In his ears was the deafening roar of the winds from beneath, winds which tore at him with cyclonic fury as they rushed up from the dark depths of the shaft. Staring down into that shaft Rowan could see nothing, since its interior was of intense and unrelieved blackness, without spark of light. As seconds passed, though, and his eyes became more accustomed to the blackness beneath, he seemed to sense, rather than see, a quiver of light far below, a wavering, flickering of light that lasted for but a moment and then vanished. And then he glimpsed something far below that was rising swiftly toward him, something that gleamed a little in the white light from above him. The platform!
Abruptly there was a sound of sharp movement behind Rowan, and he whirled around, then stood motionless. At the mound's west edge there stood a single one of the scaled, unhuman lizard-creatures, his eyes full upon Rowan. From down the great path came the rasping squeak of the voices of the other two, but the one was silent, staring straight toward him. Then, with a movement inconceivably swift, he had leapt forward.
Rowan cried out as the creature leapt, then felt himself grasped by powerful, taloned claws, thrown to the ground, whirling about at the pit's edge in threshing combat. He heard a harsh cry from the creature that grasped him, heard the cries of the other two as they raced now to his aid. The two struggling figures were at the very rim of the great shaft, now, rolling and twisting, and in one uppermost moment Rowan glimpsed the mighty disk-platform sweeping up out of the depths of that shaft, hovering motionless at its mouth, beside him.
He staggered to his feet, still in the other's grasp, striking frantically out with clenched fists. Now the other two had raced up on the mound, he saw, and were leaping toward the combat. Then Rowan gave a frantic wrench and twist, felt himself and the creature holding him tottering at the rim of the abyss, and then they had fallen, still striking and twisting, had fallen upon the great disk as it hovered momentarily at the pit's edge beside them, and locked still in deadly combat upon that disk were sinking ever more swiftly downward, into the darkness of the giant shaft, into the raging of the deafening winds, down, down, down....
4
For how many minutes he struggled thus with his lizard-thing opponent on the great disk, Rowan could not guess. Twisting, squirming, striking, the two rolled about, and then as the powerful muscles of the creature began to wear down his own resistance, Rowan put forth all his strength in one last effort. Grasping the scaled body of the creature with his left arm he encircled its conical head with his right and twisted that head back with all his force. There was a moment of intense effort, a frantic threshing of the creature in his grasp, and then a muffled snap as of breaking bones, and the thing lay limp and still. Rowan scrambled up to his knees, panting.
Around him now roared the deafening torrents of ascending and descending winds, and a few feet away from him the smooth metal wall of the great shaft was flashing upward with immense speed as the disk shot downward. From high above a pale white light fell down upon him, a little circle of white radiance that was swiftly contracting, dwindling, as the disk flashed down. In a moment it had dwindled to a spark of light, and then had vanished entirely. And then about Rowan was only darkness—darkness and the thundering bellow of the raging winds.
He crept to the edge of the great disk, now, peered down over the low protecting rail that rimmed it, straining his eyes down through the darkness. The flicker of light he had glimpsed from above was clear now to his eyes, a tiny patch of quivering red light that was growing rapidly stronger, larger, as the disk flashed down toward it. Crouched at the great descending platform's edge Rowan gazed down toward it, hair blown back by the great winds that raged past him, clinging to his hold against their tremendous force. The patch of illumination was swiftly broadening, until it lay across all the shaft far below, a crimson, quivering glare.
And now it seemed to Rowan that the downward-shooting disk-platform was slowing a little its tremendous speed. The gleaming walls around him were not flashing upward so swiftly, he thought, and then even as that thought came to him the great disk shot down out of the darkness of the shaft and into a glare of lurid crimson light, into a titanic, cavernous space which seemed to his eyes in that moment limitless.