"Here," came the voice again.

Squinting into the left-hand corridor, Conan was startled to see a man's hand emerge from the near side of the waterfall. The hand beckoned. "Hurry!" the voice said.

Conan and Elashi glanced at each other. They had little to lose. Even so, the big Cimmerian approached the roaring water cautiously, finding that the deep pool in the center of the corridor was bounded by a shallow ledge. Once he attained the spot where he had seen the hand, Conan leaped through, his blade held ready to strike.

Behind the waterfall, which was wide but shallower than it had appeared, a short, thick-set man stood, illuminated by the green glow of the ubiquitous wall fungus. Old he was, perhaps fifty, with a gray beard and long, matted gray hair under a limp hat. His clothes were soggy cloth breeches and shirt, and crude sandals, and he held a long dagger at the ready. Behind the man lay a high corridor, winding away for a long distance.

Elashi splashed through behind Conan, water spray ing from her form. As soon as she looked up, the older man gestured with his head down the corridor. Conan needed no prompting to understand. They followed the stranger away from the waterfall. Around two turns of the corridor, the man stopped. "Them Blind Whites can't hear us through the noise of the waterfall, and they can't smell nothin' past the water, neither. They won't come this way."

"We thank you for your aid," Conan said.

"Tull, I'm called," the old man said.

"Well met, and timely, Tull. I'm Conan, of Cimmeria, and this is Elashi, of Khauran." The Cimmerian paused, then asked, "What is this place, friend?"

"That'll take some time for the tellin'."

Conan looked around. "It seems that we have little else."

"I have a hiding place not far from here," Tull said. "Suppose we go there and I'll explain what I know."

Conan and Elashi nodded. Tull moved off, and they followed.

Wikkell ducked to avoid a crusty stalagt.i.te dangling from the low ceiling. His Blind White guide stopped, c.o.c.ked his head to one side, then turned to the cyclops. The guide chattered. His fellows were returning, it seemed. They approached from down the corridor and would be upon them momentarily.

Wikkell smiled at that, revealing thick, wide-set teeth. This venture was proving to be easier than he had antic.i.p.ated. In a moment the Blind Whites would appear-there they were now-and they would be bearing with them- No one!

Where were the men?

The leader of the Whites shuffled his feet on the floor. There had been two of them, he said, one a female, judging from her odor. But they had escaped.

"Escaped!" Wikkell roared the word as if it were a virulent curse.

That was so. Vanished into solid rock.

"Men do not vanish into solid rock," the cyclops said.

Either that or they walked on water, the leader of the group said. Perhaps they were wizards.

"Show me. I will see this with my own eye."

A waste of time, the leader said.

"It is my time to waste." And, he thought to himself, if the quarry has truly escaped, there will be considerably less time remaining to me than heretofore. The cyclops followed the Blind Whites down the corridor.

The bat alighted upon a rocky fold just ahead of Deek and used its teeth to scratch at something on its left wing strut.

"W-w-what i-is t-t-the n-n-news-s-s?

Bad, the bat told the worm. The two men-one a female, so he had learned by listening to that barbaric speech of the Whites-had escaped, vanished, disappeared.

Deek considered that. It was bad that he did not have the man and woman in his possession; on the other coil, it was good that One Eye did not have them either. Perhaps this affair might be salvaged yet.

"I-i-is t-t-there a-a-another w-way t-to w-w-where t-the m-m-men v-v-vanished-d-d?" This was a long speech for Deek to scratch out on the rock.

The bat indicated that this was so.

"S-sh-show m-m-ine."

In his chamber, Katamay Rey grew impatient, waiting for news of the man's capture. He rummaged through his collection of crystals, searching for the small blue stone that he used for communication. He would call his cyclops and ask about the delay. Where was that cursed stone?

In her chamber, Chuntha fumed, awaiting the report from her minion Deek. What could be keeping him?

She would give him another hour; then she would try a dreamcast to contact the great white worm. The antic.i.p.ation of receiving the captive was high in her, and she was not one to suffer delay easily.

