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She could see that the green light came from some thick, poisonous fungus that grew in the slow currentsof air. The room ahead was high and arched, and she could see carvings covered with fungus, and at thefar end, blurred and overgrown shapes which had once been a dais and something like chairs.

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Melitta took a firm hold of her nerves.
 
Why should it be evil just because it’s green andslimy-looking
 
, she demanded of herself.
 
So is a frog, and frogs are harmless. So was the moss on arock. Why should plants growing in their own way give me this overwhelming feeling ofsomething wicked and sinister
 
? Nevertheless, she could not make her feet move to take the first stepinto that arched room. The green light made her eyes ache, and there was a faint smell, as if of carrion.

Slowly, as her eyes grew accustomed to the green, she saw the things that crawled among the fungus.

They were white and sluggish. Their eyes, great and curiously iridescent, moved slowly in her direction,and the girl felt her stomach heave at that blind regard. She stood there paralyzed, thinking frantically,
 
This must be new, they can’t have been here all along, this passage was in good shape forty yearsago; I remember my father speaking of it, though he hadn’t been down here since years before Iwas born
 
.

She stood back, studying the green stalactites of fungus and the crawling things. They looked dreadful,but were they dangerous as well? Even though they made her skin crawl, they might be as harmless asmost spiders. Perhaps, if she could simply summon up the nerve to run through them, that was all thatwas needed.

A small restless rustle behind her made her look down. Near her skirts, sitting up on his hind legs andsurveying her with curiosity, a small red-furred, rodentlike animal hung back from entering the cave. Hegave a small, nervous chitter which seemed to Melitta to mirror her own apprehension. He was adirty-looking little creature, but by contrast with the things in the green cave he looked normal andfriendly. Melitta almost smiled at him.

He squeaked again and, with a sudden burst of speed, set off running through the fungus.

The green branches whipped down on the little creature. It screamed thinly and was still, smothered inthe green, which seemed to pulse with ghastly light. Through the phosphorescence the small golden-eyedhorrors moved, swarmed, and moved away. Not even the bones were left; there was only an infinitesimalscrap of pinkish fur.

Melitta crammed her fist in her mouth to keep from screaming. She took a convulsive step backward,watching the slow subsiding of the fungus. It took some minutes to subside.

After a long time her heartbeat slowed to normal and she found herself frantically searching forsolutions.
 
I wish I could get through here somehow and lure Brynat’s men down after me
 
, shethought grimly, but that line seemed to go nowhere.

Fire. All living things fear fire, except man. If I could carry fire…

She had no light; but she did have steel and tinder in her pocket; on Darkover to be outdoors withoutthe means of making fire in the snow season, was to die. Before she was eight years old she had knownall the tricks of firemaking anywhere and everywhere.

Trying not to breathe hard, she pulled out her firemaking materials. She had nothing she could use for atorch, but she tore off her scarf, wound it round a small slab of rock, and set it alight. Then, carrying itcarefully in front of her, she stepped into the fungus cave.

The green branches whipped back as the firelight and heat struck them. The sluggish crawling at her feet

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made her gasp with horror, but they made no effort to attack, and she began to breathe again as she began to walk, steadily, across the cave. She must go quickly but not too fast to see where she was going. The scarf would not burn more than a minute at most. Fortunately the patch of green seemed to be less than a hundred yards; beyond the further arch was darkness again.

One of the crawling things struck her foot. It felt squishy, like a frog, and she gasped, staggered a littlefor balance, and dropped the blazing scarf. She swooped to retrieve it…

A high shrill yeeping came from the crawling thing.

The green fungus near her feet moved, and Melitta held her breath and waited for it to strike.

The blazing scarf touched the green branch and it caught fire. A blaze of ghastly green-red light licked upto the ceiling; Melitta felt the blast of heat as the fire blazed up, catching branch after branch. In half aminute the walls of the cave were ablaze; the small crawling things screamed, writhed and died at her feetas the green branches, agitating violently, struggled to get out of range, were caught by the blaze andburned.

It seemed an eternity that she stood there in terror, trying to draw her clothing back from the flames, herears hurting with the screams and her eyes burning from the greenish tint of the fire. Rationally she knewthat it must have been only a few minutes before the flames, finding nothing more to feed on, sank anddied, leaving her alone in unrelieved, blessed darkness.

She began to move slowly across the cave, in the remembered direction of the other door, holding herbreath and trying not to breathe the scorched, poisonous dust of the burnt fungus. Under her feet itcrumpled unpleasantly and she hated setting her feet on the ground, but there was no help for it. She keptmoving, numbly, in the direction of that remembered patch of darkness beyond the fungus cave.

She knew when she had passed through it, for almost at once the air was cleaner, and under her feetthere was nothing but hard rock. There was also faint light from somewhere—a glimmer of moonlight,perhaps, from a hidden airshaft. The air felt cool and sweet; the builders of these tunnels had gone tosome pains to make them pleasant to walk in. Far off she heard a trickle of water, and, her throat still fullof the dust of the burnt fungus, it was like a promise.

She went down, moving toward the sound of distant water. Twice she shrank, seeing on the walls atrace, hardly more than a smear, of the greenish stuff, and made a mental note,
If I ever get back I’llcome down and burn it out. If not, I hope it grows fast
 
—
 
and Brynat comes down here some day
!

