Dark such as he had not imagined—yet the longer he watched, the more he saw that there were degrees of darkness in a way he could find no words to describe. There was a flowing, an ebbing there also—not to be defined—a life that was not his life, nor the life of that other weaving in the chamber. This was a thing that had entered unbidden, that strove to knit itself into the ruined walls, to remain, unless that which had once been came again.
That which had once been! Xcothal—
"It is past—" He did not know why he spoke that protest in a frozen whisper.
Past! Past! Perhaps his word had been taken up by an echo; perhaps it was only the sigh of a breeze below his lookout. The coiling of the dark upon the dark grew swifter, reached higher about the hub building. Diskan made himself watch it. His body shivered and his nails cut deeper into his own flesh, although he was not aware of that small pain through the larger that filled him.
Xcothal—he clung to his dream, strove to batter aside the tide of darkness with the color, the life, the beauty it smothered and buried. Xcothal should not be taken! That which had dwelt here could not be so lightly overcome, banished—Xcothal—Diskan stared into the night and fought—throwing away all logic, all reason.
He only knew that, in summoning his dream and holding it, he was waging a small engagement in the midst of a battle, and he held to his post grimly. What had been dark waves beating on shadows began to change. He did not know when he saw that first spark of light flash into being, a pinpoint in the streets. But there came another and another—minute sparks of light whose origin he could not guess. They followed no pattern, a cluster here, a line of individual points there, a solitary beam in the midst of heavy dusk.
They did not move as did the whirling lashings of the dark but endured as outposts. And at length, no more appeared. Diskan unclenched his fists. Again on his hands and knees, he went back to the wall. He did not want to sleep; he did not need it. There was a tingling awareness of the night, such as he had never experienced before, running through his veins, warming him so that with impatient fingers he pulled at the throat of the parka, opening it farther.
Something—he did not know just what—had happened, as if a machine long idle had been triggered into action once again, and ripples spreading from that action were lapping on, out and out. Was this what they had wanted of him, the brothers-in-fur? No, swift on the heels of that came the denial, and he knew it was the truth. He had failed then, but now—
Diskan did not notice the device hung at his belt. On the dial the needle quivered, fluttered; the clicking was a solid purr that did not reach his deaf ears. All that was real for him now was what lay out there in the night, stirring, moving. And this time—surely this time—he was going to learn what it was!
Not a sound
but a vibration in the air, through his body, was transmitted by the stone on which he crouched. A summons? After it, a quiver, as if each and every heavy stone in these walls strove to answer, only had no way of giving voice. Diskan waited tense, yearning—
Again!
His body obeyed without any command from his brain as he stood up. In his veins, the blood flowed more quickly; he felt alert, ready for anything that might come. The deadening fog of fear had been rent into tatters, was shriveling from him.
In the dark, needing no physical sight as a guide, Diskan found the stairs, began to descend. Beat—once again! A heart awakening into life—Xcothal's heart? In his eagerness, he stumbled, almost fell, and that mishap taught him caution. Round and around, down, always waiting for that beat of life within the core of ancient death.
He was on the threshold of the wedge-shaped chamber when it vibrated for the fourth time. And he saw the furred ones moving up the steps, slipping around and about him, as if he had no existence in their eyes. There was no reckoning the number of their dark shapes in this pale light. Diskan only knew that they were many and that they came from all directions, pressing with purpose up the outer steps, toward the wedge chamber. The brothers-in-fur! But they could not be alone—there must be the others!
Bewildered, Diskan drew to one side just within the doorway, his eyes searching for what he felt must be there, though what he sought, he could not explain. The interior of the huge hall, which had been so dusky, was now growing lighter. Sparks hung in the air here and there, always above the mass of furred bodies, reared up on their broad haunches, their heads all turned to the narrow far end, as if fixed in a hypnotic stare on some point or thing he could not see. There were so many of them!
Now their heads moved, a rhythmic ripple that ran back like a breaking wave to Diskan's place by the door. And following that ripple came the vibration, stronger now, a beat that shook the building, the living things in it, as if the very earth heaved.
