The puffs
of steamy gas had become a fog through which they groped their way
slowly, following a trace of path along the base of the cliff.
Time did not exist in the underworld of Erb. Varta did not know whether
it was still today, or whether she had passed into tomorrow when they
came to a cross roads. She felt Lur press against her, forcing her back
against a rock.
"There is a thing coming--" his message was clear.
And in a moment she too saw a dark hulk nosing through the vapor. It
moved slowly, seeming to balance at each step as if travel was a painful
act. But it bore steadily to the meeting of the two paths.
"It is no enemy--" But she did not need that reassurance from Lur.
Unearthly as the thing looked it had no menace.
With a last twist of ungainly body the creature squatted on a rock and
clawed the clumsy covering it wore about its bone-thin shoulders and
domed-skull head. The visage it revealed was long and gray, with dark
pits for eyes and a gaping, fang-studded, lipless mouth.
"Who are you who dare to tread the forgotten ways and rouse from slumber
the Guardian of the Chasms?"
The question was a shrill whine in her brain, her hands half arose to
cover her ears--
"I am Varta, Maiden of Asti. Memphir has fallen to the barbarians of the
Outer Lands and now I go, as Asti once ordered--."
The Guardian considered her answer gravely. In one skeleton claw it
fumbled a rod and with this it now traced certain symbols in the dust
before Varta's webbed feet.
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