Sword in Sheath

by Andre Norton

  “At least it isn't raining. And we can't really tell what it's like from this distance. Wait until we get ashore before you start crabbing — ”

  But Sam had already turned his attention from the shore to the lagooa

  “Wonder if this is the pearl factory. Care to go down and look around a little?”

  “Do you wish a run ashore?” Lorens joined them. “Capt. van Bleeker proposes to lead a party in person.”

  “Now why do you suppose we have our scout uniforms on? Sure, we've taken an option on the front seats in the first boat to push off — ”

  They weren't able to get the front seats Kane had mentioned so confidently, but they were in the shore-going party which pulled away from the freighter a short time later. And they were right on the captain's heels when van Bleeker splashed through the few inches of water to the white coral sand of the sliver of beach.

  “It would take one of your bulldozers to break through this— “ He waved toward the jungle. But the Nisei shook his head.

  “No, it's not so bad really. In fact we can wriggle through right here. That's the stuff, Fortnight — just what we need for this job!”

  The Samoan came ashore carrying bolos, two of them — jungle knives which had been designed to fight nature long before the Moros had learned to turn them against human flesh. Sam took one and gave it an experimental swing to test the balance.

  The Samba's captain turned to Kane. “You have had experience in jungle fighting, you and Marusaki. Are you willing to try to get high enough on the mountain to find a lookout — if that is possible? Felder, van Norreys and I with the men shall round the lagoon. I need not warn you about taking care — ”

  Sam laughed “Take care? This sort of a set-up is old stuff to us, Captain. When you've harried the Nips through as many birds’ nests like this one as we have, you, too, can get a diploma in skulking. Well, Dutch, do we charge?”

  They fell into the old single-file pattern, the lead man swinging a bolo. Oddly enough it was Sam, small and slight as he was, who kept the best pace, his regular swinging strokes falling with a rhythm which never lagged. For Fortnight, in spite of his strength, it was a hard task. While Kane, until muscles unused for months got grimly to work again, found it plain drudgery.

  Not that it was just a woodhcopper's holiday. There were places where the native rock of the mountain had broken through the lush vegetation. And there progress was a matter of scrambling, digging in toes and fingers, scraping hands and arms on sandpaper-faced stone. At the end of twenty minutes Kane leaned panting against a convenient rock. His shirt was plastered to his aching body with his own sweat, one nail had been torn from a finger, and the feel of knife-edged lava was so deeply cut into his palms that he would never forget it. But when Sam started on again he was ready to follow.

  Their second rest was beside a slide of tumbled rock where the rotting wood of imprisoned trees showed between stone and earth.

  “Landslide, maybe even an earthquake” — Fortnight pointed out the evidence — “a long time ago. We had better go around this; there is still danger in loose stones.”

  But going around took time, a lot of it. And on the other side of the slide they were faced by a nasty bit of climbing up a ledge which narrowed almost to a crack as they advanced. It was then that the Samoan produced rope from a neat belt of it around his waist, and they tied themselves together.

  Fortnight, in the lead, pulled himself up to a higher ledge, then jerked the rope to bring up the Americans. They hauled themselves over the lip of a wide cut in the mountainside, a cut which sloped gradually up toward the left. Here the overgrowth of green stuff was thin, and the Samoan stood up, examining the rocky breast of the mountain at their backs.

  “Look here — and there also!” He picked away with the point of his bolo. “This is tool work — all of this. A road cut out of the rock!”

  “Road — ?”

  But it was true. Kane could see for himself the marks the other had cleared.

  “But — why a road here?”

  “To reach a city, a temple up above — who knows? But much work went into the making of this, a long time ago.”

  “How long do you suppose?” Sam was scraping the soil back from the ledge under them, trying to uncover the surface of the ancient way.

  “A very long time. See, down there trees have taken root across this path.”

