streambank. Taking that as an order to proceed, Neko suppressed any final reservation and climbed into the hole. What lay below was unknown. Others might quail before the prospect of crawling blindfolded into the unknown, but to Neko a mystery was always compelling. For the moment he might be deprived of the use of his eyes, but he had other senses, and he trusted those implicitly.
The opening was naturally small, but the passage opened up almost immediately. For a while. He soon discovered that the elves were correct about the tightness of the way, but tight passages were Neko's playground, and making his way through them was how he had earned his living and no little part of his reputation. In darkness, he crawled deeper into the earth, scraping through ever smaller spaces that made his burden even more an inconvenience than the blindfold. To deal with that he unslung the bag and pushed it ahead of him as he went.
The air was at first cool and damp, but no more than was natural. As he progressed, however, it became drier and warmer than it should be. His skin began to prickle.
At last, Neko emerged into an open space. It was large, but he had none of the sense of vastness he had felt in other caverns. A hint of light touched the edges of the blindfold. His skin began to itch, and he wondered if he was feeling the workings of the place's defensive magic. Was the blindfold doing its work? He would know if he removed it, but then he would forfeit the protection the elves had said it offered.
Neko felt a sense of peace in the chamber, not the sort of thing one would expect if magics were seeking to deny an intruder. Curious. The satchel in his hand vibrated slightly, the' object reacting to something in front of him. He took a step forward and the vibrations increased. Step by cautious step, he moved forward, following the ebb and flow of his burden's vibrations, always moving in the direction of the strongest. He finally noticed that at one spot any movement seemed to result in a lessening of the vibrations. This, then, was the spot.
He lay the satchel down, opened the flap, and reached in. Without removing the object, he began to unwrap it. The sense of peace lessened as he peeled away layer after layer of what felt like cloth wrappings. Something felt wrong. Fearful that he was opening himself to danger, Neko reconsidered the wisdom of trusting the elves.
Lacking sight, he was at a disadvantage. But lacking the blindfold, he was at the mercy of the defensive magics of this place. Or so the elves had said. Even though he was supposed to be in danger here, somehow Neko did not feel threatened. The elves hid their faces, preventing him from seeing their true appearance, and in here they had him wearing a blindfold. For what reason? To protect him, they had said, but might they not have other reasons as well? A blindfold, whether magically endowed or not, served a mundane purpose; it deprived the wearer of sight. Perhaps there was something in the cavern that the elves did not wish him to see. But what?
And to whose benefit was it that he did not see whatever it was?
Theirs, most likely.
Perhaps it would be more to his advantage to see what he was not supposed to see, even though removing the blindfold might forfeit his magical protection. Having already penetrated to this place, Neko decided that he no longer needed protection against the magics that would have denied him entrance.
Also, he had achieved what the elves had asked of him; he had fulfilled his job, one might say, and was now on his own time. Curiosity overcoming the last shreds of caution, he decided to remove the blindfold. Before doing so, he focused his ki as he had been taught. If this course of action were rash, he wanted to be as ready as possible. When Neko was satisfied that he was attuned to his surroundings, he stood, readying himself for the worse, then he pulled the rag away from his eyes. Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes and immediately squinted to protect his dark-accustomed eyes from the light in the chamber. Through slitted lids, he marveled at the sight of a cavern swirling with eldritch light. Strange hues sparkled and glimmered on fantastic rock formations, colors drifting across the scene like strands of fog across a lake. As his eyes adjusted somewhat, Neko could see that he stood near the center of the open space, next to a large plinth of some sort. He turned his attention to it.
Sitting atop a carved wooden framework was a large, faceted crystal of remarkable clarity, its top more than a meter above his head. Each face of the translucent stone was carved with strange symbols and pictures. Though Neko did not recognize them, the symbols seemed regular enough to be writing. The pictures were strange, too, stylized in a curious, elongated way. Some were simple geometric shapes and others were complex interweavings of line that hurt his eyes when he tried to follow their convolutions. A few were more representative and seemed to be beasts of many forms, including several dragons. Curiously, the carvings on the wooden framework that supported the stone seemed cruder, as if a less skilled hand had copied them from those on the stone.
He knelt by the satchel and felt the object the elves had given him. Yes, it too was faceted and carved. Removing the last layer of wrapping, but careful to keep the object within the satchel, he held it in his hands and peered into the bag. It was another crystal, almost a miniature version of the one that dominated the cavern, except that the elves' stone was tinted slightly red. Like the larger one, it was carved; some of the images were similar, but most were very different from both the framework carvings and the emblems on the great crystal. The arrangement and subjects of both stones suggested that each had a different purpose. Carefully, Neko removed the stone from the satchel.
Nothing happened.
He rotated the elves' crystal until its long axis was vertical, like that of the cavern's crystal. Moving it back and forth until he could ascertain the place where the elven crystal vibrated most strongly, he placed it on the cavern floor, propping it upright by tucking the satchel around its base. Then he stepped back in wonder as the crystals began to sing to each other.
Kham's position let him look down into the clearing where the elves had set up their magical apparatus. He watched as they blindfolded the Jap kid and led him over to the stream. Then he watched Neko squirm down into a hole and disappear. Seeing the perfor mance Kham wondered if the kid didn't have a separate deal with the elves.
Once Neko had disappeared underground, the elves returned to the clearing, where they fussed with their magic junk for a while. One of them, the more angular one who Neko had dubbed the Dark One, squatted down in the center of a triangle marked out by three tall poles. After setting up some occult devices of crystal and silver wire, the elf began to chant over them while his partner walked around the poles shaking a wand and scattering powder. Magic stuff, no doubt about it, but it didn't look to Kham like anything he'd ever seen Sally Tsung do.
The Light One finally settled down halfway between one of the poles and the hole where Neko had disappeared. As the elf crossed his legs and stretched his arms wide, Kham thought he could see a faint green light outlining the mage's hands, but he couldn't be sure. The Dark One remained squatting in the center of his triangle, singing. Kham could make out the tune, a strange awkward thing, but none of the words were clear; they sounded foreign.
Kham knew that magic rituals sometimes had to be performed in certain places and at certain times. Sally had told him. So, this crazy run was starting to make sense, as much as anything connected to magic made sense. These elves wanted mundane protection while they did their stuif. The spells would warn them of magical trouble, which was just as well because they were the only ones out here who could handle that drek, and the runners would cover the real world, protecting the elves against any mundanes butting in.
Kham couldn't see the connection with Neko crawling into the hole, though. Maybe it had some kind of ritual symbolism.
The glow around the Light One's hands became definite. With a flash that startled Kham, a spark leapt from each of the elf's hands and converged on the pole behind him. The crystal at the top of the pole kindled to life, flashing beams of jade light to the crystals topping the other two poles, kindling them also. In the glow of the crystals, the clearing was bathed in a wan, iridescent light, as the strange assemblies of silver and crystal situated at the midpoints between the poles began to hum. Kham had the sense of a generator sparking to life.
'I got movement out here,' John Parker whispered excitedly on the radio link. He was on the eastern edge of the perimeter.
Kham tore his eyes from the spectacle of the ritual working and tried to see John Parker's position, but trees blocked his line of sight. Out beyond the perimeter the forest seemed quiet. ' 'Injuns?''
'Naw,' John Parker responded. 'Not unless they're coming to visit in a tank.'
'If dey was in a tank, we'd hear it. Can't be.' John Parker sounded unconvinced. 'Whatever it is, it's big enough to be a tank.'
