by C. L. Moore
And that, too, humiliated her. It seemed to her that she had been wallowing in enforced humilities for the past several hours, each of them more irritating than the last. This was particularly so, because it involved the moral courage she prided herself on possessing. She did not like to think of Egide walking boldly up to a doorway so awesome that she herself scarcely dared visit it in thoughts. Even the knowledge that he was a barbarian and an outworlder, with the courage of ignorance, was not too comforting. And presently, in the dimness, she began to wonder whether she could do as he was doing, supposing herself free again. Step in under that great shadowy, unimaginable portal and ask for guidance? Intrude her small human presence upon the living gods, whose millenniums of aloofness showed so clearly that they did not welcome human interference?
Even if she were free, would she dare?
Suddenly, hideously, there were tiny cold hands fumbling at hers.
The darkness reeled about her. Mad thoughts went racing through her mind—denizens of the lower levels, creeping up in the dark to seize her? Unseen things against which the Andareans locked their great grilles in vain? Tiny, clammy-fingered demons from some lost race’s hell—Gammy-fingered—many-fingered—
Juille sank back against the wall and laughed hysterically in the dark, weak with relief, feeling a sleek, furry side brushing her wrist as the little hands tugged at her bonds. The llar, of course, but how … how could it possibly have followed or found her here? No llar had ever done such a thing before. They had none of the canine’s fawning faithfulness. No, there must be rescuers close behind it, though how anyone could have followed her here unseen by the Andareans, she could not imagine.
She called softly into the dimness. No answer, but the llar hissed at her gently, rather like a man whistling in preoccupation as he works. A moment later, she was amazed to feel the cord slackening at her wrists. Knowing how efficiently Helia had tied it, she could not believe the little animal could have loosened the knots. Nor could its teeth have parted the strands no knife could touch. But her hands were free, and already prickling with the pins and needles of returning circulation.
She rubbed them together, luxuriating in the pleasure of relaxed arm muscles again, and then felt the War’s lithe, boneless weight on her knees. Something was thrust into her hands. Her fingers closed stiffly on a packet—a little leather bag. With fingers clumsy as thumbs, she expored it.
A tiny cylinder fell out, and something like a mirror on a chain, and what felt like a card. She knew the shape of the cylinder. It was a needle-beam flashlight that was weapon and torch in one. Cautiously, awkwardly, she switched on the flash to its weakest power. In the little blue-white circle of its light she could make out writing on the card.
It was a message of almost incredible impersonality:
I am sending you the first completed focusing agent for our weapon. Center your target in the cross-hairs, then press the white stud. Target will register in the machine here; can be destroyed at will by pressing the black stud. Sorry this is a model, good for one shot only. Choose well.
DUNNAR.
Juille reread the note slowly, puzzled by its laconic detachment. This might be a problem in ethics instead of the desperate reality it was. She saw in her mind’s eye the strange, avian face of the envoy as it had so often regarded her with an impersonal, lidless gaze. She could not imagine emotion showing in it. Not even his own danger, she remembered now, had moved him at all when he came in from space with the weapon. Certainly no peril of hers moved him. She sensed some unfathomable purpose of his own working out, calmly and unhurried, behind all that had just been happening. Was he an Andarean? Certainly there was something behind those great, unwinking eyes, something locked secretly in the narrow skull, that evoked awe and distrust together.
Well, at any rate, now she had a weapon. Two weapons, for the flashlight would serve, too. She turned the thing like a mirror over in her hand. A double lens on a chain, she saw now, each lens threaded with a cross-hair and manipulated by studs in the tiny frame. A white stud, a black one. Such a simple thing to carry that deadly power. She tossed it up and caught it in her palm, grinning with sudden, fierce confidence. The tables were turning a little. Egide had left her bound and helpless; he would come back to her free and armed with a weapon of such surpassing treachery as no race had owned before, a weapon that struck out of empty air, in solitude, at the striker’s will. But since this was a model, it would strike only once. She cursed that restriction in a whisper. Would it be Egide, then? Her feeling for sps too much a jumble of passionate contradictions now, to be sure. Although—
The llar squeaked impatiently at her knee. She glanced down in the faint blue light. “Well, little friend?”
It was hard sometimes to know just where to place the limitations of that tiny animal brain. The llars were like cats in their fastidious withdrawal from any human attempt to probe their small minds or catalogue them according to human standards. She thought her own pet understood a limited vocabulary very well. She said, “What is it now? Where did you come from? Is there danger?”
The great benign eyes stared up at her; the furry body twisted away and then back as if in an urgent plea to follow. Juille said, “All right,” and stood up, brushing off the thick dry dust. The llar scuttled to the door and peered out. Then it scuttled back and looked up expectantly. “Run along,” Juille told it. “I’ll follow.”
She slipped the lens chains over her head and dropped the circular instrument down inside her tunic. It would look like some innocent ornament if anyone caught her now. But she felt, without knowing why, a curious faith in the llar’s ability to guide her out of this place in safety. She even experienced an illogical flicker of gratification that the impersonal little beast had troubled itself so much in her behalf. The entire performance was one no naturalist would have believed possible, certainly no owner of the proud, fastidious animals.
