Toyanna shrugged. "It's possible, I suppose. Why do you ask?"
"This." Lopakhin moved his finger. "See? This part. And this. There's a different kind of shading." His hand dropped to his side as he moved away. "But what killed her?"
Dumarest stirred, waking instantly, one hand reaching for the knife in his boot. Kneeling beside him Massak shook his head.
"No need for that, Earl. Listen."
The air was filled with a thin, high singing sound that wavered, carrying overtones of bells.
"Is this what you heard before?"
"Yes, but it's louder now. Closer." In the dimness the mercenary's face was tense. "Much closer-and it's coming nearer."
Wailing and singing from the air, the stone, the gaping mouth of the tunnel beside which the tracery of the skeleton kept warning guard.
One almost invisible now; the gleaming patches had dulled to somber glows, the chamber gaining a new menace with the loss of illumination. A good place to stay, he'd decided. One in which to check their gear and rest. To sleep as he had slept while Massak had stood watch. As the others were still sleeping.
"Earl?" The wailing, undulating sound had touched the mercenary on the raw. "What the hell is it?"
A question echoed by Mirza Karroum as she woke, eyes bleared, rubbing strength into her sagging cheeks.
"I don't know." Dumarest touched Lopakhin on the shoulder, found Toyanna already alert. "Spread out. Make no sound and don't move. Whatever it is we don't want to attract its attention."
Good advice but not easy to follow. Not when the sound grew louder; shrilling, tinkling, sweet with the music of bells, strong with the whine of generators. Resting his fingers against the casket, Dumarest felt the transparency quiver beneath his touch. Beneath the somnolent figure it contained, a warning lamp began to flash in pulses of red.
"Give me room!" Toyanna had spotted the signal. A panel lifted as Dumarest moved to one side, her fingers deft as she manipulated keys. "His heart," she explained. "If it gets any worse I'll have to introduce a bypass."
"I thought you dumped all nonessential equipment."
"This is essential." She sighed her relief as the red lamp ceased its flashing. "His heart is a muscle too, remember, and as weak as the rest of him. I had to provide for an emergency."
One drowned in the present problem. The singing, chiming, wailing sound which now filled the chamber with demanding noise.
"Look!" Lopakhin pointed. "The skeleton!" The tracery was glowing as if each bone had been delineated in fire. "The light!"
It filled the mouth of the tunnel, eye-bright, scintillating, glowing as if it was made of ice and diamond and cold, cold flame. A writhing something which flowed from the opening to hang in a shimmering mist of glowing radiance. One which shifted, changed, adopted new and enticing configurations. A thing of beauty, bright, clean, wonderful. One which sang.
Sound which dominated the ear as the glowing mist dominated the eye. As the subtle pulsing of it dominated the mind with its hypnotic spell.
"Don't look at it!" Dumarest forced himself to turn away, lifting a hand to cover Massak's eyes.
One the mercenary jerked away as he turned, snarling. "Don't look," snapped Dumarest. "Don't let it get to you."
"It's harmless. Just a cloud of brilliance. It shows me things."
"It's sucking your mind."
"No. That's stupid. It-"
"Damn you! Do as I say!" Dumarest lifted his hand, the fingers clenched, a fist which he poised to strike, then dropped as Lopakhin rose to his feet. "Tyner! Sit down! No, man! No!"
"Hilary!" The artist stepped toward the glowing radiance, hands extended, his face illuminated by something more than reflected light. "Hilary! My darling! You came back to me!"
"No!" Dumarest tried to rise and was thrown back against the wall by a sweep of the mercenary's arm. "Let me-"
"Stay put. There's nothing you can do. It's too late."
Lopakhin had closed the distance between himself and the shimmering cloud. He walked up to it, into it, froze as it closed around him.
"God!" Massak lifted his gun. "It's eating him!"
"Don't shoot!" Dumarest slammed down the weapon. "It's too late."
"I can give him an easy out."
"He doesn't need it. Look at his face."
It was calm, peaceful, the artist smiling a little as if he saw something which pleasured him. Smiling as his clothing dissolved into the mist, as his skin followed, the fat, the muscle and sinew, the bones and internal organs. Smiling still with bared teeth as his skull sat on the livid horror which had once been his body.
Then that too had vanished and there was only the mist which sang and pulsed and glided away down the facing tunnel to send murmurs and whispers of itself back in diminishing cadences.
"God!" Massak shook his head. "What the hell is it? A leech? A parasite of some kind? Why didn't it it take us all?"
"It had fed." Dumarest looked at the tunnel down which it had gone. "Lopakhin ran to it, remember. It didn't have to search."
But it would find them in its restless drifting, scenting them with alien organs, responding to the heat of their bodies, the electromagnetic activity of their brains. Or perhaps simply their bulk and composition, one different from rock. As were the things they had discarded. The debris which must have been left by others. All gone, cleared away, converted to basic energy to keep the thing alive.
"So we found it," said Mirza. "Or it found us. The thing I felt must be waiting. The guardian," she explained looking at them. "There's one in every legend. The monster which guards the treasure-but where the hell is it?"
"We'll find it," said Dumarest.
"When?"
"Soon." He looked at the casket, the flash of warning lights. It would have to be soon. "In a few hours, maybe."
Massak saw it first.
Chapter Fourteen
It was a bowl set in a cavern and centered by a column of lambent blue. Impressions fined as Dumarest studied it; the bowl was filled with a thinner mist the same color as the column, which was twenty feet high and half as large in diameter.
"It's like a fountain," said Massak. He stood in the opening from which he had discovered the column. "A fountain of mist, water, smoke-what the hell is it?"
Radiation made visible; energies trapped in a revealing medium which showed their writhing complexity as the beam of a flashlight was made to look solid in a dusty atmosphere. Forces which twisted, weaved, following a pattern impossible to grasp. Forming a substance which hovered between that of solid and gas. One alien in its fabrication.
It rested in a cavern shaped like the interior of an egg, the rock bearing a polished sheen. Stone shaped and worn by unknown years of attrition from the force it contained. The glow from it was caught, reflected, emphasized, enhanced by the near-mirror finish. The bowl formed a shallow pool, the edge resting ten feet from where they stood.
"We've found it!" The gun trembled in Massak's hands. "The thing Chenault dreamed of finding. The secret of Ryzam. Look at it, Earl! The source of renewed youth. Of health. Of life itself. You can feel it. Feel it!"
Dumarest inhaled, feeling the tingle coming from the column, hearing the soft susurration which could have been the rustle of breaking atoms. Material created, changed, recreated to form a continuous cycle of pulsing energy.
One which held the same hypnotic fascination as the shining predator.
"Wait!" Dumarest caught the mercenary's arm as he stepped toward the pool. "Let's check it out."
"What's there to check? We've found it."
"As others must have done. Where are they?" Dumarest looked around the chamber; it held two other openings, each, like the one they stood in, fashioned like a soaring arch. "We can walk around the pool and see what's behind those openings. You take the left and I'll go right."