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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.
Never again would Asti's servant wear the soft stuff of His Livery. But she was resolute enough when she picked up the food pouch and strode forward, passing out of the robing chamber into a narrow way which was a natural fault in the rock unsmoothed by the tools of man. But when this rocky road ended upon the lip of a gorge, Varta hesitated, plucking at the throat latch of her hood-like helmet.
There were supplies here too, lying untouched in ageless containers within a lizard-skin pouch. Varta touched her tongue without fear to a powdered restorative, sharing it with Lur, whose own mailed skin would protect him through the dangers to come. She folded the regalia she had stripped off and laid it in the chest, smoothing it regretfully before she dropped the lid upon its shimmering color.
His nostrils expanded to their widest, his long neck outstretched, he was swinging his head back and forth across the limpid shallows. "What is it ?" "This is no water such as we know," the scaled one answered flatly. "It has life within it." Varta laughed. "Fish, water snakes, your own distant kin, Lur. It is the scent of them which you catch " "No.
He pulled himself up and looked dazedly around, striking out wildly with his fists. Catching sight of the clumsy suit Lur had taken from him he pulled at it, looking at the two before him as if he feared some attack. Varta turned to Lur for help. She might read minds and use the wordless speech of Lur.
It is the water itself which lives and yet does not live " His thought trailed away from her as he struggled with some problem. No human brain could follow his unless he willed it so. Varta squatted back on her heels and began to look at the water and then at the banks with more care.
But of those who had once been at home there, there remained no trace. Lur, having given one glance to the furnishings, was prowling about the far end of the cabin uncertainly, and now he voiced his uneasiness. "There is something beyond, something which once had life " Varta crowded up to him.
There was a hood to cover the entire head, taloned gloves for the hands, webbed, clawed coverings for the feet as if the skin of a giant, man-like lizard had been tanned and fashioned into this suit. And Varta suspected that that might be so the world of Erb had not always been held by the human-kind alone.
But at Varta's upflung arm it uttered a rasping cry and planed down into the mass of vegetation below. By the glint of sunlight on the stone around them the day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at Lur's mane until he roused. There was a regularity to the rocks piled about their sleeping place which hinted that they had lain among the ruins left by man.
"This way ," her companion's sudden turn was to the left and Varta was quick to follow him down a slide of rock. Lur's instinct was right, as it ever was. There was water before them, a small lake of it. But even as he dipped his fanged muzzle toward that inviting surface, Lur's spined head jerked erect again. Varta snatched back the hand she had put out, staring at Lur's strange actions.
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