That none had yet been found was no reason for me to embrace despair. Laidan, I believed, had fastened the full of what must be a not inconsiderable talent on me. Sooner or later she would—she must—feel the strain of what she did. So I must keep probing, at irregular intervals, ready for any second which might win my freedom.
These underground ways were dark. I was swallowed up by blackness as if the maw of some great beast had engulfed me. But I resolutely held fear at bay. Laidan needed me; she would not waste what she needed. Therefore, even in the dark I did not have yet anything to fear—except the will which held me captive.
Now there was a kind of nibbling at my mind. It did not come, I believed, from what Laidan had laid upon me. She had to hold her manipulation of me too taut to take any such liberties. No, this was like a very vague memory struggling to throw open some door and issue forth.
All of my species have such occurrences of memory we cannot account for—times when we see a stretch of country, a building, when an inner voice swells in instant answer—saying, "This you have seen before." Even when we know that that cannot be possible.
What tugged so persistently at me now must be such a false memory. Or can it be true that we live more than one life, seeking in each to repair the wrongs we have willfully committed earlier? I have heard some of the Old Race discuss this theory upon occasion. But for me heretofore, this life had been enough—the wonder and promise of it filling me always.
But—sometime—somewhere—I had walked these ways. I was so certain of that I thought, black as it was here, I could be sure of the walls rising on either side. And those walls were not bare stone. No—deep cut in them were symbols. So, to prove myself wrong or right, I put out my right hand, confident that I would find my fingers sliding over such stone. And so I did. And the wall was pitted and slashed with deep cutting. Though I did not strive to trace any of the patterns I knew were there.
For those patterns were not of my Talent. Around them hung a taint of evil, lessened perhaps a little by the many years they had been wrought here. My flesh recoiled as if I had touched fire, or burning acid, when I found them.
The pavement under my boots was smooth, with no falls of rock nor crevices to provide any barrier. Then—I was brought to a halt.
I sensed a sighing—a disturbance in the air. That which had taken command of my body turned me to the left until both my outstretched hands once more scraped across engraven stone. And I tapped out with one foot, knowing, as surely as if I could see, that here a pit opened in the floor and the only way around it was a narrow ledge which my tapping toe located.
So I set my shoulders against that wall, my hands braced tightly against it, facing outward to the pit. Step by step I squeezed by the trap I could not see. While from the depths came ever that sighing, and with it a stale smell. My journey seemed to take an hour, though it could only have been minutes before I was once more on a wide and solid surface of a corridor.
Now I saved my strength of purpose, no longer making those attempts to break the power holding me. For that passage shook me greatly, the reason for it lying, I was sure, in the depths of that memory which was not a real memory.
I felt also that the passage now sloped upward—at so gentle a curve that at first I was not aware of it. This became steeper as I went. Finally I knew that my feet unerringly had found a flight of steps and I was climbing. Here the wall to my left was smooth and I ran my hand along it for the sense of support it gave me in the dark.
Up and up—was I inside the heart of some mountain? Though I could not remember any peak of unusual height among those walling in the Valley. No, the true chain mountains lay to the north and the west—those we had come over in our venture into Escore.
My hands arose, at the command of Laidan rather than by my own desire. Flat-palmed, they struck a surface just above my head. And I guessed that I had reached some kind of trap door sealing off this place. I exerted my strength, and not altogether at the bidding of my captor—for I wanted out of this trap.
At first I thought that exit must have been sealed or barred. Then, very slowly and reluctantly, it loosened in its frame. Gray light, thin like the last of any winter twilight, outlined a square on three sides. I arose two more steps that I might set my back to the door and, with a last compelling effort, sent that crashing up and back. Ancient dust puffed into my face, making me cough.
For a moment I hesitated, for what might lie above in waiting I could not guess. Then, because I must, I climbed into the open. There were piles of tumbled stone, even a trace of a wall, as if this hidden way had once issued into the room of a building of size and presence. But if that were so, the way was—
I blinked and blinked again. For a second or two I saw clearly the desolation which had been plain enough still in existence—the fallen blocks like shadows. Then those winked out. Walls arose out of the very earth itself, took on sturdy substance. There was a roof high over my head veiling the sky. The place of the skull—?
No—there were no pillars here and the wall was round. I could have entered the ground floor of some tower. Window slits there were, but those gave little light. Rather that came from torch rods set at intervals on the wall, pulsating with a steady, contained flame.
The opening of the trap door through which I had emerged had pushed aside a tanned, furred rug, into the making of which must have gone more than one snow-cat pelt. And there were stools and benches, much carven, a table nearer to the wall on which sat a bowl of ruddy crystal overflowing with those small red grapes which are the sweetest and the rarest my people knew. Beside that was a flagon of worked metal with the sheen of silver and gold interwoven, which had been fashioned in the form of a traditional dragon—its neck curved upward, its mouth open to emit whatever fluid might fill such a container.
All illusion; my mind gave a quick and, I thought, true answer. Yet when I stooped to touch the wrinkles of the rug, my fingers held the softness of fur. So this illusion could control more than one sense at a time.
I swung around toward the table, determined to test that guess further, but there came a curdling of the air. So strange was that I stared as the atmosphere itself appeared to thicken, form a body. Then I faced Laidan.
She laughed, lifting one hand to brush a strand of flame-bright hair out of her eyes.
"So you are duly surprised, little sister? Well, time can he obedient to the will, even as is space—or the other boundaries men so complacently accept as always unchangeable and fixed. This is Zephar—"
For a moment after she spoke that name her eyes were intent upon me, almost as if she expected I might recognize the word. Then she shrugged.
"It does not greatly matter whether you remember or not. But all this"—she flung her arms wide, the mistlike covering that she had worn before seeming in this setting to be more opaque and more like some normal weaving—"answers readily to my call since I once had the ordering of it. Where memory is the sharpest, there we can beat time itself.
"However, that is of no consequence. You are—"
She seated herself with deliberation on the only true chair in that chamber, one placed at mid-board by the table, its dark high back framing her hair to make those strands appear even brighter.
"Yes, we are in Zephar, younger sister. And in Zephar there is that which even in this crook-coiled time you can do." Now she set her chin upon one fist and planted the elbow of that arm firmly on the table. Though her mouth might still smile easily, her eyes were like bits of ice drawn from the teeth of the Ice Dragon, as from them appeared to spread a chill which grew strong within that tower room.