“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 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 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 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 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 door-post, 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.
* * *
* * *
XI
THEY 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.
“What . . . ?”
Orsya shook her head. “I do not know, though it is very old. Some of the sounds—” She shook her head again. “No, I do not know. It was a guard set, I believe, to answer such a coming as ours. What was opened to us, we need not now fear.”