The Hour of the Gate Page 9

  Jon-Tom walked forward and gave the boatman a hand with the winch. "Thanks," Bribbens said when they were finished.

  A strong breeze blew in Jon-Tom's face. It came from the blackness forward and chilled his face even as it dried his long hair. He shivered a little. The wind came from inside the mountain. That hinted at considerable emptiness beyond.

  Here there was no mass of water-soaked debris to prevent their continued traveling. The mouthlike opening could easily swallow the logs and branches bunched against the mountainside above. The cliff did not descend this far.

  When they had the second anchor up and secured and the boat was drifting downstream once more, Bribbens moved to a watertight locker set in the deck. It offered up oil lamps and torches. These were set in hook or hole and lit.

  The wind blew the flames backward but not out. Oil light flickered comfortingly inside conical glass lamps.

  "Why didn't you explain it to us?" Flor brushed at her long black mane while she chatted with the boatman.

  Bribbens gestured at the squat shape of Clothahump, who rested against the railing nearby. "He suggested back at my cove that it'd be a good idea not to say anything to you."

  Jon-Tom and Flor looked questioningly at Clothahump.

  "That is so, youngsters." He pointed toward the flowing silver roof. "From there to here's something of a fall. I wasn't positive of the distance or of what your mental reactions to such a peculiar dive might be. I thought it best not to go into detail. I did not wish to frighten you."

  "We wouldn't have been frightened," said Flor firmly.

  "That may be so," agreed the wizard, "but there was no need to take the chance. As you can see we are all here safe and sound and once more on our way."

  A muttered obscenity fell from the form on the right spreader.

  They were interrupted by a loud multiple splashing to starboard. As they watched, several fish the size of large bass leaped skyward. Their fins and tails were unusually broad and powerful.

  Two of the leapers fell back, but the third intersected the flowing sky, got his upper fins into the water, and wiggled its way out of sight overhead. Several minutes passed, and then it rained minnows. A huge school of tiny fish came shooting out of the upper river to disappear in the lower. The two unsuccessful leapers were waiting for them. They were soon joined by the descending shape of the stronger jumper.

  Jon-Tom had grown dizzy watching the up-and-down pursuit. His brain was more confused than his eyes. The new optical information did not match up with stored information.

  "The origin of the name's obvious," he said to the boatman, "but I still don't understand how it came to be."

  Bribbens proceeded to relate the story of the Sloomaz-ayor-le-WeentIi, of the great witch Wutz and her spilled cauldron of magic and the effect this had had upon the river forevermore.

  When he'd finished the tale Plor shook her head in disbelief. "'Grande, fantastico. A schizoid stream."

  "What makes the world go 'round, after all, Flor?" said Jon-Tom merrily.

  "Gravitation and other natural laws."

  "I thought it was love."

  "As a matter of fact," said Clothahump, inserting himself into the conversation, "the gravitational properties of love are well known. I suppose you believe its attractive properties wholly psychological? Well let me tell you, my boy, that there are certain formulae which…" and he rambled off into a learned discussion, half balderdash and half science: which is to say, fine magic. Jon-Tom and Flor tried to follow, largely in vain.

  Talea leaned on the bow railing, her gaze fixed on the blackness ahead and around them. The cool wind continued, ruffling her hair and making her wonder what lay ahead, concealed by the screen of night.

  For days they drifted downstream in darkness; water above, water below, floating through an aqueous tube toward an uncertain destination. Jon-Tom was reminded of a corpuscle in the bloodstream. After all the talk of Zaryt's "Teeth" and of traveling into the "belly" bf the mountain, he found the analogy disquieting.

  From time to time they would anchor in midstream and supplement their supplies from the river's ample piscean population. Occasionally Bribbens and Mudge would make exploratory forays into the upper river. They would climb the mast, Mudge helping the less adapted boatman. A small float attached to an arrow was shot into the underside of the current overhead. The float was inflated until it held securely. Then the cord trailing from it would be tied to the mast. Bribbens and the otter would then shinny up it, to disappear into the liquid ceiling.

