Though side openings showed here both right and left, Sander was held to the main passageway. Eventually he reached the head of a stairway, one again leading down. There was evidence that some of the ceiling had fallen. Props of metal had been rammed in place against the walls; beams of the same crossed overhead, supporting cracked masonry.
Once more Sander descended. Had some of the Before People waited out the Dark Time in underground burrows? The stories he had heard of the rending of the earth itself by quakes could not have made any such plan a safe one. Here in this broken portion most of the wall lights were dark, leaving only an eerie glow at intervals. There was no change, except for the cracking in the walls themselves.
He counted the steps as he went down—twenty of them. And he could only guess at how deep this way now lay below the surface of the outer world. The props, rough as they looked against the remnants of the smooth wall, had been well set and braced. There had been a great deal of work down here to insure that these passages would continue to be usable.
By whom? Traders? All the metal-hunting Sander had seen evidence of had been carried on aboveground. The fact that so many of these reinforcing beams and braces were made of solid metal—strong, unblemished metal—made him wonder. To waste such a highly marketable product was not the way of the Traders.
The mist that had floated the upper ways was missing here. Instead, where the lights still existed, the monotony of the corridor showed clearly. The will that was not his continued to force the smith ahead.
He passed a small wagon—if wagon it was without a means of harnessing any sort of draft beast. The object against the wall did have two seats in the front with a smaller fifth wheel mounted on a post before one of those seats. The thing was completely wrought of metal.
In his excitement at the profuse use of a material rarely found in an unbattered, much less uneroded condition, Sander could almost forget for an instant that he was as much a prisoner as if his arms had been lashed to his sides and he was being jerked along by a rope.
The first horror of his predicament had dulled a little. He no longer struggled uselessly against the compulsion, rather yielded, conserving his strength, his mind busy with questions that perhaps never could be answered, but among which might just lie some suggestion that would serve him later.
No Rememberer's tale had ever hinted at an unbelievable situation where the will of another could take over the rule of a man's body, compel him to action. But the knowledge that a Rememberer carried from the Before Days was admittedly only fragmentary.
Sander's people had not even been natives of this part of the world in that legendary time. Therefore, they might not have known what was being accomplished elsewhere. That someone could activate very old machines, such as the wagon he had just passed—yes, that he could accept without question. For the work of one man's hands might be repaired with patience and the proper tools. It was that very hope of accomplishment that had brought him north.
But the tampering with another's thoughts—that was another matter. To him such an invasion by mind was as alien as the monster on the ancient island. He decided now he had but one possible chance—to allow whatever force was summoning him now to believe that he was wholly docile, until he could learn what lay behind his capture.
The wall braces were no longer in evidence. Sander had passed beyond the section of corridor that had been threatened. Here the walls showed no cracks at all under the lights, none of which were dark here, all glowing equally. By their light Sander saw a doorway at the end of the hall, with further radiance beyond it.
Then he heard something—Rhin's sharp bark! The sound was the same the koyot always gave when greeting Sander after any absence. In this much he had been right—the koyot was waiting for him. He stepped through the door and blinked, for the light within was far greater than that which had lined the corridor.
He found himself in a room of medium size, but an odd room, for the side walls ended just above the level of his head, sprouting pillars to rise farther, ending against the ceiling far above. The room was empty and without any break in the walls at all, save that door through which he had just entered. Yet he was sure that it was only part of a much larger space.
At that moment the compulsion that had led him here vanished with the swiftness of one snap of a dry stick. Yet Sander was sure that, should he try to retrace his way, he would not be allowed to do so.
He had heard Rhin's bark, and it had come from this direction. Therefore, there must be a way out of this room, leading beyond. Methodically, Sander turned to the nearest wall. Though his eyes could detect not the faintest line of any opening, he began running his fingertips over the slick surface. Squatting down, he began a search upward from floor level, rising up to stretch his arms near to the wall top in a careful sweep of touch.