  Kane and Marusaki followed that pointing finger with their gaze. The old road wound down along the mountainside toward that portion of the island which lay on the opposite side from the Sumba's anchorage. They could trace its curve for some distance before the jungle swallowed it altogether.

  “Suppose we stay with it the rest of the way up,"suggeted Sam. “It'll be a lot easier than traveling like mountain goats.”

  “If it hasn't been used for so long, the Johnnies, who may or may not be playing around with machine guns, don't walk it So I vote yes.” Kane looked to Fortnight, and the big man nodded.

  “I have seen no signs of recent use. And it will make our task easier.”

  It was still necessary to use the bolos now and then, but with better footing and no rock climbing they kept a faster pace until, upon rounding a curve, Fortnight jerked back with a cry of dismay, forcing the others with him to halt. When Kane elbowed himself forward again he was on the edge of a sheer drop, looking down into a cup of jungle hundreds of feet below.

  The American jumped back. “What happened, d'you suppose?” If Fortnight had not been careful where would they be now — down in that mess below? The Samoan must have been sharing that mental picture of disaster. There was a beading of moisture around his hair line, heavier than any the climb had produced.

  “Earthquake, I think.” Sam was nearer to the break but looking up, not down. “It looks as if a big slice of the mountain just scaled right off here. Well, what do we do now? I had a feeling that this road was too good to last.”

  Kane had turned to the mountain wall. It seemed rough enough to offer foot-and hand-holds. And it was the only answer to Sam's question.

  “Get out the rope, Fortnight,” he said over his shoulder. “Here we go again.”

  Sam groaned and stooped to feel gingerly of the calves of his legs. “I charge time-and-a-half for gymnastics,” he warned. “And have you thought, my fine feathered friend, that we shall have to come down again after we get up? All right, all right” He took the rope the Samoan was holding out. “I can see the darn thing. I hope I'm good at knots — if I swing out over that gulf I want to be pulled back again — by your strong and willing arms — ”

  “Trustful little squirt, isn't he?” Kane asked Fortnight. “Keep your feet where they belong, Sam. I don't intend to do any pulling at all — my arms aren't what they used to be — say about an hour ago. Next time we make one of these expeditions I shall be the one to mooch around on the sand looking for pearl beds — not a mountain taming hero. Allez-oop, Fortnight!”

  The Samoan hung the plaited lanyard of his bolo around his neck and began to climb. The first hundred feet were comparatively easy. But after that Kane gritted his teeth, forcing himself to keep eyes only on the stone before him and move up according to the holds Fortnight called out as he changed his own. Through a cotton-dry mouth he managed to grunt out the same instructions to Sam. The strap of the Reising cut into his shoulders with a file edge, and he hesitated between each shift of holds to make sure it was properly balanced. How long it took them to creep up that bad stretch he never knew — it seemed to pass as a week of sun-filled days.

  But it could not last forever, and they worked again into a piece of porous, weathered rock where holds were many and easy.

  “Wait!” Fortnight's voice was hoarse with strain. “I'm going to circle left now. I think that I can see the edge of a plateau over there — ”

  So they crawled crabwise left, and Kane suddenly felt the tug of his waist rope.

  “Come ahead — good footing here.”

  They were up,
all three of them, and before them was a gentle slope leading down into what had once been the fiery core of a volcano. On one side, to their right, a large section of the core wall had broken away, perhaps in that same earthquake which had shorn off the old road. So now what lay below was a saucer of which about a quarter was missing.

  There was some vegetation, brilliantly green. But the dense mat which formed the jungle on the slopes was missing. And here and there, among the trees and bushes, were tumbled heaps of stone which somehow appeared too regular to be the debris of nature.

  Sam took the binoculars from their case and slowly swept the outer rim of this sky valley.

  “There's the city.” Fortnight pointed to the stone heaps.

  “City! Up here?”

  “Your city is here all right,” Sam confrimed the Samaon's guess. “And across there is something very, very interesting. A temple, I think, and one still in good working order by the looks of the altar down front. Take a squint for yourself, fella” He pushed the glasses into Kane's hand.

