Beneath Strange Stars

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “To bargain for their release,” Challenger explained. “I only left Shamballa because I ascertained from my studies of your records that you prized an object stolen long ago by the repti…by your brethren of the swamplands.”

  Challenger opened his knapsack and withdrew the strange crystalline object.

  The chamber was filled with sudden hissing, like a nest of vipers roused to fury.

  The priest grabbed the object with such violence that its talons nicked and scraped the surface.

  “What is the matter?’ Challenger demanded.

  “Not quite what I expected, Challenger,” Rollo remarked.

  “The diamossai vanished from Shamballa long cycles ago and we thought not to see it again,” the priest explained. “It was taken in the last raid ever conducted by those dwelling in darkness.”

  “Then what is the problem?” Challenger persisted.

  “Having taken what they thought to be of great value, they installed it in a temple of their own fashioning and worshipped it in their ignorance,” the priest said. “They were content in their foolishness, and though we tell tales of it and remember when it was in our city, a link to the world before, we let it remain with the ignorant to preserve our peace.”

  Challenger quickly explained the situation to his friends, then turned back and said: “I only wanted to ransom my friends without violence.”

  It was hard to gauge the emotions on the priest’s scaly face, in his unblinking obsidian eyes. “Did you gaze into the crystal?”

  Challenger shook his head. The priest handed the crystal back, and Challenger and the others crowded close to peer within.

  Within the shimmering, glinting interior, they saw strange landscapes beneath the watchful eye of a ringed planet looming large in a sky filled with constellations none could recognize. A mountain rose like the throne of a god. Reptilians and beings like men performed strange rituals within rings of standing stones, calling forth leaping blue fires.

  “The world before,” the priest explained. “Those who dwell in darkness worship the images without understanding anything about them…and they leave us alone.”

  Suddenly the cavern shook, and a thunderous sound rumbled through stones and bones.

  “What the devil!” Challenger exclaimed, nearly losing his grip.

  A guard rushed to the priest’s side and hissed frantically.

  “We are being attacked,” the priest explained to the humans. “Shamballa is under siege.”

  At the entrance they saw a mass of swampland lizard creatures surging forward, while overhead German airships loosed missile after missile at the mountainside.

  “Murgatroyd won’t be able to help us,” Rollo said to Challenger’s questioning gaze. “The Astronef is not a warship, and with him guiding it, he cannot at the same time use any weapons.”

  “What have I wrought?” Challenger murmured.

  The attack by the two foes was as uncoordinated as it was savage, and the carnage was all the greater for it. The humans fought back with rifles and handguns against the swamplanders, with little effect, and with energy weapons against the airships, to no effect because of their distance.

  The defenders of Shamballa fought their savage cousins with spear and arrow, but they seemed as endless as the waves of the sea upon the shore. And they rolled the shattered carcass of the Albatross before them, overcoming the weight of the ship by dint of sheer numbers, pushing it as if it were a war trophy, or a totem of strange godhood.

  “I say, can you clear those blighters away from the Albatross?” Cavor asked.

  The reptilians scattered before bullet and bolt.

  “What’s your idea, Cavor?” Challenger asked.

  “I think we can use it to clear away those Hun zeps.”

  “I thought you said it would never fly again.”

  “Oh, no, not quite. It’s not spaceworthy, but the gravity louvers should still function adequately enough to guide it through the atmosphere,” Cavor explained. “It is not without danger, but it’s our only hope of ending that barrage.”

  “Tell me what to do!”

  “Only I can fly it!” And Cavor darted from the mouth of the cavern, moving as swiftly as his injured leg would allow.

  Challenger started after the thin inventor, but Blake pulled him back and ran after instead. With his rife, Challenger shot reptile after reptile that would have otherwise attacked the two daring humans. Minutes after Blake and Cavor entered the Albatross it leapt skyward and shot toward the half-dozen airships.

  “If they survive,” John Bell said, “there’s no way the ship can withstand another landing; it will bust up for sure!”

