Abruptly he realized that Broca was letting go, was sliding down against him to the deck. Through a swimming haze he saw Alor standing there with a belaying pin in her hand. He began to tremble, partly with reaction but mostly with fury that he should have needed a woman’s help to save his life. Broca lay still, breathing heavily.
“Thanks,” said Heath curtly. “Too bad you had to hit him. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Alor said levelly, “Didn’t he?”
Heath did not answer. He started to turn away and she caught him, forcing him to look at her.
“Very likely I will die in the Moonfire,” she said. “I haven’t the faith in my strength that Broca has. So I’m going to say this now—I love you, David Heath. I don’t care what you think or what you do about it but I love you.”
Her eyes searched his face, as though she wanted to remember every line and plane of it. Then she kissed him and her mouth was tender and very sweet.
She stepped back and said quietly, “I think the Guardian has gone. The Lahal is under way again.”
Heath followed her without a word to the sweep. Her kiss burned in him like sweet fire. He was shaken and utterly confused.
They toiled together while Broca slept. They dared not pause. Heath could distinguish the men now aboard the Lahal, little bent figures sculling, sculling, and there were always fresh ones. He could see the black tunics of the Children of the Moon who stood upon the foredeck and waited.
The Ethne moved more and more slowly as the hours passed and the gap between the two ships grew steadily smaller. Night came and through the darkness they could hear the voice of Vakor howling after them.
Toward midnight Broca roused. The fever had left him but he was morose and silent. He thrust Alor roughly aside and took the sweep and the Ethne gathered speed.
“How much farther?” he asked. And Heath panted, “Not far now.”
Dawn came and still they were not clear of the weed. The Lahal was so near them now that Heath could see the jeweled fillet on Vakor’s brow. He stood alone, high on the upper brace of the weed-knife, and he watched them, laughing.
“Work!” he shouted at them. “Toil and sweat! You, Alor—woman of the gardens! This is better than the Temple. Broca—thief and breaker of the Law—strain your muscles there! And you, Earthman. For the second time you defy the gods!” He leaned out over the weed as though he would reach ahead and grasp the Ethne in his bare hands and drag her back.
“Sweat and strain, you dogs! You can’t escape!”
And they did sweat and strain and fresh relays of men worked at the sweep of the Lahal, breaking their hearts to go faster and ever faster. Vakor laughed from his high perch and it seemed futile for the Ethne to go on any longer with this lost race.
But Heath looked ahead with burning sunken eyes. He saw how the mists rose and gathered to the north, how the color of the weed changed, and he urged the others on. There was a fury in him now. It blazed brighter and harder than Broca’s, this iron fury that would not, by the gods themselves, be balked of the Moonfire.
They kept ahead—so little ahead that the Lahal was almost within arrow-shot of them. Then the weed thinned and the Ethne began to gain a little and suddenly, before they realized it, they were in open water.
Like mad creatures they worked the scull and Heath steered the Ethne where he remembered the northern current ran, drawn by the Ocean-That-Is-Not-Water. After the terrible labor of the weed it seemed that they were flying. But as the mists began to wreathe about them the Lahal too had freed herself and was racing toward them with every man on the rowing benches.
The mists thickened around them. The black water began to have a rare occasional hint of gold, like shooting sparks beneath the surface. There began to be islands, low and small, rank with queer vegetation. The flying dragons did not come here nor the Guardians nor the little reptiles. It was very hot and very still.
Through the stillness the voice of Vakor rose in a harsh wild screaming as he cursed the rowers on.
The current grew more swift and the dancing flecks of gold brightened in the water. Heath’s face bore a strange unhuman look. The oars of the Lahal beat and churned and bowmen stood now on the foredeck, ready to shoot when they came within range.
Then, incredibly, Vakor gave one long high scream and flung up his hand and the oars stopped. Vakor stretched both arms above his head, his fists clenched, and he hurled after them one terrible word of malediction.
“I will wait, blasphemers! If so be you live I will be here—waiting!”
The emerald sail dwindled in the Ethne’s wake, faded and was lost in the mist.
Broca said, “They had us. Why did they stop?”
Heath pointed. Up ahead the whole misty north was touched with a breath of burning gold.
“The Moonfire!”
5 Into the Moonfire
This was the dream that had driven Heath to madness, the nightmare that had haunted him, the memory that had drawn him back in spite of terror and the certainty of destruction. Now it was reality and he could not separate it from the dream.
Once again he watched the sea change until the Ethne drifted not on water but on a golden liquid that lapped her hull with soft rippling fire. Once again the mist enwrapped him, shining, glowing.
The first faint tingling thrill moved in his blood and he knew how it would be—the lying pleasure that mounted through ecstasy to unendurable pain. He saw the dim islands, low and black, a maze through which a ship might wander forever without finding the source that poured out this wonder of living light.
He saw the bones of ships that had died searching. They lay on the island beaches and the mist made them a bright shroud. There were not many of them. Some were so old that the race that built them had vanished out of the memory of Venus.
The hushed unearthly beauty wrenched Heath’s heart and he was afraid unto dying and yet filled with lust, with a terrible hunger.