She went swiftly along the tunnel, over the cushioning dust, lighting her way with the dimmest blue radiance of her torch. It could be changed to a weapon of needle-beam force by a twist of the handle if anyone came out to intercept her, but her unreasoning faith in the llar was justified more deeply with every passing moment, for it led her along tunnels that seemed to have been uninhabited since the last Andarean emperor died at the hands of the first Lyonese.
Watching the sleek, lithe body flowing through the dimness, Juille wondered at its unerring certainty of the path. Some homing instinct, or actual knowledge of these passages? No one knew enough about the llar species to answer that.
The chain of small, flower-shaped footprints in the dust led her on and on. Up level, down level. Over crumbled ruins, through chambers of resounding echoes and caverns muffled in age-old dust.
They must be nearing the end of the journey now. She could smell fresh air blowing along the tunnels and smiled as she pictured the excitement in the palace when she came out. Her deep uneasiness about the unknown weapons of the Andareans would be appeased soon; those weapons would never now be turned against her. And she thanked her imperial ancestors that Egide had thought he must consult the Ancients, for it gave her the time she needed. The H’vani and their smuggled weapons would never leave Ericon now.
Her own emotional reactions to the immediate past and the immediate future were too tangled to sort out She didn’t want to. That would come later. At any moment she would be coming out into the bustling exhilaration of the palace, and her long inactivity and helplessness would be ended. She smiled into the dark.
At her feet the llar scurried, rippling, on ahead.
The end came suddenly. They turned a corner and an unbarred door hung half open before them. The llar gave one small, whispering cry and then drew aside into the shadows of the tunnel. Cautiously, but with a beating pulse of triumph in her throat, Juille pushed the door open. Words were on her lips—urgent commands, reassurances, all the details of the plans she had been working out to put into practice the moment she reached her destination.
Juille glanced wildly around for her little guide. It had vanished. She shot a blue beam around the corridor behind her, finding only a confusing array of fingery footprints that vanished into the dark. She cursed the evasive little beast in a voice that was close to tears. To come so near victory and then find only this!
For she knew what this forest must be. Indeed, when she cast her blue light down she saw what must be the footprints Egide had left when he came out this very tunnel into the woods where the Ancients lived. Forbidden woods, uncharted, unknown, kept sacrosanct by countless generations of human life on Ericon.
She glanced about uneasily. Jair and the Andareans could not be far away. But what she could do next she had no idea. Where or how far the city lay was impossible to guess. Certainly she could not return through the pathless honeycomb of the caverns, and if she tried the forbidden woods she might wander for days in the wrong directions. If the llar had been visible now, she might have blasted it with a needle beam for bringing her so far astray. But there was no help for it. She would have to get back to the city, hit or miss, perhaps too late to do anything but warn them of impending blows from nameless weapons.
The memory of Egide’s glowing confidence when he came back to her armed with the Andarean gifts gave her a feeling of sinking dismay. The impending conflict had taken on too many prospects of unguessable proportions. The effect of the new weapons might be overwhelming, unless she could find some way to prevent it.
Unless—Juille stared out speculatively through the trees. If she could delay Egide—but how could she, short of killing him? And did she want that? Her mind flashed off on a tangent—he had stayed his hand, too, when killing her might have meant a great deal in the outcome of the revolt. Her scorn for that weakness had gone deep. Yet she was hesitating now in the face of the same problem. She set her chin.
This was the way he had come, down this narrow glade into the forest. For all the woods seemed to slope downward as if toward a sunken path that wound between the hills. She could trace his tracks, perhaps, in the soen ground.
If she hunted a way out of the forest, she might wander for days, while Egide and Jair escaped unhindered with their loot. But if she followed Egide now, if she used her needle beam upon him, or the lens of the Dunnarian weapon—would Jair leave Ericon without him? Could she gain time enough to find her way back to the city, leaving Egide dead here in the rainy forest?
It was too confusing—she did not know what she wanted. But this alternative seemed best of all the impossible choices she had. Follow Egide—let the rest take care of itself.
It was very quiet here in the woods. Juille could not remember ever having been quite so alone before. She walked through a drowned green gloom beneath the dripping trees, making no sound. Egide had gone this way before her; she found his prints now and then in bare places along the valley. She strained her ears and eyes for him returning, but nothing moved except the leaves, nothing made any sound except the drip-drip of rain and the occasional liquid bubbling voice of a tree frog enjoying the wet.
And presently, in spite of herself, the silence and the solitude began to lull her senses. This was the holy place, and the old awe began to oppress her as she walked. Through this quivering gloom the gods had moved upon their own unfathomable errands; perhaps they were moving now. She looked about uneasily. She had seen the power of the Ancients manifested tangibly, terribly, overhead in the open sky so brief a time ago that the memory was still appalling.
And then sudden anger washed over her. Egide had come this way. He was a fool, blundering in ignorance through the sacred woods, but wherever he dared to go surely she dared follow. Even into the temple itself.