  The hurtling Albatross passed through the nearest airship like a massive cannonball, then abruptly careened toward the next. Immediately the airships ceased their attack and attempted to avoid the hurtling sphere of death, but to no avail. Hydrogen balloonettes erupted into furious flame. The last airship fired a missile. It struck the Albatross with a sickening burst of fire and smoke, but the flaming Albatross continued in its deadly flight.

  “Just as Blake did with the dynamite boat against the French,” Rollo murmured. “Brave chaps, both of them.”

  “Aye, but no last-minute leap to safety this time, I fear,” Bell said sadly.

  Challenger watched in helpless fury, feeling as if a great hand gripped his throat, as the doomed craft and its brave crew struck the final airship, which immediately burst into flame and dropped from out the sky.

  “Look!” Zaidie cried, pointing upward.

  All eyes, even those of the reptile people, followed her pointing finger and saw two white forms descending slowly, menaced by falling fiery debris, but avoiding any collisions.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Challenger gasped.

  “Parachutes!” Bell cried. “I forgot all about those.”

  “And to think of all the grief we gave Cavor for including parachutes among the supplies of an aethership.”

  The danger posed by the Germans was past, but the menace of the swampland lizard men, come in quest of their lost god, remained. And Challenger knew there was only one thing to do about it, just as there was just one person who could do it.

  “No, Challenger, stop!” Rollo cried.

  “Professor!” Zaidie shouted.

  But Challenger shook off their restraining grips and walked into the field of battle, carrying the ancient crystalline device before him. Instantly, the swampland warriors ceased fighting and watched the approach of the human. A lizard man in decorated glossy leather armour and attended by two others marched forward to meet Challenger. Before they met, however, a spear dug into the ground at Challenger’s feet. Challenger set the object down and backed away. The two attendants rushed forward, seized the looted thing and carried it back to their master, who touched it reverently, cast a final venomous look at Challenger and took it away. In minutes, the field of battle was empty, the lizard warriors slithering into the heavy foliage, on their way back to their swampy home where they would install again the ancient scrying crystal they held as divine.

  Later, in a meeting room, they sat at a stone table. Cavor and Blake were a bit singed for their efforts but otherwise unharmed.

  “The swamplanders will not return now that they have regained their totem,” the priest of the Shamballans said, Challenger translating for the others.

  “And you’ll not see any German airships,” Challenger said. “The destruction will be blamed on either the Albatross or the Astronef; either way, complaints will be lodged with the British authorities on Venus, but no one will be looking for Shamballa.”

  “Good,” Rollo said. “We are anxious to be on our way.”

  “No one may leave Shamballa,” the priest informed the humans after Challenger translated the statement. “If you leave, you will speak of us, and more outlanders will come.”

  “We will swear to secrecy,” Rollo protested. “You would have our words, and the word of an Englishman is sacrosanct.” />
  The priest shook his head, slowly, sadly.

  “What if you held one of us as a hostage?” Bell asked.

  “No one is being held a hostage!” Rollo protested hotly and the others agreed.

  “Who would stay?” the priest asked.

  “I would,” Challenger replied. “This is my responsibility.”

  “Out of the question!” Rollo protested.

  “We could not possibly abandon you, Professor,” Zaidie said.

  “I shall remain behind!” John Bell declared.

  “I cannot allow that, Bell,” Challenger replied. “As the leader of this expedition, I…”

  “I will stay,” Bell repeated. “I do it willingly, and gladly, and for not entirely altruistic reasons. In Shamballa, there is a lifetime of study and discovery, more than a lifetime. My discussions with the Shamballan High Lama revealed a new vista of knowledge, the very learning for which I have searched all my life, but never found on Earth. Believe me, my friends, I offer to do this without reservation, without regret.”

  When the proposition was put to the priest, he was motionless for a long period, and no one could tell what thoughts played through his unfathomable brain. Finally he nodded.

