Bova, Ben Orion 01 Orion Phoenix

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Ahriman had trapped me in the first time we had met. But this was a natural cave, not a bubble of
captured energy. The heat was coming from a natural source. Magma from the volcano, I reasoned.
Perhaps I was moving deeper underground, rather than toward daylight.
I stopped, panting in the dank, heavy air, and tried to think it out. That got me nowhere; I simply did not
have enough information. Then I tried to put myself in Ahriman's place. What was he going to do?
Destroy the Goat Clan, came the answer.
How? I asked myself. The attack on the clans had failed. They would be on guard now. Instead of
driving them out of the valley, the attack probably made them realize how precious the grain fields were.
They might well have decided by now to stay in the valley year-round, to protect the grain against
marauders.
But Ahriman is no fool, I told myself. He would have foreseen that.
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Then the true purpose of the attack must have been to entice the clans into staying in the valley. But that
did not make sense unless Ahriman planned to destroy the clans and the valley itself, together!
How? Earthquake? Could the Dark One control tectonic forces? I didn't know. But the answer came to
me soon enough, as I lay there in my lightless prison of rock. I heard a loud, slapping, sloshing noise from
far below me. A wave was surging through the underground river that flowed down there in the darkness.
"A flood," I said aloud, my voice strangely hoarse and muffled against the close confines of rock. My
thoughts raced. Underground heat to melt the underground ice. The stream that runs through the valley
will burst out of the mountainside in an uncontrollable flood. The clans will never have a chance of getting
out. The valley will be drowned, together with everyone in it.
Even as I lay there, it was beginning to happen. The water was lapping noisily below me, getting closer,
rising to where I lay trapped in this prison of stone. I would be the first one to drown. Ahriman had
planned well.
Going through death and being reborn does not make you eager to face death again. Ormazd was in
control of my destiny, I knew, but the more I learned about the Golden One and his powers, the more I
became aware of his limitations. If he had the power, he would have dealt with Ahriman directly, without
need of me or any intermediary. He had power enough to pull me through death and project me into
another time and place at least twice. But what assurance did I have that he could do it again, or would
do it again, or even that he knew where I was and what I was facing? I felt totally alone, facing the choice
of waiting for the water to rise up and drown me or plunging down into it and trying to find a way back
out to daylight. Time was vital. If I survived at all, it was crucial that I get to Dal and Ava in time to warn
them of the flood.
I made up my mind, took a deep breath, and rolled over the edge of the rock and dropped like one of
my tossed stones down toward the water. There was plenty of time for me to be frightened; the fall was a
long one. I oriented my body feet downward, the best way to take such a dive. I found myself wondering
how deep the water was; I might break my neck before I drowned.
The water felt like cement when I finally hit it, and then I was plummeting deep, deep down in icy black
water, every nerve shocked numb, no sensory input except a painful bubbling in my ears.
I bobbed to the surface at last, took a deep, happy breath, and half swam, half rode the current
wherever it was leading me. I had the feeling it was in the direction opposite to the one in which I had
been crawling.
After what seemed like hours, I banged my flailing arms against solid rock. The river swirled and surged
against a blank wall, but I could feel from the undertow that it dipped into a deeper tunnel and kept
flowing on. There was no airspace in that tunnel, I realized, but I had no choice except to follow it. I filled
my lungs and then dove under, letting the current carry me along.
The oxygen in my lungs was soon exhausted; yet the river still flowed in its natural tunnel. I began to
squeeze oxygen from the spare cells of my body, consciously shutting down whole muscle systems and
organs that I didn't need, taking their stored oxygen to feed to my heart and brain and limbs. I began to
die, bit by bit, like the lights of a city winking out in a power failure, one section after another. Desperate,
I slowed down my heartbeat and brought myself into a virtual catatonic trance, passively flowing along
the underground river, starving for oxygen, not knowing if I would ever see the light of day again.
It seemed like months went by, but finally the darkness around me began to brighten and I floated to the
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surface of the river.
Air! Real, breathable air. It tasted wonderful as my body returned to life and I gulped in huge lungfuls of
the most precious substance on Earth.
The river was emptying itself into a huge cave, turning it into a vast underground cistern. I dragged myself
up onto dry, rocky ground, every part of my body jangling from lack of blood circulation. Sunlight filtered
from an opening in the vast cave, far overhead. I was much too weak even to try to reach it.
CHAPTER 31
For hours there was nothing I could do but lie there on the rock-strewn dirt and try to recover my
strength. But every moment of that time, the water behind me rose higher, splashing and gurgling as it
filled this natural underground cistern. Soon enough it began lapping at my feet as I lay stretched prone on
the damp ground.
I forced myself to stand and began scrabbling up the sloping wall of the huge cave, toward the opening
where the sun's light streamed in. The bare earth was loose and pebbly, difficult to climb. With each step
forward I was in danger of sliding all the way back. But I struggled upward and finally pushed myself
through the narrow fissure of rock and out into the daylight.
Looking back, I saw that the underground river was filling up the cave. When it reached the rock ceiling,
the water would have nowhere to go but outward, exploding through the rock that held it back, gushing
down into the valley below with the force of a tidal wave that would sweep everything before it.
I staggered down the steep slope of the valley wall, my legs weak and rubbery from exertion. Through
blurring eyes I could see the valley spread out below me in the late afternoon sun, beautiful, peaceful,
vulnerable. I had to get down to Ava and Dal and warn the people.
Tottering with exhaustion, I made my way toward the grain fields. People were at work there, cutting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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