Hopelessly, Newlin urged Songeen to her feet. They fled, and the game began all over again.
It was a madman's dream. Desperate flight, the haunted ruins of an unknown city, deadly pursuit closing in, slowly, patiently inevitably. The familiar hare and hounds pattern of nightmare.
They fled through vague, littered streets, treacherous with the rubble of lost centuries. Buildings were lighter patterns upon the gathering darkness. Stone flagging underfoot was rough, eroded, rotten.
A pinnacled precipice rose suddenly to bar their way. Immense, sheer, buttressed by spills of loose rock, it towered above them and lost its heights in gloom.
Within a massive, deep-carved archway of stone, set an oval of polished red granite. A doorway, barren of carving save for one, scrawled and monstrous hieroglyph. Uneasiness stirred in Newlin, for something in his buried race-memories recalled that symbol with supernal dread. Ice formed about his spine and melted in trickling terror-drops. Instinct cringed, but his conscious mind rebelled at even the effort of memory.
Songeen stopped and stared at the hideously marked doorway, as if tranced.
"I remember this place," she said in swift excitement. "But I had thought it vanished—eons ago."
Newlin swerved on her angrily. "This is no time for experiments with your subconscious," he growled, savage with strain.
"It is—sanctuary," she replied softly. "Come!"