  “Should any human return to Shamballa,” he said, “you will be put to death. Please make sure your companions understand that.”

  They did, but they did not like it. Still, there was no other choice.

  Minutes later, John Bell watched from the entrance to Shamballa as Rollo fired the Very pistol into the air to summon his ship. But before the Astronef lifted away, Bell turned and vanished within, not wanting to see their agonized faces watching him remain behind, so that when they looked back they saw nothing but the cleft in the Shining Mountain, which grew small and vanished as the aethership sped toward Port Victoria.

  Even in the ancient world, they were conscious of an even greater antiquity beneath their ‘modern’ veneer. When I watched the Sword & Sandal films in vogue during the late 50s, early 60s, Hercules (or the Sons of Hercules, as some of the films were packaged) was always fighting some ancient evil, some monster that had survived the end of its age, usually in the ruins of long-vanished cities upon misty islands, relics of the Age of Titans. I always liked Sterling Lanier’s tales of Brigadier Ffellowes, which appeared originally in F&SF, for much the same reason, and at least once he encountered an ancient evil I thought vanquished in a Sword & Sandal film. In this vignette, Kira comes upon an old place and meets an entity who has survived into our own age only as a name and a legend.

  The Tower in the Forest

  A Tale of the Age of Bronze

  Kira crouched in deepening shadows not far from the forest road and listened to the wind, the voice of the forest and her own beating heart. The warriors had gone, but they would watch for a bronze-clad woman moving near the road, and then she would find herself hauled before the dais of the Elder of Louras-Dhorn, who wanted her head for many reasons.

  If, however, she could reach Yoran, she would find sanctuary in the Temple of the Goddess. In the twilight, the dangers of the forest were unknown, but they were preferable to the known dangers of the road.

  She paused by the warrior who had come upon her, gently pushing down his eyelids. It was ill luck to endure a dead man’s stare. The sigil of a river eel shown spectrally upon his breastplate. Using the man’s round shield she dug a shallow grave in the humus, both to keep his body from being discovered and to keep his spirit from wandering. She placed his weapons at his side – though an enemy he was still a brother-in-arms – then pushed the humus over him with her hands.

  Overhead, between the spreading limbs of clustered trees, the first stars glimmered. The moon was a hairline of silver cradling a shadowy orb, the aspect of the Goddess people called slayer of men, Our Lady of Darkness or, simply, Hecate.

  Kira glided through the forest. Her bronze did not betray her passage even to small forest creatures. Those predators who lurked more silent that Kira were held at bay by the sharpness of the sword in its sheath and her awareness of their presence.

  If she journeyed straight through, she reckoned she could reach Yoran before dawn and slip through the gates undetected. Though shrines and altars had been erected in recent years to the gods of men, cruel and hungry for blood, the followers of the Goddess had remained strong and still held sway, the last Kira had heard.

  Toward the center of the night, Kira saw a light in the forest. She slowed her cautious pace. While the Bretonian forest was not heavily peopled, those dwelling outside cities were usually solitary and lawless, well avoided if possible.

  It was a tower of pale stone in a clearing’s center, light showing through three tiers of windows, the lower two covered by panes of mica, the third by isinglass pulled to transparency. A thin trail of aromatic smoke curled upward from a hearth. Left of center, from where Kira crouched, was a door of ash. The dark of the moon seemed balanced upon the tower’s summit.

  Although the tower was not overtly infused with menace, Kira decided to keep on for Yoran. From bitter experience, Kira knew how difficult it was to be aware of danger’s advent when drinking ale and warming oneself before a hearth.

  A twig cracked, a naked foot scraped across a patch of soft earth. As Kira sank into the brush, a pair of hands gripped her and flung her from hiding.

  Kira’s dagger flashed and the roar of discovery from her attacker became a scream of agony. Another slash and the scream died, but not before others took up the cry.

  The body of the man fell away, but it was not entirely a man. If a man were totally removed from all the gentle aspects of civilization, had known only lust, never love, had dwelt for years in the heart of darkness, he might become the thing that now lay at Kira’s feet, oozing dark life into the humus.

