Beast Master's Quest by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2006-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Logan was already recording the startling walls of the small chamber. Storm raised his own recorder and followed suit. As he turned he could see that this small, half-melted building was only an antechamber. From one corner a long ramp descended into darkness. He raised his flashlight, and using the powerful beam he swept its light downward to show the ramp and walls that enclosed it. This time it was Tani who cried out.

“Storm! Look!”

“I see. Logan, over here. Record everything you can see.” There were more exclamations as Logan and Laris saw what Storm was already capturing on his recorder.

“Odd perspective,” Tani commented.

Storm shrugged. “Maybe it represents a god’s-eye view?”

They studied the illustrated walls. Around them in a full-blown riot of color ran murals depicting the aikizai and their liomsa. All intelligent beings were shown three-quarter-faced, while the perspective from which they were painted was from a position slightly above them and the landscapes they inhabited. As if whoever had depicted them was hovering ten or twelve feet in the air.

Storm had been studying the work. “Look at the differences in the depiction of the peoples. The aikizai seem smaller in comparison to their liomsa. That may be merely an artistic convention, or it may suggest that to the painters the humanoids are more important or more intelligent than their companions. But the depiction of the liomsa isn’t quite the same as the ones we met, either.”

Logan looked more closely. “The murals could be old.”

“Maybe.” Storm swept the light along the ramp walls. “Look here.”

Tani was using her own flashlight to illuminate the walls by now, while Laris turned her own beam on the ramp.

“Storm, how long would it take for this material to be affected?”

“Affected?” He saw what her flashlight was showing and dropped to one knee on the ramp’s first few feet. He touched the ramp, attempted to dig his fingers into the material, and rubbed his gloved fingertips over the marks Laris had pointed out. Then he looked up.

“Logan, toss me a sample bag and a brush.” He swept the ramp’s surface, collecting a tiny pile of what appeared to be dust from the material which composed it. This he placed in the sample bag before handing that and the brush back to Logan.

“I’m not sure what the material is, but it’s pretty hard. I’d say it’s taken a long time to make those marks.”

They all stood considering the wide, shallow, worn-in hollows down the ramp. A large number of feet and paws had traveled up and down the surface to leave wear like that. Prauo had his nose to the ramp, breathing in slowly.

*Many many people, liomsa and aikizai, most of them young. Some time ago: the scents do not seem recent.*

“How long ago?” Tani asked. “Can you tell?”

*Maybe sixty to ninety days in this place.* He moved down the ramp, checking it from side to side. *I smell older scents, from earlier, and earlier again. I think it may be that the liomsa

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