ta hesitated,
plucking at the throat latch of her hood-like helmet. Through the
unclouded crystal of its eye-holes she could see the sprouts of yellow
vapor which puffed from crannies in the rock wall down which she must
climb. If the records of the Temple spoke true, these curls of gas were
death to all lunged creatures of the upper world. She could only trust
that the cunning of the scaled hood would not fail her.

The long talons fitted to the finger tips of the gloves, the claws of
the webbed foot coverings clamped fast to every hand and foot hold, but
the way down was long and she caught a message of weariness from Lur
before they reached the piled rocks at the foot of the cliff. The puffs
of steamy gas had become a fog through which they groped their way
slowly, following a trace of path along the base of the cliff.

Time did not exist in the underworld of Erb. Varta did not know whether
it was still today, or whether she had passed into tomorrow when they
came to a cross roads. She felt Lur press against her, forcing her back
against a rock.

"There is a thing coming--" his message was clear.

And in a moment she too saw a dark hulk nosing through the vapor. It
moved slowly, seeming to balance at each step as if travel was a painful
act. But it bore steadily to the meeting of the two paths.

"It is no enemy--" But she did not need that reassurance from Lur.
Unearthly as the thing looked it had no menace.

With a last twist of ungainly body the creature squatted on a rock and
clawed the clumsy covering it wore about its bone-thin shoulders and
domed-skull head. The visage it revealed was long and gray, with dark
pits for eyes and a gaping, fang-studded, lipless mouth.

"Who are you who dare to tread the forgotten ways and rouse from slumber
the Guardian of the Chasms?"

The question was a shrill whine in her brain, her hands half arose to
cover her ears--

"I am Varta, Maiden of Asti. Memphir has fallen to the barbarians of the
Outer Lands and now I go, as Asti once ordered--."

The Guardian considered her answer gravely. In one skeleton claw it
fumbled a rod and with this it now traced certain symbols in the dust
before Varta's webbed feet. When it had done, the girl stooped and
altered two of the lines with a swift stroke from one of her talons. The
creature of the Chasm nodded its misshapen head.

"Asti does not rule here. But long, and long, and long ago there was a
pact made with us in His Name.