"The Flame is sinking," Janissa said in a somber voice. "That is why Parror sought out Craddock. You see, Paititi was not always as it is now. In the old days, generations lived and died during the day, and other generations in a night. And before that, hundreds of generations in a day. The cycle slows now. Water moves faster than in the days of our fathers. Our memories go back a long way. We have written records, but certain things we had to guess. Before we were human, long, long ago, another race dwelt in Paititi.
"That race built these castles. Men and women not of our species but akin to yours, strong and wise and happy, dwelt in this land and lived beneath the Flame. Then the Flame sank and slept."
Raft scowled.
"That race died?"
"It did not die."
"What happened to it?"
She looked away.
"As you came through the unseen road, you must have seen a cavern there—a dark place where things crept and flew in shadow. You saw the monsters that dwelt in it. Those things—their ancestors—built this castle, and Parror's castle, and a hundred others. But as the Flame sank, they sank below the level of beasts. We know that now. But we did not always know."
Raft tried to marshal the facts. "The first race degenerated, eh? As your own evolved?"
"They degenerated long before we had the first glimmers of intelligence. I said that the Flame slept. Craddock wakened it, millions and millions of cycles ago. We know that, because our ancestors penetrated to the cave of the Flame, and found certain things there—a cloth sack, metal containers, a notebook with symbols we could not read.
"Not until da Fonseca came here, in his machine that flew, did we have any knowledge of the real truth, though we had often theorized. Parror and I took da Fonseca and through him learned the contents of that notebook."
"Millions of cycles? Craddock isn't that old!"
"The tides of time are altered in Paititi," Janissa said. "Craddock awakened the Flame, and our race was given birth. Now the Flame sinks, and that means great evil."
Dan Craddock! How much did he really know about the man, Raft wondered. For thirty years the Welshman had wandered the Amazon Basin. Why? Because of some secret he had stumbled on, long ago?
"What is this Flame?" he asked.
Janissa made a curious symbolic gesture. "It is the giver of life and the taker-away of life. It is Curupuri."
Raft stared at her. "All right, leave that, then. What do you want?"
The eyes shaded to purple again. "I am of royal blood. In the old days there were once three kings, enemies. They fought, and two were conquered. But the two vanquished kings were not shamed. They were given the hereditary honor of guardians of the Flame. They dwelt, after that, in the castle Parror holds now, while the conqueror dwelt in this place, by Doirada Gulf. It was so for generations. Until now!"
She seemed to bristle.
"Parror uses me—uses me! And I am of blood no less royal than his own. I held the secret of the lens, which he needed, but now that he has Craddock, he can waken the Flame, and I will be stripped of my birthright." Her eyes glowed. "Holding the castle of the Flame is a trust. We guard. Parror intends to break the trust, and act on his own, without waiting for the king's decision. That will be a shameful thing. It will bring shame on me, one of the guardians."
"Yet you helped him murder da Fonseca," Raft said. "You helped him kidnap Craddock."
"As for the murder, I did not know he intended that. The spell of the mirror can be broken, but it must be done slowly, carefully, or the victim will die. I had no love for da Fonseca, yet I did not want his death, and I would have stopped Parror could I have done so.
"Craddock—well, Parror lied to me. He told me he would do no more than bring Craddock here. I would not have trusted his word alone, but he gave me logic I could not deny. False logic, I know now. For he will get the knowledge he needs from Craddock's brain, and waken the Flame. That—that—" She hesitated. "It may be a very great sin. I am no longer sure what is the right way, Brian."
"Well, one way is for me to get out of here and see Craddock," Raft said practically.
"I cannot get you out—yet," she told him. "But the rest is easy. I have the mirror. See?" She drew the little lens from her bosom and held it out. Raft, remembering da Fonseca, found himself instinctively glancing away.
Janissa laughed softly.
"There's no harm in it, unless the psychic cleavage is violent. Look into my mirror."
"Not so fast," Raft said. "How does it work?"
"We know much of the mind," Janissa said. "The device is—is a mental bridge. Once it has caught the matrix of a man's mind, it can be put en rapport with that man. Each brain has a different basic vibration. You could not use the mirror alone, Brian, for it needs a trained mind to direct. But with my aid, you can. Look."
He obeyed. In the tiny lens the gray storm-clouds misted and swirled. They were driven aside. Tiny and alive, Raft saw the face of Dan Craddock.
He had a stubbly white beard. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked utterly exhausted. Beyond him Raft could make out vague outlines. Silks, he thought, of many colors.
"He is alone, and resting," Janissa whispered. "So you may speak with him freely."
"Speak?"
"In the mind. Look closer now, while I summon him."
Raft stared down at the lens. He saw Craddock's gaze lift, and sudden awareness spring into them.
Raft heard his name!
He did not hear it. He sensed the impact of Craddock's thought. Abruptly he was conscious of nothing but his friend's presence. The room about him darkened and vanished. There was present only the odd feeling that Janissa was here, somewhere, alive and guiding.
"Dan. Are you all right?" His thought formed words.
"All right, Brian. Yes. You?"
"So far I'm alive, anyway," Raft thought grimly. "Janissa's here."
"Good. She managed to tell me a little. And Parror's told me more."
"Is he—has he tried any tricks?"
Craddock grinned wanly.
"More or less. He's the most dangerous altruist I've ever met. You shouldn't have come after me, Brian."
"You should have told me the set-up back in the hospital, when Parror first showed up," Raft pointed out. "But that's water under the bridge. What we've got to figure on now—"
"I didn't know," Craddock interrupted. "When Parror brought da Fonseca to the hospital, I hadn't the least idea what was going on. When he showed me my notebook, I was—well, as flabbergasted as I looked."
"You were here before, though."
"Yes. I was here. Thirty years ago by our time, a hundred million, maybe, by Paititi's time. For it's variable. There's the Flame…"
"Tell him," Janissa's thought urged.
Craddock nodded.
"Yes, I—I'd better, I suppose. Though thirty years ago I hadn't much idea what I was getting into. I was pretty young. I was on the trail of the secret medicines the Indio witch-doctors were supposed to have around here, and that's how I stumbled on the unseen road. It wasn't closed then. It lay wide open. A trap, as it proved."
"A trap?"
"One set by fate," Craddock thought grimly. "I went on, though, past the cavern of the monsters, and to the place where the road forks. One branch leads to Paititi. The other leads to the thing the Indios call Curupuri."
"The Flame," Raft supplemented. "What is it?"
"I don't know. Radiant energy of some kind. It may be alive. It may not. But certainly it's nothing that ever was spawned on this earth. Paititi's a meteoric crater, Brian, and I think Curupuri came to this planet in a meteor. Perhaps it was the meteor. It's—life."
"The creator and the destroyer," Janissa put in quietly.
"Destroyer? Yes. There are forms of energy we know nothing about. Sometimes we see them through telescopes, in the giant nebulae light-years away. The stuff of primal energy, spawned in interstellar space, where that tremendous force can safely exist. It can't exist—safely—on a planet. Not unless the planet is still gaseous, still molten. Curupuri, the thing that fell on Brazil in a meteor ages ago, is a source of life, Brian."