"These Sarn Riders, who are they?"

"A force which holds these hills. It is said they follow one of the Great Ones who has not altogether withdrawn from this world, and that their captains take orders from a strange mouth. Wait . . .."

Now it was she who ordered, and I who lay silent. I could breathe through my tiny root niche, but I was still blind. I could feel her body against mine and it was rigid with sudden tension.

X.

To WAIT BLIND the coming of danger is to await the fall of a war ax when one stands a captive with bound hands. Orsya's mind touch was shut off. I thought she used that skill elsewhere, questing for danger, but of that I was not sure. It was all I could do to lie there.

Water splashed, washing me dangerously back and forth in my shallow hiding place. I gasped and choked as it filled my nose unexpectedly. This was no normal rippling of the river. How soon would their steel stab to spit us?

Orsya's hands fastened on my forearm. Her nails bit into my flesh. I read it as a warning. But still she did not use mind touch. Minutes drew hour long; those threatening waves subsided.

Tentatively my companion made contact: "They are gone, for now. But they will not give up the search."

"Dare we move?" I did not know how she could be so sure, but that she was, I accepted.

"You cannot take to the river deeps."

"But you can! Go, then. I am a scout and can easily throw off these bush-beaters." I tried to make my answer as certain as hers.

"The deeps lie downriver, they know that, and will be waiting."

"The Thas have left a half-dam above. There are no deeps to hide in there," I counterwarned. "Will you not have a better chance down than up?"

"You forget-my people also hunt me. Safety only lies where they do not go, where I was heading when they caught me."

"Where?"

"The river is shallow for a s.p.a.ce, where the Thas and the Sarn forced us to a stand, but higher still it narrows and deepens again. Then it takes to underground ways. Wherever waters run the Krogan may go. I do not think the Sarn will follow that way, and while Thas lurk in burrows, still there are places they do not like." She hesitated. "I have found an old, old way, one made by those before us. There is a spell-laying there, but thin and tattered by the years, so if one is of strong will, one may penetrate it. But to sniff such will send a Thas squealing in flight, for it is a man spell, not one laid in their earth magic, but sealed with fire and air. Nor will the Sarn come, even if they find the gate, because it is guarded by one of the words of power. Of all that lies within I have no knowledge, save that such as we are not forbidden entrance. It will shelter us for a s.p.a.ce."

"Yet upstream and past shallows," I reminded her. Though she offered me this shelter freely, yet I had Kaththea to think about now.

"It lies in the direction of the Dark Tower." Her simple answer to my thoughts at first did not make sense. Then I flinched.

"Why do you fear that?" Orsya's curiosity was as plain to me as my flare of fear must have been to her.

I told her, then, of Loskeetha and her sand reading, and of the three fates she had seen for the ending of my quest.

"Yet I believe that you cannot take any other path," Orsya replied. "The Dark Tower draws you as if it is a pull-spell. For it is not in you to turn your back upon her whom you seek, not even if you believe such a desertion may save you both. You are too close-knit, one to the other. You shall see the Dark Tower, but thereafter the fate may not lie in Loskeetha's reading at all. I have heard of her Garden of Stone and whispers concerning her sorcery. But in this land nothing is fixed and certain. For long ago all balances were set swinging this way and that. We can live but one day from dawn to sunset, one night from twilight to first dawn, and what lies ahead can change many times before we reach it."

"But Loskeetha said-decisions-the smallest decisions-"

"One has to make choices and abide by them. I know this much; any road to the Dark Tower is guarded, not only by things seen, but those unseen. I can offer you one path I believe that Dinzil and his men do not know."

There was logic in her saying. If that were the heart of Dinzil's holding, he would treat it to every defense. I could do much worse than accept her offer and go with the river. There would be trouble enough along that watery road to make a man keep his wits sharp, his eyes ever on watch.

We pulled out from under the drift refuge and, for as long as we could, we swam. If the enemy hunted, it was downstream. Orsya took the lead, using each promising overhang of bank, each large boulder or half submerged piece of drift for concealment from which to spy out clear pa.s.sage beyond. We saw p.r.o.nghorns come to the water to drink, and that was heartening. For those timid grazers would not seek the open if any men were about.

