There was a bottomless pit whereover he must cross by an Invisible bridge that was as slick as glass. Great winds rose in this pit out of the center of the world and strove to thrust him off balance…
There was a resonant echo-chamber hung with dangling spears of stone where the slightest sound reverberated deafeningly and the stone spears could be dislodged by the slightest whisper…
Through these and other perils he passed by the use of caution and patience and strength and grim nerve… aided, it must be confessed, by certain clever devices he bore with him against the hour of need. Fore-warned is fore-armed, and the grey philosophers of Trevelon had searched well through their magic skills.
In a safe place he rested and even slept for a time, napping huddled in his cloak against the shelter of the wall. He must husband every atom of strength against further need. And when he awoke, he went forward again.
No man had ever come this far before. At least, there were no bones here.
He felt very alone. The god still slept within him. He could have used a few miracles, he thought with a grim, weary smile. He felt as if he had come many miles by now. And, for all he knew, perhaps he had—despite the known dimensions of the Tower.
Space and time were distorted here, twisted into new contours by the spell of the god. He felt so weary, he wondered if he had been in the maze hours… or days?
He went on.
He was past the greater number of the death-traps now. He had passed the corridor of stone gladiators where living statues, their arms honed to stone swords, listened alertly for the slightest sound, ready to kill. He had traversed the fiery corridor where jets of flame lashed erratically at any passing shadow. He had survived the chamber of ice where blasts of freezing cold congealed any warm-blooded thing that ventured therein. His supply of protective devices was now exhausted.
He would need no more artificial aid, he had been told, from this point on. He hoped the mages of Trevelon know what they were talking about. He went forward warily.
And came at last to the door of the treasure chamber itself. He had come through a thousand perils untouched. And as he stood gazing at the door to the chamber wherein the Heart of Kom Yazoth was kept (so the inscription read), he felt his heart sink within him. For one last peril lay before him. A peril he had not been prepared to face.
He tasted the bitterness of defeat and failure. He growled a despairing curse at the distant philosophers who had not warned him of this…
Between where he stood and the door to the inmost chamber, the floor fell away in a bottomless abyss.
An abyss a hundred yards across!
Kirin groaned and rubbed his brows. He could not fly, he could not jump, and his suction harness had been discarded, together with all surplus weight, far behind him, when he passed over a pit of knives on a slender rope that could bear only his weight alone.
This was the end of the quest. He could neither go back nor go forward.
He was doomed.
He slept there on the brink of the abyss. He was utterly exhausted in body and mind; worn out, with a weariness that ran bone-deep.
He awoke to hunger and thirst, but his food supplies had been cast aside together with the no-longer-needed equipment. The mages had warned him, through Temujin, that at the area of the pit of knives he must abandon every bit of extra weight. Once he had reached the Medusa (said they), the return passage would be magically brief and without any perils.
He wished he had retained the suction harness. Although in his exhausted state he greatly doubted he would have been able to span the abyss by clinging with vacuum cups to the walls. Still, he would have had a fighting chance.
This way he had no chance at all.
He searched the edge of the abyss from one wall to the other, testing every inch of empty space along the edge. It was just possible there was an invisible bridge…
But there was none.
He sat on the edge of the abyss, dangling his heels, staring into emptiness.
What happened now?
Well, he could stay here and starve to death. Slowly.
Or he could try to retrace his path, and die under slashing knives or flailing limbs, or the searing lash of fire-jets, or one or another of the dooms he had passed through with the aid of his mechanisms.
Neither was a very attractive prospect.—
Or he could simply leap into the abyss. It looked bottomless, but it was choked with gloom and he could not tell. At any rate, it would be a swift and merciful death, over in moments. Better than a slow, agonizing death by starvation. Better than dying under the torment of a broken back from the stone gladiators, or burning alive in the fire-jets, or freezing in the chamber of cold.
He could not decide what to do. He sat there idly contemplating his doom. He had never been this close to death before. That is, to certain death. Oh, he had flirted with destruction many times in his perilous career. But always he had won through to freedom. This time, his position was hopeless. It was a rather unpleasant thought.
Strangely enough, he found himself thinking of his friends. His death would mean their deaths as well. For the robot ship would not open to admit Temujin or Caola. They would wait beyond the portal of the Tower for his return. But he would never return, and they would eventually be caught and slain by the Death Dwarves.
Nor could he do anything to prevent this! The thought galled him unbearably. His own death was one thing: grim enough, but at least he had gone into this with his eyes open, knowing the risks he took, and confident that he could surmount them. But to have the deaths of the old man and the girl on his conscience as well—that was an ugly burden to carry down into the eternal darkness with him. He cursed wearily, damning the wise men of Trevelon who had foreseen every hazard but this last one, damning the dead god within him who had built this accursed tower of stuff so dense he could not even use his signal bracelet to summon aid from the ship. Seven times he had tried to punch a rescue call through the dense stuff of the Tower and seven times he had failed. Nor would the ship do anything on its own initiative. Its intelligence was, after all, limited. It would sit there on the plain till doomsday, unless attacked. And since it was completely invisible and indetectible, he doubted if the Death Dwarves would attack it.
It was hopeless. Utterly.
What about the god who slept within his deepest mind? Could even Valkyr do anything to get him out of this predicament? He had tried to summon the god, to contact it, to communicate. But he had failed to rouse the ghost of the deity.
His situation was completely hopeless.
Idly, he wondered why the grey ones of Trevelon had not foreseen this last hazard. There must be a reason. They had anticipated everything else. What possible explanation could there be? He tried to think, tried to cudgel his wits into some semblance of their former alert acuteness. But he was too tired, too hungry. And thirst was becoming a torment to him. It seemed like days since he had last had anything to drink.
He napped again, falling into a light, fitful, uneasy slumber. He half hoped that in the extremity of his need he would contact the ghost of Valkyr within his ancestral memory, but nothing chanced. After a time he awoke, no longer quite as weary, but hungrier and thirstier than before. He knew he could not endure this for long. Thirst drives men mad long before hunger can kill them. He resolved to spare himself that kind of an end. Far better, a swift leap into the abyss, a fast, clean death in instants, than a lingering agony, giggling with madness, chewing on his own flesh. He would go out like a man, not like some animal thing, raving in the darkness of a mind gone mad.