Ripple, ripple. With a start, Diskan became conscious his own head had joined in the slow bend forward and back. The sparks in the air grew brighter. They were of different colors, gems tossed aloft to hang in brilliant array—green, blue, orange, scarlet, violet, shades in between, dazzling to watch.
From over the heads of the animals, the lights moved out and away, drifting to the bare walls. But where they touched the stone they melted, spread in glistening runnels and shooting trails of jeweled fire. And they were not still, those runnels and trails, but moved, interweaving, loosing, weaving again another design, as had the dusky shadows. Only this was the splendor of which that had been the dying ashes.
Diskan shaded his eyes with his hand from what was close to searing brilliance. He longed to watch, and yet he could no longer do so. He was on his knees, his head moving in time with those of the animals about him. And from them, a vast wave of ecstasy, which was also expectancy of some greater wonder to come, rose about him.
Boom! Boom! Xcothal awakening—the past returning to flower again.
Yes! Yes! Diskan's lips shaped the words he could not voice aloud. To know—to be in Xcothal in this hour! This was what he had sought without understanding. He stood on a threshold; take only one step and wonder beyond reckoning was his!
A scream—
The fabric of lights, of rapport with the animals, was rent as if a knife had slashed it. Dazed, Diskan shook and shivered. He fell forward, and that saved his life, for over him a blaster bolt blazed, to strike the wall and scar it with a core of crimson destruction.
Diskan twisted, still too much under the spell to know more than that it had been broken. He stared up, bemused, at the smoking evidence of that shot. Then he was knocked down and rolled over by furred bodies launched at him. And by the time he fought his way free of those, his wits were back.
Had he really been attacked by the animals? Diskan thought not as he sat up, back against the wall, well out of line of the doorway from which that blast must have come. His companions in that ritual had merely removed him speedily from the line of fire.
Fire from an off-world weapon! Now a piercing buzzing from his belt! Had the device guided the enemy here? Diskan unhooked it and almost threw it from him, his grief and anger at the interruption turning into a smoldering rage. No, he would hunt that other down! He had been close to dying in that ray, yes. But what was worse, he had lost that which had been almost within his grasp here. And for that there was no pardon! This thing he held in his hand, it could perhaps guide him to his attacker.
However, as he scrambled up, the animals pressed about him, imposed their bodies as a barrier between him and the doorway.
"No!" Diskan strove to elude their guard. "Let me through!" He thrust against them. Then he remembered the stunner, dragged it out, and sprayed widely with it.
That cleared a path as the animals went down, temporarily paralyzed. Diskan ran into the night, the com device in one hand, the stunner in the other. Free of the chamber, he paused. To charge ahead into a blaster was stupid. Logic took over, forced control that his rage had broken. Do not run into death—hunt, trail, use what cunning he had.
He studied the dial on his palm. The needle swung to his left, in the general direction of the ruined chamber in which he had found the dead man. Here it was dark; his sight was still dazzled by the lights that had snapped into nothingness at the firing of the blaster. But the dark could be a cloak as well as a disadvantage. Also he remembered the way well enough. With his shoulder against the wall, Diskan crept along the curve.
The buzz of the device was less strong; his quarry must be well ahead. But the needle pointed fixedly on. And he would find him—most certainly he would find him!
Behind him forces he did not sense stirred.
He was close; he must not get away. So close we were, brothers!
Let him go; he is useless to us now. To himself he has returned. Perhaps he is not for our shaping.
Close!
There was a chorus of that, beating down doubts.
Until he comes again to the threshold by his own wish, he is useless. Let him seek now his kind; let that be the test.
There was opposition, ready and hot, but it was overruled.
If he goes to his death, then that is the ordained pattern, and we cannot change it by all the arts. We cannot be whole with that which is flawed. He must aid in his own shaping, or the shape will be imperfect. Let him go free to do what is in him to do. Only when he has freed himself can he enter the portal we open to him. We watch, we wait, but we cannot move until he is again with an open mind and heart.