Her mind went back to those troubled thoughts in the solitary caverns, before the llar had come. Could she go? Could she not, when Egide had ventured there and perhaps learned celestial wisdom that might turn the tide of battle? For the Ancients did give advice, so legend said. If human supplicants dared make the pilgrimage, they sometimes brought back knowledge that could make them great.
Well, it would be humiliating to come second into their presence, but if Egide had come and gone, Juille began to realize that she must, too. Indeed, in this rainy solitude she realized even more. Her mind was clarifying itself of shock and confusion, and now as she walked alone, it began to grope back toward that firm bedrock of principle and duty upon which she had prided herself so long. In her mind she had faltered at the thought of killing him. Far back, deep down, the roots of weakness were there when she thought of Egide. Even to herself, she could not admit that yet. But subconsciously, perhaps, she knew herself as weak as he in this one thing, and subconsciously she sought to justify herself by surpassing him. It took less courage from Egide than from her to face the Ancients in their temple, because he knew less about them. She knew this much clearly—that she would never be at peace again with herself if she let him outface her here. Impatiently, she shrugged the tangled thoughts away. Time enough for introspection if she lived through the next hour.
Before she left the tunnel, Juille had taken the belated precaution of removing her bell-mouthed pistolom its uncomfortable hiding place and pushing it up into the lining of her helmet, where its flexible barrel adjusted to the curve. Should Egide by any mischance see her first here in the woods, he might not think of searching there for this last reserve, unpredictable as the weapon was. But she did not mean him to surprise her. She was better prepared than he for the meeting before them, and she knew very well that if they met unexpectedly only one was likely to return.
All the strange undertones of their relationship, confused, twisting together, not clear to either, were unimportant in the basic motive behind their final reckoning. She must not forget that. She must let nothing swerve her. If she died before Egide, the H’vani would most likely sit next upon the throne of Ericon. Egide knew that as well as she, and she thought that this time he would not forget it.
How did a traveler through this trackless wood know the way to the temple? Juille could not guess, but she did know the way. It was a part of the magic of the Ancients which she could feel thickening about her in the fragrant green silence as she went on. And how did one know what the temple would look like, when no human creature had ever brought back word of it? She could not guess that, either—but she knew.
She knew without surprise how the great black walls would lean inward above the trees that hid their foundations. She stood almost without breathing, gazing up between the branches at that towering, massive darkness which housed the living gods.
It was a little while before she could bring herself to come nearer. Only the thought of Egide made her do it. He must still be in there, in the unthinkable sanctum of the Ancients, hearing the voices that no living man had ever told of. At the back of her mind, a craven alternative stirred briefly—why not wait until he came out, and do then whatever impulse moved her to do? With a mental squaring of the shoulders she dismissed that idea. No, if he were in there still, she would confront him before the very altar of the gods.
Her heart was beating heavily as she went up the slope toward those great dark leaning walls that breathed out silence. She saw no door. The grassy furrow she had been following led up between the trees to a clear space against the solid black wall, and ended there. She was not breathing as she took the last step forward and put out hesitant hands toward that blackness.
She could tell then, of course, that it was not there at all. The walls were black and the dark inside was black, and the entrance made no difference between them to the eye. Light from outside did not penetr
ate over the threshold. Juille took a long, deliberate breath and stepped forward.
She walked three paces through utter darkness. Then light began to show faintly underfoot. Glancing back now, she could see the outlines of the portal, and the woods beyond looking indescribably changed and enchanted, like the woods of another dimension. Beneath her feet the light grew slowly stronger as she went on.
Above rose only the fathomless heights of the dark. And there was no one here but herself. She felt that with unreasoning certainty. The terrible, oppressive presences of the gods, which she had expected must paralyze her with their very awesomeness, she did not feel at all. A she thought Egide was not here, either. The dark around her had that vast, impersonal emptiness she had known before only during flights through the emptiness of space—cold, measureless, still beyond all human compass.
The light from below was strengthening, with an oddly vertiginous effect. She could see nothing down there, not even the substance of the floor. If she walked on pavement, it was pavement of the clearest crystal without flaws or jointure. She was like one walking above a void on invisible supports that might vanish before the next step. When she thought of that she slowed automatically, unable to control the fear that each next step would overreach the edge of the flooring and plunge her into the lighted infinities below. By contrast, the dark overhead was almost a solid, unrelieved in the least by any reflection of light. The impression grew so strong that she began to imagine the blood was pounding in her ears and temples from reversed gravity, as she walked upside down like a fly across a ceiling of glass.
She took a few more dizzy steps and then halted, too confused and frightened to go on. She had forgotten Egide. For the moment, she had even ceased to expect the Ancients. There was nothing anywhere but herself standing upon a crystal ceiling looking down into the sky, frozen with awe and terror.
Nothing happened for what seemed a very long time. No sound, no motion. Juille stood alone in the darkness upon the light, not conscious of any presence but her own. She was never conscious of any other presence, from first to last. But after a long interval, something began to happen.
