Telltale scratches about the lock plate testify that some have actually sought entrance. Equipment sufficient to force the great door could not be transported or properly positioned, however. The trail that leads to Hellwell is less than ten inches in width for the final three hundred feet of its ascent; and perhaps six men could stand, with crowding, upon what remains of the once wide ledge that faces that door.
It is told that Pannalal the Sage, having sharpened his mind with meditation and divers asceticisms, had divined the operation of the lock and entered Hellwell, spending a day and a night beneath the mountain. He was thereafter known as Pannalal the Mad.
The peak known as Channa, which holds the great door, is removed by five days' journey from a small village. This is within the far northern kingdom of Malwa. This mountain village nearest to Channa has no name itself, being filled with a fierce and independent people who have no special desire that their town appeal on the maps of the rajah's tax collectors. Of the rajah, it is sufficient to tell that he is of middle height and middle years, shrewd, slightly stout, neither pious nor more than usually notorious and fabulously wealthy. He is wealthy because he levies high taxes upon his subjects. When his subjects begin to complain, and murmurs of revolt run through the realm, he declares war upon a neighboring kingdom and doubles the taxes. If the war does not go well, he executes several generals and has his Minister of Peace negotiate a treaty. If, by some chance, it goes especially well, he exacts tribute for whatever insult has caused the entire affair. Usually, though, it ends in a truce, souring his subjects on fighting and reconciling them to the high tax rate. His name is Videgha and he has many children. He is fond of grak-birds, which can be taught to sing bawdy songs, of snakes, to which he occasionally feeds grak-birds who cannot carry a tune, and of gaming with dice. He does not especially like children.
Hellwell begins with the great doorway high in the mountains at the northernmost comer of Videgha's kingdom, beyond which there are no other kingdoms of men. It begins there, and it corkscrews down through the heart of the mountain Channa, breaking, like a corkscrew, into vast cavernways uncharted by men, extending far beneath the Ratnagari range, the deepest passageways pushing down toward the roots of the world.
To this door came the traveler.
He was simply dressed, and he traveled alone, and he seemed to know exactly where he was going and what he was doing.
He climbed the trail up Channa, edging his way across its gaunt face.
It took him the better part of the morning to reach his destination, the door.
When he stood before it, he rested a moment, took a drink from his water bottle, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, smiled.
Then he sat down with his back against the door and ate his lunch. When he had finished, he threw the leaf wrappings over the edge and watched them fall, drifting from side to side on the air currents, until they were out of sight. He lit his pipe then and smoked.
After he had rested, he stood and faced the door once again.
His hand fell upon the pressure plate, moved slowly through a series of gestures. There was a musical sound from within the door as his hand left the plate.
Then he seized upon the ring and drew back, his shoulder muscles straining. The door moved, slowly at first, then more rapidly. He stepped aside and it swung outward, passing beyond the ledge.
There was another ring, twin to the first, on the inner surface of the door. He caught at it as it passed him, dragging his heels to keep it from swinging so far as to place it beyond his reach.
A rush of warm air emerged from the opening at his back.
Drawing the door closed again behind him, he paused only to light one of the many torches he bore. Then he advanced along a corridor that widened as he moved ahead.
The floor slanted abruptly, and after a hundred paces the ceiling was so high as to be invisible.
After two hundred paces, he stood upon the lip of the well.
He was now in the midst of a vast blackness shot through with the flames of his torch. The walls had vanished, save for the one behind him and to the right. The floor ended a short distance before him.
Beyond that edge was what appeared to be a bottomless pit. He could not see across it, but he knew it to be roughly circular in shape; and he knew, too, that it widened in circumference as it descended.
He made his way down along the trail that wound about the well wall, and he could feel the rush of warm air rising from out of the depths. This trail was artificial. One could feel this, despite its steepness. It was precarious and it was narrow; it was cracked in many places, and in spots rubble had accumulated upon it. But its steady, winding slant bespoke the fact that there was purpose and pattern to its existence.
He moved along this trail, carefully. To his left was the wall. To his right there was nothing.
After what seemed an age and a half, he sighted a tiny flicker of light far below him, hanging in midair.
The curvature of the wall, however, gradually bent his way so that this light no longer hung in the distance, but lay below and slightly to his right.
Another twisting of the trail set it directly ahead of him.
When he passed the niche in the wall wherein the flame was cached, he heard a voice within his mind cry out:
"Free me, master, and I will lay the world at thy feet!"
But he hurried by, not even glancing at the almost-face within the opening.
Floating upon the ocean of black that lay beneath his feet, there were more lights now visible.
The well continued to widen. It was filled with brightening glimmers, like flame, but not flame; filled with shapes, faces, half-remembered images. From each there rose up a cry as he passed: "Free me! Free me!"
But he did not halt.
He came to the bottom of the well and moved across it, passing among broken stones and over fissures in the rocky floor. At last he reached the opposite wall, wherein a great orange fire danced.
It became cherry-red as he approached, and when he stood before it, it was the blue of a sapphire's heart.
It stood to twice his height, pulsing and twisting. From it, little flamelets licked out toward him, but they drew back as if they fell against an invisible barrier.
During his descent he had passed so many flames that he had lost count of their number. He knew, too, that more lay hidden within the caverns that open into the well bottom.
Each flame he had passed on the way down had addressed him, using its own species of communication, so that the words had sounded drumlike within his head: threatening words, and pleading, promising words. But no message came to him from this great blue blaze, larger than any of the others. No forms turned or twisted, tantalizing, within its bright heart. Flame it was, and flame it remained.
He kindled a fresh torch and wedged it between two rocks.
"So, Hated One, you have returned!"
The words fell upon him like whiplashes. Steadying himself, he faced the blue flame then and replied:
"You are called Taraka?"
"He who bound me here should know what I am called," came the words. "Think not, oh Siddhartha, that because you wear a different body you go now unrecognized. I look upon the flows of energy which are your real being—not the flesh that masks them."
"I see," replied the other.
"Do you come to mock me in my prison?"
"Did I mock you in the days of the Binding?"
"No, you did not."
"I did that which had to be done, to preserve my own species. Men were weak and few in number. Your kind fell upon them and would have destroyed them."
"You stole our world, Siddhartha. You chained us here. What new indignity would you lay upon us?"
"Perhaps there is a way in which some reparation may be made."
"What is it that you want?"
"Allies."
"You want us to take your part in a struggle?"