  With them went small sealed oil lamps fitted with handles. These provided light in the darkness, a necessity since even such agile swimmers as the two explorers could become lost in the deep waters.

  On the twelfth day, when the monotony of the trip had become dangerously settled, Bribbens slid down the line in a state of uncharacteristic excitement.

  "I think we're through," he announced cheerily.

  "Through? Through where? Surely not the mountains." Clothahump frowned. "It could not be. The range is too massive to be so narrow. And the legends…"

  "No, no, sir. Not through the mountains. But the airspace above the upper river has suddenly expanded from but a few inches to one many feet high. There is a substantial cave, far more interesting to look at than this homogeneous tunnel. We can travel above now, and there's some light as well."

  "What kind of light?" Flor wanted to know.

  "You'll see."

  Preparations were made. Buoyant material did not have to be dragged or shoved downward this time. Instead, they simply had to raise it to the upper stream and insert it, whereupon it would instantly bob to the second surface. Mudge was waiting to slip a line on such packages and drag them to shore.

  When all their stores had been transferred, the nonaquatics climbed the mast rope and pushed themselves into the upper river. It was far easier to ascend than that first uncertain dive had been.

  Jon-Tom broke the surface with wind to spare. He remained there a while, treading water as he inspected the cavern into which the river emerged.

  The boatman had understated its size in his usual phlegmatic fashion. The cave was enormous. Off to his left Jon-Tom could see the abrupt cessation of the solid stone wall that had formed a tight lid on the upper stream for so many days. Little debris drifted this far on the river, and what few pieces and bits of wood tumbled by were worn almost smooth from the continual buffeting against that unyielding overhang.

  More amazing were the cavern walls. They appeared to be coated with millions of tiny lights. He swam lazily toward the nearby beach, crawled out and selected a towel with which to dry himself, and moved to inspect the nearest glowing rocks.

  The lights were predominantly gold in hue, though a few odd bursts and patches of red, blue, green, and yellow were visible. The bioluminescents were lichens and fungi of many species, ranging from mere colored smears against the rock to elaborate mushrooms and step fungi. Individually their lumen output was insignificant, but in the millions they illuminated the cavern as thoroughly as an evening sun.

  He was kneeling to examine a cluster of bright blue toadstools when a vast rush and burble sounded behind him. He turned, instinctively expecting to see some unmentionable river monster rising from the depths. It was only their boat.

  The first days on board he'd wondered at the purpose of great collapsed intestines, carefully scraped and dried, that lined the little craft's hold. Now he knew. Having been inflated in turn they'd given the boat sufficient lifting power to rise like a balloon from the lower river right up to the surface of its twin.

  Now it bobbed uncertainly as Bribbens rushed to open the valves sealing each inflated stomach before they could lift the ship from its second surface to the ceiling of the cavern. Water ran off the decks and out the seacocks. Mudge pumped furiously to purge the remaining water from the hold.

  Dry and dressed, the passengers were soon traveling once more eastward. The scenery had improved greatly. Jon-Tom hoped
the cavern would not shrink around them and force them again down to the dull surface of the understream.

  He needn't have worried. Instead of compacting, the cavern grew larger. It seemed endless, stretching vast and fluorescent ahead of them.

  Phosphorescent growths made the river an artist's palette, oils of many colors all run together and anarchically brilliant. Gigantic stalactites drooped like teeth from the distant ceiling. Some were far larger than the boat. They drifted past huge panels of flowstone, frozen rivers of stained calcite. Helictites curled and twisted from the walls, twitching at gravity like so many crystalline whiskers. Fungi flashed from diem all.

  On both sides they could see passages branching from the main cavern. Jon-Tom had a powerful urge to grab a lamp and do some casual spelunking. But Clothahump reminded hiru there would be ample exploring to do without deviating frori their course. So long as the river continued to run eastward they would keep to the boat.

