When the fingers of his left hand rubbed an uneven surface, he used that point as an anchorage, drawing near to it. It marked a wall right enough. Sweeps along that surface told him it was of stone, but sometimes he felt the ridges of what could be bunches of roots depending from above. The smell became foul once as his nails scraped across something slimy. From that spread a faint glimmer of light, enough for him to see a tuber clinging with hairlike roots to the stone—now oozing viscid stuff from a hole his fingertip had punched in it. He wriggled the tuber back and forth until the hair-thick supports were torn free, so he could carry it with him as he went on—though the light was very dim, showing him no more than the patch of wail immediately around his improvised candle.

It was twenty strides from the place where he had awakened to a corner where wall met wall. Halfway up the new barrier was a dark hole and from that trickled some liquid, which coursed down the stones to collect in a runnel at the wall's foot.

Seeing this suddenly awoke in him a raging thirst. How long it had been since he had eaten or drunk he had no way of knowing. Did he dare to touch this oily-appearing streamlet? He was not sure. Debating the safety of that he turned and edged along the side of the stream, using that now for a better guide.

In the end that disappeared in a round hole in the floor. His torch was failing him and he tried to find another such. Only here the growth from above looked more like ends of stout vines. There came a sudden sound. The stream had flowed silently, and the silence itself had pressed in upon him. He had not realized the full depth of that quiet until it was broken.

There was a kind of flutter, as if the roots from above swayed. He looked up. Overhead was nothing but the thick dark. Cautiously Farree tried to open his wings. Once more the edges scraped over his head. The passage was low of roof. He pulled his wings into as tight folds as he could manage.

The thirst which he had tried to put out of his mind was joined now by hunger. He longed for the pack of emergency supplies still back in the ship.

The ship! The Lady Maelen—what had happened to her when the murky globe had broken in his hands? What had those who had put him here done? Had they in some manner moved into that bowl valley and tried to fetter those on board as they had him? He had great respect and awe for Maelen's powers—even more for those of the Zacanthan. Through unreckoned time Zoror's people had collected knowledge, had developed latent talents. Not all of them had followed the same paths—he knew that Zoror had experimented with mind speech and mind control. But Farree did not know the scope of the historian's talent. He paused for a moment to put his own mind send to the test once more—only to strike that barrier.

Well, they might have bound his mind, but they had not fettered his body this time. During his brief halt those roots above seemed longer. For some reason that awoke a dread in him. Being under the earth was difficult enough; he had to fight an ever-present fear of being shut in—encased in this evil-smelling pocket of soil. The light from the tuber continued to ebb. Farree faced around to look back, although all there was blind dark.

Not quite. He sighted a small spark of light—fiery orange-red, like a minute, awakening flame. Two—close together– another pair slightly behind the first. At the same time an effluvium, a stench strong enough to churn his empty stomach, puffed in his face. He gagged and fought to control the nausea that awoke in him.

At the same moment his mind was touched. He was in contact with one of the things which had run the dark ways underground back in the valley. What he could read was ravening hunger, and a picture of this foul thing hurrying to seize upon his flesh.

The odor grew stronger, and the lights which marked their eyes brighter and larger. Hunger drove them and he was the food.

Moving backward, Farree edged as close as his folded wings would allow him to the wall at his right. His hand groped for the knife and then he remembered his sheath was empty. He had no defense except his two hands. Still he backed and the creatures followed. Now and again he gave a hurried glance over his shoulder to make sure that there were no other eye lights showing ahead, that he was not being driven into a trap.

He expected them to charge, but it seemed that something kept them from making that last run which would bear him down. They were coming up on him to be sure, but not as swiftly as he expected. The tuber in his hand lost its light. But he could still see the eyes.

As Farree went he was careful to test each step with his heel, making sure that he was not about to lose his balance. Then he kicked something and there was the sound of metal striking stone. He dared to stoop and seek to feel what he had stumbled upon. His hand closed about a chain.

Part of it was loose and yielded easily to his jerk but the other end appeared to be fixed. He pulled again and was answered by a glow of light. Again where his fingers pulled he saw a glimmer. The hunters had paused– Raw hatred and purpose still filled them but there was now caution, he believed, in their halt, as if he had chanced upon something in which they foresaw trouble. At the same time the links gathered into his hand began to warm, to burn as had the globe; but he refused to drop his find. The fact that the very picking up of the thing had slowed the others' advance made him cling to it the tighter.

Light sped from the links in his hand out along the rest of its length. This was a far better light than the tuber had given. He gathered the metal linkage up in both hands now to give a strong pull.

There was no give. Only more of the chain was alight, so that his eyes, already accustomed to the dark, could follow it to a wall. There it had been fastened to a loop apparently deep set in one of the stone blocks. Farree followed it up to that anchorage. He had to divide his attention between what he was doing and those menacing eyes. But the latter had stopped their advance.

Farree's fingers found a loop set in the stone. From his touch there came a stab of agony as great as if he had put his hand into real flames. He drew back but he did not drop hold of the chain. Unlike the links he held the loop did not shine. Pull having achieved nothing, he tried twist, winding the chain as swiftly as he could to the left, its links clinging together and its length becoming less as he wound it into two strands together. Once more he jerked.

There was a clang and the link locking the chain to the loop gave way so quickly he stumbled back, his wings brushing painfully against the other wall. Now he held several arm's lengths of glowing chain free from its anchorage. Though it remained fully in his hand it did not sear his flesh as had the single stone-set loop. Winding a fair portion about his right hand he swung the rest back and forth as one would swing a lash. With a clank of metal against rock it met the pavement behind him. Only then did its light reveal something else—a skull, teeth a-grin, as it rested in the midst of a pile of bones. What manner of creature had been left to die here Farree could not tell, but to his eyes the skull looked as if it were humanoid in shape.

He took a stride across that mass of bones, striking the skull without intention with the toe of his boot. It rolled back along his trail, toward the waiting eyes. Farree shivered and began once more to edge along the right hand wall of this place, which changed quickly into a narrowed passage. The glow from the chain remained constant and he swung it back and forth now—not only as a warning to those who followed him, but as a method of seeing a little ahead on his own path.

The dim light picked up a heap of something and for the second time he viewed a pile of bones. But the method of securing this unfortunate prisoner to the wall had been different. The upward swing of the chain showed a small cage of metal secured to the stone about as high as a man such as Vorlund would stand. In that cage a second skull rested, with the bones piled below. Farree hurried on.