Dare to Go A-Hunting

"Go

Again that cackle of laughter while mind speech accompanied it. "Not winging will you be this time, wingling! Nor she neither, 'less she puts those flappers of hers down."

The girl was pulling once more at the edge of the transparent covering which held her wings pressed as tightly together as hands palm against palm.

There was little of the night left, Farree noted. Instead a distant greying of black sky suggested that dawn was close upon them. They must waste no time.

Though his hands were stiff and painful after his ordeal with the chain, Farree tried to help her tear off that covering. Then he caught up Togger. There might not be any more venom—nor could the smux have used it here—but his foreclaws still had their sawlike i

"Make it quick, winglings!" The underground dweller had popped down into the hole but his mind speech still reached them. "We ain't go

Farree dropped Togger back with Yazz and steadied the girl beside him. He still dared not try mind send—with her; Yazz and Togger "talked" in another level of communication, at the very edge of what he could pick up. Maelen was better at communication with all those she called "those little people in fur," but his long co

He touched the girl's nearest wing even though the pain in his now very stiff fingers made that a difficult gesture, pushing gently at the edge to attempt the suggestion that she fold them back. Perhaps she picked up the earth dweller's order, she was flexing her wings, stiff from their long imprisonment, though she jerked and shook as if every move caused her pain. But at length she got them as furled as Farree had brought down his and, as she was ready to enter the hole, he held her by the wrists to lower her. Yazz and Togger had already gone in.

There was something of a drop; Farree had to lie belly down until he felt her come to a stop and her fingers moved to free themselves. Then he swung over hurriedly, having to let himself fall until he plopped down on earth and smelled the sour and musty odor which seemed to hang in these underground ways. There was a dull light some distance away towards his left and Togger's send reached him again:

"Come—"

The passage was none too large and it must have been recently dug, for his wings, as tightly folded as they were, brushed clods of earth from both overhead and from the walls, until he feared that the whole way might collapse on him. The light was not stationary but ran ahead as he followed and he guessed it to be some kind of a mobile torch in the hands of one of their party.

Then he passed by a hollow in the side of the tu

There was a rustling behind and he called on his sense as strongly as he could. Yes, it was the burrow lurkers, but they were not trailing him as he had feared, rather scuttling back toward the hole which led to the camp. Surely they would be a surprise to any who would come after them, but also they might now be engaged in filling the entrance to this escape route.

Farree quickened his pace as best he could, his arm up and ahead of him to feel out anything which might catch on his wings. But he did not touch any of the tubers which had hung from the roof in that other way.

Twice the passage took an abrupt turn, and on the second one he caught up with the rest of the party, hardly more than shadows in the very weak light which came from a crooked stick carried by the one who had overseen all this rescue. His head, in that dim light, looked nearly too large for his body, and his forearms and legs, which were incompletely covered by dull grey-brown, skintight clothing, were nearer stick thin. The rest of his body was haired with coarse black and thick clumps of bristles. His nose was nearly a snout, for his mouth was very large and he had no visible chin. In some ways he looked rather like the animal-masked one Farree had seen in his dream. His ears were pointed and placed well up a naked skull, the ends of them curved over a little. Farree, who had seen many strange wayfarers during his days in the Limits and a-travel thereafter, thought that his ugliness well passed the common.

Having once made the escapees free of this secret way he paid no more attention to them, but stamped ahead flatfootedly, leaving them to follow or not as they would.

The girl was behind Yazz, and she kept hold on Yazz's waving tail as if she needed touch with some creature less disagreeable than their guide. There was no room here to push up closer, so Farree continued to bring up the rear. They passed walls now where the soil rained down and there were streaks of moisture showing. The earth dweller hastened by those spots and they had to hurry, Farree very uneasy at those signs of possible disintegration.

One more turn and their path was much brighter. Unconsciously they all speeded up once more toward that and so they came out into a place so different from the cramped ways down which they had come that Farree stopped short, once he was through a break in the wall, just to stare about him.

Chapter Sixteen

The light was as brilliant as the full day's shine but not steady. As the lasers had flashed in the air earlier, here also shot shafts of rainbow glitter. He might have been back in that crystal castle of his first dreaming.

Only here the crystals were untamed. They had not been quarried or shaped by any will save their own. Great, sharp-pointed spikes stood taller than Farree, sprouting from the rock as if they had grown like trees. Some were as clear as mountain water save that they cut the light into rainbows. Others were footed in color—amethyst, clear yellow, smoke-silver. In the midst of this vast cave or hall there were many of grey but these were murky, not silver, resembling the ball, the Globe of Ummar, which had splintered.

These alone showed that they had been worked upon for a purpose. They were packed together, flat sides uppermost, a wall of high points at the back of a level stretch on which someone was seated.

The earth dweller who had led them here forged ahead, but those he had guided remained just within the entrance of this place of colored light, dazzled by its brilliance. Their guide shambled on, to stand at the foot of the piled crystals which had been fitted to serve as a seat—or a throne—

He bowed low and then looked up into a face—

Not a face, Farree thought, the chill once more upon him, but rather a countenance close to a skull, even if there was yellowish skin laid across the thrusting bone. The eye holes were not empty; there were tightly drawn lids across their sharp edges. And the skin on the two hands resting on flanking crystals was deeply wrinkled, showing long nails, curved beyond the ends of the fingers as might claws, all emblazoned by a bright scarlet which the play of the crystal light could not disguise.