Protection from weather, the manmade door needed no lock against a folk whose piety was founded on relics. When he had closed it behind him, Ivar stood in abrupt silence, motionless cold, a dark whose thickness was broken only by the wan ray from the flash. His breath sounded too loud in his ears. Fingers sought comfort from the heavy sheath knife he had borne from Windhome; but it was his solitary weapon. To carry anything more, earlier, would have provoked instant suspicion.
What will I find?
Probably nothin’. I can take closer look at Caruith machine, but I haven’t tools to open it and analyze. As for what might be elsewhere … these corridors twist on and on, in dozen different sets.
Noneless, newest discovery, plausibly barred to public while exploration proceeds, is most logical place to hide—whatever is to be hidden. And—his gaze went to the dust of megayears, tumbled and tracked like the dust of Luna when man first fared into space—I could find traces which’ll lead me further, if any have gone before me.
He began to walk. His footfalls clopped hollowly back off the ageless vaulting.
Why am I doin’ this? Because Merseians may have part in events? Is it bad if they do? Tanya feels happy about what she’s heard. She thinks Roidhunate might really come to our aid, and hopes I can somehow contact that agent.
But Ythri might help too. In which case, why won’t Orcan chiefs let me see Erannath? Their excuse rings thin.
And if Ancients are workin’ through Merseians, as is imaginable, why have they deceived Jaan? Shouldn’t he know?
(Does he? It wouldn’t be information to broadcast. Terran Imperium may well dismiss Jaan’s claims as simply another piece of cultism, which it’d cause more trouble to suppress than it’s worth . . . but never if Imperium suspected Merseia was behind it! So maybe he is withholdin’ full story. Except that doesn’t feel right. He’s too sincere, too rapt, and, yes, too bewildered, to play double game. Isn’t he?)
I’ve got to discover truth, or lose what right I ever had to lead my people.
Ivar marched on into blindness.
XX
A kilometer deep within the mountain, he paused outside the chamber of Jaan’s apotheosis. His flashbeam barely skimmed the metal enigma before seeking back to the tunnel floor.
Here enough visits had gone on of late years that the dust was scuffed confusion. Ivar proceeded down the passage. The thing in the room cast him a last reflection and was lost to sight. He had but the one bobbing blob of luminance to hollow out a place for himself in the dark. Now that he advanced slowly, carefully, the silence was well-nigh total. Bad-a-bad, went bis heart, bad-a-bad, bad-a-bad.
After several meters, the blurriness ended. He would not have wondered to see individual footprints. Besides Jaan, officers of the Companions whom the prophet brought hither had surely ventured somewhat further. What halted him was sudden orderliness. The floor had been swept smooth.
He stood for minutes while his thoughts grew fangs. When he continued, the knife was in his right fist.
Presently the tunnel branched three ways. That was a logical point for people to stop. Penetrating the maze beyond was a task for properly equipped scientists; and no scientists would be allowed here for a long while to come. Ivar saw that the broom, or whatever it was, had gone down all the mouths. Quite reasonable, trickled through him. Visitors wouldn’t likely notice sweepin’ had been done, unless they came to place where change in dust layers was obvious. Or unless they half expected it, like me … expected strange traces would have to be wiped out….
He went into each of the forks, and found that the handiwork ended after a short distance in two of them. What reached onward was simply the downdrift of geological ages. The third had been swept for some ways farther, though not since the next-to-last set of prints had been made. Two sets of those were human, one Ythrian; only the humans had returned. Superimposed were other marks, which were therefore more recent.
They were the tracks of a being who walked on birdlike claws.