Tull's hiding place proved to be a fungoid grotto reached by climbing up a rough wall in a large cave.

The narrow entrance to the grotto was covered by a flap of hide that had been covered with crushed stone so that it blended into the wall, rendering it almost invisible from the floor of the cave below.

Inside, the walls were caked thick with the glowing fungus; here the light was concentrated and almost bright. The room contained a small table constructed of various lengths of bone bound with gut strings, upon it rested a cup made from an animal's skull. There was also a pile of furs in one corner, likely used for sleeping. Conan noted that these furs seemed very similar in shape and color to the Blind Whites, as Tull had called them. Also, there were smaller skins, birdlike but rat-colored, in the collection.

"This place is called the Grotterium Negrotus," Tull said. "The Black Caves. I have been here for nearly five years, best as I can figure."

"How did you come to be so?" Elashi asked. "I fell through a hole In the ground above."

"Sounds familiar," she said.

"Who were those creatures that attacked us?" Conan asked.

"Them's the Blind Whites. Mostly they side with Rey."

"Rey?"

"Aye. There's two rulers down here. One's Katamay Rey, he's a wizard what uses crystals and such for his magic. The other's Chuntha the witch. Her magic, well, it's more involved with, uh-" he glanced at Elashi-"uh, it's more of apersonal nature."

"Personal nature?" Elashi asked.

Tull made a sign with his hands, the meaning of which was unmistakable. Conan grinned, and Elashi glared at him.

"Anyways, the two of 'em have been at each other for as long as I been here. According to what I heard, they been fightin' each other for control of the caves for hundreds of years. Got all the natives workin' for 'em. Blind Whites, which you met, Webspinner Plants, Bloodbats, Worms Gigantus, and the hunchbacked cyclopes. They switch sides sometimes."

"Sounds like a wonderful place," Elashi said, her voice full of irony. "Why do you stay here?"

"Can't get out. The worms 'n' the cyclopes, they close up the trap holes after a little while. In five years I ain't found a way out."

Conan stared at Tull. To be trapped here for the rest of one's life? That was an unpleasant thought.

"I get by," Tull continued. "n.o.body's found this place, and the taste of the Whites and bats ain't so bad once you get used to it."

"Are there any other people here?"

Tull shook his head. "Now and again somebody drops in through one of the traps. If Rey gets 'em, he kills 'em quick and that's it for 'em. If Chuntha gets 'em, the goin' is more pleasant, judging from what I heard and seen once, but almost as fast. Druther be caught by her 'n' him, but I avoid 'em both."

Conan digested this morsel of information. "I have no intention of spending my days in this pit," he said.

"We shall have to find a way out."

"I been lookin' for five years and ain't found it yet.

"Nonetheless, there must be a way."

"You'll want to be careful," Tull said. "If the Whites know, then Rey knows you're down here and likely anything Rey knows, Chuntha will know, too. They'll be lookin' for you." Conan touched the handle of his sword. "Perhaps they might be sorry if they find me," he said.

Tull glanced at Conan's sword, then at the big Cimmerian's muscular frame. "Aye, perhaps. But likely you'll be sorrier. One cyclops would make two of you, and there's hundreds of 'em. And the big worms can sometimes squeeze the air out of a cyclops, one against one."

Conan and Elashi looked at each other.

"Better we should find a way out," Elashi said.

Conan said nothing, but agreed silently. Witches, wizards, and h.e.l.lish cavern beasts held no attraction for him whatsoever. The sooner they left this place, the better Conan would like it.

Six.

The size of the cave system impressed the Harskeel while at the same time frightening its men. Their torches cast a fitful yellow glow that blended with the fungal green light emitted from the dank walls.

Finding Conan and the woman might prove to be a more difficult task than first the Harskeel had imagined. Well, it made no difference. Conan was the one; the Harskeel grew more convinced of it every moment. Once it had the barbarian's sword, the spell reversing this accursed joining could be intoned.

