The Andre Norton MEGAPACK ®. Andre Norton

setting. Here and there they had varied the pattern with tiny emeralds or flaming opals so that the finished portion was a rainbow.

      One of the workers smoothed the robe and glanced up at Garin, a gentle teasing in her voice as she explained:

      “This is for the Daughter when she comes to her throne.”

      The Daughter! What had the Lord of the Folk said? “This youth is fit to mate with the Daughter.” But Urg had said that the Ancient Ones had gone from Tav.

      “Who is the Daughter?” he demanded.

      “Thrala of the Light.”

      “Where is she?”

      The woman shivered and there was fear in her eyes. “Thrala lies in the Caves of Darkness.”

      “The Caves of Darkness!” Did she mean Thrala was dead? Was he, Garin Featherstone, to be the victim of some rite of sacrifice which was designed to unite him with the dead?

      Urg touched his arm. “Not so. Thrala has not yet entered the Place of Ancestors.”

      “You know my thoughts?”

      Urg laughed. “Thoughts are easy to read. Thrala lives. Sera served the Daughter as handmaiden while she was yet among us. Sera, do you show us Thrala as she was.”

      The woman crossed to a wall where there was a mirror such as Urg had used for his language lesson. She gazed into it and then beckoned the flyer to stand beside her.

      The mirror misted and then he was looking, as if through a window, into a room with walls and ceiling of rose quartz. On the floor were thick rugs of silver rose. And a great heap of cushions made a low couch in the center.

      “The inner chamber of the Daughter,” Sera announced.

      A circular panel in the wall opened and a women slipped through. She was very young, little more than a girl. There were happy curves in her full crimson lips, joyous lights in her violet eyes.

      She was human of shape, but her beauty was unearthly. Her skin was pearl white and other colors seemed to play faintly upon it, so that it reminded Garin of mother-of-pearl with its lights and shadows. The hair, which veiled her as a cloud, was blue-black and reached below her knees. She was robed in the silver net of the Folk and there was a heavy girdle of rose shaded jewels about her slender waist.

      “That was Thrala before the Black Ones took her,” said Sera.

      Garin uttered a cry of disappointment as the picture vanished. Urg laughed.

      “What care you for shadows when the Daughter herself waits for you? You have but to bring her from the Caves of Darkness—”

      “Where are these Caves—” Garin’s question was interrupted by the pealing of the Cavern gong. Sera cried out:

      “The Black Ones!”

      Urg shrugged. “When they spared not the Ancient Ones how could we hope to escape? Come, we must go to the Hall of Thrones.”

      Before the jade throne of the Lord of the Folk stood a small group of the lizard-men beside two litters. As Garin entered the Lord spoke.

      “Let the outlander come hither that he may see the work of the Black Ones.”

      Garin advanced unwillingly, coming to stand by those struggling things which gasped their message between moans and screams of agony. They were men of the Folk but their black skins were green with rot.

      The Lord leaned forward on his throne. “It is well,” he said. “You may depart.”

      As if obeying his command, the tortured things let go of the life to which they had clung and were still.

      “Look upon the work of the Black Ones,” the ruler said to Garin. “Jiv and Betv were captured while on a mission to the Gibi of the Cliff. It seems that the Black Ones needed material for their laboratories. They seek even to give the Daughter to their workers of horror!”

      A terrible cry of hatred arose from the hall, and Garin’s jaw set. To give that fair vision he had just seen to such a death as this—!

      “Jiv and Betv were imprisoned close to the Daughter and they heard the threats of Kepta. Our brothers, stricken with foul disease, were sent forth to carry the plague to us, but they swam through the pool of boiling mud. They have died, but the evil died with them. And I think that while we breed such as they, the Black Ones shall not rest easy. Listen now, outlander, to the story of the Black Ones and the Caves of Darkness, of how the Ancient Ones brought the Folk up from the slime of a long dried sea and made them great, and of how the Ancient Ones at last went down to their destruction.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      The Defeat of the Ancient Ones

      “In the days before the lands of the outer world were born of the sea, before even the Land of the Sun (Mu) and the Land of the Sea (Atlantis) arose from molten rock and sand, there was land here in the far south. A sere land of rock plains, and swamps where slimy life mated, lived and died.

      “Then came the Ancient Ones from beyond the stars. Their race was already older than this earth. Their wise men had watched its birth-rending from the sun. And when their world perished, taking most of their blood into nothingness, a handful fled hither.

      “But when they climbed from their space ship it was into hell. For they had gained, in place of their loved home, bare rock and stinking slime.

      “They blasted out this Tav and entered into it with the treasures of their flying ships and also certain living creatures captured in the swamps. From these, they produced the Folk, the Gibi, the Tand, and the land-tending Eron.

      “Among these, the Folk were eager for wisdom and climbed high. But still the learning of the Ancient Ones remained beyond their grasp.

      “During the eons the Ancient Ones dwelt within their protecting wall of haze the outer world changed. Cold came to the north and south; the Land of Sun and the Land of Sea arose to bear the foot of true man. On their mirrors of seeing the Ancient Ones watched man-life spread across the world. They had the power of prolonging life, but still the race was dying. From without must come new blood. So certain men were summoned from the Land of the Sun. Then the race flourished for a space.

      “The Ancient Ones decided to leave Tav for the outer world. But the sea swallowed the Land of Sun. Again in the time of the Land of Sea the stock within Tav was replenished and the Ancient Ones prepared for exodus; again the sea cheated them.

      “Those men left in the outer world reverted to savagery. Since the Ancient Ones would not mingle their blood with that of almost beasts, they built the haze wall stronger and remained. But a handful of them were attracted by the forbidden, and secretly they summoned the beast men. Of that monstrous mating came the Black Ones. They live but for the evil they may do, and the power which they acquired is debased and used to forward cruelty.

      “At first their sin was not discovered. When it was, the others would have slain the offspring but for the law which forbids them to kill. They must use their power for good or it departs from them. So they drove the Black Ones to the southern end of Tav and gave them the Caves of Darkness. Never were the Black Ones to come north of the River of Gold—nor were the Ancient Ones to go south of it.

      “For perhaps two thousand years the Black Ones kept the law. But they worked, building powers of destruction. While matters rested thus, the Ancient Ones searched the world, seeking men by whom they could renew the race. Once there came men from an island far to the north. Six lived to penetrate the mists and take wives among the Daughters. Again, they called the yellow-haired men of another breed, great sea rovers.

      “But the Black Ones called too. As the Ancient Ones searched for the best, the Black Ones brought in great workers of evil. And, at last, they succeeded in shutting off the channels of sending thought so that the Ancient Ones could call no more.

      “Then did the Black Ones cross the River of Gold and enter the land of the Ancient Ones. Thran, Dweller in the Light