The construction was not of any stone that he had ever known, for this surface was smoother than any rock could be worked. And it was chill to the touch. Yet in some places he chanced upon a slight radiated warmth. Some of those spots were hardly larger than the fingertips exploring them; he could span others with a flattened palm.
And they occurred only on the wall directly facing the door, he discovered, after he had made a complete circuit of the small chamber. Since these were all he had found, Sander returned to them, tracing their positions carefully.
Hands—they were set in hand patterns! If one laid one's palm so, fitting into the larger space, then one's finger tips just touched the small spots if the fingers were spread as wide apart as possible. One hand was directly right and one left, but to fit them properly one had to stand with one's body pressed to the wall, arms extended to the farthest limit. Sander took that position and pressed his flesh into the warmth of those invisible holds.
Heat flared. He had wit enough not to snatch away his hands. In a second he knew that this radiation was not as hot as it first seemed. But he was equally startled when a disembodied voice spoke out of the air overhead, as if some invisible presence now stood directly behind him.
What it said was gibberish for the most part. But to his vast amazement Sander grasped words out of the smith's chant, words that were the deep secret of his own trade. There was an interval of silence, and once more the same stream of sounds was uttered.
Sander moistened his lips with his tongue. A—smith—? One of his own calling? Well, he could only try. With his hands still on those hot areas, he raised his own voice, to send, echoing hollowly through the space, the work chant, that which contained those words he was sure he had heard.
And the wall—the wall turned! The section of flooring on which his boots were planted swung with it, completely around, carrying him to the other side. This was so far different from all his past experiences that he could not move for a long moment or take his hands away from the wall that had behaved in so improbable fashion, to look about and see where it had transported him.
Shivering a little, the smith forced himself to face around. He stood in another room, perhaps slightly larger than the first. However this one was not bare. There was a table with a top clear as glass, only he had never seen any fragment of glass so large. Its legs were fashioned of metal tubes. There were two stools fashioned of the same material, clear-topped, metal-legged.
In the corner of the table rested a box about the length of his full arm, the width of his forearm. While on the top of that a number of small knobs were raised, each of a different coloring or shading of coloring. Again there was no door. And when he ran his hands over the wall that had so unceremoniously delivered him here, he could no longer locate those warm places for his hands.
Baffled, he approached the table cautiously. On the small surface of each box knob there was a marking, akin, Sander was sure, to that "writing" Fanyi boasted she knew. But the purpose of the box he could not guess. Gingerly he bent over it to study those knobs. Perhaps this controlled another door; anything was possible here. He no longer doubted that Fanyi had discovered the end of her quest. There were certainly marvels gathered in this place unlike any found in the outer world.
One line of knobs was red, shading from a very dark crimson to near pink. The second rank displayed shades of green, the third yellow, the last brown, which ended in one near white. Sander touched each line very lightly. No heat here. But that this had an important purpose he did not in the least doubt. And he wondered gloomily how many combinations of the various colors could be worked out.
Since the compulsion had released him, he felt very tired, and he was hungry enough to ache with the emptiness. Unless he could somehow force this box to yield its secret, he might well be a prisoner here indefinitely. How long did it take a man to starve to death?
Stubbornly, he refused to be beaten now. If the way through another wall lay with this machine, then he was going to find it!
Begin with the first row—then the second, then combine—pushing the buttons on those two in every pattern he could think of. After that try the third and the fourth rows. Sander did not allow himself to be shaken by the thought that what he would try might take hours of effort.
He seated himself on one of the stools and leaned forward, exerting strong pressure with his forefinger on the first button in the red row. He was halfway down the line when there was a response. But it was not the one he hoped for. No wall slid aside, rose or sank into the flooring. Instead the button, upon pressure, snapped down level with the surface of the machine and did not rise again.
Sander looked hopefully at the walls hemming him in, no longer intent upon the box itself. Therefore, it was only at the sound of a click that drew his eyes back to it. An opening appeared in one end, from which slid a brown square, and then another, both about the length of his little finger. Now the button flashed up again into line with its fellows while Sander stared questioningly at the two objects lying on the table.