The words had long since been committed to the Harskeel's memory, burned in deeply as if placed there by a red-hot iron brand. Ahead, the tracker uttered a short curse.

"What is it?" the Harskeel asked.

"Lost the sign agin, m'lord. Looks like somethin' pa.s.sed behind 'em and wiped it away. See?"

The tracker held his torch close to the floor. The encrusted salts and slime had been smoothed over, as if something wide and heavy had been dragged over the surface in a side-to-side manner. There was a kind of pattern to the smoothing, a widened "S" shape.

"Ever see a track like this before?" the Harskeel asked.

The tracker shook his head. "Can't say's I have, m'lord. Not exactly. Once, in the desert, I seen a pattern kinda like it. Serpent track. But there ain't no snakes this size." He gestured at the floor.

You hope, the Harskeel thought. And I hope so too. 'Twould be difficult to utilize Conan and his blade did they have to be extracted from the belly of a monster serpent.

"We shall continue on down this tunnel," the Harskeel said.

The Whites had moved ahead of Wikkell toward the waterfall cavern and so the cyclops was alone when the call came from his master. All of a moment the air to one side of the cave seemed to swirl with purple light; a low humming began and increased in volume to that of a giant winged insect. Wikkell stopped, realizing almost immediately the cause of the phenomenon.

From the purple haze came Rey's voice. "HAVE YOU THE MAN I SEEK?" Wikkell swallowed dryly and chose his words carefully. "Even now I am on my way to collect him, Master. The Blind Whites have trapped him in a corridor some distance away."

"HOW LONG UNTIL YOU RETURN WITH HIM?".

"Ah, that is difficult to predict, Master. The corridor is some distance away, asI said. And your chambers are considerably farther, as the man is in the opposite direction from them."

"MAKE HASTE, WIKKELL. I HATE TO BE KEPT WAITING.".

"I shall return as soon as possible, Master."

The purple blot upon the air swirled and faded, leaving the cyclops alone in the dim green light. He tried to swallow again but found his mouth too dry to accomplish that simple task. He had purchased more time with his lie... well, perhaps not a lie, only an exaggeration. But best he hurry and accomplish that which he had told Rey was imminent. Otherwise...

The image of himself as a steaming puddle of ooze upon the floor thrust itself into the cyclops' thoughts.

He increased his speed.

Though he was wide awake, Deek had a dream. In it he lay at the feet of Chuntha, who loomed over him as if she were ten times her normal size. "Where are the people I sent you to fetch?" she demanded.

Deek could feel himself exude the oily flux that pa.s.sed for sweat among his kind. "I-I h-have n-not yet a-arrived at t-t-their l-location, M-m-mistress. I-it is... ah... s-s-some d-distance a-away."

Chuntha increased in size, towering over Deek. She bent and picked up the worm as if he were no more than a hatching fresh from the egg. She held him in her hands as she sometimes did that wand-bone of hers. With the slightest pressure, she could squeeze him into mush. "Hurry, Deek. I grow impatient. You do not want that."

Without a sounding rock to sc.r.a.pe upon, Deek could not speak, but no, he definitely did not want Chuntha impatient with him. No.

Deek awoke to find himself crawling along as before, the bat, his guide, still flitting back and forth above him. Had he the ability, he would have sighed. In lieu of that, he merely increased his speed.

Conan had listened to Tull's story with interest, but he was not ready to accept the older man's conclusion. And were he to find the way out, best he begin looking immediately. He said as much.

Once again to his surprise, Elashi failed to contradict him. "Aye," she said. "The sooner we are shut of this place, the better."

Tull shook his head. "I think you're daft, lad, but I'll not see you wandering about in the caves without my a.s.sistance. May be that you can do what I could not. You shall have my knife's help." Conan grinned. This was more like it. Far better to be up and doing something than to sit pa.s.sively awaiting Fate's bidding. "Good," he said. "Then let us be about it."