Mottled splotches of tree-filtered sunlight flashed across his body.
He ran, wishing he had not looked back at Krasna, guiding himself by
the sun, and when he grew tired he used his new knowledge to postpone
fatigue. His body would have to pay a price later, but for that he was
prepared.
He knew now that he must inevitably come into conflict not only with
the Faith, but with the Sasso-thing itself. For Sasso held the Gateway.
He smiled wryly to himself as he considered fragmentary plans. Perhaps
he was El-ve-don after all.
The forest thinned to allow glimpses of the Mountains that Move, and
then he was clambering up the same barren, rock-strewn slopes he and
Krasna had descended so slowly together.
He found the entrance to the Chamber without difficulty, for that black
hole among the rocks was fixed indelibly in his memory. Then he had
to drive himself, push himself step after lagging step down the steep
tunnel until he stood amid the warmth and polychromatic glow of the
crystal-lined grotto. He felt his spirit, his _self_, float free from
his body. It was like swimming in a riptide, requiring a conscious and
constant effort to hover near and not be swept out again into the Thin
World.
And then, deliberately, Eldon's _self_ did strange and terrible things
to the body that lay crumpled on the rough floor. There was a psychic
pain that ripped and tore at the _self_, more intense and poignant than
any purely physical torment, and it continued for a timeless age.
When at long last a body staggered up the tunnel its left arm was a
stump and one eye blinked and squinted in a ruined, disfigured face.
By his own choosing he was outwardly as he had been during those last
unhappy months on Earth. The mental changes were invisible.
Above the Chamber the mountains grew steeper, rougher, and to an
already exhausted cripple the difficulties were almost insuperable.
Time after time he narrowly avoided rock slides loosened by the
constant earthquakes, and there were ledges where the slightest misstep
meant death, and crevices from which noxious, choking fumes puffed in
irregular spurts. And always there was the howling, shrieking wind
that strove to wreck his precarious balance and send him tumbling to
destruction.
He wished he had an antigravity egg. With time and proper facilities he
could have constructed one. He understood how. But he was not in the
Thin World and could not produce one from nothing merely by thinking
about it.
And he could not have used it anyhow. It was necessary that his maimed
body be tortured almost to the point of collapse. The Gateway must be
reached through Sasso, and Sasso could be reached only through the
Faith. But one who was Of the Faith could not be false to Sasso.
Scratched and bleeding, half-frozen, his shoes worn through and the
palm of his single hand shredded by jagged rocks, he crossed the summit
and made the long descent to the semi-desert plateau on the other side.
Near the bottom a small stream trickled across the rocks, and Eldon
drank deeply although the water stank of chemicals leached from the
volcanic core of the range.
The domain of the Faith was huge, and for three days he plodded across
the drifting brownish sands. His breath whistled noisily in a throat
parched with thirst and seared by alkali dust. Beneath the tattered
remains of his shirt his ribs showed starkly through weather-scoured,
sun-blistered skin, but he welcomed the emaciation and each scratch of
the cactus-like plants. It was all necessary.
As the merciless sun rose for the fourth day he sighted a column of
mist ahead. In the afternoon he topped a slight rise and looked down
upon a small lake steaming in the brazen sunlight. On its shore two
dozen mud and wattle huts huddled together for mutual protection. A
settlement of the primitive Puva tribesmen, the original non-mutants.
Eldon hid in the scanty shade of a boulder and slept a couple of hours.
Then he stood up, allowing the setting sun to outline him. It was only
a minute before a savage saw him and gave a shout. Still Eldon stood
in plain sight, and soon thirty Puvas armed with clubs and spears were
racing toward the stranger who had dared invade their territory. To
their primitive minds stranger and enemy were the same.
Eldon waited until they were near. Then he _thought_, and a moment
later smiled to himself as he passed undetected within a few feet of
the tribesmen seeking his blood. His peculiar Earth mentality, coupled
with the control he had learned in the Thin World, made him completely
invisible to the Puvas. But he knew well it was a trick which would
never work against mentalities that were more nearly his equal.
Beside one of the huts he found a crudely made clay pot of water.
He drank his fill and threw the remainder of the water over a Puva
woman. She screamed. He shattered the pot at the feet of another woman
who ran to investigate. Then he trotted away, leaving the village in
turmoil behind him, trusting the wind-whipped sands to obliterate his
footprints.
All night long he plodded steadily eastward toward the Fortress of Sin.
Near morning he threw himself down on the sand, this time making not
the slightest effort at concealment.
* * * * *
The whistling ships appeared with the grey of dawn, heading for the
Puva encampment. The first passed high and to the south, but as the
second approached Eldon opened his eye, lurched to his feet, staggered
a few steps. He did not look up as the sound of the ship changed. Then
he let himself sink limply to the sand.
The ship skidded to a stop nearby and through a slitted eye Eldon
watched two men emerge. Men--mutant Puvas of the Faith--and not Luvans.
He allowed himself a sigh of relief before feigning unconsciousness.
One of them rolled him over with a booted toe.
"Hey, Thordan," he said to his companion. "It's the crippled
Outworldling that Highness Sin ordered us to watch for."
"But how could this have--" Thordan began.
"Those Puvas!" The other mutant sounded disgusted. "They saw this
thing; and when he hid from their clumsy searching they sent that false
alarm that the Rebels had crossed the mountains. Superstitious fools!"
Thordan nodded and examined Eldon critically. "Bah! Who'd want such
an atrocity as a slave? Not me! Let's blast it here and not dirty our
ship."
"Blast it and you'll carry lash scars," the other warned. "That thing
is--was--an Earthman."
"All right. Throw it in and let's get back," Thordan agreed sourly.
"And don't give it food or water either," the other reminded. "Highness
Sin, or perhaps Lesser Highness Margaret may have other ideas."
Something inside Eldon died at the casual mention of Lesser Highness
Margaret. The words did something Krasna's hints and the open
accusations of the Forest People had failed to do. They convinced him,
brought into sharp focus all the half-thoughts and doubts he had so
resolutely pushed aside.
* * * * *
The ship landed and Eldon was half-led, half-dragged across the
courtyard of the Fortress and into Sin's audience hall. There he was
given a final shove, tripped at the same instant, and made involuntary
prone obeisance to the dark-haired woman on the throne. He had just
time to notice with a start how closely she resembled Margaret.
Sin looked down in questioning contempt Eldon could feel her
mind probing tentatively at his and deliberately made incoherent
thought-pictures of burning sands and torturing thirst, of howling
savages with blood lust in their eyes, of the trembling hell of the
Mountains that Move. He invented scenes of being hunted through an
endless towering forest by murderous people. To set up a complete mind
block would only have called attention to his ability.
Sin's mind displayed increasing interest at those pictures, so he took
his thoughts back to Earth and reproduced the nightmarish, multiform
and utterly horrible and meaningless images of morphine and delirium
which had haunted him in the hospital. He had the satisfaction of
feeling her mind withdraw in fastidious disgust.
"His mind is gone, Highness Sin?" a hulking, much-decorated warrior
asked.