“Run!” Johnny yelled. “There’s others a-comin’!”
There was an opening among the twisted, malformed lava rocks before them and Mike led the way. Down a steep chute over broken rock, and then a green terrace and a ruin, a few stunted trees. Beyond them a huge mass of rock, weirdly shaped.
The ruin offered shelter, cover of a sort. A few ruined walls, a kiva, and a roofless corridor ending in a T-shaped doorway. It was a semicircular ruin with all the houses facing broken canyon country, somewhat like that between Navajo Mountain and the Colorado.
“Can we stop?” Erik asked. “I’d like to rest.”
Once inside the ruin, Raglan paused to listen. “Take it easy,” he suggested. “Johnny? Would you keep a lookout?”
Somewhere near he could hear the sound of running water. It proved to be a small stream running from under the slide-rock, a stream that had been guided away from its old bed and into a ditch. The water looked clear and fresh.
“Kawasi? Was it near here?”
She came to him. “You will go back now?”
“I must get Erik back, and Johnny.” He turned to look at her. “And you, if you will come with me.”
Her eyes searched his face. “You are sure? I do not know your world.”
“You did not like what you saw?”
“Oh, yes! I like very much some things. Others I not—do not—understand.”
He looked around. “Kawasi? We’re near, aren’t we? How do we get back?”
“It is a sometime place,” she said. “I do not know all. He Who Had Magic was the one who knew, and he marked the ways he knew. I think only the door from the kiva is an always place.”
“We haven’t much time, Kawasi.”
She led the way through the fallen walls, skirting a kiva and a round tower. She paused some distance from a T-shaped door. “It is there. Or it has been. I do not know.” She looked up at him. “All this is uncertain. We are different from you, for we know our world is a sometime place, and all this where our two worlds come together and cross—all this changes. Now only the Saqua know. The People of the Fire. They come and go as they will, and sometimes people on your side believe them ghosts, or the walking dead. But they will not bother where fire is.”
“I saw them once, down on Copper Canyon road. There was a bright fire on No Man’s Mesa and they went toward it.”
“I have seen this, too. The fire calls them back. I do not know why.”
Raglan glanced toward the door. “That is where we came through? It does not seem the same.”
“You will see. It is the same. You fell through the door, and got up. You came down here.”
Turning, he called out. “Erik! Johnny! Come on!”
He saw them rise, saw them start toward him. Uneasily, he glanced around. The yellow sky remained the same, the green grass, the old, moss-grown stones of the ruined walls, yet something was wrong, very wrong.
Following Kawasi, he started up the narrow, grassy lane toward the T-shaped door. Behind him were Johnny and Erik. Glancing back he saw Zipacna come from the ruins, the other Varanel coming one by one from hiding. He ran, in a stumbling run, following Kawasi. She came to the door and stopped, abruptly.
“Mike! Mike, it is not here! The opening is gone!”
He stopped beside her. If ever there had been an opening here it was gone now. Desperately, he glanced around. “Kawasi! Kawasi, there’s got to be a way!”
“It is gone! We are caught!”
Johnny was loading his rifle. “If we could get to one of my places—”
“There’s no chance now.” He indicated more of the Varanel coming up from the trees.
“Be dark soon,” Johnny said.
The Varanel were down there now, not three hundred yards away, and from where they stood there was no escape. Their little patch of ruins was all there was for them. Through a rift in the rocks he could see the valley of the Forbidden, not so far off as he had imagined. Or was it this deceiving light?
Vast, black, and ominous. At this distance it seemed much larger than he had believed. It no longer seemed so black. Was that the strange light that preceded darkness? What passed here for a setting sun? Only, no sun was visible.
“Ain’t like them to attack at night,” Johnny said. “We got until daybreak, if we’re lucky.”
“There’s not that much time,” Raglan said, “not if what Kawasi said was true.”
“I don’t know,” Kawasi protested. “Only He Who Had Magic knew. Somehow he worked out the rhythm of the changes. He left writings that explained it, but I have not seen them. He said it was natural law, and only seemed unnatural because we did not understand. He said there were other such places, but they were few, and far apart. This one was all in an area of scarcely more than five of your miles. He said there were occasional openings, and they might happen just anywhere. He said our ideas of dimension and space would have to change before we understood. He said our three-dimensional world was fantasy, something we had become accustomed to and accepted as the all.”
“We don’t have to understand it,” Erik commented. “We just have to make it work. I’ve an apartment in New York and that’s where I’d like to be.”
“We followed you, Raglan,” Johnny said. “Up to you, ain’t it?”
The light had grown dim. “Better gather any wood you see,” Mike suggested. “We’ll want a fire.”
“There at the edge of the trees? Where they come down to the ruin? I saw some dead stuff over there.”
As Erik and Johnny went to gather wood, Mike turned to Kawasi. “Is there any other place? I mean, it’s our only chance.”
“I do not know. I thought this place …”
“We have water and we have walls around us. If we have to make a stand, we can do it here.”
Johnny and Erik returned with wood, dumping it on the ground. “There’s plenty of firewood and we might be able to get away into the woods, come daylight.”
Johnny glanced at Mike. “Nobody goes into the woods at night. Ain’t safe. Them big lizards hunt at night, mostly.”
Mike gathered twigs and bits of shredded bark. Then, powdering some of the shredded bark in his fingers, he put it in a hollow in a slab of wood. Making a bow of a curved branch and some rawhide looped about a stick, he put the end of the stick in the hollow and worked the bow back and forth to twirl the stick. Soon smoke was rising, and then a tiny flame. He brushed the burning material into the gathered bark and twigs. His fire blazed up and he added fuel.
He had an eerie sense of being watched. He turned his head suddenly.
The creature stood in the shadows beyond the ruins. It appeared to be naked, but covered with hair. It stared, and he stared back. Deliberately, he extended his hands to the fire. When he looked around, the creature was gone.
It resembled those seen that night in Copper Canyon. Like the creature who bumped into his car when answering the call of the light from No Man’s Mesa. There had been no animosity in the stare, only a kind of wonder. Or was it awe?
“Kawasi? Did you see it?”
“Yes. It was a Saqua, the hairy ones.” She added, “We believe they worship fire, but do not know. Yet something about the fire attracts them.”
“They know the ways to pass through to our side?”
“It is believed.”
“Would they show us?”
She was aghast. “Oh, no! They are fearful things! My people fear very much! Anyway, they have no speech. Or we think they have none.”
“But if they know the way?”
“You would trust them?”
He shrugged. Would he trust them? In any event, how to communicate? They certainly would not know English, if they had intelligence enough to understand anything. Were they animals or men? Even that he did not know, for, while seeming like men, they acted like animals—and smelled like them.
“Have they ever attacked you?”
“No, but—”
“Maybe they just want to be left alone?”
Or maybe there was something else. He had extended his hands to the fire, held them there. Was there something in that? He had been doing nothing else that might attract attention.
“Johnny? Erik?”
They appeared from the darkness. “Johnny, I’m not going to waste your time with explanations, but I’ve a hunch. Let’s all of us stand around the fire and stretch our hands to it. Just warm your hands, palm down.”
Erik stared at him. “What the hell’s the idea? My hands aren’t cold.”