“There is a current of air. See, the torch,” Stans said. “Our best guide may lie with that.”
It was true that the flames were blown away from the head of the brand he held. His suggestion was undoubtedly the most sensible one. They turned to face that current, the flames pointing toward their own breasts.
But they kept their pace slow. Now and then Stans paused, holding the torch out to this side or that. There were still no walls to be seen. Finally the light shone out on the lip of a drop. There the Raski lay belly down, to crawl cautiously to the edge of that, holding the torch out and down. There was nothing to see below but a chasm apparently so deep that their light was quickly lost in it.
Yet it was from across this that the current of air blew.
Stans sat up. The small part of his face Elossa could glimpse by the weaving flame was set. However, she saw no suggestion of wavering or weakness in his frowning gaze as he turned his head slowly from left to right surveying the rim of the drop on which they crouched.
“With a rope,” he said as if more than half to himself, “we might try descent. We cannot otherwise.”
“Along the edge then?” Elossa was privately very dubious that they would find any way of bridging that gulf. On the other hand there just might be a faint chance that the break itself would eventually narrow so that a leap could take them over.
He shrugged. “Right or left?”
It was all a matter of chance. One way might be as good as the other. During the moments of rest here she had been sending out short mind-probes, striving to find even the most minute suggestion of other life here-life which might have its own paths and ways to reach again the surface of the world she knew. The puzzle of the Yurth cry for help still troubled her mind.
“It matters not to me.” She returned from the emptiness in which her probe had been lost and useless.
“Left then.” The Raski got to his feet. He waited until she, too, stood up, and then turned in the direction he had chosen, keeping near enough to the edge of the drop so the rim lay ever within the light of the torch.
There was little way to measure distance traveled, save in the fatigue of their own bodies. Elossa found herself counting steps under her breath for no good reason, save that such a sum of their journey quieted the ever-present fear that there was no way out.
Then-
Stans gave a sharp exclamation, strode forward. The light of the torch had caught a projection out from the rim of the chasm, extending over the dark emptiness of that drop. It was of the same rock as formed the flooring over which they had traveled, and narrowed as it went. Not worked stone of any man-made bridge, Elossa thought. Yet. . . .
Her companion swung the torch closer to the surface of that projecting tongue. Though there were no marks of tools smoothing this path there lay something else. Deep carven into the floor was another representation of that face, while extending from it was the bridge in the form of a tongue thrust forth. Elossa halted just beyond the edges of the carving, having no wish to tread over the wide lips of the mouth. But Stans apparently felt no such repugnance. He stepped onto the tongue where it issued from between the lips at its widest extent. Then he knelt and, torch in one hand, began to crawl out on the bridge itself, if bridge it was.
Elossa had no desire to follow. There was that about this continual appearance of Atturn’s face which disturbed her. It was wholly of Raski, and yet Stans insisted that he knew little of it There was also the fact that whoever had wrought the representations of it she had seen had continually accented the malice, the evil. Atturn had not been a god-or ruler- or energy-who had been engaged in any good for her own kind.
She watched Stans creep along over the drop, longing to summon him back. Yet she knew better than to disturb the concentration displayed in his whole tense figure. While the tongue bridge, though it narrowed, did seem solid enough as far as the torchlight reached.
Stans paused, for the first time glanced back at her over his shoulder.
“I think we can cross,” he called and there was a distorted echo from below uttering his words so garbled they might have been from the throat of some beast “It seems to continue. Let me see the other end.”
“Well enough.” Elossa dropped down just beyond the edge of the face, watching as he once more advanced slowly but steadily ahead. Around her the dark thickened as the torch was carried farther and farther away. She could hardly make out the details of the tongue passage, save that it seemed to her that it was narrowing to an extent where Stans might not even find width enough to support both knees at once.
The Raski’s advance was very slow. Though he held the torch up to illuminate as much as he could of what still stretched before him, his other hand grasped the edge of the bridge in a grip Elossa did not have to see clearly to realize was tightened by the very real presence of fear. Then he moved so that now his legs dropped, one on either side of that path which had become so narrow his own body more than spanned it.
He began to hitch, his legs swinging over nothingness. Elossa, without being conscious of what she did, pressed one fist tight against her mouth, until the pain in her pinched lips made her aware. The torch had certainly not caught any sign yet of the other side of the chasm. What if the tongue became a tip and Stans slid off it into the depths?
The malice of the carven face certainly promised no more than harsh disaster for anyone daring to trust to it. She longed to shout to the Raski to return, but at the same time feared that any sudden summons might send him off balance, to fall.
She blinked, hardly sure that she did see that hint of a ledge of rock reaching out toward the tongue tip from the far side. Was there a space between the two which could not in the end be bridged? Or did the very tip of the stone span actually rest upon the ledge? It was too far-the light too confined by the distance-for her to make sure. Her heart was pounding, she had risen to her knees, staring out at that small flicker of flame which was so perilously distant.
Stans made a convulsive movement-a fall! Her breath caught in a choking gasp. No! He was getting to his feet, and now the torch was swinging back and forth like the flag of a victorious army waved to signal triumph.
He started back, down once more on the thread of stone, edging along, holding the torch before him. Her own body ached with tension as she watched him make the slow return trip. She only breathed deeply and fully once more when he arose to walk the last few steps to gain the lips of the face from which that incredible bridge issued.
“It is very narrow toward the end. . . .” He breathed in short gasps and in the torchlight she could well see the sheen of sweat across his face. That journey had not been an easy one. “There is but a very small margin of meeting between bridge and the edge on the far side. But it is a crossing.”
“As you have proved.” She tried to make her face impassive. There was no escape save this very risky path. All her life she had known mountain trails which were narrow, where one must walk with the greatest of care, the highest dependence upon one’s balance and skill. Yet the worst of those was as nothing compared to the ordeal before her now. She needs must shut away fear, and with it that other feeling of repugnance for the form of their only escape. To her the face carried such a sensation of sheer evil that to trust her body to the tongue was nearly more than she could force herself to do. The thing was stone, it had no life-except that illusion it might be able to foster in those who feared it-yet there was deep in her a sick hatred born from the need to touch its substance.
A picture haunted her, a vision of the tongue curling up and around, as that tongue of fog had wreathed the Raski. A stone tongue to hold her securely a prisoner, draw her back into the gaping mouth of. . . .