The irregular walls, roof and floor were crystals of all shapes
and colors. Some glowed, shedding polychromatic light. He rolled
over--his body responded with a heavy stiffness--and beside him lay the
red-haired girl. This was the Chamber, a natural formation possessing
strange characteristics possible only in Varda. In the Chamber they had
cheated death by giving their bodies complete rest.
He moved his left arm. It moved! His breath went out in a sigh of
happiness as he looked at it, his two eyes focusing with difficulty at
first. It was less heavily muscled and the skin was white and tender.
It looked _newer_. Here in the Chamber he had grown it like a--like a
crawfish. And the mortal dagger wound had healed scarlessly.
Krasna opened her eyes and stretched. He looked over to see if she had
fared as well.
She caught his look. Instantly her face flushed and she snatched up a
cloak one of the rescue party had left beside her, wrapped it around
herself. Eldon was surprised. The prudery of bodily modesty had seemed
entirely lacking from her character. In her home she had always been
charmingly natural and unembarrassed.
She saw he had discovered his new arm and eye.
"Pleased?" she asked.
He nodded vigorously, forgetting everything else.
He felt a pull, a tugging deep within himself. Krasna felt it too and
jumped up.
"Come," she urged. "We must get out of the Chamber at once."
Together they climbed a crystal-lined passage so steep it was almost a
shaft. His muscles felt stale, unused and stiff. They came out on the
rugged slope of a mountain, high above the forest line, and the opening
to the Chamber was a small black hole amid a cluster of boulders.
Eldon shivered in the chill wind after the tingling warmth of the
Chamber, and Krasna drew her cloak more closely around the tattered
remains of her clothing. There was a flash of movement among the rocks
and Tikta came running, chattering happily. Krasna stroked its soft fur
and the lemur-thing placed its paws on her head in the way Eldon had
learned meant mental communication.
He watched her face become set and grim.
"Things are going--badly," she said.
She hurried him down the jagged slope, telling him as they went that
the Forest People were gathering. It was risky, an unprecedented move
of desperation, for if any large numbers were killed or captured
Varda's entire defense against Sasso would collapse. The Gateway could
be fully opened.
But Krasna was unable to maintain the pace at which she started. She
tired rapidly, and often they rested at her suggestion. She seemed
clumsy, unsure of her footing, and frequently he helped her over the
rougher places.
"Do you remember the Thin World?" she asked during one pause.
"N--no," he admitted. He could remember Earth and Varda, remember his
battle with the Luvans. But about the Thin World he could recall only
that there was such a--was it a place?
"But you must!" she wailed. "You must!"
"I don't," he insisted.