He was beginning to sweat a lot from the increasing heat. However, the numbness of his legs seemed to be completely gone. Though they still pained him, he stood up. He was shaky but getting stronger. He drank deeply from the canteen Manathu Vorcyon had given him. A few minutes later, he walked out of the room. No use staying here. Not when Khruuz was prowling around out there and armed with God only knew what.
The going was not so tough at first. Though what was left of the hallway was jammed halfway up to the open ceiling, he could scramble up, slipping sometimes, crawl through the space between the top of the mound and the ceiling, where there was ceiling, and slide down the other side of the mounds. A beam of pale light slanted from the opening Wemathol had mentioned. Kickaha looked up through it. No mistake. The sky was green.
Beyond the hallway was a room the size of two Imperial palace ballrooms. But it was shattered. He was confronted with numerous obstacles: hillocks and dales of plaster chunks, pieces of wood, stone slabs and blocks, broken and unbroken marble pillars, marble chunks, and greater-than-life-sized stone statues. Many of the slabs and pillars and statues were sticking up at a slant from the mounds like cannons from the ruins of a fort. Also protruding were jagged broken-off legs and backs of chairs and tables; dented metal and wooden cabinets; broken bottles, the odors of spilled beer and wine making the air pungent; twisted and broken chandeliers; and warped frames of large paintings, the cloth fragments hanging from them. Getting over or around these made him sweat. The perspiration mingled with the white dust, covered his body and hair, and ran down into his eyes, stinging them. He thought that he must look like a pale ghost with scary red eyes.
Now and then, he took the gate-detector out of a belt pouch and turned it on. The instrument lit up a dozen times. But he could not use the Horn now to open the gates. Khruuz might be within hearing range.
The Great Mother had said that she and Wemathol would go to the northeast corner of the palace. From there, they would separate for individual searches. Once the scaly man was taken care of, they would find each other by radio. Kickaha headed toward the northeast section of the palace, but he was forced to take a circuitous path. Despite his strenuous climbing, his legs were gaining, not losing, strength.
When he got to the tremendous heap of debris on the other side of the huge room, he seemed to have deviated from a straight path. Manathu Vorcyon and Wemathol had probably ascended through an opening to the second story and then to the third. But he could not even see entrances to the next room. Towering peaks of debris blocked his view.
He began going up the slope of rubble but slid back now and then. The sliding material made noises. Near the top of the mound was an opening to a tunnel of sorts. It seemed to go through the pile and into the wall, which was somehow still standing. He used a tiny flashlight to illuminate the interior of the tunnel, which had been formed by accident. Two huge marble columns coming in almost parallel angles to each other but slanting somewhat downward had punched through the wall and stopped side by side. The big hole they must have made in the wall had been plugged up by a mass of large fragments. Stone slabs had crashed down to make a roof over the pillars. The pillars were not so close to each other that there was no space for him to move forward, molelike, between them. Some debris half-blocked the passageway, which pointed upward at about ten degrees from the horizontal. But he had room enough to pass the stuff half-blocking the tunnel behind him. Beyond the dark tunnel was light, feeble but brighter than that in this cramped space. If he could get through it to the next room, he would be coming out in a place an enemy lurking there would not expect. He began worming his way through it.
Though he was making as little noise as possible, he was not quiet enough. For a second, he envisioned Khruuz standing to one side at the end of the tunnel, waiting for anyone who came through it. No. If the scaly man was there, he would shoot his beamer rays down its length when he heard noise in the tunnel and would slice his enemy. In any event, he, Kickaha, could not stop going forward. And why would the scaly man be there? He wouldn’t know there was a tunnel there.
When he cautiously poked his head from the thirty-foot-long passageway, he saw that he was near the top of a mountain of debris. Most of the ceiling of this gigantic room had fallen through, and perhaps some of the floor of the third story. He took his time looking at the ruins below him. If anyone was hiding down there, he would have to be behind a very large mound near the wall at the other side.
His beamer in one hand, he slid down on his back. He silently cursed the noise he could not help making. When he got to the bottom, scratched and bleeding from small gashes and smarting from plaster dust in the wounds, he waited awhile for an attack. None came. He went over smaller piles and then found behind the second mountainous ruin a gaping hole in the wall. It was large enough for a Sherman tank to pass through. In fact, it looked as if a tank had made the hole. He did not know what kept the rest of the much-cracked wall from collapsing.
He stepped through the hole after sticking his head through it to scout the territory. Above him, all the stories had partly fallen through. Down here, the light was almost that of dusk. Up there, it was bright. He could see a much larger piece of the green sky than he had seen in the hallway.
The heavens around the World of Tiers were the same color. Could Khruuz have gated the palace to the planet shaped like the Tower of Babylon? If so, why did he choose it? Or … no use speculating.
A pile of timbers and stone stuck out several feet from a twenty-foothigh jumble to his left. He had just seen something stir in the darkness under the ledge. The shapeless mass, covered with white dust, could be a man. He looked closely at it and finally determined that it had its back to him. That might be a ruse. Whoever it was could have seen him, then turned away to make him think he saw a dead or badly injured person. When he heard Kickaha’s footsteps, he would twist his body to face him and would shoot. Maybe.
