The animals were standing but shaking themselves as if they were trying to locate loose parts. Aejip had dropped the dead khratikl. Deyv stood and looked upward. The window opened from the inside; the round port hung down. A snarling head appeared in it Deyv yelled, and the thing disappeared. It would be back soon with much company.
At one end of the floor was a door. Deyv climbed over the piles of dirt and leaves and skirted a nest some creature had abandoned. He scraped the accumulated mud off most of the door and used an ornamental projection to heave up on it. It rose soundlessly. The room below was much darker than that in which he stood. Without a light he couldn't tell how big it was and hence how deep was the next floor
—or rather, wall. Still, he couldn't stay where he was.
Jum protested, whining, but through the opening he went, pushed by Deyv. A moment later he was barking. He didn't sound hurt, so Deyv told the cat to follow him. She didn't like it, but after looking down with her eyes wide-open, she leaped down.
Deyv dropped, his knees bent.
Another small room.
A flurry of chlttering and squeaking came from above.
Outlined in the dim light were a dozen heads.
There was some dirt on the floor. Deyv felt along it until he found another door. This, too, gave him a grip with its projections. He got that up, and the frightening process was repeated.
Apparently, the khratikl had given up. That showed good sense on their part. Only a desperate being would enter a House from the top side. The three continued. Each time Deyv prayed that the room below would not be a big one. Each time The Great Mother heard him. It didn't get any darker, since it was possible to get only so dark. The air got mustier with every level. He also began to get thirsty. At last, they reached the lowest floor, what would have been a window in the wall on the opposite side if the
House had been standing upright. Deyv pulled it up and found mud below it.
Unless the room contained more doors than the one through which they had dropped, they were done for. There was no furniture to stack up and try to climb back up on. Nor did he have a hook on the end of his rope to throw back up with the hope that it would catch onto something. Even if it had had a grapnel, there would have been nothing for it to snag on to.
The House of Deyv's tribe, according to tradition, had contained some furniture when it was found generations ago. But this building had been looted.
Fortunately, the walls of the rooms were as rounded as the outside of the building. Deyv managed to run up the curve in the dark until his hand felt a door.
After sliding back down, he sat down to get his wind back, and then he ran up again. Groping, he felt a projection but slid back before he could seize it. The next try, he hung on. The door swung down, and he rolled back to the floor—that is, the wall.
On the third attempt, he grasped the edge of the door and hauled himself over. Before going up, he'd tied one end of the rope to his waist and the other around Jum's body. The dog howled with protest, but he went up kicking and was scraped against the edge of the door. Deyv untied Jum. Aejip, no matter how much Deyv coaxed, wouldn't leap up through the doorway. Deyv couldn't blame her, since even her light-sensitive eyes could not' see.
If she did try to jump, she'd probably slam her head into the edge of the door. He climbed back down, tied the rope to the cat and to himself, and got over the door and through the doorway. Dragging her up, however, was even more laborious and exasperating. But he did it.
And then there was the next door. And the next. By the time they had reached the last room, all three were hot, very tired, and very thirsty. Since Deyv had done most of the work, he was in the worst condition.
Here, though, the window in the wall gave light. Deyv was glad that they had not dropped through the doors on this side. The room was huge, big enough to hold his entire tribe Comfortably.
Not only was there light, but the window was open. Apparently, it had not been closed for a very long time. Only a small amount of dirt had gotten in, though. The window was far enough above the ground to keep splashes of mud out except during the most driving rains. It was not high enough to keep animals out, yet there was no evidence that any had ever been there.
This was strange, since the cavernous room was festooned and carpeted with a thick growth. There was enough light to see that it was a sort of fungus. Deyv laid down on it to rest and found it a very soft bed.
After a while, he had to get up and climb out through the round window. Thirst drove him and his companions to seek water. They found a pool in a hollow and drank deeply. Then he searched around until he found a gourd tree. He picked four of the fruit, cut them open, and shared the sweet meat with
Jum and Aejip. Having hollowed out the thin hard shells, he filled them with water and returned to the room.
Deyv removed his compression cylinder from a pocket of his blowgun case after making a torch of twisted dried leaves that had blown into the room. He ignited some punk in the cylinder and used this to ignite the torch. Its Same showed that the fungus, so dull in the dim light, was actually a purple-and-redstriped glory. Stalactites of it pointed down from the ceiling, and here and there on the floor were stalagmites. Spiderweblike strands of the plant filled the comers from ceiling to floor. Many small hard nodules were visible just below the surface of the growth on the walls and ceiling.
Before the blaze went out, he saw he'd been mistaken in thinking that no beast had ever laired there. In one corner was a protuberance which looked like a bone. He picked it up, brushing off the sticky growth, and examined it. It looked like the thigh bone of an animal the size of Jura. It must have been there a long time, though. It was badly decayed.
He poked around under the surface and found pieces of rotted, deeply pitted bones, including the fragment of a skull. Deeper he found a long curved canine tooth, also pitted. Some large cat had once made this room its den or else it had crawled in here to die.
By then Aejip had returned from a short hunt. She dropped a dead bird in front of Deyv and sat back on her haunches. Deyv took it outside and skinned the fuzzy, almost wingless creature, gutted it, and cut off portions for all three. The cat and dog devoured their share, including the bones, before he had gathered together enough dry wood for a small fire.
Soon the odor of flesh had attracted a horde of black beetles spotted with green fleur-de-lys. Deyv caught a dozen of them and ate them as appetizers. The things were utterly without caution when swarming over dead meat, so he called the two pets and they lapped the insects up, crunching them between their teeth and swallowing them half-alive. A number fell in the fire, so Deyv picked them out and ate these. They were even better half-roasted.
When it was sleep-time, Deyv closed the window, and they bedded down. But the air got too stuffy.
After a while he opened the window. Though this allowed access to predators, the window could be guarded. He stationed the two animals just under it and then half-closed it, propping it up with a stick.
His sword was by his right hand and his tomahawk was by the other. Both animals would instantly awake if they heard strange noises nearby or smelled a dangerous creature.
Then he got an idea, and he rose again. He tied one end of the rope to the stick so that he could pull on the other end and yank the prop out. The window would then bang down, frustrating anything that intended to get in.
Thus assured of safety, or as much as was possible in this place, he went to sleep.
5
IN his dream Deyv had just leaped from behind a bush and grabbed a woman of an enemy tribe. He'd been watching her as she came up the path from the river. She was tall and had a beautiful figure, and the soul egg between her breasts was glowing with streaks of color that matched those of his egg in color and waveform. She was just what he wanted as a wife, and if he could subdue her before she screamed and warned her people, he would take her away to his tribe.