“It would be best,” she suggested, “not to pass directly between those.” Once more she indicated the plates on the wall. Crouching, she obeyed her own warning by going on hands and knees under the setting of the squares. Without hesitation the Raski followed her example.
They went more warily, Elossa herself now keeping a keen eye on the walls, glancing ever from one side to the other, in search of more such insets as that which had marked the coming of the Yurth in ship’s clothing. She retained a close rein on her mind, blanketing down as best she could all emanations which another might pick up if some wide-flung mind- search were in progress.
According to the message left in the sky ship the development of Yurth talent had been a latter thing with her people, a deliberately fostered attribute which the ship’s equipment had set upon them after the great catastrophe. Perhaps some of the Yurth who could might have fled before that plan had been enacted, might have escaped similar development. Yet the call had been on mental level only.
Even if there had been a body of survivors from the ship come into hiding here in the heart of these mountains, how many generations were they away from the first of the refugees? The man she had seen wearing the ship’s clothing-clothing which looked untouched by time. . . . No, he must have been an illusion.
They went warily, at a pace which gave them a chance to survey carefully the passage ahead. That continued to run straight, the color lines on its walls, growing wider until their edges met and there was no neutral background to be seen. Elossa felt an ache develop behind her eyes; to survey those colors as she thought it needful to do hurt so that her eyes teared and smarted.
In a queer fashion the colors themselves made her feel ill and she slowed yet more, finding it necessary to pause now and then, closing her eyes to rest them. Stans had said nothing since they had started on, but suddenly he broke the silence between them: “There is-”
He had said no more than those two words when, in the air, suspended without a visible support, there appeared a mist which whirled about, gathering substance as it moved. From a small core it grew larger until it filled the full passage from the rock under their feet to that which roofed them overhead, spreading in turn from one side wall to another.
As it solidified it became the same monstrous mask which had surrounded the mouth hole giving passage into this underground territory. The eyes of the mist face held the same malicious glitter-even, Elossa thought, more awareness than those set in the rock. Once more the mouth was agape as if providing a door to some threatening way beyond. Though through it she could see no spread of the corridor, only deep darkness.
“Atturn!” Stans gave the manifestation a name. “The Mouth-it waits to swallow us!”
“Illusion!” The girl countered with a firmness she could not altogether feel.
There was a stir within the open cavern of that mouth. Though the rest of the face was now appearing very solid, the mist which it formed no longer moved as far as she could see. Out of the opening there licked a tentacle of darkness, as if some great black tongue quested for them.
Elossa, without thinking, reacted on the physical level, stabbing at that with her staff. Then she realized her mistake. One did not fight such as this with force of arm-rather force of mind. But before she could ready such counter the staff had passed through the tongue without any visible effect. And that lash of darkness closed about Stans, closed tightly and clung. In spite of his efforts to free himself, the Raski was drawn forward to where the lips quivered, awaiting him. There was an avid excitement in the eyes of that face, a kind of terrible greediness to be read about the waiting mouth. Atturn would feed and flu’s food was now within its power.
Elossa caught at Stans, taking firm hold of his shoulder. There was no disguising the pull which drew him with a strength which they could not match, even linked in common struggle. But the girl needed that contact in order to apply her own answer.
“You are not!” She cried aloud in her mind to that face. “You have no being here and now! You are not!” She launched her arrows of denial even as she would have sent ones of wood, metal-tipped, from a hunting bow. If only Stans could help her! This manifestation must be of Raski, even as the other had been of Yurth.
“It is not there!” she cried aloud. “This is a thing of illusion only. Think of it so, Stans! You must deny it!” She returned to her own fierce denial by force of mind.
The strength of the tongue appeared limitless. Stans was nearly at the verge of those lips opened even wider to engulf him, while Elossa had been drawn also through the hold she kept on the Raski.
“You are not!” Now she both cried that aloud and thought it with all the force she could summon.
Was it only her imagination, or did the awareness in those great eyes flicker?
“You are not!” She had not said that. It was Stans who had uttered that breathless, low cry. He had stopped fighting against the loop of darkness about his body, instead, with upheld head and defiant gaze he faced the eyes boring down at him.
“You are not!” he repeated.
There was no general loosing of his bonds. Instead the face, the tongue which held him, the whole of the illusion vanished in an instant between one breath and another, so quickly that they both stumbled forward, carried by the very impetus of their resistance when the source against which they fought disappeared.
13.
Not only had the face which barred their passage vanished, but so had the passage itself. Those smooth walls with the bands of color winked out. In their place was a sweep of dark on either side. The torch which they had forgotten when they had worked their way through into the band-lighted passage was no longer alight to give them any idea of the extent of this pocket of deep dark.
Elossa stood very still, shivering. She had the impression that they were no longer in any confined corridor. Rather there must stretch about them, for some distance, an area which might hold deadly snares for any who blundered on. The fear of the dark unknown which was bred into her kind sought now to send her into panic, and she needed all the resources of spirit she could muster to remain self-disciplined, turn in upon what senses of hearing and smell she might draw upon, since sight was denied her.
“Elossa.” For the first time her companion spoke her name. She was startled in that his voice seemed to come from some distance away. Yet, though that one word echoed hollowly, there was no trace of fear in it.
“I am here,” she returned, schooling her own voice as best she could to the same level. “It remains-where are we?”
She nearly cried out as, from the smothering darkness, a hand fell on her shoulder, slipped down her arm. until fingers found and tightened about her wrist.
“Wait. I have still the fire-strike.” Those fingers which had gripped her, perhaps in mutual reassurance for an instant, loosed hold.
She heard the click-click of what could only be a striker in use. There followed a small flare of flame. That grew and she saw, with a thankfulness she did not try to put into words, that Stans had not abandoned his torch, though she had not remembered now seeing it in his hands as they passed along the corridor.
Such a small light hardly pressed back any of the dark. Still it illumined their two faces, and, in a way, built up a measure of defense against the pressing blackness. Stans held it between them for a long moment as if so to reassure them both that they did indeed have it. Then he swung it away, out before them, nearly at shoulder level.
The flames flickered, leaped and fell. Elossa could feel against her own cheek currents of air which puffed, flowed, then were gone again. But the light did not touch any wall, on either side, before, or behind. They might have been dropped on a wide open, lightless plain. Under foot was a solid surface of dark rock, the only stable thing they had yet sighted. Had the corridor been entirely illusion? Elossa, for all her awareness of how the conscious mind might be manipulated and tricked, could hardly accept that. If it had not been illusion in entirety then how had they been transported into this pocket of eternal night?