Broca drew the air deep into his lungs as though he would suck the power out of the Moonfire.
“Can you find it again?” he asked. “The heart of it.”
“I can find it.”
Alor stood silent and unmoving. She was all silver in this light, dusted with golden motes.
Heath said, “Are you afraid, breaking the taboo?”
“Habit is hard to break.” She turned to him and asked, “What is the Moonfire?”
“Haven’t the priests told you?”
“They say that Venus once had a moon. It rode in the clouds like a disc of fire and the god who dwelt within it was supreme over all the other gods. He watched the surface of the planet and all that was done upon it. But the lesser gods were jealous, and one day they were able to destroy the palace of the Moon-god.
“All the sky of Venus was lighted by that destruction. Mountains fell and seas poured out of their beds and whole nations died. The Moon-god was slain and his shining body fell like a meteor through the clouds.
“But a god cannot really die. He only sleeps and waits. The golden mist is the cloud of his breathing, and the shining of his body is the Moonfire. A man may gain divinity from the heart of the sleeping god but all the gods of Venus will curse him if he tries because man has no right to steal their powers.”
“And you don’t believe that story,” said Heath.
Alor shrugged. “You have seen the Moonfire. The priests have not.”
“I didn’t get to the heart of it,” Heath said. “I only saw the edge of the crater and the light that comes up out of it, the lovely hellish light.”
He stopped, shuddering, and brooded as he had so many times before on the truth behind the mystery of the Moonfire. Presently he said slowly, “There was a moon, of course, or there could be no conception of one in folklore. I believe it was radioactive, some element that hasn’t been found yet or doesn’t exist at all on Earth or Mars.”
“I don’t understand,” said Alor. “What is ‘radioactive’?” She used the Terran word, as H
eath had, because there was no term for it in Venusian.
“It’s a strange sort of fire that burns in certain elements. It eats them away, feeding on its own atoms, and the radiation from this fire is very powerful.” He was silent for a moment, his eyes half closed. “Can’t you feel it?” he asked. “The first little fire that burns in your own blood?”
“Yes,” Alor whispered. “I feel it.”
And Broca said, “It is like wine.”
Heath went on, putting the old, old thoughts into words. “The moon was destroyed. Not by jealous gods but by collision with another body, perhaps an asteroid. Or maybe it was burst apart by its own blazing energy. I think that a fragment of it survived and fell here and that its radiation permeated and changed the sea and the air around it.
“It changes men in the same way. It seems to alter the whole electrical set-up of the brain, to amplify its power far beyond anything human. It gives the mind a force of will strong enough to control the free electrons in the air—to create…”
He paused, then finished quietly, “In my case, only shadows. And when that mutation occurs a man doesn’t need the gods of Venus to curse him. I got only a little of it but that was enough.”
Broca said, “It is worth bearing pain to become a god. You had no strength.”
Heath smiled crookedly. “How many gods have come out of the Moonfire?”
Broca answered, “There will be one soon.” Then he caught Alor by the shoulders and pulled her to him, looking down into her face. “No,” he said. “Not one. Two.”
“Perhaps,” said Heath, “there will be three.”
Broca turned and gave him a chill and level look. “I do not think,” he said, “that your strength is any greater now.”
After that, for a long while, they did not speak. The Ethne drifted on, gliding on the slow currents that moved between the islands. Sometimes they sculled, the great blade of the sweep hidden in a froth of flame. The golden glow brightened and grew and with it grew the singing fire in their blood.
Heath stood erect and strong at the helm, the old Heath who had sailed the Straits of Lhiva in the teeth of a summer gale and laughed about it. All weariness, all pain, all weakness, were swept away. It was the same with the others. Alor’s head was high and Broca leaped up beside the figurehead and gave a great ringing shout, a challenge to all the gods there were to stop him.
Heath found himself looking into Alor’s eyes. She smiled, an aching thing of tears and tenderness and farewell.
“I think none of us will live,” she whispered. “May you find your shadow, David, before you die.”
Then Broca had turned toward them once more and the moment was gone.
Within the veil of the Moonfire there was no day nor night nor time. Heath had no idea how long the Ethne’s purple hull rode the golden current. The tingling force spread through his whole body and pulsed and strengthened until he was drunk with the pleasure of it and the islands slipped by, and there was no sound or movement but their own in all that solemn sea.
And at last he saw ahead of him the supernal brightness that poured from the heart of the Moonfire, the living core of all the brightness of the mist. He saw the land, lifting dark and vague, drowned in the burning haze, and he steered toward it along the remembered way. There was no fear in him now. He was beyond fear.
Broca cried out suddenly, “A ship!”
Heath nodded. “It was there before. It will be there when the next man finds his way here.”
Two long arms of the island reached out to form a ragged bay. The Ethne entered it. They passed the derelict, floating patiently, untouched here by wind or tide or ocean rot. Her blue sail was furled, her rigging all neat and ready. She waited to begin the voyage home. She would wait a long, long time.
As they neared the land they sighted other ships. They had not moved nor changed since Heath had seen them last, three years ago.