So close
—Wistful, regretting.
Close, yes. But now, waiting—Our renewal is delayed; we cannot change that, for any recharging will take time, much time.
Diskan entered the room with the broken walls, his eyes turned away from the pile of stones that was now a tomb. In the dim light of the room, he could see the needle pointed to one of the wall rents. Crazy to go in there without a torch, without any hope of seeing what lay ahead, while the one he hunted could be in ambush. But, crazy or not, he was going!
An incautious step among the rubble, and he fell heavily. As he lay there for a moment, he heard a sound ahead, and the com buzzed more loudly. His teeth clenched, Diskan crawled on, taking that one small precaution against a blast.
Oddly enough, as he thrust head and shoulders through the hole, he did not come into absolute darkness such as he thought existed beyond the walls. Instead, once past that barrier, he found gray half light, and he was not far from another stair. But this curled down and not up.
Reaching that, Diskan lay flat, his ear pressed to the floor. Faint sounds—feet on the steps? The enemy was moving away. But to be trapped on the stair, a target from raying from below—
He waited until the sounds were so faint that he could hardly distinguish them. And then he swung over, planted his feet on the steps, and began to descend, but with caution.
The buzz of the device was faint, a click instead of a steady beat. When he held it to his eyes, the needle changed with every curve of the stair.
Round and around, down and down. He was already certain he must be well below the level of the streets without. There was damp rising from the stairwell, and with it an unpleasant odor of decay, such as might issue from a swamp. Perhaps there was some underground outlet on the marsh bog that had come to partially swallow Xcothal.
He had to slow his descent; the rounds of the stair were making him dizzy. And once, during one of those pauses, he heard a sound from behind. Diskan pushed against the wall, his head up, peering up the corkscrew.
Outlined in the dim light was a round furred head. The animals! At least one of them was trailing him. He had used the stunner freely back there in the chamber. Had his art turned friend into enemy? But when he halted, that one halted, too, did not strive to draw closer. After a long moment, Diskan relaxed. In a way, this was a return to his first days on this world of mysteries, when he had been dogged across the ridge by just such a follower. He began to descend again.
How deep was that curl of stairway? He had not tried to count the steps, but at long last, they brought him to a firm footing from which a passage ran. And here the swamp had thrust exploring fingers.
The dank air was filled with evil odors. There were unwholesome, faintly glowing growths on the wall in leprous patches, others noduling up from the floor. Diskan had never seen a place he liked less. Yet the device told him his way lay ahead, and he could see traces of another's passing—broken fungi growths and smears on the slimy floor.
Those ragged wall growths made it difficult to see clearly. Diskan picked a very slow and cautious path, listening always—for the sound of footsteps before him, to the buzz of the com, for the animal behind. The latter he did not hear at all, but the ticking of the com approached a steady purr once more.
It was lighter down here than it had been aloft, from the luminescence of those monstrous and contorted growths. So foul was their general appearance that Diskan took every precaution to avoid any direct contact with them. But he inadvertently brushed the back of his hand against a spike of fleshy stuff broken by the passing of the one he trailed.
He might have put his hand into flames, the pain bringing back a swift memory of the hurt he had taken to dis-con the watcher robot. Then the powers of the ship had healed his wound. Now he could only rub his knuckles across the skirt of the parka, hoping he was removing the irritating ooze, not smearing it in. There was an angry puffing at the base of his fingers, and he felt sharp stabs of pain when he tried to flex them.
More of the broken "branches" hung ahead, making him squirm and twist to avoid their dripping poison. Why had the enemy not used his blaster to burn clear a passage?
Diskan knew very little about those weapons. Legally, they could be worn and used only by off-worlders on planets certified dangerous, and by those of the Service. The ordinary galactic citizen had no reason to use them. He presumed they were charged much the same as the stunners, with a measure of energy that would become exhausted. And if the man ahead had not used his now to burn off this fungi for a clear passage, it could mean that his present blaster charge was low.