  11

  SIVA'S FOURTH FACE

  Kane swung the glasses in a short arc. Out of a spur of the cone wall, almost straight across the crater valley from where they stood, there leaped into full and lavish detail what was most certainly the entrance to a temple carved out of the rock of the mountain itself. Grotesque masks of forgotten gods and demons leered and frowned over the desolation they had once ruled. But years had weathered their elaborate headdresses and chipped their bold features.

  From the wry-faced god at the apex of the dark doorway Kane's gaze traveled downward until — Beneath the sticky envelope of his shirt he knew again the familiar crawl of aroused nerves.

  There was a fait stone block before that doorway. And on that block was heaped a mound of bright-skinned fruit and brilliant flowers. Both offerings were arranged in a pattern. The American passed the binoculars to Fortnight and unslung his Reising.

  “Shall we go in from the left?” Sam was already edging in that direction. “More cover over there.”

  Kane evaluated the crater's cover with that searching care which had been so laboriously drilled into his mind and body. “Left it is. But they've probably sighted us already — ”

  “The flowers are withering. They have been there sometime — perhaps hours.” The Samoan returned the glasses to Sam. “Yes, to the left is best, sir. And it would be prudent, I think, to move as much undercover as possible.”

  “You don't think there is still a settlement here then?”

  “No, sir. This may be a holy place, but I do not think that anyone lives in the cone.”

  They began their progress around the outer edge of the valley next to the swell of the cone wall. There was cover enough in the ragged growth of brush and the stone piles of the lost city to conceal a regiment, and as long as they exercised reasonable care, Kane thought that they might remain hidden from any worshiper or worshipers who had climbed to sacrifice at that temple in the sky.

  It could not have been a large place, this stronghold of the crater valley, even in the days of its greatest glory. But it had been the center of a rather high degree of civilization. The intricate carving which patterned most of the larger stones had been designed and executed by artists. And the immense piles of such blocks suggested that they were the remains of quite large buildings.

  “Do you suppose this was all one temple? There's a place in Java where a single one covers a whole mountain.” Kane had paused to wet tongue and mouth with a sparing taste from his canteen.

  Sam hunkered down before a block and ran his forefinger lightly over the bas-relief appearing there. “It's allied with Hindu stuff anyway. Look at this jolly old girl with all the fangs and the necklace of skulls. She's Kali— I’ll bet a fiver on it!”

  “Kali!” Kane studied the open-mouthed female monster who was apparently screaming in insane fury at the moment when the unknown artist had chosen to immortalize her. “Isn’t she the one who is the patron of those necktie boys — the Thugs? I don't think that I care to have her turn up here.”

  Sam's puzzled frown grew deeper. “I never heard of her being worshiped in the islands. She's not a very nice old lady — nursed smallpox germs and indulged in heart-eating and other quaint pastimes of a like nature. Maybe this was the headquarters of a devil cult — like those in Tibet where they do a regular business in black magic. Here” — over Kali's horrible grin he pulled a piece of vine — “let her be veiled — permanently.”

  “We can leave her to the lizards.” Kane got up. “Time to move on, soldier.”

  It was a very short while later that they caught sight of the bottom step of a wide stairway which led directly up to the cave-entrance of the temple. As they stood for a moment behind a half-dead bush they heard the sounds of a scuffle from the shadows above. A small stone rolled down from step to step. Kane caught the faint click of Sam's gun coming into readiness. His own fingers tightened.

  A muscular arm covered with grayish-black fur arose over the edge of the altar stone long enough for black fingers to close about a fruit and jerk it away from the pile. As the rest of the fruit tumbled out of the pyramid arrangement to roll off the altar, more hands appeared to grasp and grab. There came a banshee shriek of outrage and fury and two plump bodies popped into view, one in wild pursuit of the other.