After what seemed like hours of slow descent she found the water—a trickling stream coming out of therock and dripping slowly down along the stairs beside her path. She cupped her hands and drank. Thewater was good, and she drank well, cleansed her grimy face, and ate a few bites of food. She could tell,by the feel of the air on her face, that the night was far advanced. She must be safely hidden by morning.

Must I? I could lie hidden in the tunnel for a day or two, till pursuit quiets.

Then she knew she could not. She simply could not trust Allira that much. Her sister would notintentionally betray her; but if Brynat suspected Allira knew, he would try anything to extract theinformation from her. She had no faith in Allira’s ability to resist questioning for any length of time.

As she went downward, she realized that the slope of the tunnel was lessening, until she walked on agrade that was just downhill. She must be coming near the end of the long stair. She was a fair judge of

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distances, and she knew that she had walked a considerable distance in the night; the tunnel must have led far beneath the castle and down into the caves and cliffs beneath. Then she came upon a great pair of bronze doors, thrust them outward, and stood in the open air, free.

It was still dark, although the smell of the air told her that dawn was less than two hours away. Themoons had set, and the rain had stopped, though mist still lay along the ground. She looked back at theclosed doors behind her.

She knew where she was now. She had seen these doors from the outside when as a child she played inthe forge village. She stood now in an open square of stone, surrounded on every side by the doors cut inthe cliffs that rose around her. The sky was only a narrow cut above. She looked at the dark housedoors, some of them still agape, and thought with all the longing in her weary body of how good it wouldbe to crawl into one of the abandoned houses to lie down and sleep for hours.

She forced herself upright again and went down the path that led between the cliffs. Like the tunnel, theempty forge village would be the first place searched if Brynat managed to force the secret of the passagefrom Allira. She passed the open-air hearths where countless years ago, smiths had worked, making theirbeautiful and curious ironwork, copper jewelry and the iron gates of their own castle now crumpled andthrown down in the siege. She cast a look upward. From here she could see a portion of the outworks. Brynat had spared no time in repairing the fortifications of Storn. Evidently he thought he might have tohold them against invaders.

He will. I swear it by Avarra and Zandru, I swear it by Sharra, Goddess of Forges and Fires! Heshall struggle tenfold…

There was no time for that. If she wanted to make Brynat suffer, there was only one way to achieve it,she must get away herself. Her own safety must be the first thought. She passed the old circle offireplaces, cold and rusted. Even the carven image of Sharra above the central forge was dulled and thegold of her chains, set against the duller metal of the statue, covered with spiderwebs and bird-droppings. She flinched at the sacrilege. She was no worshipper of the Flamehair, but like every child of themountains, she had a deep respect and awe for the secret arts of the smith.

If I come back
—
 
when I come back Sharra’s image shall be purified and served again
…

There was no time for that now, either.

The horizon was reddening perceptibly when footsore Melitta, her steps dragging, clung to the doorwayof a small house in a village far below the castle, and beat weakly on it. She felt at her last strength. If noone heard her or helped her, she would fall down here and lie there until Brynat’s men found her, or shedied.

But it was not more than a few moments until the door opened a cautious crack, and then motherly armsgrasped her and drew her inside and to a fire.

“Quick—bar the door, draw the curtain—
 
damisela
 
, where did you come from? We thought you dead in the siege, or worse! How did you get free? Evanda guard us! Your poor hands, your face— Reuel, you oaf, bring some wine, quickly, for our little lady.”

A few minutes later, drinking hot soup, her boots drawn off and her feet to the fire, wrapped in blankets,

Melitta was telling a little of her escape to a wide-eyed audience.

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“Lady, you must hide here until the search is quiet—” but their faces were apprehensive, and Melitta

said a swift “No. Brynat would surely kill you all,” and saw shamed relief in their eyes. “I can lie hidden in the caves up the mountain until darkness tonight; then I can get away to Nevarsin or beyond. But you can find me food to carry, and perhaps a horse that can face the passes.”

It was quickly arranged and by the time the day broke, Melitta rested, wrapped in furs and rugs in thelabyrinthine caves which had for centuries been a last hiding place of the Storns. For one day she wassafe there, since Brynat would surely search nearer places first; and by tonight she would be gone. It wasa long road to Carthon.

Exhausted, the girl slept, but the name tolled in her dreams—
 
Carthon
.

VII

«^»

BARRON had believed, on the journey from the Terran Zone to Armida, that he had seen mountains. True, his Darkovan escort had repeatedly called them foothills, but he had put that down to exaggeration,to the desire to see the stranger’s surprise. Now, half a day’s ride from Armida, he began to see that theyhad not exaggerated. As they came out of a miles-long, sloping pathway along a forested hill, he saw,lying before him, the real ranges. Cool purple, deep violet, pale grayed blue, they lay there fold on foldand height behind height, each successive fold rising higher and farther away, until they vanished in cloudydistances that might have been thunderheads—or further ranges.

“Good God,” he exploded, “we’re not going over the top of
those
 
, are we?”

“Not quite,” Colryn, riding at his side, reassured him. “Only to the peak of the second range, there.” He pointed. “The fire tower is on the crest of that range.” He told Barron its name in Darkovan. “But if you look far enough, you can see all the way back into the mountains, as far as the range they call the Wall Around the World. Nobody lives beyond there, except the trailmen.”