He launched himself rather too hurriedly across the abyss, his mind in part on the girl. Striking the opposite cliff rather clumsily, his left foot slipped on green slime, he jarred against the wall with his shoulder, swung into spray, and lost his grip on the rope. Next second, he was falling down the chasm.
Amid the roar of water came their united cry—the first time they had genuinely done something in unison.
Yuli struck rock, and clung there with every fibre of his being. He squeezed his knees up under his body, fought with his toes, and gripped the rock.
His fall had been no more than two metres, though it jarred every bone in his body, and had been broken by a boulder protruding from the cliff. It afforded him little more than a foothold, but that was enough.
Casping, he crouched in his awkward position, scarcely daring to move, his chin almost on a level with his boots.
His anguished gaze fell on a blue stone lying below his eyes. He focused on it, wondering if he was going to die. The stone would not come sharp. He felt that he might have reached out over the ledge where he crouched and picked it up. Suddenly his senses told him the truth of the matter—he was not looking at a nearby stone but a blue object far below. Vertigo seized him, paralysing him; accustomed to the plains, be had no immunity against such an experience.
He closed his eyes and clung. Only Usilk’s shouts, coming from a long way off, forced him to look again.
Distantly below lay another world, to which the fissure in which he crouched served as a kind of telescope. Yuli had a view no bigger than his hand into an enormous cavern. It was illuminated in some way. What he had taken for a blue stone was a lake, or possibly a sea, since he had a glimpse only of a fragment of a whole whose size he could not attempt to guess. On the shore of the lake were a few grains of sand, now interpretable as buildings of some kind. He lay in a cataplexy, staring senselessly down.
Something touched him. He could not move. Someone was speaking to him, clutching his arms. Without will, he allowed himself to cooperate in sitting up with his back against the rock, and locking his arms about his rescuer’s shoulders. A bruised face, with damaged nose, slashed cheek, and one closed black and green eye swam before his vision.
“Hang on tight, man. We’re going up.”
He managed then to hold himself against Usilk, as the latter worked his way slowly upwards and eventually hauled them, with enormous labour, over the rock lip from which the waterfall poured. Usilk then collapsed, flat out, panting and groaning. Yuli looked down for Iskador and Scoraw, just visible on the other side of the fissure, faces upturned. He also looked more sharply down, into the fault; but his vision of another world had disappeared, eclipsed by spray. His limbs trembled, but he could control them sufficiently to help the others to join him and Usilk.
In silence, they clutched each other thankfully.
In silence, they picked their way amid the boulders on the side of the rushing stream of the waterfall.
In silence, they went on. And Yuli kept silence over the vision of the other world he had glimpsed. But he thought again of old Father Sifans; could it have been a secret fortress of the Takers, momentarily revealed to him amid the wilderness of rock? Whatever it was, he took it inside himself and was mute.
The warrens in the mountain seemed endless. Without light, the party of four went in fear of crevasses. When they judged it to be night, they found a suitable nook to sleep, and huddled together for warmth and company.
Once, after climbing for hours along a natural passage strewn with boulders from a long-vanished stream, they found a niche at shoulder height into which all four could sctamble, to tuck themselves away from the chill wind that had been blowing in their faces all day.
Yuli went to sleep immediately. He was roused by Iskador shaking him. The other men were sitting up, whispering apprehensively.
“Can you hear?” she asked.
“Can you hear?” Usilk and Scoraw asked.
He listened to the wind sighing down the passage, to a distant trickle of water. Then he heard what had disturbed them—a continuous rasping noise, as of something moving fast against the walls.
“Wutra’s worm!” Iskador said.
He clutched her firmly. “That’s just a story they tell,” he said. But his flesh went cold, and he grasped his dagger.
“We’re safe in this niche,” Scoraw said. “If we keep quiet.”
They could only hope he might be right. Unmistakably, something was approaching. They crouched where they were, peering nervously into the tunnel. Scoraw and Usilk were armed with staves, stolen from the warders of Punishment, Iskador had her bow.
The noise grew louder. Acoustics were deceptive, but they thought it came from the same direction as the wind. There was a rasping element to the noise now, and a rumble as of boulders being thrust heedlessly aside. The wind died, blocked perhaps. A smell assailed their nostrils.
It was a ripe aroma of festering fish, of scumble, of rotten cheese. A greenish fog permeated the passage. Legend said Wutra’s worm was silent, but now it approached with a roar, whatever it might be.
Moved more by terror than courage, Yuli peered from their lair.
There it was, coming fast. Its features could hardly be discerned behind the bank of green luminescence it pushed along in front of it. Four eyes, banked two and two, whiskers and fangs gigantic. Yuli pulled his head back in horror, choking. It was approaching irresistibly.
Next moment, they all four had a sight of its face in profile. It plunged by, eyes glaring insanely. Stiffish whiskers brushed their furs. Then their vision was blocked by scaley ribs, rippling by, blue-lit, scouring dust in upon them, choking them with filth and stink.
There were miles of it, then it was past. Clutching each other, they peered out of their hiding place to see the end of it. Somewhere at the beginning of the boulder- strewn passage was a wider cave through which they had come. A convulsion was taking place down there; the green luminescence, still visible, rippled.
The worm had sensed them. It was turning round and coming back. For them. Iskador stifled a cry as she realised what was happening.
“Rocks, fast,” Yuli said. There was loose rock they could throw. He reached towards the sloping back of the niche. His hand shuck something unsuspected and furry. He drew back. He struck his chert wheel. A spark flew and died—living long enough for him to see that they were keeping company with the mouldering remains of a man, of which only bones and his enveloping furs remained. And there was a weapon of sorts.
He struck a second spark.
“It’s a dead shaggy!” Usilk exclaimed, using the prisoner’s slang for phagor.
Usilk was right. There was no mistaking the long skull, from which the flesh had dried, or the horns. Beside the body was a staff capped by a spike and a curved blade. Akha had come to the aid of those threatened by Wutra. Both Usilk and Yuli reached out and grabbed the shaft of the weapon.
“For me. I’ve used these things,” Yuli said, wrenching at it. Suddenly, his old life was back, he recalled facing a charging yelk in the wilderness.
Wutra’s worm was returning. Again the scraping noise. More light, livid and green. Yuli and Usilk ventured a quick look out of the niche. But the monster was unmoving. They could see the blur of its face. It had turned and was facing back in their direction, but did not advance.
It was waiting.
They chanced a look in the other direction.