  Kane began to laugh helplessly as the apes tore twice around the altar, then disappeared into the interior of the temple. Fortnight stepped into the open and the Americans followed him.

  “Those boys wouldn't be playing around so free and easy if there was anyone here.” Sam stated the obvious as he began to mount the stairs.

  But at the door of the temple all three hesitated. In the first place, the sunlight of the crater world did not penetrate far into the cavern, and there was something about its dark silence which was not healthy. Kane investigated the carvings of the lintel Here were demons in plenty — no pleasant faces at all. Sam's supposition might be true — this could be a temple dedicated only to the dark gods.

  The silence was strong, a wall closing in upon them. Even the racketing apes had been swallowed up. There was not so much as an insect's buzz to disturb the brooding of the older gods. Earth and dust made a carpet within the door, marked only by the tracks of the fruit stealers. Apparently the worshiper who had brought the offerings had not entered the sanctuary.

  “We ought to have a flash to go in there.” Sam shifted from one foot to the other. “It rather smacks of booby traps and such — ”

  “Wait — “ Fortnight ran lightly down the stairs and into the brush below.

  “D'you suppose he's going back to the Sumba for a flashlight?” demanded the Nisei

  “Not to the Sumba but he's probably going to get a substitute. Wonder where in thunder those apes went. They haven't come out, and we'd still hear them if they were doing half-mile laps around the place — ”

  “Of course, there might be another entrance — on the other side of the mountain, say. Dutch, do you know who that is over the door — there?”

  “The cheerful gentleman with three faces? No, I’m sorry, but my education has been neglected; he's a total stranger as far as I’m concerned.”

  “To be really correct he ought to have four faces, one on each side of his head. That's Siva, and the face he has turned out to the crater is the face of Siva the Destroyer — which is his worst personality. I don't think this city ws a very nice place in its heyday — not a nice place at all!”

  Kane, after glancing at several scenes pictured in lurid detail on the nearest wall, was inclined to agree with him. But the art studies were interrupted as Fortnight came back, a bundle of dry twigs and twisted grasses in his hand. He struck a match to his improvised torch as he joined the Americans on the top step, and holding it above shoulder level, he went into the darkness.

  The place was much larger than the size of the doorway suggested. On either side they could catch only glimpses of the distant walls where, in paint a
nd stone, devils sported gruesomely. There were double rows of pillars carved, like the walls, out of native stone, which led straight ahead. And between these the explorers walked.

  Kane found himself tiptoeing to keep his boot heels from ringing on the pavement Here and there in the dust were ape prints, and twice the wavering spoor of a snake wrote a curved message under their feet But nowhere was there any proof that man had walked here since the sky city had been deserted. And always the silence hemmed them in — almost menacingly.

  The avenue of pillars brought them to the foot of a dais or platform which had been fashioned of one huge block of stone. And on this was planted a gigantic figure which might have appeared in a nightmare. Not that it had a grotesque demon face, a skull necklace, or a severed human head in its outstretched hands, as had some of the other idols they had seen.

  Instead it was of semi-human form with only the normal number of arms, legs and head. It was standing, one foot slightly advanced as if about to step down from its place, and it gazed serenely from large gleaming eyes down the length of the pillared corridor to the square of sunlight which was the opening to the outer world.

  But the face —

  “Devil!” breathed Sam softly.

  The torch in Fortnight's hand wavered as the big man's grip shook, then steadied.

  Kane looked from the face several feet above his head to the painting on the wall behind it. There was a difference, a great difference. The god before whom they stood had been made in a different age, by other hands than those which had carved this temple and embellished it with their own vile imaginings. He was older — and more evil There was nothing of the beast in that calm, smooth-planed countenance. Siva and Kali were but the nightmares of backward children compared to this.

  “No Hindu made that!” Kane spoke his thought aloud.

  Fortnight raised the torch higher. The details of the body were plain, as were the folds of the cloak which half hid its nakedness. As the torch moved the eyes glistened as if the thing were alive and — watching!