Keepers of the Secrets

When he awoke, he was lying on a muddy bank and was cold, cold, cold.

He sat up and began coughing. A shape appeared out of the darkness. He got to his feet as swiftly as he could but with agonising slowness. A voice rumbled, 'It's me, Doc. Take it easy.'

He felt his head. His projector was still here. But his goggles were gone. Then his eyes became more adjusted to the dark and he saw that he was on a mud bank that sloped gently for several yards and then rose at ninety degrees for about forty feet. The sky was paler up there. The side of a mountain hung over them on the opposite side; the less precipitous slope was on the other side.

'Where's Barney?' he said.

Pauncho grunted like a sick hog and said, 'He's trying to find a way out of here. You all right, Doc?'

Caliban felt his side. 'I think I cracked some ribs. I won't know until I get back to Gramzdorf.'

'I thought you were a goner. I saw you slam into that boulder at the bottom of the falls.'

Doc could hear the muted roar of the cataract to his left. They must have gone quite a distance downstream before making this bank.

He swallowed another energon. When he started to feel warm again, he said, 'Let's go after Barney.'

They walked into a side street of the little village of Gramzdorf just before dawn. They were no longer cold and wet and dirty and hungry. But they went silently and stealthily and studied the outside of the i

Doc had resumed his disguise of Mr. Sigurdsson, the old Norwegian tourist, and Barney was wearing a false red beard and red wig in his guise as a Mr. Benjamin. Pauncho wore contact lenses to change the colour of his grey-blue eyes; he had a huge blue-black beard and his hat was jammed down to hide his enormous supraorbital ridges and his slanting forehead.

At this time of the year, when most of the snows were melted, there were few tourists. The locals, who stayed inside the village to work at the i

A little box attached to the opposite wall was flashing an orange light. That meant that it had photo-graphed no one entering the room, and that, presumably, it was safe to enter.

Barney, who had been at the end of the hall and looking out of the window, signalled Doc. When Doc got there, he saw two figures coming down a side street: Carlos Cobbs and Barbara Villiers.

Doc Caliban was gone like a rabbit scared by a coyote. Though six feet seven and weighing more than three hundred, he moved as swiftly and as lightly as a tiger. He was down the hall, down the steps, and out onto the lobby just as the couple entered. His timing was precise. The two had no chance to get away if they had wanted to do so. Doc had considered not revealing himself so that he could watch the couple when they thought they were safe. But his own great size and difficulty of disguise for Pauncho van Veelar would also make it easy for the two to recognise them. Besides, he wanted information now, and he did not feel that the waiting game was the one to play at this time.

So he spoke to them in his own voice as they approached.

The jaws of both dropped, and their eyes were wide. But both recovered swiftly. Cobbs did not try to smile, but Barbara managed a brilliant and lovely smile. ‘I’m so glad!' she said, advancing with her arms open. 'So glad! And so overwhelmed! I thought you were dead! You dropped into that awful hole and were gone! But the others? Are they ... ?'

'All right,' Doc said. 'Would you mind coming to my room? There are some things we have to establish.'

'Why not in the morning?' Cobbs said. 'We're very tired. With good reason, as you know.'

'I would think your curiosity would be too great for you to think of sleep,' Doc Caliban replied. 'You must have seen some things that you would have thought could not exist. And Iwaldi. Didn't - '

'Oh, yes, darling!' Barbara Villiers said, placing a lovely white hand on Cobb's arm. 'He's absolutely right! Besides, why is he disguised as an old man? I'm dying to find out! There must be some tremendous mystery here! I couldn't sleep thinking about that! I don't think I could sleep anyway, not with that mad goblin on the loose yet!'

Doc said, 'The mad goblin. A good description indeed of Iwaldi. Will you go with me?' and he turned as if he fully expected that they could do nothing else.

They followed him up but stopped short when they saw Pauncho and Barney standing before the door. Cobb said, 'Who - ?' and then, 'Very good disguises those! But those long arms and that nose and mouth! No, I think I'd recognise him anywhere no matter what!'

Doc unlocked the door and let the others through and then locked the door and secured a little box against the upper part of the door with a disc. Barney had turned off the mechanism that was flashing a light and was removing the film.

Pauncho said, 'What about a drink to warm us up and give us courage to face the morning sun? I thought I'd never see it again.'

All took some brandy except for Doc, who never drank alcohol unless a disguise required it.

Pauncho lit up a long green, Cuban cigar and said, 'Doc, the floor is yours.'

He added, 'And the furniture, too, if you so desire.'

Barney groaned. Cobbs and Villiers sat down before Doc could ask them to.

Doc said, 'Did you two have any trouble getting out?'

'No,' Cobbs replied. 'We just walked out the front way. Everything was clear.'

The titian-haired woman shuddered and said, 'All those bodies ...'

'You didn't tell the police here,' Doc said. 'Obviously you didn't have enough time; you got here so fast.'

Cobbs said they had come straight down the mountain path to the i

'Just what were you digging for?' Doc said.

'Some years ago, when we were here on vacation, we heard about a shepherd who had discovered a stone with some strange markings on it. We investigated and found a rock with inscribed runic signs, made by some Germanic speaker by the name of, by a curious coincidence, Iwaldi. Probably the runes were incised between 600 A.D. and 800 A.D. We sniffed around that area and found a site of a small village. So, every now and then, we dig around here during our vacation. We're on sabbatical leave just now.'

Doc made a mental note to check on their stories.

He could understand their fear. But what they had seen in the labyrinthal tu

On the other hand, they may have reasoned, quite correctly, that Iwaldi had enormous influence and could abort any attempt by the police to get into his castle.

Doc asked a few more questions. Cobbs said that the helicopters which had landed the invaders had left by the time they reached the castle's front door. But he was convinced that some of the invaders had gotten out alive. Apparently, the invaders must have split up, and the second party had survived. He thought so because he had seen the glow of cigarettes far below them on the mountainside path. It was true that the smokers could have been extremely early hikers or maybe forest rangers, but he doubted it.