“The sealed ones—they good to men who keep their laws. Put in Gorgol’s head how to kill flyer—send water drip to drink while leg bad. Old stories say sealed ones good to Norbies long, long ago. I say this too. Maybeso I die there did not their magic help me! Their magic big—” His hand expanded in the large sign. “They do much—sealed away from sun they sleep—but still they do much!”
“Could you find this valley again?”
“Yes. But not go there unless sealed ones allow. I follow bird. Sealed ones know I come not to disturb them, not to dig them up. They excuse. Go to wake them—maybeso they not like. Must call—then we go.”
Storm heard the conviction in that and respected it. Each man had a right to his own beliefs. But this did back up Sorenson’s story that the wizard Bokatan had offered to guide them because he believed that the sealed ones themselves were in favor of it. And since the country of Gorgol’s hunting adventures was in the same general direction as the territory into which the expedition was heading, perhaps they were going to find the mysterious Sealed Caves after all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun was a warm hand pressing on his bared shoulders as Storm lay on top of an outcrop, his long-vision glasses trained on the pass ahead. He had shed his easily sighted frawn shirt many days ago, having discovered that his own brown skin was hard to distinguish from the rocks.
Now the path of the expedition had narrowed to one choice, a defile leading between climbing walls, a perfect country for ambush. Properly they should travel it by night, except that the footing was none too good and they dared not risk a fall for either man or horse. Already the party followed well-tried Terran precautions for advance into enemy territory, stopping in the early afternoon to graze their horses and feed themselves, and then moving on for an hour after sunset, so that their night camp site was far from the place where they had first—to any spy-scout—bedded down. Whether such elementary tactics would mislead experienced native raiders was another matter.
Storm was certain that they were under observation, though he had no real proof except the alert uneasiness of the team. And he depended upon bird and cat for his first warning against any attack.
Now Baku did come in, voicing a harsh scream, to send winging out of the brush below a whole covey of panic-stricken grass hens. There was someone coming through the defile, a Norbie riding along on a vividly spotted black and white horse. And the white star on its forehead was dabbed with red, a circle centered by a double dot—If this newcomer was not the wizard Bokatan, then he had acquired Bokatan’s favorite mount, which had been described to Storm in advance. This would not be too impossible. Storm remained where he was, his bow ready.
“Hoooooooooo!” The call was the twitter of Norbie speech prolonged into a high-pitched hoot. Out of the rock, seemingly, Dagotag arose to meet the wizard. At least the party now had their promised guide.
Before nightfall they had crossed the invisible border of the taboo land, to camp that night on the banks of a swollen stream. The water was red with silt, whirling along uprooted bushes and even small trees. Sorenson surveyed it critically.
“You can have too much of a good thing. We have to depend upon the mountain rains for water. But, on the other hand, flash floods in these narrow gorges can wipe out a party such as ours in a matter of seconds. Tomorrow we’ll have to parallel this as long as we can to water the horses. Let us hope the level begins to drop instead of to rise—”
Before noon the next day, not only was the flood dwindling but Bokatan pointed them away from it, using as a guide for their new direction something that excited them all. There was no mistaking the artificial origin of that low black ridge, running at right angles to the northeast.
Strom measured it roughly with his hand, finding it about a foot wide, though raised only a few inches from the ground. It was wedge-shaped with the narrower edge straight up. To the touch it was not stone, nor metal, at least no stone nor metal he had ever seen before. And its purpose remained a mystery. A knife blade made no impression, but under prodding fingers the substance had a faintly greasy feel, though neither dry soil nor leaves clung to its surface. Nor would Surra put paw on it. She sniffed dubiously at the ridge, plainly avoiding contact, sneezing twice and shaking her head in her gesture of distaste.
“Like a rail,” Mac commented, and whacked the first pack horse on, though that animal, too, picked a way that did not bring it close to the black ridge.
Sorenson stopped to snap tri-dee prints of the thing though Bokatan urged the party to hurry. “Up!” his fingers counseled. “Up and through the hole in the earth before sun sets—then you may look upon the valley of the sealed ones—”
Already the cliffs rose so high that the light of the sun did not penetrate to the floor of the canyon through which they passed, and gathering shadows thickened almost to dusk as they rode along by the black rail.
Death defiles, that old belief of his people haunted Storm, while his modern training denied it. A man who touched the dead, or their possessions, dwelt under a roof where death had been, was unclean, accursed. This black ridge was like a thread wrought by the dead to draw others into the house of the dead—He blinked, shrugged the blanket about his shoulders, dropping a little behind the rest as he fumbled in his belt pouch for an object he had fashioned during their noon halt.
The Terran did not dismount, but leaned far from his riding pad, holding that small sliver of wood plumed at one end with two of Baku’s feathers. It had been shaped with the aid of one of his war arrows after immemorial custom, and now he aimed its point at the alien rail—if rail it was. The prayer stick caught and held in some infinitesimal crack of the substance, standing unwavering, its feathers triumphantly erect.
One magic against another. Storm clicked his tongue to Rain and the horse trotted on to catch up, just as a turn in the canyon brought them to what Bokatan could well term the “hole” in the earth.
If they had not been able to see the brightness of sunlight ahead, Storm would have protested against entering the place. For the tunnel opening was like an open mouth, fanged at the upper arch with regular pointed projections of the same substance as the rail that had led them here. What purpose those projections had originally served, the explorers could not guess. Now they resembled nothing so much as teeth ready to close upon the unwary. And Storm envied Baku who could wing aloft and cross the mountain barrier in the free air.
Though the tunnel was a short one, open at both ends, within it, the air was stale to taste and smell, as if no cleansing wind had ever flown through. Surra took the passage in a rush, the horses pounding after her, until they burst out into the brilliant blaze of the sun again, to find themselves at one end of a much larger valley.
“This is a leg-breaking do, if I ever saw one!” Mac exploded—rightly. For before them was a choked stretch of debris, tumbled blocks of the black material overgrown with generations of vines and brush.
Sorenson dismounted. “Some kind of a building—perhaps a gatehouse for defense—” He was reaching for his tri-dee camera when Bokatan pushed to the fore.
“Into the valley now—night come here—bad—”
Reluctantly Sorenson agreed. Storm was already afoot, his horse’s reins hooked over his arm, ready to help Mac with the pack train, while the Norbies strung out, scouting the easiest way through the maze before them. Storm, threading a narrow path between banks of the broken black material, decided this was an excellent trap, certainly not any trail to be traveled after dark.