontar, turning on his small flashlight and pointing it at several prone figures. "They burst out of a hidden door while I was in the chamber alone, and knocked me out with a well placed blow to the head. I was lucky to regain consciousness before they were able to do whatever it was that they were planning to do to me."

I looked at the beings lying dead in the circle of artificial illumination on the floor. They would have been about five feet tall when standing and they reminded me of a large rat, at least as far as their faces were concerned. They had legs designed for upright locomotion, and two sets of arms on their upper torso. Their dirty, wrinkled skin was a dull grey color, and hairless, reminding me quite a bit of the way rodents look just after they are born. Though they wore no type of clothing, they did wear simple leather harnesses upon which they carried crude hand-made stone tools.

"The Kartags are well-known to my people," said my Amatharian friend. "They live by scavenging from more civilized beings."

"I kind of got that impression from looking at them," I replied. "It is lucky that you were able to rescue yourself. If it hadn't been for the soul in your sword, Malagor and I would never have found you."

"It may have been lucky for us that they attacked me. This subterranean passage may be a considerable short cut home to Amathar."

"If we don't get lost," I replied. "Right now I don't think I could even tell which direction we should be heading."

"If I am not mistaken,” said the knight, "Malagors have a very highly developed sense of direction." We both turned to Malagor, who grunted and pointed in a direction, presumably the right one. The three of us started off in the way indicated. The room seemed to go on forever.

"What possible purpose could this room have had?" I asked.

"I am certain that I don't know," replied Norar Remontar, "but this is not uncommon in Orlon sites, at least as far as I can recall from my schooling as a child. The Orlons created vast underground cities and cavern networks, with many hidden doors and strange rooms, but never any furniture."

"Have you ever seen what they looked like?"

"I could be mistaken, but I do not believe that there have ever been any remains or representations of the Orlons found--no pictures, no statues, no tombs."

"Interesting,” I said, though by this time I was far less impressed by the fact that an ancient race had left no trace of themselves behind, than I was by their ability to create a seemingly endless subterranean room with no visible means of structural support. We seemed to have traveled at least another mile in the room since Malagor and I had found Norar Remontar, though in the all pervasive darkness the distance might have been one tenth or ten times that distance. In that time we had not seen a pillar or brace for the ceiling. Of course we could have been passing them in the darkness without noticing them, but somehow I didn't believe that to be the case.

"I don't know about you two," I said, stopping, "but I need to take a rest." Norar Remontar and Malagor both agreed to stop for a little while, though neither admitted to needing a rest themselves, so we sat down in the immense darkness.

"I am very hungry," said Norar Remontar.

"I am hungry too," said Malagor. "And what is worse, my dinner is roasting outside this mountain, and I will not be able to retrieve it before it is burnt to a crisp."

"If it is any consolation," I interjected, "I'm sure an animal has already made off with it by now."

"It is not any consolation at all," Malagor said.

Sitting in the endless darkness of the seemingly endless room, with only the Amatharian flashlight to brighten our surroundings, seemed to me like floating in the darkness of space, with nary a planet nor a single star to keep us company. But sit there we did, in relative silence for what seemed to be a long time. I recollected that this was the first time that I had seen real darkness since coming to this world. While the stormy weather and the overhanging trees had made the world seem dark when we had passed through the forest of the Pell, it was nothing compared to this. As soon as we all felt we had rested enough, we resumed our journey through the darkness. We had traveled only another hundred feet, when we came to a wall. The wall was constructed of the same black material that had lined the end of the corridor through which we had entered and had the same type of acoustical quality. Norar Remontar and I felt comfortable following Malagor and his apparent direction sense, so when he turned right and began to make his way along the wall, we were content to follow.

The wall was straight and gave the impression in my mind of a square or rectangular room, but when a room is of this tremendous size, who can say what the shape of the other sides might have been. I was reminded of the story of the blind men who encounter an elephant. The first blind man, who feels the elephant's trunk, thinks he has encountered a snake. The second blind man reaches out to touch the legs of the pachyderm and thinks that he has found a tree. The third blind man, who feels the elephant's side, believes he has found a wall. The three of us, alone in the dark, were like three blind men. I thought how strange, interesting, and frightening it would be, if this great expanse of wall were in fact, the side of some great beast.

Happily, before I had much chance to contemplate this line of reasoning, Malagor located a doorway, and we entered another long tunnel. It might have been the same tunnel through which we had entered for all that I knew. It had the same tapered entrance, the same walls, and the same floor.

"At least," I thought, "if this is the same way we came in, we are on our way back to the food." Any belief that we might have been retracing our steps was quickly laid to rest though, when after going only a few hundred yards, we began to notice a light in the distance. As we continued on our way, the light grew steadily brighter, until it was obvious that we were approaching a location with some sort of large-scale artificial lighting.