  Shadows thrashed and howled, sounding like a legion of demons. The lesson of the pain-filled cry had not been lost, for they advanced slowly but inexorably. Kira entered the clearing, her sword drawn and a prayer to the Goddess upon her lips.

  She held hr sword at the ready. If they meant to have her, then, by the strength of the Goddess, she would take many with her. When the foul creatures emerged from the woodline, she kept her icy eyes directly upon them. Like animals, they averted their gazes, but still they advance.

  Then they halted, moved back swiftly and vanished into the night. Silence surged back.

  Kira turned. The door of the tower had opened, though Kira had not heard it. A man stood silhouetted against the light. For an instant, he seemed to wear a helmet of antlers, but the illusion vanished and the figure became merely a man holding a staff.

  “They’re easily startled,” the man said. “They’ll wait for awhile but will weary of a hunt that does not end quickly. They’ll move on. I offer shelter, warrior, hospitality until the danger is past.”

  Kira hesitated, but only for a moment. If nothing else, one enemy was easier to face than a score.

  Kira entered, sword still at the ready. She saw no one was hiding within, then turned her attention fully upon her host.

  He lowered a bar across the ash door. He was of medium height for the men of the region, but was a head shorter than Kira. He was stocky, compact, muscular beneath his robe, which was blue trimmed with silver. His hair and beard flowed together in tightly coiled black ringlets.

  The lower floor of the tower was a single circular room. To the right, near the hearth where fire danced, stone stairs arched into a rectangular opening, dimly lit.

  The room was well furnished, and tables and benches were piled with scrolls and tablets, bound tomes and parchment leafs. The abode, she decided, of a scholar or a magician, which called for added caution on her part.

  Kira removed her helmet as the bearded man turned from securing the ash door.

  “An Amazon!” Then a smile curved his red lips. “No, not of that formidable tribe, else your bow-breast would be seared and bare. And you’re too tall. I am Roubyn. Who are you? What errand takes you through my
woods?”

  “Hospitality and shelter are appreciated, Lord Roubyn.” Kira noted the curious way one eyebrow rose at the lordly address but made nothing of it. “My name is Kira, and I am far from home, which, before it was destroyed, was north and west of Nordhelm.”

  “Some say the necropolis is the earth’s uttermost point.” He gestured to a chair. “Loneliness is a heavy stone to carry.”

  “I’ve been alone a long time. When my tribe was destroyed, I alone escaped.” She debated whether to mention the reason for the survival of such a young child in the moonlit northern woods, then decided not to. “I’ve been alone ever since.”

  Roubyn poured two cups of amber wine from a decanter carved from a piece of volcanic stone. He smiled at her reticence and drank from his first. “And your reason, Kira, for traveling my woods by the dark of the moon?”

  “The road was very dangerous, more so, I thought, than the woods.” She paused. “There were many riders upon the road.”

  He nodded and pursed his lips. “Having encountered the were-men, do you still think the road more dangerous?”

  “I think men who hunt like men are always more dangerous than men who hunt like animals.” Her gaze shifted momentarily to a mica-paned window. “They were men, were they not?”

  “Animals who change at the dark of the moon, who mock man’s form when the Goddess turns her bright face from the Earth,” Roubyn replied. “When the Goddess does not watch, many strange things happen on Earth, many terrible things.”

  “When the Bright Lady turns, Hecate watches still.”

  Roubyn smiled, revealing serrated teeth between wide crimson lips. There was no mirth in his smile.

  “Evil mocks her dark gaze,” he murmured. “That which was dead rises to feast upon the living.”

  Kira set her cup at her feet and stood in the silence, watching the man. He was a most unusual person, perhaps unlike any she had ever before met, and she thought back to her initial impression.

  “When I first saw you against the light, it seemed you wore a helmet of antlers. A trick of light and shadow, I thought.”