Uranos frowned. “It could well be done. There are secrets within Chronos’s walls, which he has manned so securely, that are secrets even to him.”
“You mean?”
“Rooms and passages underground where the foot of man has not stirred dust these hundred years. I have heard tales of such, and perhaps your captain has also, or knows even more than tales. If he has found such a way, the core of the city might lie open to him. But this captain is loyal to the Shadow, is he not?”
“No longer, or so I hope. He sailed with escaped Murian prisoners onboard-”
“Then”-Uranos smiled-“perhaps in the future Chronos may have some unsought visitors. Would that I could look upon his face if and when that happens. Also I think he shall lie uneasy tonight-”
“Why?”
“I suspect we have been overheard, and a report of our words will be speedily carried to Chronos!”
“Someone listening?” Ray stared at the walls.
“Years of such hospitality have given me keen ears. It is not the first time this has happened. Now there will be a mighty scurrying, hunting underground ways. Whisper a warning into a coward’s ear and he will straightway feel a knife pricking his throat. But there
are hundreds of passages; mostly long sealed, and he will never find them all. So will he sweat and fear-”
“But what if he finds the right passage and sets an ambush there?” It seemed to Ray that his cellmate was entirely too optimistic.
“That is as fortune decrees, but somehow I think it will not happen. What man may change the lines written on his forehead at birth, or the future the stars foretell? I believe that I shall live to reign here-”
In spite of himself Ray was moved by the Atlantean’s confidence. Could these men really see the future, or a portion of it? What had the Lady Ayna once said-that they saw a future but that some decision of their own could change it.
“How can you be so sure?”
Uranos looked at him, and now that glance steadied into a hard, measuring stare.
“If you have passed the First Mysteries, as by your age you must have, how can you ask that? What manner of man are you? Of the Barren Lands you said, Murian by the Re Mu’s favor-but no colonist. What are you?”
“No man of this time-”
“You mean?”
�‘I was born into the world of the far future. I came through time to here. How, and why I do not know.”
Uranos was silent for a long moment. If the same story had been told him, Ray wondered, would he have believed it?
“So-then did the Naacals send forth a summons also? One that you answered by your coming?”
“No, I came by accident.” He told the story in a few sentences.
“And if you can never return?”
“That I do not know. Nor even if I have any future beyond this hour, or this day. Judging by our present circumstances, probably not.”
Uranos shook his head. “It is well to be prepared for ill, but do not yet toss away the future, my friend. Let us forget a little and give those who listen something to be heard. Tell me of your world-no, let me first show you mine-”
And he talked of his boyhood in the mountain valleys and of how he had hunted horses in the plains.
“Comrade, nowhere in the world is there aught to equal the beauty of a horse finishing a race, his mane long on the wind, his hoofs pounding as war drums. The sailors speak of ships, the huntsmen of the elk at bay-but the horse fills my heart. And did I not ride Flame breather to victory five times over!” Passionate longing broke through his voice.
“Tell me-” he began after a pause, and then made a sharp gesture toward the door. “They come again,” he said in a half whisper.
And it seemed to Ray that a kind of evil shadow came first, dimming the light rod, hanging about them.
15
ACCOMPANYING the guards this time was one of the Red Robes.
“All hail, brother of the Shadow,” Uranos addressed him as their guards released their chains from rings in the wall. “Why does the servant of Ba-Al come to disturb us?”
The priest looked from Ray to Uranos and then centered his stare on the Sunborn. The American thought that he had never seen so cold and measuring a regard. He did not answer Uranos but spoke to the guards.
“Bring them forth.”
They found it hard to get to their feet. The short chains had so held them that the muscles of their backs and thighs were cramped. But pushes from the guards sent them stumbling out into a narrow hall.
“They count us mighty heroes,” Uranos observed. “See, brother, they must send eight warriors and a priest to have us out!”
But if he were trying to bait the Atlanteans into some move, none of their escort arose to his needling. Instead, the soldiers closed upon them, urging them on at a fast pace after the hurrying priest. They went on up and down dark passages, and Ray thought how like this was to a giant spider web, with Chronos, like a bloated insect, in its midst. Then they came to a wider and better lighted hall and halted before a door curtain of metal, not fabric.
Their guards shifted uneasily, keeping their attention riveted upon the curtain. It was, Ray decided, as if they were unhappy at being sent here. Then the priest placed his right hand on the screen, and it opened at what could have been only a light touch. With an audible sigh of relief, the warrior nearest Ray thrust the American on the heels of the Red Robe, with Uranos, similarly urged, beside him.
Two Red Robes waited and caught at their chains as if this was a matter in which they had long practice. Ray had no chance to struggle before his arms were locked firmly behind him.
“On!” commanded the third priest who had led them.
They crossed a bare room and went through a second door into a chamber with walls the rusty brown of dried blood. There was a single large chair there, carved from one block of black stone, which looked none too comfortable. But its occupant appeared as much at his ease as Chronos lolling among cushions. Magos brooded. There was a satiated, yet anticipatory look about him, such as might have been worn by a vulture perched above a slaughter yard.
He was smiling, if the rictus that twisted his thin lips could be given such a definition, leaning forward slightly to hear the better some tale now being whispered into his ear by another priest. But when his eyes rested upon the prisoners, it became a wide and evil smirk.
“So, my lord Sunborn, Poseidon-who-has-no-hope-of- being, you have come to me at last,” he said to Uranos. “Do you hold in memory now a past meeting when I spoke to you of the will of the Dark master and you refused to listen? You cut yourself from the future that day, Uranos. Do you regret that?”
Uranos held his head high. “Magos, you claim to be the son of Ba-A1 upon earth. Does the Shadow agree to that, I wonder? But I can well believe you aspire to play the role as fittingly as something born of flesh and blood can, since such evil otherwise would not come into any sane mind. If you propose to entreat me again-”
“Entreat you you!” The high priest laughed, a chill, thin sound that might have issued from the bony jaws of a skull. “Magos does not ask a second time. Nor have you any value now. This time you will serve another purpose.”
“That shall be as the Sun decides. The future lies: within the temple-”
“Ba-Al’s shrine.”
“I think not. There still stands another temple in this city.”
Magos’s smile was gone. His eyes burned as Ray had never seen a human’s burn before.
“The Flame is long quenched. You pay a debt-”
“And I say to you, Magos, that in the end the paying shall come from you. And it shall be such a paying as. this world has never seen.”
There was such conviction in Uranos’s voice that one could believe he looked into the future, reading there enough to make that not a threat but a prophecy.
“Dare you believe that, you who are an insect upon which the servant of Ba-Al can set a sandal and no
realize that he has crushed aught at all? Dare you:’ speak to me-me, the ruler of the world under the.` shadow?”
“Has Chronos heard such words, Magos? He sees himself the ruler of the world.”
The smile returned to the priest’s vulturine face. “Chronos? Who-what is Chronos? A man uses a tool, to aid in a task. Once done, that tool may be throw