Ross thought he cried out, but he could not be sure, as he watched Karara’s head begin to sway in concert with her Foanna partner, her black hair springing out from her shoulders to rival the rippling strands of the alien’s. Ashe was consciously matching steps with the companion who also drew him along a flowing line of fire.
In this last instant Ross realized the time for retreat was past—there was no place left to go. His hands went out, though he had to force that invitation because in him there was a shrinking horror of this surrender. But he could not let the others go without him.
The Foanna’s touch was cool, and yet it seemed that flesh met his flesh, fingers as normal as his met fingers in that grasp. And when that hold was complete he gave a small gasp. For his horror was wiped away; he knew in its place a burst of energy which could be disciplined to use as a weapon or a tool in concentrated and complicated action. His feet so . . . and then so . . . Did those directions flow without words from the Foanna’s fingers to his and then along his nerves to his brain? He only knew which was the proper next step, and the next, and the next, as they wove their way along the pattern lines, with their going adding a necessary thread to a design.
Forward four steps, backward one—in and out. Did Ross actually hear that sweet thrumming, akin to the lilting speech of the Foanna, or was it a throbbing in his blood? In and out . . . What had become of the others he did not know; he was aware only of his own path, of the hand in his, of the silvery shape at his side to whom he was now tied as if one of the Rover capture nets enclosed them both.
The fiery lines under his feet were smoking, tendrils rising and twisting as the hair of the Foanna rippled and twisted. And the smoke clung, wreathed his body. They moved in a cocoon of smoke, thicker and thicker, until Ross could not even see the Foanna who accompanied him, was only assured of her presence by the hand which grasped his.
And a small part of him clung desperately to the awareness of that clasp as an anchorage against what might come, a tie between the world of reality and the place into which he was passing.
How did one find words to describe this? Ross wondered with that part of him which remained stubbornly Ross Murdock, Time Agent. He thought that he did not see with his eyes, hear with his ears but used other senses his own kind did not recognize nor acknowledge.
Space . . . not a room . . . a cave—anything made by normal nature. Space which held something.
Pure energy? His mind strove to give name to that which was nameless. Perhaps it was that spark of memory and consciousness which gave him that instant of “Seeing.” Was it a throne? And on it a shimmering figure? He was regarded intently, measured, and—set aside.
There were questions or a question he could not hear, and perhaps an answer he would never be able to understand. Or had any of this happened at all?
Ross crouched on a cold floor, his head hanging, drained of energy, of all that feeling of power and well-being he had had when they had begun their dance across the symbols. About him those designs still glowed dully. When he looked at them too intently his head ached. He could almost understand, but the struggle was so exhausting he winced at the effort.
“Gordon—?”
There was no clasp on his hand; he was alone, alone between two glowing arabesques. That loneliness struck at him with the sharpness of a blow. His head came up; frantically he stared about him in search of his companions. “Gordon!” His plea and demand in one was answered:
“Ross?”
On his hands and knees, Ross used the rags of his strength to crawl in that direction, stopping now and then to shade his eyes with his hands, to peer through the cracks between his fingers for some sight of Ashe.
There he was, sitting quietly, his head up as if he were listening, or striving to listen. His cheeks were sunken; he had the drained, worn look of a man strained to the limit of physical energy. Yet there was a quiet peace in his face. Ross crawled on, put out a hand to Ashe’s arm as if only by touching the other could he be sure he was not an illusion. And Ashe’s fingers came up to cover the younger man’s in a grasp as tight as the Foanna’s hold had been.
“We did it; together we did it,” Ashe said. “But where—why—?”
Those questions were not aimed at him, Ross knew. And at that moment the younger man did not care where they had been, what they had done. It was enough that his terrible loneliness was gone, that Ashe was here.
Still keeping his hold on Ross, Ashe turned his head and called into the wilderness of the symbol-glowing space about them, “Karara?”
She came to them, not crawling, not wrung almost dry of spirit and strength, but on her two feet. About her shoulders her dark hair waved and spun—or was it dark now? Along those strands there seemed to be threaded motes of light, giving a silvery sheen which was a faint echo of the Foanna’s tresses. And was it only his bemused and bewildered sight, Ross wondered, or had her eyes turned golden?
Karara smiled down at them and held out her hands, offering one to each. When they took them Ross knew again that surge of energy he had felt when he had followed the Foanna into the maze dance.
“Come! There is much to do.”
He could not be mistaken; her voice held the singing lilt of the Foanna. Somehow she had crossed some barrier to become a paler, perhaps a lesser, but still a copy of the three aliens. Was this what they had meant when they warned of a change which might come to those who followed them into the ritual of this place?
Ross looked from the girl to Ashe with searching intensity. No, he could see no outward change in Gordon. And he felt none within himself.
“Come!” Some of Karara’s old impetuousness returned as she tugged at them, urging them to their feet and drawing them with her. She appeared to know where they must go, and both men followed her guidance.
Once more they came out of the weird and alien into the normal, for here were the rock walls of a passage running up at an angle which became so steep they were forced to pull along by handholds hollowed in the walls.
“Where are we going?” Ashe asked.
“To cleanse.” Karara’s answer was ambiguous, and she sped along hardly touching the handholds. “But hurry!”
They finished their climb and were in another corridor where patches of sunlight came through a pierced wall to dazzle their eyes. This was similar to the way which had run beside the courtyard in Zahur’s castle.
Ross looked out of the first opening down into a courtyard. But where Zahur’s had held the busy life of a castle, this was silent. Silent, but not deserted. There were men below, armed, helmed. He recognized the uniform of the Wrecker warriors, saw one or two who wore the gray of the Foanna servants. They stood in lines, unmoving, without speech among themselves, men who might have been frozen into immobility and arranged so for some game in which they were the voiceless, willing pieces.
And their immobility was a thing to arouse fear. Were they dead and still standing?
“Come!” Karara’s voice had sunk to a whisper and her hand pulled at the men.
“What—?” began Ross.
Ashe shook his head. Those rows below drawn up as if in order to march, unliving rows. They could not be alive as the humans knew life!
Ross left his vantage point, ready to follow Karara. But he could not blot from his mind the picture of those lines, nor forget the terrible blankness which made their faces more inhuman, more frighteningly alien than those of the Foanna.
17: Shades Against Shadow
The corridor ended in a narrow slit of room, and the wall before them was not the worked stone of the citadel but a single slab of what appeared to be glass curdled into creamy ridges and depressions.
Here were the Foanna, their robes once more cloaking them. Each held, point out, one of the rods. They moved slowly but with the precise gestures of those about a demanding and very important task as they traced each depression in the wall before them with the wand points. Down, up, around . . . as their feet had moved to cover each line.