Below was a dark opening into which he flashed his torch. Steps showed, seemingly uninjured in spite of the wreckage above. But his suit was too bulky to pass through the hole. He used the blaster again to nibble around the edges and enlarge the space. Then he started down.
There were ten steps, steeper than those of a normal stair. The whir of his radiation counter was a constant buzz, but he tried to forget that warning. There was no way he could help it, so he must not let it alarm him into carelessness. The freeing of the blocked passage was only the beginning.
There was a passage leading on from the foot of the stairs, running in toward the heart of the temple. What he sought had been placed directly below the throne whereon the Emperor sat at all state services.
Andas’s torch showed him only blank walls of stone, nothing to suggest the importance of this crypt. Now—a door. But before him was only another blank wall putting an end to the way. He had expected this. Now, if only—
Andas ran his tongue across his lips. He raised his gloved hand but did not quite touch the com. It had been adjusted as well as the tech could do it. He could not alter it any.
He spoke. The words were very old, in a language he did not understand. He doubted if any, even like Kelemake, who had made a study of the ancient records, could translate them. Nor did he know their meaning, only that they must be intoned slowly, with pauses between their groupings, in this place.
There was no answer. No door opened—the wall did not fall. He tried a second time, sure that he gave the right accents in the proper places, without result.
It must be the com at fault. That probably distorted some tonal quality that was of major importance. He would have to unhelm to recite the words properly or fail. But with the radiation counter buzzing—unhelm here?
When there is only one answer you accept it—or retreat. And he had come too far; this was too important to retreat. Nor could he ruthlessly burn through the wall. It was provided with safeguards against that. What he sought would be destroyed at the first alarm.
Andas placed the blaster against the wall, and his gloved hands loosened the face plate of his helmet. The air was dead, with an acrid, burning smell that filled his nose. Yet he could not hold his breath and recite at the same time. He spoke the formula for the third time and knew that this must be his last try.
He closed the plate of the helmet, coughing. Then, the wall split down the center, the halves slipping back into the corridor. It had worked!
He was still coughing as he faced, a couple of paces farther on, a grill of metal that glistened in his torchlight as if it had been recently polished. The center of that grill was worked into a design he knew, the legendary “lion”—a fabulous beast sacred to the Emperor. The open mouth of the creature was his keyhole.
Now, would the key from one world fit the lock of another? This was no time to lose confidence. It slid in easily enough.
Turn to the left—it opened! The lock was the same. At his push the grill swung in, and he shuffled on. There was a pedestal in the very center and on it a box. This also showed a keyhole, but Andas did not wait to try his key. He had plucked that out of the grill and fastened it to his belt. Now he slid his hands under the box and lifted it.
He had expected it to be heavy, but it was lighter than the blaster, and he could carry it easily under one arm as he turned to retrace his way, making the best speed he could.
Though he no longer coughed, his throat was dry and his eyes smarted. Whether he had taken such a dose of radiation as would doom him, he dared not think. He must take what he had found to those who might be able to use it, even if he brought his own death with it.
Up the steps he went, back into the open where the skimmer had dropped him. Though it was very hard, encased in such armor, to tilt his head back, Andas managed it far enough to see the skimmer on hover. He raised his arm in signal.
The ascent rope came tumbling down. Andas pitched the blaster from him. He needed that no longer. Still holding the box close, he made fast the hoist cord and gave the signal to rise.
The hoist jerked as it took the strain of his weight. He was hauled up, hoping that the pilot had taken the precautions in which they had drilled him, erecting a force screen between him and his passenger. No one would dare to approach Andas now until they had used every method of decontamination. But he had done it. He had their greatest weapon now in his two hands!
18
Having gone through the most rigid decontamination processes the medico and techs of the mercenaries could devise, Andas sat alone before the box. He thought only of what must be done now, rather than of the results of the tests they had forced on him. He had known that his quest might well be fatal, though it is hard for any man to face directly the fact of death, of ending all that he knows, feels, is—They had told him the truth, that the tests had showed a higher degree of radiation than the body could survive.
So, he had made his payment in advance. What he bought must be worth it. Andas inserted the key and turned it.
Surprisingly, though it must have been locked for centuries of time, the lid arose easily. And in the interior, bedded down in a thick layer of spongy material, were two things, one a roll of what seemed to be thin leather, the other a length of metal links, the metal dark and dull, studded with small bosses in no decorative pattern. He drew that out and straightened it to full length on the table. Disappointment choked him.
Indifferently he took up the roll, slipped off the ring that kept it tight, and flattened it out. The inner side was printed with signs and drawings, meaningless to him at first.
To have bought so little with his life! Then the promises of legends were worthless. Perhaps they had never intended to do more than to give a prop to the emperors, a confidence in knowing that if the worst came, there awaited a way out. And they were expected to find their own solutions first, not to fall back upon this deception.
