The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

the rise, their heads lifting out of the water as they “spoke.” And Karara hastened to reply.
    “Loketh…Baleku…” Ross began when he caught a mental stroke of anger so deadly that it was a chill lance into his brain. He faced the Foanna, startled and a little frightened.
    “They will not come—now.” A knob-crowned wand stretched out in the air, pointing to the upper reaches of the slope. “Nor can any of their blood—unless we win.”
    “What is wrong?” Ashe asked.
    “You were right, very right, men out of time! These invaders are not to be lightly dismissed. They have turned one of our own defenses against us. Loketh, Baleku, all of their kind, can be made into tools for a master. They belong to the enemy now.”
    “And we have failed so early?” Karara wanted to know.
    Again that piercing thrust of anger so vivid that it was no mere emotion but seemed a tangible force.
    “Failed? No, not yet have we even begun to fight! You were very right; this is such an evil as must be faced and fought, even if we lose all in battle! Now we must do that which none of our own race has done for generations—we must open three locks, throw wide the Great Door, and seek out the Keeper of the Closed Knowledge!”
    Light, a sharp ray sighting from the tip of the wand. And the Foanna following that beam, the three Terrans coming after…into the unknown.
    CHAPTER 16
    The Opening of the Great Door
    It was not the general airlessness of the long-closed passage which wore on Ross’s nerves, made Karara suddenly reach out and clasp fingers about the wrists of the two men she walked between; it was a crushing sensation of age, of a toll of years so long, so heavy, as to make time itself into a turgid flood which tugged at their bodies, mired their feet as they trudged after the Foanna. This sense of age, of a dead and heavy past, was so stifling that all three Terrans breathed in gasps.
    Karara’s breaths became sobs. Yet she matched her pace to Ashe and Ross, kept going. Ross himself had little idea of their surroundings, but one small portion of his brain asked answerless questions. The foremost being: Why did the past crush in on him here? He had traveled time, but never before had he been beaten with the feel of countless dead and dying years.
    “Going back—” That hoarse whisper came from Ashe, and Ross thought he understood.
    “A time gate!” He was eager to accept such an explanation. Time gates he could understand, but that the Foanna used one.…
    “Not our kind,” Ashe replied.
    But his words had pulled Ross out of a spell which had been as quicksand about him. And he began to fight back with a determination not to be sucked into what filled this place. In spite of Ross’s efforts, his eyes could supply him with no definite impression of where they were. The ramp had led them out of the sea, but where they walked now, linked hand to hand, Ross could not say. He could see the glimmer of the Foanna; turning his head he could see his companions as shadows, but all beyond that was utter dark.
    “Ahhhh—” Karara’s sobs gave way to a whisper which was half moan. “This is a way of gods, old gods, gods who never dealt with men! It is not well to walk the road of the gods!”
    Her fear lapped to Ross. He faced that emotion as he had faced so many different kinds of fear all his life. Sure, he felt that pressure on him, not the pressure of past centuries now—but a power beyond his ability to describe.
    “Not our gods!” Ross put his stubborn defiance into words, more as a shield against his own wavering. “No power where there is no belief!” From what half-forgotten bit of reading had he dredged that knowledge? “No being without belief!” he repeated.
    To his vast amazement he heard Ashe laugh, though the sound bordered on hysteria.
    “No belief, no power,” the older man replied. “You’ve speared the right fish, Ross! No gods of ours dwell here, Karara, and whatever god does has no rights over us. Hold to that, girl, hold tight!”
    “Ah, ye forty thousand gods,Ye gods of sea, of sky, of woods,Of mountains, of valleys,Ye assemblies of gods,Ye elder brothers of the gods that are,Ye gods that once were,Ye that whisper. Ye that watch by night,Ye that show your gleaming eyes,Come down, awake, stir,Walk this road, walk this road!”
    She was singing, first softly and then more strongly, the liquid words of her own tongue repeated in English as if what she strove to call she would share