Lur lay panting beside her, his red-forked
tongue protruding from his foam ringed mouth.
"We walk again the ways of men," Lur was the first to note the tool
marks on the stone where they lay. "By the Will of Asti, we may win out
of this maze after all."
Since there were no signs of the deadly steam Varta dared to push off
her hood and share with her companion the sustaining power she carried
in her pouch. There was a freshness to the air they breathed, damp and
cold though it was, which hinted of the upper world.
The ledge sloped upwards, at a steep angle at first, and then more
gently. Lur slipped past her and thrust head and shoulders through a
break in the rock. Grasping his neck spines she allowed him to pull her
through that narrow slit into the soft blackness of a surface night.
They tumbled down together, Varta's head pillowed on Lur's smooth side,
and so slept as the sun and worlds of Asti whirled protectingly above
them.
A whir of wings in the air above her head awakened Varta. One of the
small, jewel bright flying lizard creatures of the deep jungle poised
and dipped to investigate more closely the worlds of Asti. But at
Varta's upflung arm it uttered a rasping cry and planed down into the
mass of vegetation below. By the glint of sunlight on the stone around
them the day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at Lur's mane until
he roused.
There was a regularity to the rocks piled about their sleeping place
which hinted that they had lain among the ruins left by man.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25