It was the odor arising from them that startled him the most. Meat, roasted to a turn over a fire under the care of a most attentive cook. But why—what—how?
Warily he picked up the nearest square. It was warm—having the texture of perfectly browned crust. He could no longer resist the odor and recklessly bit into the biscuit-like offering.
As it crunched between his teeth, he could not have truly named it. Was it a kind of bread? No, for the taste was like its scent—that of well-done meat. Yet it was plainly not the roast both smell and taste proclaimed it.
And though it might be loaded with some drug or fatal herb, Sander could not have refused to finish it after that first taste, any more than he could have, in his present state of dire hunger, thrown a grilled fish from him. He finished the biscuit in two bites and eagerly bit into the second.
Oddly enough, though the morsels were small, two of them gave him a feeling of repletion, though they added to his thirst. Now he eyed the remaining untried buttons, wondering if this box also had an answer for that need.
He went at the matter methodically. Another red button gave him a bar, darker brown, but of somewhat the same consistency of the square, which smelled like baked fish. The green line produced three different wafers, unlike in shades. These he put aside with the fish bar. The yellow had only one button in working order. But after pressing it, the box offered him a small cup of some thin, shiny material that was filled to the brim with a semi-soft, pale cream substance. A touch of his tongue informed him that this was sweet. The last row—at the next to the last button—slid out to his hand a slightly larger shiny cup, a lid of the same substance creased tightly over it. When he had worked that off, Sander held a measure, not of water, but of a liquid with an aromatic odor he had never smelled before. He gulped it down though it was hot. Like the cream stuff, it was sweet to the taste but it slaked his thirst.
Carefully, he put the fish bar and the wafers inside his coat. The cream substance, for want of any spoon, he licked clean of its container.
Would the same knobs work again, providing him with extra provisions? Once more he tried the same combination of pressed knobs, but no more supplies appeared. Did it only then work once? Had there in the beginning been food delivered from each of those buttons—but now that abundance had failed through the long seasons, so only these were left—and perhaps he had exhausted the last of what the box had to offer?
The thing was a machine of some kind, of course, but how it worked he could not guess. It was certainly too small to hide, within its interior, supplies to be cooked and offered. Sander got down on the floor, looking up through the transparent surface of the table at the box's underside. But it was entirely solid.
He was no longer hungry or thirsty, but he was still a prisoner. The stool on which he sat—if it were moved against the wall, would it give him extra height so he might reach the top of the partition?
When he tried to shove it, he found that it could only be drawn back from the vicinity of the table far enough for some one to be seated, no farther.
Sander shrugged. He suspected there were no short cuts here. It would require patience and all the wit he possessed to learn the secrets of these rooms. Rhin—if he could win an answer from the koyot, he would at least know in which direction he must advance, which of the three walls was the barrier to be crossed.
He whistled, and the sound seemed doubly loud and strong. Listening, he could hear nothing but his own faster breathing. Then—from afar—came the yelp. However, it was so echoed within the area, he could not pinpoint the direction.
Once more he began a patient and exhaustive search of the wall surface. He knew what to look for now. Only this combing of the walls was fruitless. No warm spots were to be found, even though he made that sweep twice.
Finally Sander returned to the table, flung himself on the stool and rested his elbows on the surface, which supported the box, holding his head in his hands as he tried systematically to think the problem through. There were none of those mysterious handholds on the walls, that he would swear to. He had leaped several times, trying to catch at the top of the same barriers. But so slick was the coating there, his hands slipped from any grip he tried to exert. Then—how did he get out?
For Sander was very certain that there was a way out of this room, doubtless one as cleverly hidden as those handholds had been. What was the purpose of this place? It seemed that whoever had constructed it—unless that mind was either entirely alien or warped—had intended to make it difficult for any one to travel through. The situation, Sander decided, looked like some kind of testing.
Testing—he considered that idea and concluded that such an answer fitted what small facts he knew. The purpose of the testing, unless it was to gauge the imagination or intelligence of the captive, he could not now know. But its former purpose was immaterial, it was how he might confront the problems offered him now that mattered.