When we reached the doorway of the room, we entered with our weapons at ready. Norar Remontar and I had our swords drawn, and Malagor carried his light rifle. In fact, we had been carrying our weapons at ready all the way through the darkness, but as we had encountered nothing but black emptiness, we had not been called upon to use them. The chamber we now entered was like nothing I had ever seen before.

Chapter Ten: Chamber of the Elder Gods

The room was large, though obviously not as large as the huge chamber we had visited before. The far wall was about one hundred fifty feet away, and the room was equally as wide. We had entered through a doorway in the middle of the wall, and there were no other entryways or exits visible. The room was well lit, though I could not determine the source of the light. Indeed, it seemed that the light came from everywhere, as though light were a thing that could flow around solid objects like the air. The walls, floor, and ceiling were smooth and dull grey, as were the fixtures in the room’s center--four large geometric shapes.

As the three of us slowly walked into the room, we were drawn toward the four geometric shapes in the center of the floor. They were each about the same size, perhaps twelve feet across. Closest to us was a sphere. The others were a cube, a pyramid, and a dodecahedron.

"What are these for, do you suppose?" I wondered aloud.

"Perhaps they are not for anything," growled Malagor.

"Why are you so grumpy?" I asked. "Still hungry?" He growled again in confirmation.

"This is unlike anything I have ever seen relating to the Orlons," said Norar Remontar. "The lighting has an interesting quality."

He reached up and laid a hand upon the surface of the sphere, and a large portion of the wall to our left suddenly became a huge picture screen. A forty foot image of a great plain appeared, with tall grass billowing in the wind like waves on the surface of the ocean. Here and there, grazing herbivores roamed in search of a particularly interesting bit of flora. To the far right of the image, two stummada sat looking around lazily. At their feet were the remains of a large animal.

"Wow," I said.

"This is most definitely not an Orlon site," reiterated the Amatharian. "Their technology never reached anywhere near this level."

"I wonder what else these shapes do." I stepped around him to the cube. I placed my hand on the surface, which felt warm to the touch, and marveled as another giant image appeared opposite the first. This image was of a beautiful green field, obviously cultivated. In the distance, to the right was the edge of a great forest of extremely tall coniferous evergreen trees. At about the same distance but to the left, one could see the edge of a strange and marvelous city. It was made up of ivory colored buildings with reddish roofs--each roof topped by a craved animal figure. In the foreground, as well as around the city, were the inhabitants.

The people living in the strange city, playing around it, and working in the fields looked remarkably like a child's teddy-bear. They were covered with light brown fur, had very large round ears on the top of their heads, and large expressive eyes above their small snouts. They came in a variety of sizes, probably males, females, and children. Some of the small ones seemed to be playing tag just outside the city. Larger ones were working in the field, pulling up green vegetables of some kind. Still others, of several sizes, were busy within the confines of the city, though just what they were doing was impossible to tell at the present magnification on the image. They were probably doing the same things that humans on Earth did in their own cities.

"I do not know that race of people," said Malagor. "I wonder who they are, and where in Ecos that place is."

"Or when," I offered. "For all we know, that may be a stored image of the ancient Orlons, or even their ancestors."

Norar Remontar and I were both fascinated by the images, and we began moving around the shapes, placing our hands here and there and watching the scenes produced on the three blank walls of the room. Most were of wild places with nothing but plant life and an occasional animal, though the locale of each was noticeably different. There were scenes of deserts, of forests, and of jungles. Finally I placed a hand upon the sphere at a point as yet untouched and a picture of a hillside replaced an earlier scene on the wall opposite the door. Standing on the hillside were two Amatharian men.

"Bentar Hissendar!" shouted Norar Remontar.

"You know him?" I asked the obvious.

"He is a friend and kinsman of mine," the Amatharian replied. "He works within my uncle's trading group."

The two Amatharians did indeed look to be kinsmen of Norar Remontar. They were both handsome, with straight black hair and dark blue skin. They both wore black body suits and white tabards with crests upon them, marking them as knights. The first one, whom Norar Remontar had identified as Bentar Hissendar sported the crest of a flaming sun held by a stylized hand. The other’s crest was that of a flaming sun raining light rays downward. They were picking up rocks from the hillside and examining them. Since there was no sound in the images, it was difficult to figure out what was going on. The other man said something to Bentar Hissendar, who laughed and punched the man playfully on the shoulder. Then the two walked off the edge of the image, leaving nothing on the screen but the side of the hill.

"That image at least seems to be of the present," said Norar Remontar. "I cannot say where that place would be though. Bentar Hissendar looks just the same as when I last saw him, and if I am not mistaken, that other fellow is Tular Maximinos, though I have not seen him since he became a knight."