  The size and magnificence of the cavern kept him fror.i thinking about the composition of the Sloomaz-ayor-le-Weenti:

  It was disconcerting to sail along a river that flowed not o.rock or sand but on air.

  "How do you know it even has a solid bottom?" Plor onc,asked their boatman. "Maybe it's a triple-or quadruple-river?"

  Bribbens rested in his seat at the stem, one arm draped protectively across the steering oar.

  "Because I've been in and out of it many times, lady. Anyway, no matter where you are on the river the anchors always bite into the second bottom."

  Here and there the warm glow of the bioluminescents would fade and then vanish. At such times they had to rely on me lamps for light until they reached another fluorescent section.

  It didn't bother Pog. He'd finally recovered from his lengthy grumpiness. To him the darkness was natural, and he enjoyed the stretches of no-light. They could hear him swooping and darting beyond the range of the boat's lamps, playing dodgem with the cave formations. Sometimes he'd leave the boat for long stretches of time, much to Clothahump's displeasure and concern, only to have his internal sonar unerringly bring him back to the ship many hours later.

  "Beautiful," Jon-Tom was murmuring as he watched the glowing shapes drift past. "It's absolutely beautiful."

  Talea stood next to him and eyed the dark openings that branched off from the main cavern. Sometimes these gaping holes would come right down to the river's edge.

  "Funny idea of beauty you have, Jon-Tom. I don't like it at all."

  "Humans got no appreciation of caves," said Pog with a snort, weaving in the air above them. "Dis all wasted on ya except da spellsinger dere, an' dat's da truth!"

  "Can I help it if I prefer light to dark, freedom to confinement?" she countered.

  "Amen," said Flor heartily.

  For both women the initial loveliness of the formations had been surrendered to the superstitious dread most people hold of deep, enclosed places. Jon-Tom was the only one with a real interest in caves, and so he was somewhat immune to such fears. To him the immense shapes, laid down patiently over the ages by dripping water and dissolved limestone, were as exquisite as anything the world of daylight had to offer.

  Flor and Talea were not alone in their nervousness, however.

  "I think I liked it better inside the rivers," Mudge said one morning. "Leastwise there a chaploiew where 'e was, wot?"

  He indicated the darkness of a large, unilluminated sic passage with a sweep of one furry arm. "Don't care much tc this place atall. I ain't ready t' be buried just yet."

  "Superstition," Clothahump muttered. "The bane ( civilization."

  As for their boatman, he remained as calm as if he'd bee sailing familiar waters.

  "Does this place have a name?" Jon-Tom asked him watching a clump of bright azure mushrooms on the shore,

  "Only in legend." Bribbens looked away for a moment. An impossibly long tongue flicked out and snared something which Jon-Tom saw only as a ghost of glittering, transparent wings and body.

  The frog smacked his lips appraisingly. "No color, but the flavor isn't bad." He nodded at the cavern. "In stories and legends of the riverfolk this is known as the Earth's Throat.''

  "And where does it go?" Bor asked him.

  Bribbens shrugged. "Who knows? Your hard-shelled men tor believes it to travel much of the way through the mow tains. Perhaps he's right. I prefer to think we'll come ou there instead of, say, the earth's belly."

  "That doesn't sound very nice." Nearby Talea fingered the haft of her knife as though she could intimidate the surrounding darkness with it.

  Or whatever else might be out there…

  VII

  They were beginning to think they might complete the passage through the Teeth (or at least to the end of the river) without mishap. Long days of idle drifting, the boat carried smoothly by the current, had lulled the fears they'd acquired on the Swordsward.

  Pog, his hearing more acute than anyone else's, was first to note the noise.

  "Off key," he explained in response to their queries, "but it's definitely somebody's idea of song. More than one of whatever it is, too."

  "I'm sure of it." Caz's long ears were cocked alertly toward the northern shore. They twitched in counterpoint to his busy nose.

  It was several minutes more before the humans could hear the subject of their companion's intense listening. It was a rhythmic rising and falling, light and ethereal as an all-female choir might produce. Definitely music, but nothing recognizable as words.

