Golden Torc - 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

boat kissing the proffered hands of the ladies and toasting the men with swigs from his silver flask. In contrast, Stein Oleson sat back in the shadows with one huge arm curved protectively around Sukey, both of them apprehensive. Skipper Highjohn came to stand beside Bryan in the bows.
    He fingered the gray torc around his neck and laughed out loud.
    "We'll be on our way any minute now, Bryan. What a welcome! I've never seen anything like it. Just look at your tricky little gold friend up there! They'll have a hell of a time taming that one, if they ever do!"
    Bryan looked at the smiling brown face blankly. "What? I'm-I'm sorry, Johnny. I wasn't even listening. I thought I saw someone. A woman I once knew."
    With kind firmness the boatman pressed the anthropologist down onto one of the benches. Teamsters whipped up the hellads and the boat began to roll, accompanied by cheers and a bell-loud clangor from the escort, some of whom were beating their gem-studded shields with glowing swords. From nearly a hundred throats and minds came the Tanu Song, its melody oddly familiar to Bryan, for all that the words were alien:
    Li gan nol po'kone niesi,
    'Kone o lan li pred near,
    U taynel compri la neyn,
    Ni blepan algar dedone.
    Shompri pone, a gabrinel,
    Shal u car metan presi,
    Nar metan u bar taynel o pogekone,
    Car metan sed gone mori.
    Bryan's fingers dug into the boat's splashcover fabric. The fantastic panoply of riders swirled along the towpath as the boat mounted a long slope. There was no vegetation this close to the salty lagoon, but eroded lumps and pillars of mineral loomed in the wavering shadows like the ruins of some elfin palace. The train entered a depression between steep cliffs and bright Muriah disappeared from view. The hellad-drawn boat and its faerie escort seemed to move toward a black tunnel mouth flanked by huge broken cherubim. The Song echoed from overlooming walls.
    An old imagery reasserted itself to Bryan. A cave, deep and dark, and a loved thing lost inside. He was a small boy and the time was six million years into the future: in England, in the Mendip Hills where the family had a cottage. And his kitten, Cinders, wandered off, and he searched for three days. And finally he had stumbled upon the entrance to the little cave, barely large enough for his eight year old body to wriggle through. He had stood staring at the fetid black hole for more than an hour, knowing that he should search it but terrified at the thought.
    In the end, he had taken a small electric torch and wormed his way in. The passage twisted and angled downward. Scratched by sharp stones and nearly breathless with fear, he had slithered on. The stench from bat droppings was dreadful. All daylight vanished at a turn in the narrowing corridor; and then the crack opened into a deep cavern, too large to be illuminated by his little flashlight. He aimed the beam downward and saw no bottom. "Cinders!" he called, and his boy's voice reverberated in broken wails. There was a horrid rustle and a faint sound of squeaking. From the cave roof high above, a mist of acrid bat urine drifted upon him.
    Choking and retching, he had tried to turn around, but the crevice was too narrow. There was nothing for it but to back out on his stomach, tears streaming down his cheeks, knowing that at any moment the bats might fly into his face and sink their teeth into nose and lips and cheeks and ears. He dropped the torch as he hunched along. Maybe the light would frighten the bats. He kept going, centimeter by centimeter backward over rough stones, his knees and elbows getting rawer. The passage would never end! It was already much longer than it had been when he entered! And it was tighter, too, squeezing him beneath unimaginable tons of black rock until he knew it would press away his life...
    He came out.
    Too weak even to sob, he had lain there until the sun was low. When he was able to get up and stagger home, he found Cinders lapping a saucer of cream