Pass free from us, woman of the Light.
There are two paths before you--."

The Guardian paused for so long that Varta dared to prompt it.

"Where do they lead, Guardian of the Dark?"

"This will take you down into my country," it jerked the rod to the
right. "And that way is death for creatures from the surface world. The
other--in our old legends it is said to bring a traveler out into the
upper world. Of the truth of that I have no proof."

"But that one I must take," she made slight obeisance to the huddle of
bones and dank cloak on the rock and it inclined its head in grave
courtesy.

With Lur pushing a little ahead, she took the road which ran straight
into the flume-veiled darkness. Nor did she turn to look again at the
Thing from the Chasm world.

They began to climb again, across slimed rock where there were evil
trails of other things which lived in this haunted darkness. But the sun
of Asti lighted their way and perhaps some virtue in the rays from it
kept away the makers of such trails.

When they pulled themselves up onto a wide ledge the talons on Varta's
gloves were worn to splintered stubs and there was a bright girdle of
pain about her aching body. Lur lay panting beside her, his red-forked
tongue protruding from his foam ringed mouth.

"We walk again the ways of men," Lur was the first to note the tool
marks on the stone where they lay. "By the Will of Asti, we may win out
of this maze after all."

Since there were no signs of the deadly steam Varta dared to push off
her hood and share with her companion the sustaining power she carried
in her pouch. There was a freshness to the air they breathed, damp and
cold though it was, which hinted of the upper world.

The ledge sloped upwards, at a steep angle at first, and then more
gently. Lur slipped past her and thrust head and shoulders through a
break in the rock. Grasping his neck spines she allowed him to pull her
through that narrow slit into the soft blackness of a surface night.
They tumbled down together, Varta's head pillowed on Lur's smooth side,
and so slept as the sun and worlds of Asti whirled protectingly above
them.

A whir of wings in the air above her head awakened Varta. One of the
small, jewel bright flying lizard creatures of the deep jungle poised
and dipped to investigate more closely the worlds of Asti. But at
Varta's upflung arm it uttered a rasping cry and planed down into the
mass of vegetation below. By the glint of s