Anana, holding her spear in one hand and a torch in the other, led the way. Tomahawk in hand, Kickaha walked a few steps back from her side until they reached the temple. The log building was dark. The guards who should have been here were drunk and snoring in the village square. While Anana followed him and cast the light of the torch around for him, he went around the temple to check for other entrances. But it had only one, the big wooden two-sectioned door in its front.
That had a thick wooden beam across the sections. He pulled it back from one of its slots and then swung a section back. Torchlights burning in wall sockets showed a smaller building in the center of the temple floor. It was a duplicate of the temple.
No Whaziss was here, unless he was inside the House of the Door, as the priest had called it.
Kickaha shot back the bar on the small door and swung a section open. Anana got close behind him. He stayed outside the building but leaned far in to look around it. The two torches there lit up a structure flanked by two wooden idols.
Anana said, “At last!”
“I told you that this was it.”
“Many times.”
Both had seen gates like the one before them. It was an upright sixangled structure composed of arm-thick silver-colored metal beams. It was wide enough to admit two persons abreast.
They walked into the building and stopped a few inches from the hexagonal gate. Kickaha thrust the head of his tomahawk into the space enclosed by the beams. It did not, as he had half expected, disappear. And when he went to the other side and stuck the tomahawk in it, it was clearly visible.
“Unactivated,” he said. “Okay. We don’t need the code word. We’ll try the Horn.”
He put the tomahawk shaft inside his belt and opened the bag hanging from his belt. He withdrew the Horn of Shambarimen from it. It was of a silvery metal, almost two and a half feet long, and did not quite weigh a fourth of a pound. Its tube was shaped like an African buffalo’s horn. The mouthpiece was of some soft golden substance. The other end, flaring out broadly, contained a web or grill of silvery threads a half-inch inside it. The underside of the Horn bore seven small buttons in a row.
When the light struck the Horn at the right angle, it revealed a hieroglyph inscribed on the top and halfway along its length.
This was the highly treasured artifact made by the supreme craftsman and scientist of the ancient Thoan, which meant “Lords.” It was unique. No one knew how to reproduce it because its inner mechanism was impenetrable to X rays, sonic waves, and all the other devices of matter penetration.
Kickaha lifted the Horn and put its mouthpiece to his lips. He blew upon it while his fingers pressed the buttons in the sequence he knew by heart. He saw in his mind seven notes fly out as if they were golden geese with silver wings.
The musical phrase would reveal and activate a hidden gate or “flaw” if one was within sound range of the Horn. The notes would also activate a visible gate. It was the universal key.
He lowered the Horn. Nothing seemed to have happened, but just activated gates did not often give signs of their changed state. Anana thrust the blade of her spear into the gate. The blade disappeared.
“It’s on!” she cried, and she pulled the blade back until it was free of the gate.
Kickaha trembled with excitement. “Fifteen years!” he howled. Anana looked at him and put a finger to her lips.
“They’re all passed out,” he said. “What you should be worried about is what’s on the other side of the gate.”
He could stick his head through the gate and see what waited for them in another universe. Or perhaps somewhere in this universe, since this gate could lead to another on this planet. But he knew that doing that might trigger a trap. A blade might sweep down (or up) and cut his head off. Or fire might burn his face off. Sometimes, anything stuck through a gate to probe the other side conducted a fatal electrical charge or a spurt of flaming liquid or guided a shearing laser beam or any of a hundred fatal things.
The best way to probe was to get someone you didn’t care for, a slave, for instance, if one was handy. That was the way of the Lords. Kickaha and Anana would not do that unless they had captured an enemy who had tried to kill them.
Her spear had come back from that other world without damage. But a trap could be set for action only if it detected flesh or high-order brain waves.
Anana said, “You want me to go first?”
“No. Here goes nothing-I hope not.”
“I’ll go first,” Anana said, but he jumped through the empty space in the hexagonal frame before she could finish.
He landed on both feet, knees bent, gripping his tomahawk and trying to see in front of him and on both sides at the same time. Then he stepped forward to allow Anana to come through without colliding with him.
The place was twilit without any visible source of light. It was an enormous cavern with dim stalagmites sticking up from the ground and stalactites hanging down from above. These stone icicles were formed from carbonate of calcium dissolving from the water seeping down from above. They looked like the teeth in the jaws of a trap.
However, except for the lighting, the cavern seemed to be like any other subterranean hollow.
Anana jumped through then, her spear in one hand, a blazing torch in the other. She crouched, looking swiftly around.
He said, “So far, so good.”
“But not very far.”
Though they spoke softly, their words were picked up, inflated, and, like Frisbees, spun back toward them.
Ahead was the cavern, huge as far as they could see. It also extended into darkness on both left and right. He turned to look behind him. The sixsided gate was there, and beyond it was more vast cave. Air moved slowly over him. It cooled off his sweating body and made him shiver. He wished that he had had more time to prepare for this venture. They should have brought along clothes, food, and extra torches.
