The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

quarters stood out in sharp relief under his scales, his fangs were bare as his lips snapped back with effort.
    Something gave, a thin black line appeared to mark the edges of a door. Then time, or Lur’s strength, broke the ancient locking mechanism. The door gave so suddenly that they were both sent hurtling backward and Lur’s breath burst from him in a huge bubble.
    The sealed compartment was hardly more than a cupboard but it was full. Spread-eagled against the wall was a four-limbed creature whose form was so smothered in a bulky suit that Varta could only guess that it was akin in shape to her own. Hoops of metal locked it firmly to the wall, but the head had fallen forward so that the face plate in the helmet was hidden.
    Slowly the girl breasted the water which filled the cabin and reached her hands toward the bowed helmet of the prisoner. Gingerly, her blunted talons scraping across metal, she pulled it up to her eye-level.
    The eyes of that which stood within the suit were closed, as if in sleep, but there was a warm, healthy tint to the bronze skin, so different in shade to her own pallid coloring. For the rest, the prisoner had the two eyes, the centered nose, the properly shaped mouth which were common to the men of Erb. Hair grew on his head, black and thick and there was a faint shadow of beard on his jaw line.
    “This is a man—” her thought reached Lur.
    “Why not? Did you expect a serpent? It is a pity he is dead—”
    Varta felt a rich warm tide rising in her throat to answer that teasing half question. There were times when Lur’s thought reading was annoying, He had risen to his hind legs so that he too could look into the shell which held their find.
    “Yes, a pity,” he repeated. “But—”
    A vision of the turbi flowers swept through her mind. Had Lur suggested it, or had that wild thought been hers alone? Only this ship was so old—so very old!
    Lur’s red tongue flicked. “It can do no harm to try—” he suggested slyly and set his claws into the hoop holding the captive’s right wrist, testing its strength.
    “But the metal on the shore, it crumpled into powder at my touch—” she protested. “What if we carry him out only to have—to have—” Her mind shuddered away from the picture which followed.
    “Did the turbi blossom fade when pulled out?” countered Lur. “There is a secret to these fastenings—” He pulled and pried impatiently.
    Varta tried to help but even their united strength was useless against the force which held the loops in place. Breathless the girl slumped back against the wall of the cabin while Lur settled down on his haunches. One of the odd patches of color drifted by, its vivid scarlet like a jewel spiraling lazily upward. Varta’s eyes followed its drift and so were guided to what she had forgotten, the worlds of Asti.
    “Asti!”
    Lur was looking up too.
    “The power of Asti!”
    Varta’s hand went up, rested for a long moment under the sun and then drew it down, carefully, slowly, as she had in Memphir’s temple. Then she stepped towards the captive. Within her hood a beaded line of moisture outlined her lips, a pulse thundered on her temple. This was a fearsome thing to try.
    She held the sun on a line with one of the wrist bonds, She must avoid the flesh it imprisoned, for Asti’s power could kill.
    From the sun there shot an orange-red beam to strike full upon the metal. A thin line of red crept across the smooth hoop, crept and widened. Varta raised her hand, sending the sun spinning up and Lur’s claws pulled on the metal. It broke like rotten wood in his grasp.
    The girl gave a little gasp of half-terrified delight. Then the old legends were true! As Asti’s priestess she controlled powers too great to guess. Swiftly she loosed the other hoops and restored the sun and worlds to their place over her head as the captive slumped across the threshold of his cell.
    Tugging and straining they brought him out of the broken ship into the sunlight of Erb. Varta threw back her hood and breathed deeply of the air which was not manufactured by the wizardry of the lizard skin and Lur sat panting, his nostril flaps open. It was he who spied the spring on the mountain side above, a spring of water uncontaminated by the strange life of the lake. They both dragged themselves there to drink deeply.
    Varta returned to the lake shore reluctantly. Within her heart she believed that the man they had brought from the ship was truly dead.