A chance, less than one in a thousand, but a chance all the same. The only one he had if he hoped to escape the Cyclan and the trap he was in.
The caverns of the Sungari were unknown. They were a legend from the past. A scrap of history distorted, possibly, into fable. The things which killed in the night had never been investigated. The entire story could have been invented to protect the early settlers from the nocturnal threat.
And yet how often had he been told that Earth did not exist-and of all men he knew as well as any that it did.
And there were clues; a crevass containing a dead beast and a dead man, smoke which had stung his eyes and which had held a moving shape, a foal which had trotted from the smoke to vanish.
To vanish where?
He had been ill, dying, toxins flooding his body, the smoke catching his lungs and blurring his vision. A movement which had taken on the shape of a foal. But foals did not run alone and no mare had been close.
"There!" Roland pointed. "The raft, returning."
But without Dumarest. Lavinia watched as it landed and Gartok, jumping out, came towards them. Pearls of moisture glinted on his helmet and armor.
"Kars?"
"He found an opening, my lady. A cavern of some kind or a natural fissure. Earl wouldn't let me enter it with him. Said to come back and take command of the men." He glared at Roland. "I take it there's no argument?"
"From me? None."
Lavinia said, "Is there anything we can do to help?"
"We can pray, my lady. I'm not much good at it myself, but I'm willing to learn."
Chapter Thirteen
There were rasps and drips and small, rustling sounds, the somber beat of a drum and a liquid gurgle which could have been the pound of surf but which was, as Dumarest knew, the roar of blood in his ears.
As the drum was the beat of his heart, the rasps and rustles the scrape and movement of boots and clothing. The drips alone came from the outside world, the slow fall of moisture from the roof, its soft slide over time-worn stone.
A cavern which had opened from a tunnel which had led from a smaller cavern which he had reached by a winding fissure. Miles of endless turns and twists and descending floors. The weight of a world pressing in around him.
Darkness broken only by the ghostly shimmer of converted energies, residual forces amplified by the mechanism bought from the entrepreneur which he wore clamped to his eyes. In its field he saw the life-pattern of a lichen, something which moved and crouched against a wall, a shower of tiny motes which provided food for the lurking predator and which fed in turn on things too small for him to spot.
Water splashed as he pressed on his way. If the Sungari were here surely they would have noticed him by now. If the Sungari existed. If he were not plunging hopelessly into the empty world of caverns and tunnels which lay beneath the mountains.
And yet the flying creatures had come from somewhere.
There had to be a hive.
He stumbled and fell and climbed carefully to his feet. The apparatus on his eyes confused him a little but, if he should break it, he would be lost in total darkness to wander blindly through an unknown world. Halting he touched his waist, found the laser holstered there and drew it. Closing his eyes he fired at the ground directly ahead. Adjusting the gain from the light-amplifier he peered from between shielding fingers.
And looked at a palace of marvels.
Light streamed from the place which had received the bolt of energy, the stone still radiating in the visible spectrum, blazing like a sun in the infrared, emitting energy which was caught and retained by the walls and roof to register as a host of scintillating rainbows, each node a sparkling gem, each irregularity a vortex of luminous wonder.
A signal to the Sungari if they should exist.
Dumarest stood waiting, wondering if again the signal would fade to linger as a ghostly luminescence long after he had moved on. Another failure which would join the others he had placed along the path from the upper air.
And then, in his brain, something turned.
It was a numbing pressure which shifted as a worm would shift in loam, as butter would slide over butter, a wave move in the ocean, a hand turn in a hand. A thing which sent him to his knees, head bowed, sweat starting from face and neck to fall and sting his eyes to gather in droplets beneath his arms.
He heard the crying, the thin, pitiful wailing which seemed always to be with him.
And, abruptly, he was in space.
It was there, the stars, the fuzz of distant nebulae, the sheets and curtains of luminescence unhampered by the dulling effects of atmosphere. The void was all around him and he floated, alone in the empty universe as the air gushed from his lungs and the eyes bulged in their sockets and his internal organs began to burst under the pressure of boiling blood.
Dying as he had once died before.
As Chagney had died; died and still drifted, his empty eyes staring at blazing stars, his skin burned by the kiss of blasting radiations, dehydrated, frozen in stasis, still living, perhaps, somehow still aware.
And crying… crying…
"No!" His voice was a gasp of pain. "No! No!"
Another voice, strange, remote, whispering in the recesses of his brain.
"A sensitive-quickly, the apparatus is erratic. Some malfunction and loss of integration … foreign elements … adjust… align… so!"
Coolness and the aching died. Peace came, the sickening movement within movement vanishing as did the blaze of stars, the fear, the crying, the pain.
Dumarest lifted his head and rose, trembling, aware of the aftermath of strain-aware too that his eyes were no longer covered by the amplifying apparatus.
Then how was it he could see?
The walls glowed with a soft nacreous light to either side. The floor was a dusty amber lined with green. The roof was bathed in an azure haze. The figure of the monk standing before him was a familiar brown.
A monk?
He stepped forward and stared into the cowl seeing a calm and placid face. Brother Jerome? Once he had known the High Monk, but Jerome was dead.
"And so no longer exists in the form you knew," said the figure. "But the shape is one you find comforting and trust. Why are you here?"
"I am looking for the Sungari."
"And have found them. We are the Sungari. You have broken the Pact."
With good reason, how else was he to ask for aid? And what good was a Pact when no one knew what it was all about? And how was it that an individual claimed plurality? And what was the real shape of the Sungari?
"You will never know," said the monk evenly. "And it is best that you do not. Yes, we have the ability to read brains. Those who first came to this world and contacted us used sensitives to communicate. We arranged a mutually agreeable settlement which you must know. Why did you not communicate earlier? We were watching you and your primitive attempts. Almost we destroyed you."
Curiosity had saved him-one thing at least men and the aliens had in common. And telepathy explained how they first had agreed to cooperate. The talent must have proved a recessive gene and had died from the surface culture.