The Lord who had set this gate up had probably done it thousands of years ago. It might have been used only once or twice and then been neglected until now. The Lord knew where other gates were and where they led. But Kickaha and Anana had no way of knowing what to do next to get out of this world. There was one thing he could do that might work.
He lifted the Horn to his lips and blew the silver notes while his fingers pressed on the seven buttons. When he was finished, he lowered the Horn and thrust the tomahawk head through the gate. The head disappeared.
“The gate’s activated on this side!” he cried.
Anana kissed him on his cheek. “Maybe we’re getting lucky!”
He withdrew the tomahawk, and he said, “Of course…”
“Of course?”
“It might admit us back to the world we just left. That’d be the kind of joke a Lord would love.”
“Let’s have a laugh, too,” she said. She leaped through the hexagon and was gone.
Kickaha gave her a few seconds to move out of his way and also to come back through if she had reason to do so. Then he jumped.
He was pleased to find that he was not back in the Whaziss temple. The stone-block platform on which he stood had no visible gate, but it was, of course, there. It was in the center of a round, barn-sized, and stonewalled room with a conical ceiling of some red-painted metal. The floor was smooth stone, and it had no opening for a staircase. There was no furniture. The exits were open arches at each of the four cardinal points of the compass; a strong wind shot through the arch on his left. Through the openings he could see parts of a long, rolling plain and of a forest and of the castlelike building of which this room was a part. The room seemed to be five hundred feet above the ground.
Anana had left the room and was pressed against a waist-high rampart while she looked at the scene. Without turning to look at him, she said, “Kickaha! I don’t think we’re where we want to be!”
He joined her. The wind lifted up his shoulder-length bronze-red hair and streamed it out to his right. Her long, glossy, and black hair flow
ed horizontally like octopus ink jets released in a strong sea current. Though the blue but slightly greencast sun was just past the zenith and its rays fell on their bare skin, it was not hot enough to withstand the chill wind. They shivered as they walked around the tower room. Kickaha did not think the shivering was caused only by the wind.
It was not the absence of people. He had seen many deserted castles and cities. Actually, this castle was so tall and broad that it could be classified as a large town.
“You feel uneasy?” he said. “As if there’s something unusually strange about this place?”
“Definitely!”
“Do you feel as if somebody’s watching you?”
“No,” Anana said. “I feel … you’ll think I’m being irrational … that something is sleeping here and that it’ll be best not to wake it.”
“You may be irrational, but that doesn’t mean you’re crazy. You’ve lived so long and seen so much that you notice subtleties I can’t…”
He stopped. They had walked far enough that he could see part of the view from the other side. Past the roofs of many structures, up against a hill of rock, was a round, bright blue structure. He resumed walking around the tower until he could see all of it. Then he stopped and gazed a while before speaking.
“That globe must be four or five miles from here. But it still looks huge!”
“There are statues around it, but I can’t see the details,” Anana said.
They decided that they would walk through the castle-city to the enormous globe. But the room had no staircase. They seemed to be imprisoned in the top room of the tallest tower in the castle. How had the former citizens gotten to this room? They busied themselves intently going over every inch of the inside and outside of the tower room. They could find no concealed door, no suspicious hollow spaces, nor anything to indicate a secret exit or entrance.
“You know what that means?” Kickaha said. Anana nodded and said, “Test it.”
He went to the side of the invisible hexagon opposite that from which they had stepped out. He lifted the Horn and blew the seven notes. Nothing visible happened, but when he thrust his tomahawk through the space where the hexagon must be, the weapon disappeared up to his hand. As they had suspected, each side was a gate.
“It’s probably part of a gate maze,” she said.
He leaped through the hexagon, landed on both feet, and stepped forward. Two seconds later, Anana followed. They were in a large, doorless, and windowless room made of a greenish, semitransparent and hard substance. The room could have been carved out of a single huge jewel. The only light came from outside it. It showed unmoving objects too dim to be seen clearly. Against the wall opposite him was the outline of a hexagon in thin black lines. Unless a trick was being played upon them, the lines enclosed a gate.
The air was heavy, thick, stale, and unmoving. Near his feet were two skeletons, one human and one semihuman. In the midst of the bones were two belt buckles, golden rings set with jewels, and one beamer. Kickaha leaned over and picked up the pistollike beamer. That made him breathe deeper than he should have. The lack of oxygen was making his heart beat overfast, and his throat was beginning to tighten.
“I think,” Anana said, “that we don’t have much time to spend trying to get through the gate. Our predecessors didn’t have the code, and so they died quickly.”
Theoretically, the two previous occupants of the room should have used up all the oxygen in it. But there was enough here to keep the two from beginning to strangle at once. Obviously, the owner of the gate had brought in some oxygen to replace what the dead intruders had used. Just enough to torture the next occupants with the knowledge of their sure fate.
“We’ve got maybe a minute!” Kickaha said.
He pressed the button on the beamer that indicated the amount of energy left in the fuel supply. A tiny digital display by the button showed that enough fuel was left for ten half-second fullpower bursts. After shoving the barrel of the beamer between his waist and his belt, he put the mouthpiece of the Horn to his lips. It was not necessary to blow hard. The output of the seven notes was at the same noise level, regardless of the input.
