body the creature squatted on a rock and
clawed the clumsy covering it wore about its bone-thin shoulders and
domed-skull head. The visage it revealed was long and gray, with dark
pits for eyes and a gaping, fang-studded, lipless mouth.
"Who are you who dare to tread the forgotten ways and rouse from
slumber the Guardian of the Chasms?"
The question was a shrill whine in her brain, her hands half arose to
cover her ears--
"I am Varta, Maiden of Asti. Memphir has fallen to the barbarians of
the Outer Lands and now I go, as Asti once ordered--."
The Guardian considered her answer gravely. In one skeleton claw it
fumbled a rod and with this it now traced certain symbols in the dust
before Varta's webbed feet. When it had done, the girl stooped and
altered two of the lines with a swift stroke from one of her talons. The
creature of the Chasm nodded its misshapen head.
"Asti does not rule here. But long, and long, and long ago there was a
pact made with us in His Name. Pass free from us, woman of the Light.
There are two paths before you--."
The Guardian paused for so long that Varta dared to prompt it.
"Where do they lead, Guardian of the Dark?"
"This will take you down into my country," it jerked the rod to the right.
"And that way is death for creatures from the surface world. The
other--in our old legends it is said to bring a traveler out into the upper
world. Of the truth of that I have no proof."
"But that one I must take," she made slight obeisance to the huddle of
bones and dank cloak on the rock and it inclined its head in grave
courtesy.
With Lur pushing a little ahead, she took the road which ran straight
into the flume-veiled darkness. Nor did she turn to look again at the
Thing from the Chasm world.
They began to climb again, across slimed rock where there were evil
trails of other things which lived in this haunted darkness. But the sun
of Asti lighted their way and perhaps some virtue in the rays from it
kept away the makers of such trails.
When they pulled themselves up onto a wide ledge the talons on Varta's
gloves were worn to splintered stubs and there was a bright girdle of
pain about her aching body. Lur lay panting beside her, his red-forked
tongue protruding from his foam ringed mouth.
"We walk again the ways of men," Lur was the first to note the tool
marks on the stone where they lay. "By the Will of Asti, we may win
out of this maze after all."
Since there were no signs of the deadly steam Varta dared to push off
her hood and share with her companion the sustaining power she
carried in her pouch. There was a freshness to the air they breathed,
damp and cold though it was, which hinted of the upper world.
The ledge sloped upwards, at a steep angle at first, and then more
gently. Lur slipped past her and thrust head and shoulders through a
break in the rock. Grasping his neck spines she allowed him to pull her
through that narrow slit into the soft blackness of a surface night. They
tumbled down together, Varta's head pillowed on Lur's smooth side,
and so slept as the sun and worlds of Asti whirled protectingly above
them.
A whir of wings in the air above her head awakened Varta. One of the
small, jewel bright flying lizard creatures of the deep jungle poised and
dipped to investigate more closely the worlds of Asti. But at Varta's
upflung arm it uttered a rasping cry and planed down into the mass of
vegetation below. By the glint of sunlight on the stone around them the
day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at Lur's mane until he
roused.
There was a regularity to the rocks piled about their sleeping place
which hinted that they had lain among the ruins left by man. But of this
side of the mountains both were ignorant, for Memphir's rule had not
run here.
"Many dead things in times past," Lur's scarlet nostril pits were
extended to their widest. "But that was long ago. This land is no longer
held by men."
Varta laughed cheerfully. "If here there are no men, then there will rise
no barbarian hordes to dispute our rule. Asti has led us to safety. Let us
see more of the land He gives us."
There was a road leading down from the ruins, a road still to be
followed in spite of the lash of landslip and the crack of time. And it
brought them into a cup of green fertility
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