Kickaha got into a sort of ready-made foxhole in the rubble and then fired a beam near the figure’s head. That would startle anyone who didn’t have absolute control of his nerves. But the man did not move. Kickaha got out of the hole with the least noise possible and walked slowly along a curve toward the ledge. When he got within twenty feet of it, he saw that the figure was neither Khruuz nor Red Orc. It was Dingsteth. But its hands were no longer tied behind its back.
The creature must have ceased bleeding. It certainly had left no trail. Kickaha still did not go directly to it. When he stopped by it, he was half-concealed by the pile. He leaned over and poked the back of its head with the end of his beamer. It groaned.
“Dingsteth!” Kickaha said.
It muttered something. He dragged it out from under the ledge and turned it over. Under the dust on its skin were many black spots. Bums? Unable to hear distinctly what it was saying, Kickaha glanced around, then got to his knees and put an ear close to Dingsteth’s mouth. Though his position made him feel vulnerable, he kept it.
“It’s me, Kickaha,” he said softly.
It said, “Khruuz … not believe that …
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Kickaha! Khruuz … when I said … not have data … in my brain … tortured me … did not believe me … took me along … got away… Zazel … proud of me.”
“I’ll get help for you,” Kickaha said. “It may take some time …
He stopped. Dingsteth’s eyes were open. His mouth, filled with the diamond teeth, was still.
He had to break radio silence. Manathu Vorcyon would want to know about this. He called her at once, and she replied at once. After he told her what had happened, she said, “I am still where I told you we were going. I sent Wemathol to look for you. If he does not find you at the end of ten minutes, he will return to me.”
If Wemathol was going to take only ten minutes for the search, he would be in the airboat. After twelve minutes had passed, he used the radio to ask Wemathol to report. But the clone did not reply.
Manathu Vor
cyon’s voice came immediately. “Something may have happened to Wemathol! I will give him two more minutes to report.”
Which is mostly up and down and around and along, he thought. Fifteen minutes later, he stopped to give his aching legs time to recharge.
When he felt stronger, he got to his feet and plodded on. Shortly thereafter, he came to another large area. Parts of the roof had fallen down on it. The sun blazed down through the opening but was past its zenith. It shone near one end of the room where a winding staircase by the wall had somehow escaped being smashed. Its upper part, shorn of its banister, protruded from the peak of a very high mound. He climbed to its top, though not without slipping and sliding and making noise. The staircase, made of some hardwood, seemed to be stable. He went up it slowly, looking above and below him at every step.
But with only twenty steps to go, he had to get down and grab the edge of the rise. From somewhere nearby, something had crashed with a roar as if it were a Niagara of solid parts. The staircase shook so much that he thought it was going to break from the wall. Screeching, it separated from the landing above. It swayed outward, then swayed inward and slammed up against the wall. The stone blocks of the wall moved, and some were partly displaced. He expected the wall to fall apart and carry the staircase with him. If that did not happen, the swaying and banging of the staircase would snap it off and tumble it to the heap thirty feet below.
Though he gripped the edge of the rise, he was moved irresistibly sideward toward the open side of the staircase. A few more such whipping movements would shoot him off the steps even if the structure did not fall. And he could now see for only a few feet around him. Thick dust raised by the newly fallen mass stung his eyes and clogged his nostrils.
Suddenly, it was over except for a shuddering of the stairs. When that ceased, Kickaha began climbing on hands and knees. The structure was leaning away from the wall, though not quite at the angle of the Tower of Pisa. Not yet, anyway. The higher he climbed, the more the structure bent at its apex and the louder it creaked and groaned.
By then, he had to lean to the right to compensate for the leftward slant of the steps. When his hands clung to the rise of the highest step, he slowly and awkwardly stood up, balancing himself precariously, his left leg straighter than his right. Before him was the floor of the second story, exposed like a dollhouse by the ripping away of its wall. It was bending in the middle, groaning under the weight of a gargantuan pile of debris. It could collapse at any moment. He had to leap through the eight feet of space between him and the floor. Do it at once.
Or he could go back down the staircase, though it might snap off before he got far.
He reholstered the beamer. He would need both hands to grip the edge of the exposed floor if he could not soar out and up to it. Under normal circumstances, he could have made such a jump easily and landed on the floor with his feet. After glancing around, he crouched down and propelled himself outward. The staircase gave way then, bending down under the force of his jump. It was too much for it. It snapped and the upper part fell down and struck the heap with a loud crash.
Although the recoil of the staircase made the leap longer than he had planned, he reached the floor. His belly was even with the edge of the floor just before he began to fall. His arms banged against the floor, and his chest struck the edge. He was supporting his body with the upper part of his arms while his legs dangled. He twisted and threw his right leg up over the edge and pulled himself entirely onto the floor.
He was panting, and he wanted to lie on his back for a minute to recover his strength. But the wood underneath was bending, and he could feel alarming vibrations running through it. Maybe the floor, overburdened by the immense pile in the middle of the room, had been close to the point of breaking before his weight was added to it.