Finally the water grew too shallow and we must wade instead of swim. It was then that we came to the blood-stained place where Orsya's people had been attacked. Now it was twilight, gloom thickening into night. I was glad that she could not see, or did not seem to see, those stains and the carca.s.s of the animal.

Night brought no halt as far as my companion was concerned. I was amazed at her energy, for I had thought that her hard usage at the hands of her captors would have left her weakened and not able to keep to such a steady pace.

We were well past the half-dam that the Thas had made, and thereafter I tried to make my ears serve me, since my eyes could not penetrate the shadows. Now we went hand in hand to keep in touch. I heard sounds in plenty and some of them made me tense, since I could not believe they were of the normal night. But they drew no closer to where we crouched listening, and then we would venture on.

Orsya's prediction was right; the stream began to narrow and the waters arose to our middles. Here and there trails of phosph.o.r.escence in the form of bubbles spun in lines.

My companion might be tireless, but I was not. Though I did not like to admit my weakness, I began to believe there was a limit to the number of steps I could continue to take. Perhaps she read my mind; perhaps she was willing to admit that she was also not a thing forged from metal, such as the machines the Kolder used to do their bidding in the old days, but knew the fatigues and aches of flesh and bone.

Her grasp upon my hand brought us into a burrow, such as the one in which we had sheltered on our way back to the Valley. It had not been recently used, for there was no animal taint in it. It was barely large enough for both of us to crowd in very close together.

"Rest now," she told me. "There is still a long way upstream and I cannot mark my guide points in the night."

I had not thought I could sleep, but I did. Unlike the night before, my dreams were not haunted, nor could I remember dreaming at all. But I awoke hungry and thirsty. The last of my supplies had gone with the bag I had used as a weapon, and since that happening, now a day away, we had been so constantly on the move, I had forgotten food. Dahaun's warning would have to be disregarded now.

So close together had we slept that I could not alter position now without waking my burrow mate. She murmured sleepily as I slipped away, my gnawing hunger demanding that I do something about filling that far too empty middle.

I caught Orsya's thought. "What comes?"

"Nothing that I know. But we must have food."

"Surely." With far more ease she joined me in the river. The cliffs held away the direct rays of the rising sun, but the sky was light enough to let me believe the day would be a fair one.

"Ah." My companion waded along the sh.o.r.e. Then, as suddenly as if she had been seized by the ankles and pulled under, she was gone! I splashed after her, not knowing what I might find. Though I ducked where she had disappeared and tried to grope about with my hands I could not locate her. But I heard a soft laugh.

Orsya stood upright again, her hands busy stripping long brown stalks from a root. Those gone, she rubbed the root vigorously between her palms, and its covering came away, so what she finally held was an ovule of ivory white.

"Eat!" She held it out with no invitation but an order.

"Dahaun said-" I held that root, looking at it hesitatingly, but hungry.

"Well enough." Orysa nodded. "Yes, there is that to be found in these lands where the Shadow has long hovered, which will kill, or will-bind, or take away memory, even the mind. But this is no be-spelled trap but a clean offering of the earth and water. You may eat of it as freely as of anything in the Valley."

So encouraged, I bit into the root. It broke crisply under my teeth and it had a clean, slightly sweet taste. Orsya dived again but was back before I had chewed and swallowed the last of my root, having found it not only pleasant to taste, but that it had juice which quenched my thirst.

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. Lucidly 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 weather-worn 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 pa.s.sage. 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 sh.e.l.l 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 over-mountain. There are even those suited to a place such as this."

But still a dark pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing from midnight to dawn.

Then we were out of the tunnel into a s.p.a.ce 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 sh.e.l.ls which were in great cl.u.s.ters, 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 sh.e.l.lfish. 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 provided 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls. 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 sh.e.l.lfish with housing s.p.a.ce. 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 m.u.f.fled 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 b.a.l.l.s, though in each oval were deep eyepits, such eyepits as had marked the carving on the cliff outside.

"Come!" Still trailing her sh.e.l.l bag, Orsya moved forward down the avenue between those standing figures. She did not glance at them as she pa.s.sed, but headed straight for the dark ma.s.s ahead.

But I had an odd feeling as I followed her that through each set of those eyepits, 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 Orysa. It was well out of the water and her quasfi sh.e.l.l 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.