  It was occasionally interrupted by a few moments of vivace modulation that sounded like laughter. Jon-Tom could appreciate the peculiar melodies, but he didn't care for the laughterchords one bit.

  Bribbens interrupted their listening, his tone quiet as always but unusually urgent. "Tiller's not answering properly."

  Indeed, the boat was drifting steadily toward the north shore. There was a gravel beach and rocks: not much of a landing place. Muscles strained beneath the boatman's slick skin as he fought the steering, but the boat continued to incline landward.

  Soon they were bumping against the first rocks. These obstacles poked damp dark heads out of the water around the boat.

  Flor stumbled away from the railing on the opposite side and screamed. Jon-Tom rushed to join her. He stared over the side and recoiled instinctively.

  Dozens of shapes filled the water. They had their hands on the side of the boat and were methodically pushing at it evec though it was already half grounded on the rocky bottom.

  "Steady now," said Talea wamingly. She stood at the bow, her knife and sword naked in the glow-light, and pointed tc me land.

  A great number of creatures were marching toward the boat. They were identical to the persistent pushers in the water. All were approximately five feet tall and thin to the point of emaciation. They were faintly human, memories of almost-people parading in unison.

  Two legs and two arms. They were nude but smoothbodied and devoid of external sex organs. For that matter they displayed nothing in the way of differentiating characteristics They might have been stamped from a single mold.

  Their white flesh was truly white, blank-white, like milk and bordering on translucence. Two tiny coal-pit eyes sat in the puttylike heads where real eyes ought to have been. There were no pupils, no ears or nostrils, and only a flat slit of a mouth cutting the flesh below the eye-dots. Hands had short fingers, which along with the legs looked jointless as rubber.

  In time to the music they marched toward the ship, waving their arms slowly and hypnotically while singing their moaning, methodical song.

  Jon-Tom looked to Clothahump. The wizard looked baffled. "I don't know, my boy. None of the legends says anything about a tribe of albino chanters living in the Throat." He called to the marchers.

  "What are you called? What is it you want of us?"

  "What can we do for you?" Flor asked, adding something unintelligible in Spanish.

  The singers did not respond. They descended the slight slope of the beach
with fluid grace. The ones in the lead began reaching, clutching over the railing.

  Two of them grabbed Talea's right arm. "Ease back there," she ordered them, pulling away. They did not let go and continued to tug at her insistently.

  Several other pale singers were already on the deck and were pulling with similar patient determination at Jon-Tom and Mudge.

  " 'Ere now, you cold buggerers, take your bloody 'ands off me!" The otter twisted free.

  So didJTalea and Jon-Tom. Yet the pale visitors wordlessly kept advancing, groping for the strangers.

  Another sound quietly filled the cavern. It seeped across the river and dominated the rise and fall of the expressionless choir. A deep, low moaning, it was in considerable contrast to the melody of the white singers. It was not at all nice. In fact, it seemed to Jon-Tom that it embodied every overtone of menace and malignance one could put into a single moan. It issued from somewhere back in the black depths, beyond where the singers had come from.

  "That's about enough," said Bribbens firmly. He hefted his backup steering sweep and began swinging it at the singers stumbling about on deck. Two of them went down with unexpected lack of resistance. Their heads bounced like a pair of rubber balls across the deck. The black eyespots never twitched and they uttered not a word of pain. Their singing, however, ceased. One of the skulls bounced over the railing and landed in the water with a slight splash, to sink quickly out of sight.

  A shocked Bribbens paused to stare at the decapitated corpses. There was no blood.

  "Damn. They aren't alive."

  "They are," Clothahump insisted, struggling awkwardly in the grasp of three singers who were trying to wrestle his heavy body off the ship, "but it is not our kind of alive."

  "I'll make them our kind of dead." Talea's sword was moving like a scythe. Three singers fell neatly into six halves. They lay on the deck like so many lumps of white clay, motionless and cold.

  Jon-Tom hurried to assist Clothahump. "Sir, what do you think we… ?"