The Gods of Garran by Meredith Skye Page B

The place was eerie.
    Asta was not superstitious, but now she began to wish that her task were done so that she could leave this place. There was something here. Maybe something sentient … alive … peering into her soul.
    But that was nonsense. She steeled herself against such foolish thoughts. She wasn't one of the primitive natives that someone could scare with those notions.
    Several times during the journey, Asta felt the dizziness and wondered if she had caught some disease on this trip. She wished she'd brought a Chanden med kit with her, but that could give away her true identity. If anyone realized she was Chanden, her life could be in danger. The Garrans could be violent and, this far from a real city, no one would ever find out what happened to her.
    Finally, Asta arrived at another door. It felt like she’d walked all day, but she had no way of knowing if that were true. And she'd seen no exits. This door was like the first and it was locked shut. She set her pack down and again touched the door, as she had the first. For several moments nothing happened, then the dizziness returned and when it passed, the door began to open.
    Asta walked through and found herself in a wider passage that led upward. This one was lighter, as though she were near the outside. Before long she came to a large entryway with a black obsidian floor, similar to the one at the other entrance, again with moonstone pillars, seven of them.
    Asta hurried across the room and to the archway. Daylight streamed through it. Pleased, Asta went outside onto a large terrace, wondering whether there would be a path from here that would connect up to the one she had come on before.
    What she saw when she got outside astounded her—it was a huge lake, placid and beautiful. Near the terrace, the lake ended in a large dam. She almost laughed. That was the mysterious will of the gods that the villagers all feared—a dam. She doubted that any of them knew it was here. A reservoir of water that could sustain a city a thousand times as large as Wanthe. All they needed was to release the water.
    Relieved and happy now to be out of the mountain, and away from the dizziness and whispering, Asta used her transmitter to send a message to the Agency, letting them know she was all right and that she was on top of the mountain.
    Now she put her mind to this problem: where were the controls for the dam?
    On the terrace, in a small alcove, was a single moonstone pillar slightly shorter than a man’s height. The top was rounded, so that it looked like some kind of crystal ball, except that it was made of moonstone. The surface was plain with a single rune on it—“bor”. God. Asta wasn’t sure where she knew that from and the thought gave her a chill.
    The lake was nearly a hundred feet below, and the cliffs were shear on either side. There was no visible path down. However, sure that there was a control somewhere, Asta searched inside the entry chamber.
    The search turned up nothing, no other doorways, no panels, no controls anywhere. Confused, Asta sat down to rest. There had to be a way. This was the most likely point to control the dam, as it was closest to it.
    The more Asta considered it, the more unlikely it seemed that this dam was built by the Garrans—they simply weren’t advanced enough. They could barely build cities of their own. Tradition held that the Borrai built the seven God-cities. But these Borrai must have been another race, perhaps one now dead. Other inhabited planets in this sector had no records of such a race.
    The Garrans accused the Chanden of killing their gods. But the legends said there were only seven Borrai. Surely there were more of the Borrai than that—if they were a separate race. Or had the Chanden truly killed off an entire advanced race when they landed here a hundred years ago? The thought was disturbing.
    Distantly, Asta heard singing--a high-pitched, familiar tune. She realized it was the song from her dream. Slowly