A scant few they were, that had lived to find the Dragon’s Throat and pass it, that had survived the Upper Seas and the island maze of the Moonfire and had found their goal at last. Some of them floated still where their crews had left them, their sad sails drooping from the yards.
Others lay on their sides on the beach, as though in sleep. There were strange old keels that had not been seen on the seas of Venus for a thousand years. The golden mist preserved them and they waited like a pack of faithful dogs for their masters to return.
Heath brought the Ethne in to shore at the same spot where he had beached her before. She grounded gently and he led the way over the side. He remembered the queer crumbling texture of the dark earth under his feet. He was shaken with the force that throbbed in his flesh. As before it hovered now on the edge of pain.
He led the way inland and no one spoke.
The mist thickened around them, filled with dancing sparks of light. The bay was lost behind its wreathing curtain. They walked forward and the ground began to rise under their feet slowly. They moved as in a dream and the light and the silence crushed them with a great awe.
They came upon a dead man.
He lay upon his face, his arms stretched out toward the mystery that lay beyond, his hands still yearning toward the glory he had never reached. They did not disturb him.
Mist, heavier, the glow brightening, the golden motes whirling and nickering in a madder dance. Heath listened to the voice of pain that spoke within him, rising with every step he took toward a soundless scream.
I remember, I remember! The bones, the flesh, the brain, each atom of them a separate flame, bursting, tearing to be free. I cannot go on, I cannot bear it! Soon I shall waken, safe in the mud behind Kalruna’s.
But he did not wake and the ground rose steadily under his feet and there was a madness on him, a passion and a suffering that were beyond man’s strength to endure. Yet he endured.
The swirling motes began to shape themselves into vague figures, formless giants that towered and strode around them. Heath heard Alor’s moan of terror and forced himself to say, “They’re nothing. Shadows out of our own minds. The beginning of the power.”
Farther they went and farther still, and then at last Heath stopped and flung up his arm to point, looking at Broca.
“Your godhead lies there. Go and take it!”
The eyes of the barbarian were dazed and wild, fixed on the dark dim line of the crater that showed in the distance, fixed on the incredible glory that shone there.
“It beats,” he whispered, “like the beating of a heart.”
Alor drew back, away from him, staring at the light. “I am afraid,” she said. “I will not go.” Heath saw that her face was agonized, her body shaken like his own. Her voice rose in a wail. “I can’t go! I can’t stand it. I’m dying!” Suddenly she caught Heath’s hands. “David, take me back. Take me back!”
Before he could think or speak Broca had torn Alor away from him and struck him a great swinging blow. Heath fell to the ground and the last thing he heard was Alor’s voice crying his name.
6 End of the Dream
Heath was not unconscious long, for when he lifted his head again he could still see the others in the distance. Broca was running like a madman up the slope of the crater, carrying Alor in his arms. Ghostly and indistinct, he stood for an instant on the edge. Then he leaped over and was gone.
Heath was alone.
He lay still, fighting to keep his mind steady, struggling against the torture of his flesh, “Ethne, Ethne,” he whispered. “This is the end of the dream.”
He began to crawl, inch by bitter inch, toward the heart of the Moonfire.
He was closer to it now than he had been before. The strange rough earth cut his hands and his bare knees. The blood ran but the pain of it was less than a pinprick against the cosmic agony of the Moonfire. Broca must have suffered too, yet he had gone running to his fate. Perhaps his nervous system was duller, more resistant to shock. Or perhaps it was simply that his lust for power carried him on.
Heath had n
o wish for power. He did not wish to be a god. He wished only to die and he knew that he was going to very soon. But before he died he would do what he had failed to do before. He would bring Ethne back. He would hear her voice again and look into her eyes and they would wait together for the final dark.
Her image would vanish with his death, for then mind and memory would be gone. But he would not see the life go out of her as he had all those years ago by the Sea of Morning Opals. She would be with him until the end, sweet and loving and merry, as she had always been.
He said her name over and over again as he crawled. He tried to think of nothing else, so that he might forget the terrible unhuman things that were happening within him.
“Ethne, Ethne,” he whispered. His hands clawed the earth and his knees scraped it and the brilliance of the Moonfire wrapped him in golden banners of mist. Yet he would not stop, though the soul was shaken out of him.
He reached the edge of the crater and looked down upon the heart of the Moonfire.
The whole vast crater was a sea of glowing vapor, so dense that it moved in little rippling waves, tipped with a sparkling froth. There was an island in that sea, a shape like a fallen mountain that burned with a blinding intensity, so great that only the eyes of a god could bear to look at it.
It rode in the clouds like a disc of fire.
Heath knew that his guess was right. It did not matter. Body of a sleeping god or scrap of a fallen moon—it would bring Ethne back to him and for that was all he cared.
He dragged himself over the edge and let himself go, down the farther slope. He screamed once when the vapor closed over him.
After that there was a period of utter strangeness.
It seemed that some force separated the atoms that composed the organism called David Heath and reshuffled them into a different pattern. There was a wrench, an agony beyond anything he had known before and then, abruptly, the pain was gone. His body felt well and whole, his mind was awake, alert and clear with a dawning awareness of new power.
The Best of Leigh Brackett Page 17