Yet all the precautions—would such have been taken to preserve a fake? Yes, if the fact that it was a fake was never to be unmasked, that the belief in it was its only power.
Andas looked down at the script he could not read, at the diagrams that blurred as he stared at them. Unless—
It was a moment or two before, sunk in his despair and disappointment, Andas realized that he was able to read a word here and there. Those long hours with Kelemake, when the archivist had been so immersed in his own studies that, needing a sounding board, he had expounded them to a boy, were paying off. Intently Andas shaped the archaic symbols with his lips and traced diagrams by fingertip. There was much he did not understand, but enough—perhaps just enough—that he could!
He drew the length of metal links to him and let it slip through his fingers as if counting them. But what he quested for were those bosses that had a meaning. An hour later he leaned back in his chair. Around his waist those links made a belt. He had done what he could without fully understanding the preparations. But the old tale had not failed him.
There was only one reason for life left, to carry what he held—or rather take what he now was—to the Valley of Bones and there fight the last battle, which would decide the fate of the empire one way or the other.
Andas came out of the room. Shara sat on a stool against the wall. Beyond her Yolyos lounged, inspecting the inner workings of one of the hand weapons from the mount. They turned to him, but he raised his hand to warn them off. How deadly he himself might be now was a matter of some concern. There was that in their faces which warmed him, even through the ice that had encased him since he had heard those test readings.
“No. I have now what may be the salvation of the empire,” he said hurriedly. How long did he have before the final illness began? “You have the skimmer ready?”
“Andas.” Shara spoke only his name and reached out her hand to him.
“No,” he repeated. “This thing was laid to me. He gave his life to begin it and bound upon me the oath to finish it.”
He looked then to
Yolyos. “It has been good,” he said simply. “I never had a brother, nor anyone save my father whom I could trust. It has been good to know such a one, even for a short time.”
Yolyos nodded. “It has been good,” he answered, his voice a low purr. “Go, brother, knowing that one stands to do here what must be done.”
At his orders they cleared the short hall between the room and the outer courtyard where the skimmer waited—the craft already contaminated by his flight to the temple. But there was the garrison drawn up, and, as he went, for the first time in his life he heard the full-throat roar of those hailing him as the Emperor.
“Lion, Pride of Balkis-Candace, Lord of Spears—hail!”
Andas dared not look either right or left to see those who shouted, knowing that pride alone would help him to finish that march with dignity. Somehow he reached the hatch of the skimmer and climbed into the pilot’s seat. Still he could not allow himself to look back. He touched the rise and was above them in a leap, the force of which made him breathless for an instant. Then the flier was on course, heading toward the last battle of all.
Andas had only one guide to the Valley of Bones (save the general directions he had been able to piece together from old accounts), and that was the ring, for it was united, he was sure, to the source of its power. He had it wired to the control board of the skimmer and watched it for any variation in the set.
His course was not a straight one after he topped the mountains, but a zigzag to pick up a trail for the ring. And before midday it had proven to be a guide, for the dull set glowed, took on rippling life, and grew the brighter as he flew on in the direction it indicated.
There were more heights ahead, the sere spur range of the Ualloga, once a chain of volcanoes making a blazing girdle for the continent. Their broken cones now were sided by such cliffs as not even the wild cam sheep knew, a riven and waterless land that repelled man and animal alike. In his own Inyanga the range had seldom been penetrated and many of the peaks never explored.
The stone glowed, flashed as he had never seen it do before. It pointed directly into this land. How much longer did he have, Andas wondered, before death attacked his body? The thought made him shift to top speed.
Thus he overshot his goal and was aware of it only when the gem signaled it. He circled about, also intent on what the visa-screen showed of the land below.
It was no true valley the ring brought him to, but the hollow of a giant crater. And, as he went on hover, Andas was aware of something else. About him the linked belt was warming, rousing in answer to some energy, while through his body he began to feel a vibration, almost as painful as the one that had accompanied the crawlers.
He put the skimmer on descend. There was no need to take any precaution over his arrival. Andas did not in the least doubt that those who sheltered in this hole knew of his coming. But he watched the screen carefully.
The very heart of the crater was a lake, though the waters there did not mirror the sky above, but were a dead slate gray. Around its shores there was vegetation. It had a withered, dead look, lacking the brilliant color and shadow one saw in normal plants.
Farther away from the water were heaps of some graywhite material set in loose order. And while they resembled no buildings he had ever seen, Andas believed them to be shelters for those who made this dismal mountain cup their home.
He brought the skimmer down on the only nearly level space he sighted. The visa-screen showed him that and a portion of sand and gravel beyond, as well as scraps of blighted vegetation—but no one moved. If there was a reception party, it was in hiding.
With care he unwired the ring, being careful not to touch the band itself. That he dared not do while he wore the belt, for their powers were so opposed, one to the other, that he believed such a connection might be fatal to him. Into the ring he inserted the end of an officer’s baton, which Yolyos had smoothed down to serve that purpose. And holding this before him, he left the skimmer.