He scrambled to his feet, drawing the beamer from its holster as he did so. As he sped toward the nearest door to the north, he heard a great cracking noise. The floor suddenly slanted down. He was almost caught by its shifting, but he leaped through the doorway just in time. For a few seconds, he came close to being borne backward with the avalanche. A pile of debris plugged all but a narrow opening in the upper part of the doorway. He landed on its slope and clawed away at the rubble to keep going as it spilled out onto a floor that was no longer there. Dust billowed out from behind him and blinded him.
He managed to get over the top of the pile in the doorway, though it was like running on a ground that was moving in the opposite direction. When he got to the bottom of the pile on the other side, he was suddenly facedown on the floor of a room. Most of the heap was gone, having avalanched into the emptiness of the room he had just left. Even so, his legs were now dangling over the bottom of the doorway. And the floor of the room that was to be his refuge was moving downward.
He pulled himself away from the edge, got up, and sprinted up the increasingly slanting surface of this floor, which was attached to the wall on the other side but would not be for long. Leaping over small piles of debris sliding toward him, racing around the larger heaps also sliding toward him, he strove to get to the exit to the room beyond this one. He did not make it. He was deafened by another roar, and he fell through to the room below. Somehow, he landed on his feet and rolled down a mound and ended, his breath and his wits knocked out of him, upon the back of a huge divan. He had been fortunate not to have been buried.
Also, the edge of the riven floor had missed by a few inches slamming into him. It undoubtedly would have killed him. As it was, it had only half killed him.
It took him an undeterminable time to regain all of his senses. Then he was aware of how much he hurt and of how many places on him were painful. But he got up. His beamer was still clutched in his hand, and the bag containing the Horn had not been torn from his belt. While the dust was still settling, he walked slowly forward. Though he felt like coughing, he suppressed it. And then he heard a cough from somewhere ahead of him.
He stopped. A vague form was moving slowly in the dust toward him. It seemed to be in the air a few feet from the surface. Wemathol in his airboat? Instead of calling out, he dropped behind a small mound and pointed his beamer at the object. Never assume anything-even if he had broken that rule now and then.
More debris fell in the next room, the one from which the unknown had come into this room. More dust billowed out, enveloping the object. He squinted toward where it had been, his eyes stinging and wet. If that was not Wemathol, then it must be Manathu Vorcyon. Or, if Khruuz had somehow gotten hold of an airboat, he could be riding it out there.
He waited. A minute passed by. Then he was startled by another crashing sound. This was followed by four less-loud collapses. The dust thickened. He held his nose and breathed out through his mouth to avoid sneezing. But a sneeze was building up in him that he would not be able to control. And then, someone out in the dust went “Ah! Choo!” This was followed by a series of nose blasts.
Kickaha, despite heroic efforts not to do so, sneezed mightily.
Though it was hard to do while the nasal explosions racked his body, he reached out and felt what seemed to be a large piece of broken crockery. He tossed it as far as he could to his right. If it made a noise that the hidden person could hear, it wasn’t audible to him. His own sneezing drowned it out. There was no reaction from the being. No ray beam cutting through the dust; no voice.
He could not wait until the dust settled. The rider might have heat detectors or be wearing night-vision goggles. Or he could be lifting the boat up high so that he could spot anyone in the room after the dust settled down.
He crawled away from behind the mound, trying to do it silently and keeping down close to the floor. The best thing for me to do, Kickaha thought, is to stand up and get out of this room swiftly. But if he did that, he could not avoid making a lot of noise and stumbling into and over debris. Moreover, he did not know where the exits were.
When he felt a large pile in front of him, he went behind it. To hell with ra
dio silence. He called. Manathu Vorcyon’s voice, much softer than usual, came at once. “What do you want?”
Kickaha whispered, “You still in the same place? I ask because there’s someone on an airboat very close to me. I can’t see him because of the dust.”
“It is not I. And Wemathol would have answered you if he were capable of doing so. Make sure, though, before you shoot, that it is not he.”
“Off,” he said.
Kickaha groped around until he felt several large chunks of plaster. He cast these into the dust before him. But the unknown did not fire at the source of the noise. Probably his boat was hovering high up and he was making sure of his target before he attacked.
That person had to be Khruuz.
He stood up and began making his way toward the far wall. After a few steps, he jumped to one side. Something wet had fallen on his left shoulder. He felt the spot with his right hand. Though he had to bring his fingers close to his eyes, he saw a dark mass of dust and something liquid.
Was it raining blood?
He looked upward. The particles were beginning to settle down. It would not be long before he would be able to distinguish any dark object near where the ceiling had been. Especially since the light was brighter up there.
He started walking again, then stopped. He had heard a low moan. After listening carefully for a moment, he stepped forward. He jumped aside with a suppressed oath. Something heavy had struck the floor near him. He walked as slowly and as silently as possible toward the source of the thump. It could be a trick, but he doubted it. The impact had sounded like the body of a man striking the earth. Wood or stone would have made a different sound. There had been a hint of a splat in the sound, flesh giving way and bone broken against the unyielding stone floor.