So far, by trial and error and the use of what he considered good sense, he had solved two problems. He had found the first door and he had supplied himself with food and drink. Both of those answers had merely required persistence and patience. Now he was faced with that one that demanded more in the way of experimentation.
The walls were sealed, and he believed any attempt to scale them would be useless. So—what did that leave? The floor!
Again he thought that he could be better served by his sense of touch than his sight. Sander slipped from the stool to his hands and knees, and selecting the nearest corner, he searched that carefully before he started out, sweeping inch by inch across the pavement which, though not quite as smooth as the walls, was uniformly level. First he made a circuit around the base of the four walls, hoping to find at one of them the release he was convinced lay somewhere.
Failing any such discovery, he launched farther into the middle of the room. It was only when he realized that he had entirely swept the whole of that surface that he sat down, with his back to that impenetrable wall, to again consider what he termed the facts of his case.
He had entered through that wall, the one now directly opposite to him. But the hidden latch there was plainly unresponsive to any return. He had searched the three other barriers, and the floor. Nothing.
Dully he leaned his head back against the wall at his back and forced himself once more to consider that room. There were four walls, a floor, high above his head a ceiling that the walls did not reach. There was the table, the box that had fed him, two stools that could not be moved far enough to aid in any climbing.
Table—stools—box— He had explored everything else. Did the secret lie in the center of the chamber after all? Excited by hope, he got up. Neither stool could be shifted any more than his first try had proven. And the knobs—surely they were meant for food delivery, not as he first conceived, for operating some device of the walls. Now—the table.
Despite his strongest efforts, he could not shift it even a fraction of an inch. The metal legs, though they appeared to rest on the surface of the floor, might well be embedded in it for all the good his pushing and pulling did.
Table, stools, box—
Once more Sander subsided on the stool to think. The patterned colors of the knobs were before him—red, green, yellow, brown—Red, since the beginning of time had registered with his species as a signal of power—of danger. It was the red of a fire that destroyed if it could not be curbed, of the flush that anger brought to a man's face.
Green soothed the eyes. That was the color of growing things—of life. Yellow—yellow was gold, treasure, sunshine, also a kind of power, but less destructive than red. Brown—brown was earth—a thing to be worked with, not that would work of itself.
Why was he wasting his time considering the meaning of colors? He had to find the way out—he had to!
Still, he could not break his intent stare at the rows—red, green, yellow, brown. They provided food; they were useless for his other need.
Brown—yellow of the gold hidden in the earth—green of the things that grew on it—red—of fire that could lick earth bare of life. Somehow a pattern began to weave in his mind, though he tried to drive such foolishness out, to think constructively of what he must do. But were such thoughts foolish? Fanyi would say no, he supposed, her belief in her Shaman powers being such she was able to accept without doubt strange vagaries of the mind. Sander had never believed—really believed—in anything he could not see, touch, taste, hear for himself.
Still, on this journey he had already met with that which could not be measured by the senses. As a smith he labored with his hands, but what he so wrought was first a picture in his mind, so that he followed a pattern no other man might see. Thus he, too, in a way dealt with the intangible.
Should he after all his experiences of these past hours now refuse to use imagination when that might be the one key to defeat the walls? That voice from the air that had addressed him earlier had used a smith's words. True, they had been intermingled with others Sander could not understand, but he was certain of those few. He must take that as an omen of sorts and now trust his guesses, no matter how wild they might seem.
"Brown," he spoke aloud, and thumbed the darkest of the buttons on that row. "Gold." He sought out the brightest there, one that reminded him most of molten metal as it ran, fiery swift, into a mold. "Green." Not the dark top one there, but one halfway down the row, which was most akin to the fresh growth of early spring. "Red." And this one was that shade a dancing flame might own.
A grating noise sounded. One wall broke apart as a panel pulled upward, leaving a narrow space open. Somehow Sander was not even surprised. He had had the feeling as he pressed the buttons in his chosen order that he had indeed solved another small segment of a mystery.
Now he walked forward with some confidence, passing through the opening to face once more the unknown.