Mythos Omnibus Vol II by Brian Lumley

Author:Brian Lumley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 1997-01-01T23:16:34+00:00

7 The People of the Cave

When they were well underway and de Marigny could give his attention to things other than the firm control of his flying cloak, he managed to reach down and receive from Silberhutte the fastenings of the other's harness. Not without some difficulty he then clipped his passenger's straps safely into position. Now at last, while the big Texan hung in comparative comfort below, de Marigny was able to work his own dangling legs and stretch them, bringing life back to them after their crushing by Silberhutte's mighty. arms.

The three dragonships were mere matchsticks floating far below and behind them by then, while ahead the rocky, natural bastions of the island loomed ever closer. Gradually climbing higher into the sky of Numinos, they had at last seen that indeed the island was in the shape of a regular, five-pointed star. It appeared that in some bygone age there had been five mountains, all of a height and probably volcanic. As time passed, the elements had whittled the formation into a single star-shape on the outside while forming an irregular lake within. Steam and a little smoke, puffing up still from the centre of the vast, still lake, showed that volcanic activity was not yet extinct in the area; but soon, as the bats began a breathtaking descent and de Marigny followed suit, the central lake was lost to sight behind the topmost spires of the exterior mountains.

Down the great bats fell in a spiralling stream, and rushing up to greet them came the jagged fangs of secondary peaks, crested now with tufts of white cloud that formed ever faster as Borea slipped in front of the sun to shut out its light and warming rays. Darkhour was almost here, and so chill the wind howling over the mountains that de Marigny felt obliged to take yet another pinch of Annahilde's warming powder.

Then the winds were suddenly shut off, and the view beyond the mountains disappeared in an instant as the fliers fell below the level of the range to continue their descent oceanward. They were coming down in a bay formed of two of the island's starfish arms, and they could now see and hear the wash of ocean on the rocks far below and marvel at the gaunt appearance of the inhospitable coastline. Here the ocean-facing cliffs rose black and threatening, almost perpendicular from the sea, so that it seemed almost impossible for anyone approaching by ship to gain any sort of foothold upon them.

Stark and bare, the place looked uninhabitable, and yet the fliers were certain that there were people here: the people of the cavern that Silberhutte had seen in telepathic pictures snatched from the minds of the great bats; those same creatures that now skimmed unhesitatingly toward a shadowed entrance whose mouth loomed darkly ominous in the rocky wall some forty feet above the level of the choppy sea.

A few seconds later, hot on the trail of the hindmost bat, the fliers entered a deep high-ceilinged cave.

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