Before they reached the cliffs there was a vast city of tumbled rocks. Huge boulders and slabs that had evidently fallen here in the past, unlike anything he had seen. He led the way, following the dim, long unused path that wound among the rocks, climbing higher and higher. Somewhere up here was, where they had come through. He thought he could find the place. He hoped he could.
The trail went up steeply into the rocks and he hesitated, glancing back down the trail just covered. Somehow the air was no longer clear, and he could make out objects only as far as a few hundred yards away. From here he should have been able to see clear to the dry riverbed, but it was lost in distance. He climbed on, moving faster as he climbed farther, driven by an urgency he did not recognize. When he topped out on the ridge he waited for Erik, who was making slow time of it.
Johnny walked over to Raglan. The shrewd old eyes studied him warily. “Are we goin’ to make it? I’d surely like to be among my own kind one more time. I’d like to get me a little cabin somewhere, just live out my days.”
Raglan looked off to his left. She was over there somewhere, among her own people. If he took her away from all that, would she be happy? Was he vain enough to believe he could make it up to her? What right did he have to assume he could?
Erik’s face was strained and pale when he came off the climb. He looked at Raglan with haunted eyes. “I’d no business getting you into this. I’d no claim on you.”
“You spoke as if there was somebody with you,” Raglan said.
Erik shrugged. “It was a dream. She got away, or they let her go.” He sat down on a flat rock. “It was she who left me the sunflowers.”
Raglan started to speak, then hesitated. Could it be that Kawasi was the one? It was Kawasi who had brought the daybook to him.
He turned abruptly. “We’ll be getting on.”
The path led into the rocks, up a steep trail through a narrow crack wide enough for them to move in single file. He looked back. Erik was behind him, Johnny following. He turned back, using his hands to help pull himself up. Here and there a projecting root offered a handhold, yet a subtle change had taken place.
The rocks now were weirdly shaped, looking like thick molasses frozen in movement. Once they had been molten lava. The climbers emerged suddenly on a small plateau covered with ruins, incredibly ancient. Fallen arches, tumbled columns, and long, unroofed halls, the walls covered with paintings.
The painted figures resembled some of the kachinas he had seen, but with a difference. The kachinas he had seen in the Hopi and Zuni villages, no matter how grotesque, had always seemed beneficent, but these conveyed a subtle feeling of horror, of fear. These were malevolent beings. “I’ll be glad when I’m out of here,” he said over his shoulder.
“Know what you mean. I lived with it for years.” Johnny paused, looking around. “Never seen anything like this. Not in all my born days. Figured I’d seen everything over here, but this here’s different. This is all wrong.”
Mike’s eyes sought the rocks, the alleyways between the ruins. How did one get out of here? Where were they exactly? They were, he was sure, close to the point at which he had come through from the other side, but where was it? Had it been among these ruins? He remembered nothing of the kind.
“Raglan? Better decide what’s next. They’re comin’.” Johnny pointed back down the trail. Not a half mile away the Varanel, a dozen of them, were coming out of the rocks.
Slowly Raglan looked around, trying to clear his mind of all but the immediate necessity. It was so much easier to be a follower than a leader. The responsibility could be left to another, and one had only to go along. Yet he was the leader and they trusted in him. He was the one who thought he knew the way back, but now he was near and he had no idea which way to turn. His eyes searched the rocks, trying to find some vestige of a way. The ruins invited them with numerous openings that might have been streets or passages, yet where did they lead? Were they traps? Were they to end in blind alleys? There was no time to try each one. His first decision had to be the right one.
“Johnny? Can you slow them up for me? I need some time.”
Johnny walked to the rocks, looking back down the trail. “This light’s deceivin’, but I’ll try.”
He paused then and said, “Raglan? There’s some of the Lords of Shibalba among them. They don’t mean for us to get away.”
Somewhere ahead of them, unless they had been destroyed by the people of the pueblo, was that other patrol of the Varanel. The worst of it was, he had lost track of time. There seemed nothing on which he could depend to count the hours or the days. The light varied so little. Raglan walked.away among the ruins, trying to think, to find a way out. It had to be quick.
Kawasi—what of her? Could he find her again? He paused on the edge of a kiva. Here, too, the roof had fallen in like so many of those he had seen in his own world. He stared into it. No sipapu, of course, but the ventilation was the same, the construction the same. Around the inside were moving figures, or figures that seemed to move, for there was a series of them in different positions.
His thoughts were suddenly cut sharply by the boom of Johnny’s Sharps Fifty. Standing on tiptoe he looked over a wall and could see a blue-clad figure lying in a deserted path. The man was obviously dead.
He looked into the kiva again. There was a window there, like the one on the Haunted Mesa, but not a window, exactly. More like one of the T-shaped doors so familiar from the ruins at Mesa Verde. Only this door seemed to open on nothing. Or was it open? He walked closer.
This was not the way he had come. This certainly could not be the way the Poison Woman or others, including Tazzoc, had crossed to his world. Where was Tazzoc?
He prowled among the ruins. There had to be a way, but how? Where? If he could find the way he could send Johnny over with Erik and then he could go for Kawasi.
The Sharps boomed again.He glanced over at Johnny. The old man looked at him, their eyes meeting. “Raglan? I can’t hold ’em long. They’re creepin’ up on us, gettin’ closer. We don’t have much time.”
Raglan dropped into the kiva, approaching the window. He could not see through it. Open it undoubtedly was, but here, too, what lay beyond was masked by that weird curtain of what appeared to be a thick smoke, or something akin to it.
Did he dare take a chance? He moved closer, and then, within, he saw the edge of the door slope steeply down, a smooth rock surface.
Another trap?
“Mike?” Johnny’s voice was pleading. “For God’s sake!”
He turned quickly. The old man was struggling to reload, and Raglan could see spots of blue darting among the rocks. He reached for his own gun, and then from behind him a voice spoke. An amused, contemptuous voice.
“I would not do that if I were you. It is too late, Mr. Raglan, much too late.”
Mike turned slowly, his hair crawling at the base of his skull.
It was Zipacna.
Behind him were a half-dozen Varanel, and among them, Kawasi, obviously a prisoner.
XLI
Too late?
Kawasi was a captive. If Johnny was taken he would be immediately killed, and as for Erik and himself, they would either be starving in cells or dead. Even as Zipacna spoke, Mike Raglan knew it was too late only if he did nothing. If he was to resist, the time was now, not when he was a prisoner. He drew his pistol and fired.
Again their confidence worked for him. The great Zipacna was speaking, he who was never disobeyed. For men unaccustomed to resistance, believing themselves invulnerable, Mike’s reaction was too swift. Before their minds could adjust and react, a man was down and dead, another dying, the rest scattering like sheep.
Zipacna’s reaction had been swift and immediate. Even as he spoke he must have realized Raglan would resist, and his move was to save himself. Poised for instinctive reaction, Zipacna threw himself to the side and leaped for cover.
Almost as quick was Kawasi’s reaction. She stepped aside and swung a hard fist to the throat of her guard. As she ducked away, Johnny was among them, swinging his clubbed rifle.