As the last silvery note bounced around in the small room, Anana thrust the head of her spear into the area of wall on which the lines were painted. It disappeared. Then she withdrew it. It showed no signs of damage or fire. That did not mean much, as both knew. Nevertheless, by now Kickaha’s lungs were sending signals to him, and his throat seemed to be falling in on itself. Anana’s face showed that she, too, was feeling panic.
Despite his increasing need for fresh air, he turned around and blew the seven-note sequence again, directing it at the blank wall opposite the inscribed one. It was possible that there was a gate there also, one its maker had hidden there. The gate with the hexagon might be a deadly trap for the uncautious.
He could not see any change in the wall, but Anana drove her spear hard against it at different places to determine if an invisible gate was there. The metal head clanged and bounced off the glassy substance, which boomed as if it were a drum. They would have to take the one way open.
Anana, her spear held out, leaped through the gate. He followed her several seconds later. As usual, he winced a little when it seemed that he would slam into the wall. Though his conscious mind knew that he would not do so, he could not convince his unconscious mind. As he passed through the seeming solid, he glimpsed the hexagonal structure a foot beyond the gate. Then he was through a second gate and had landed by Anana. She looked astonished. This was the first time she had encountered a second gate immediately beyond the first.
Fresh air filled his lungs. He said, “Ah! My God, that’s good!”
If they had not had the Horn, they would be dead by now.
“Less than a second in one world and on to the next,” Anana said. They did not have much time to look around. Now, they were in an enormous room. The ceiling was at least a hundred feet high, and it and the walls were covered with paintings of creatures he had never seen before. The bright light came from everywhere.
And then the room was replaced by a sandy plain that stretched unbroken to a horizon much more distant than that on Earth, an orange sun, and a purple sky. The air was heavy, and Kickaha suddenly felt as if gravity had increased.
Before he could say anything, he and Anana were on the top of a peak, a flat area so small that they had to cling to each other to keep from falling off. For as far as they could see, mountains extended all around them. The wind blew strong and cold. Kickaha estimated it must be producing a chill factor of zero or lower. The sun was sinking below the peaks, and the sky was greenish-blue.
There was nothing to indicate that a gate was nearby. It was probably buried in the rock on which they were standing.
A few seconds later, they were on a beach that seemed to be tropical. It could have been on Earth. The palm trees waved behind them in the sea breeze. The yellow sun was near its zenith. The black sand under their bare feet was hot. They would have had to run for the trees if they had not built up such thick calluses on the bottom of their feet.
“I think we’re caught in a resonant gate circuit,” Kickaha said.
But hours passed, and they were not moved on. Tired of waiting for something to happen, they walked along the beach until they came to the place where they had started.
“We’re on an island-actually, an islet,” Kickaha said. “About half a mile in circumference. Now what?”
The horizon was unbroken. There could be a land mass or another island just beyond the horizon, or the sea could go for thousands of miles before its waves dashed against a beach. Kickaha studied the trees, which had seemed at first glance to be palm trees. But they bore clusters of fruit that looked like giant grapes. If they were not poisonous, they could sustain life for some time. Maybe. The trees could be cut down and trimmed to make a raft with the beamer. However, there were no vines to bind the logs together.
The Lord who had arranged for
his victims to stop here had meant for them to starve to death eventually.
Kickaha walked along the beach again while he blew the Horn. Then he walked in decreasing circles until the range of the notes had covered every bit of ground. There were no flaws or unactivated gates here. That the Horn could not reactivate the gate that had admitted them here meant one thing. It was a one-way gate. The Lord who had set this up had put a “lock” on it, a deactivating device. It was seldom used because it required much energy to maintain it. Also, not many Lords had this ancient device.
“Eventually, the lock will dissolve,” Anana said, “and the circuit will be open again. But I think we’ll have died before then. Unless we can get away from here to a large landmass.”
“And then we won’t know where we are unless we’ve been to this universe before.”
He used the beamer to cut a cluster of the baseball-sized fruits from a branch. The impact of the fall split some open. Though he was forty feet from the cluster, its odor reached him immediately. It wasn’t pleasant.
“Phew! But the stink doesn’t mean they’re not edible.”
Nevertheless, neither offered to bite into the fruit. When they became hungry enough, they would try it. Meanwhile, they subsisted on the rations in their backpacks.
On the evening of the third day, they lay down on the beach to sleep. This area was where they had entered the universe, and they stayed within it as much as possible. If the gate was reactivated, they would be within its sphere of influence.
“The Lord has not only made us prisoner on this islet,” Kickaha said. “He has also confined us to a cell of sorts. I’m really getting tired of being in a prison.”
“Go to sleep,” Anana said.
The night sky was replaced by bright sunlight. They scrambled up from their sand beds as Kickaha said, “This is it!” He and Anana grabbed their backpacks and weapons. Three seconds later, they were standing on a narrow platform and looking down into an abyss.