He held out his hand to the spider. “Give me your claw.”
It was furry, not unlike the paw of a dog or cat, but harder and more bony. Niall stepped toward the rock face. But even as he passed through it, he was aware that the spider’s sudden fear that he would find himself trapped inside the rock prevented him from following.
The troll saw the problem. He said: “Give me your other claw,” and took it in his huge hand. And now, since the spider had two human creatures on either side, his fear of being trapped disappeared, and he slipped into the instinctive attitude that enabled him to pass through the rock. A moment later, as all three of them stood side by side in the tunnel, the captain made an exclamation that in human speech would have been: “That is incredible!”
The troll said: “That is because your mind created a barrier where none existed,” and Niall knew, without being told, that the spider was now able to understand the troll’s telepathic language. Subjugating his will to the troll’s had placed them in sympathy. Niall knew they now trusted one another, and that the troll’s misgivings about the spider had vanished.
The tunnel down which they now followed the troll was completely unlike the one that led to the cave of the chameleon men. To begin with, it obviously had not been carved and shaped by hands, but was natural rock. What made it so strange was this rock looked more like the wood of old, gnarled trees, with flowing curves and grooves, and even places where it had twisted into something that looked like knots. Niall could only guess that it was some kind of volcanic formation, or that molten rock had flowed into these treelike forms. There were places where the tunnel widened and where the floor was almost flat. In others, it narrowed into a passage with curved walls that looked like green glass, and a floor that was simply a point where two walls curved down to meet underfoot. The spider, with his eight legs, found these difficult to negotiate. Even Niall, placing one foot before the other, was in continual danger of twisting his ankle. Only the troll seemed perfectly comfortable in these strange surroundings, moving surefooted over the distorted surfaces.
There were places where other tunnels led off to the right or left, and at one intersection there was a deep hole that had to be skirted; from its depth came the roaring sound of running water, and a downdraft indicated that it was flowing fast. He could feel the spider’s tension as they edged around its rim. But beyond this, the tunnel became so wide, and the floor so flat, that they might have been walking on one of the pink-colored roads of the spider city.
There came a point where the sloping floor changed into a wide flight of steps, at the bottom of which was a light. They obviously were made for creatures who were taller than humans, since each step was more than two feet deep. The troll strode on down them without a change of pace, while the spider, because of the flexibility of his body, was able to move easily from step to step. But Niall, who found it easier to descend with his face toward the steps, using his hands as well as his feet, soon fell far behind.
When his feet encountered a flat surface, he knew he must be at the bottom. He turned round, sitting on the last step, both knees aching, and stared with astonishment at the great hall that faced him.
His first impression was of light reflected from a thousand crystals, created from angular surfaces whose edges reminded him of a giant saw made up of pyramids. They stretched in all directions, many half as tall as a man, others a mere quarter of an inch high, covering the cave to its far depths. Between the crystals were winding paths that twisted and turned to avoid the larger blocks. Against the wall of the cave were tall columns made of a green crystal that were shaped like tropical vegetation with long, swordlike leaves. There were also crystalline deposits that looked like sleeping birds, or skeletal hands and arms, or even gargoyles. The total effect was overpowering.
There was a sound of running water, and Niall observed a stream that flowed in a channel below the level of the floor, while small bridges that carried the paths across the water made it clear that at least some of this profusion was the work of living hands.
All Niall’s tiredness had vanished. There was something about this extraordinary place, and the power of mind that seemed to be reflected in its bright surfaces, that woke him to full alertness.
Since his mouth was dry, he knelt at the side of the stream and dipped up a little water in his hand. The taste startled him. It produced the same kind of shock of pleasure as the well water in his flask, but far stronger. It was as if the water was effervescent with tiny bubbles. Yet when he cupped both hands and filled them with water, it seemed perfectly still. He dipped his tongue into it and it prickled; so did his lips as he immersed them. Moreover, when he reached out to steady himself against a huge crystal, a faint current made him snatch his hand away.
There could be no doubt that this great hall of crystal was alive with some powerful force, the same force that had flowed up through his feet and that now ran through his body as he swallowed the water. The place had been designed as an energy trap.
The sound of footsteps brought him back to the present. The troll had come back to find him. Smiling his broad, good-natured smile, he said: “Come. My wife is preparing food.”
Niall followed the giant to the far corner, where the captain was waiting under an archway in the rock. This arch, Niall noticed, seemed to be natural, and traces of seashells and ammonites that roughened the walls revealed that this great hall had once been a sea cave. The crystals, then, were the result of evaporation, although it was hard to imagine how seawater had become so concentrated as to crystallize into this profusion.
Through the doorway, more steps descended steeply to another tall archway. And as the troll reached the bottom, two young trolls ran out and began to jump up and down, and shout so loud that Niall winced. Both had red cheeks and red hair, and a gap between their front teeth; the younger was probably two, and was already bigger than Niall; the elder looked about ten, and was over eight feet tall. Both ran to their father and hugged him. Then the young one noticed the captain, and eyed him with alarm. His father picked him up and said something reassuring in the guttural language in which he had first addressed Niall.
A bright light shone from beyond the archway. This proved to be a lamp in the form of a crystal column, two feet high, that stood on a table, and that made the room as bright as a sunny day. The tabletop was a slab of rock whose legs were six-foot tree trunks covered in thick bark.
Although the roof of the cave was high — at least twenty feet — the room was warm, and Niall realized that the source of the warmth was another rock crystal, this one shaped like a massive rough boulder that stood by a far wall and emitted an orange glow. A few feet from this, seated in an armchair that had been made out of a single piece of dark rock, was another troll who Niall guessed to be the grandfather. He had a beard that was at once bushy and straggly, sprouting from his chin in irregular but thick gray tufts. Like the troll’s of the sacred mountain, his face looked as if it had been hacked out of wood, and the nose was broken. And like his son, he conveyed an impression of enormous power.
At his feet sat an animal covered in scales, with a face like a bullfrog. At the sight of the strangers it stood up on four short legs and made a strange booming, bellowing sound that made everything in the room vibrate. The man in the chair silenced it with a roaring noise that sounded like “Groosh!” and it subsided.
A woman came through a door of rough planks on the far side of the cave, wiping her hands on an apron of sackcloth. She had red hair that fell halfway down her back, and wore a red blouse and a wide gray skirt of coarse material. At first sight she struck Niall as ugly, her upturned nose and wide nostrils giving her a piglike appearance, which was not improved by the widely spaced front teeth. But her broad smile was so good-natured that Niall like her immediately.