He had managed to learn that, wherever in the great stone city the portals to the netherworld of the Blind Beings were hidden, to find o ne of t hem w ould do h im no g ood s ince a ll were guarded round the clock by members of the Great Race, a special breed who towered several feet above average height and were armed with terrible force-weapons unlike anything Crom-Ya had ever imagined, much less seen on the battlefield. Such measures made all the clearer the fear the Blind Ones inspired in their enemies.
After several such outings, Crom-Ya finally found what he was looking for: what must have been a forgotten, and thus unguarded, gate to the realm below. The metal was a foot thick if it was an inch, and its deep corrosion suggested many thousands of years of disuse. Could it be that those who lurked in the depths beneath it had forgotten it, too?
Crom-Ya had quickly mastered the use of his inhuman limbs with their various pincers and sprouting sensor-funnels. He put them to use now, making a sweep of the vicinity to make sure he was alone. Then he focused on the metal slab before him. How was he to get it open? He had never really tested the strength of his borrowed “arms,” but this seemed the perfect opportunity. First he applied the pincers to the rusting seals, or hinges; he couldn’t tell which. He reasoned that, as the ancient door must have been designed and installed with the same physical anatomy he now possessed, it ought to suffice to remove it. But the pincers managed only to scrape away a bit of the corrosion, albeit without injury. He concluded that the ancients must have used some sort of tools. Now, could he find such instruments— or even recognize them as such?
The mind of Crom-Ya reeled again. At first he thought, and hoped, his sojourn among the Great Race was at an end, that he was about to return to his own time and place, though that was not a bright prospect either. But such speculations were rendered moot in another moment when he found himself in a seemingly airless, lightless void. He felt no physical body at all. But even in the absence of ears, he could hear a voice, though he could not tell whether its source was exterior or interior.
He had heard the voice of the Pictish mage Rang-Thalun only on one or two occasions, but he recognized it now.
Cimmerian, you were a worthy foe. I warned my men not to kill you but only to take you prisoner. This body of yours, as you must by now be aware, has been usurped by one of the farwandering Great Race. Because of the link between you I am able to speak with you.
“And what would you say to me, my lord Rang-Thalun?”
Do you then bear me no ill will?
“I do not. It is part of the great game: someone must win, as you have, and someone must lose, as I have. So be it.”
Good man. I expected as much from you, O Crom-Ya. My business with you is this. I know of the Great Race and their schemes for the simple reason that I, too, was abducted by them. During my years of captivity I took the opportunity to learn what I could from their archives of the magic of wizards from other lands and times, even of other worlds such as I had never suspected. I did not scruple to record my own learning in their metal volumes since my knowledge was crude by comparison with that already recorded there and therefore could be of no real use to them. But my powers grew mightily, and you have seen the results.
Now I propose a plan of action whereby both of us may have our vengeance upon our captors, as well as your escape from them.
“Your powers are truly great! But can even you manage these feats?”
As a shaman, the art of soul travel was already known to me. When I learned all I could from my fellow captive wizards and the metal books of still others, I did what no other had ever done: I effected the mind transfer in reverse, regaining my own body and sending its usurper back to his own. I am sure I can return you, too. Then you shall rule beside me as my general. I am no fool to let such talents go to waste. But first you shall make contact with the subterranean enemies of the Great Race.
“Such is my own purpose, O Rang-Thalun! But I know not how.”
While living among the Great Race I searched their citadel as best I could, and I discovered their armory. Listen closely, and I will tell you how to secure the force-weapons of the Race. With one of them you may easily breach the barrier to the underground world. If you can contrive to take more of the weapons to arm the Blind Ones, do so.
In the Dungeon of the Devils
Some weeks later, the cone-thing named Crom-Ya was conversing with three others whose minds had come from cultures in which the hunting of wild animals was an honored sport. He proposed to these fellow “guests” that they venture into the jungles beyond the Great Race’s city for a hunt. Having explained their plans to those in charge, they were able to obtain permission to borrow four of the force wands. No one thought it would be a bad idea to thin the herd of gigantic predators. The cones in authority thanked them for their service. CromYa’s companions half-suspected there was more to their venture than big game hunting, and if some kind of subversion against the Great Race were afoot, they would not object.
By the time the little group reached the clearing where their leader had discovered the barred door to the dungeons of the Blind Ones, Crom-Ya had revealed his plan to them and was relieved to learn of their sympathy. He then had them direct their power wands at the four corners of the huge metal door. The portal soon glowed white and sprang out of its frame. Two of the cones could not evade the hurtling mass nor survive the damage to their bodies. The third, daunted by the tragedy, declared he would wait outside while Crom-Ya descended. If they had been followed and were discovered, the facts would speak for themselves, so his desire to remain “on guard” must be nothing more than fear. The Great Race were bad enough, but how much worse must be the beings whom they so feared?
As the Cimmerian mind had dearly hoped, there was a long ramp leading from the opening to the dark depths below. He began slowly to make his way down. The darkness around him was not impenetrable since his alien sense organs were not precisely like human eyes. They operated more like the sonar with which bats are gifted.
His sense of the passage of time in this realm, even above ground, was fluctuating, unstable. He had not been able to grasp it. So he was not sure how long his descent took, but at length he came to a level floor. He knew he needn’t go any further when he realized that the Blind Beings, a huge mob of them, had gathered to meet him. In a moment he would know their attitude toward him, the only cone-creature any of them could have seen in millennia — if they lived so long. He realized he knew nothing about these beings. Had the original generation imprisoned here eventually succumbed, replacing themselves with new generations? Or were they the originals? Would they slay him, a representative, as they must suppose, of their agelong oppressors?
But he had nothing to fear. They must have had telepathic abilities not dissimilar to those of the Great Race who so feared them. Crom-Ya learned much that day. It is useless to try to represent in words what they said, since their medium of communication was so very different from that of human beings of the Hyborian Age or ours. But we may share the gist.
The Blind Beings conveyed that they were no invaders but rather the original inhabitants of the city, long ago displaced by the invaders from a world called something analogous to “Yith.” None knew what danger or disaster they had fled via mind transference. But the so-called Blind Beings had not been psychically displaced as Crom-Ya and so many others had been, as whole planetary civilizations and species had been, but rather had been driven underground with weapons fashioned by the Great Race. The invaders from Yith had taken up residence in a primitive cone race native to earth, supplying them with an intelligence evolution had denied them. On their own world, those of Yith had existed in the form of sentient gases or vapors. They were thus practiced in mind-jumping, but this had not been needful in the case of the Blind Beings, whose amoeboid forms had not proven suitable for some reason.