The nearest of the shelters was close enough to see clearly, and he was startled at its material. There was no mistaking the nature of the loglike objects piled to form its walls—bones—huge bones! He had never heard of an animal large enough to yield such. But why not—was not this the Valley of Bones—though that was a literal statement he had not known.
Andas’s right hand hovered about his belt but did not quite touch it. With his left he held the baton well away from his body. The glow of the ring was torch-like through the gloom of the valley.
Again he looked about for some sign his arrival was known—that they were prepared to move against him. Nothing stirred. There were no sounds. If bird or insect lived in this gloom, it was silent now. There was a feeling of waiting that made him want to linger by the open hatch of the skimmer as his only refuge.
Perhaps all his race was conditioned to expect the worst here. There were too many old terror tales about the ruler of this pocket—and of much more when she wished to reach out and touch this one or that to be her follower. But the fact that he knew he was a walking dead man was armor. Fear of dissolution was now longer hers to threaten.
So Andas walked away from the skimmer, from all the world that he knew, carrying the ring as a torch. And since the huts of bones seemed the logical place to start searching for whoever dwelt here, he went to those.
Sometime later he reached the end of that line of weird dwellings, having found each empty, though there was good evidence that they were occupied. But where were those he sought? That sense of expectancy, of being on the brink of action, had never left him. Yet no movement, no sound, indicated that he was not alone in the valley.
Would the ring continue to lead him? He could try an experiment. Andas loosed his grasp on the baton until he held it by only the lightest of grips. Then he spoke for the first time. Though he purposely kept his voice low, yet his words rang unusually loud in his own ears.
“To thy mistress, go!”
The baton quivered, moved. He tried not to hold it too tightly lest he hinder that movement, yet he must not drop it. It turned at a sharp angle left. And he pivoted to face that way. The baton stiffened to point, and he found he could not make it waver.
Away from the bone-walled huts it led him, from the lake, from the skimmer. It was like a spear aimed at the steep side of the crater.
Then he saw that he walked a marked way, sided by stumpy pillars, first knee high, then waist, and finally topping his shoulders, and these were also bones.
So walled in, Andas came to an opening in the cliff. As he paused, there was a flash within, a leap of greenish flame. He smelled a stench that was worse than the odor of the crawlers.
Then a voice called, “You have sought us out, Emperor. Have you then come to seek your crown? But your hour is past—even as the crown has passed to one who can better wear it!”
In the green of the flames he saw the gathered company. Back against the wall on either side were a sprinkling of men, who stood, staring in a kind of despair and complete surrender, as if all their strength had been drained. But in the center was a group of women, and behind them another, enthroned.
Andas raised his eyes to the face of that one. On her head was the Imperial crown, the sacred one worn only when the ruler took his oath of allegiance. It was death for a lesser man to touch it. At the sight of that in this place, anger blazed hot in him.
The head on which it rested was held high with an arrogance he thought not even an empress in her own right could have shown. Her face had the perfection of a soulless, emotionless statue, with only the eyes and a cruel curl of mouth betraying life.
Her body was bare of any robe, but she held on her knees, so that it covered her to the base of her throat, a huge mask. That mask was demonic, yet not ugly. Rather it seemed great beauty had been twisted to serve great evil, so that it was degraded and debased.
“Andas.” He saw the cruel smile grows as she spoke. “Emperor that wished to be. Behold your empress! Give homage as it is due!”
As she spoke, the mask before her looked at him also with a compelling stare. He shivered, knowing that it, too, had life—or was in some way an extension of a life force that had no human connection, more to be feared than merely alien.
“Homage, Andas, humble homage—” She made a chant of the words. And that chant was taken up by the women gathered at the foot of the throne until it beat in his head. But he stood erect and did not answer.
It appeared that she was not expecting such defiance, for now she ran tongue tip across her lips and ceased that chant. But a moment later she spoke again.
“You cannot stand against me any longer, Emperor of rags and tatters, of a ruined empire. If you have come to surrender—”
“I have not come to surrender, witch.” Andas spoke for the first time, and his words cut across hers as swords might clang blade on blade in a duel.
“Yet you bear our emblem as a banner!” She laughed, pointing with her chin to the ring.
“Not as a truce flag, Kidaya, but as a torch to show me your path.”
“And you have walked it—to your end, Emperor of ashes and dead men!”
“Not yet!” From whence came that flash of inspiration he never afterward knew. It was like an order sent ringing through his head by the will of a power beyond his own knowledge.
He readied the baton as if it were a throwing spear, such as a man uses for skill hunting. And he hurled it, so that the ring at its tip entered straight into the mouth of the mask.
Then he saw the lips move, close upon the wand and snap it. The portion bearing the ring, with the ring, vanished.
“To like fares like!” he cried, and the words also came from somewhere outside his own mind.