Northwest Smith

by C. L. Moore

  “There has been a mistake,” she breathed, half to herself. “They never take any but the—space-rats and the scum of the ports for Julhi to—I mean, to bring here. They must not have known you, and they will pay for that mistake. No man is brought here who might be searched for—afterward.”

  Smith was silent for a moment. He had thought her lost like himself, and her fright had been too genuine for pretense. Yet she seemed to know the secrets of this curious, unlit place. He must go warily.

  “Who are you?” he murmured. “Why were you so frightened? Where are we?”

  In the dark her breath caught in a little gasp, and went on unevenly.

  “We are in the ruins of Vonng,” she whispered. “I am Apri, and I am condemned to death. I thought you were death coming for me, as it will come at any instant now.” Her voice failed on the last syllables, so that she spoke in a fading gasp as if terror had her by the throat and would not let her breathe. He felt her trembling against his arm.

  Many questions crowded up to his lips, but the most urgent found utterance.

  “What will come?” he demanded. “What is the danger?”

  “The haunters of Vonng,” she whispered fearfully. “It is to feed them that Julhi’s slaves bring men here. And those among us who are disobedient must feed the haunters too. I have suffered her displeasure—and I must die.”

  “The haunters—what are they? Something with a touch like a live wire had me awhile ago, but it let me loose again. Could that have been—”

  “Yes, one of them. My coming must have disturbed it. But as to what they are, I don’t know. They come in the darkness. They are of Julhi’s race, I think, but not flesh and blood, like her. I—I can’t explain.”

  “And Julhi—?”

  “Is—well, simply Julhi. You don’t know?”

  “A woman? Some queen, perhaps? You must remember I don’t even know where I am.”

  “No, not a woman. At least, not as I am. And much more than queen. A great sorceress, I have thought, or perhaps a goddess. I don’t know. It makes me ill to think, here in Vonng. It makes me ill to—to—oh, I couldn’t bear it! I think I was going mad! It’s better to die than go mad, isn’t it? But I’m so afraid—”

  Her voice trailed away incoherently, and she cowered shivering against him in the dark.

  Smith had been listening above her shuddering whispers for any tiniest sound in the night. Now he turned his mind more fully to what she had been saying, though with an ear still alert for any noises about them.

  “What do you mean? What was it you did?”

  “There is a—a light,” murmured Apri vaguely. “I’ve always seen it, even from babyhood, whenever I closed my eyes and tried to make it come. A light, and queer shapes and shadows moving through it, like reflections from somewhere I never saw before. But somehow it got out of control, and then I began to catch the strangest thought-waves beating through, and after a while Julhi came—through the light. I don’t know—I can’t understand. But she makes me summon up the light for her now, and then queer things happen inside my head, and I’m ill and dizzy, and—and I think I’m going mad. But she makes me do it. And it grows worse, you know, each time worse, until I can’t bear it. Then she’s angry, and that dreadful still look comes over her face—and this time she sent me here. The haunters will come, now—”

  Smith tightened his arm comfortingly about her, thinking that she was perhaps a little mad already.

  “How can we get out of here?” he demanded, shaking her gently to call back her wandering mind. “Where are we?”

  “In Vonng. Don’t you understand? On the island where Vonng’s ruins are.”

  He remembered then. He had heard of Vonng, somewhere. The ruins of an old city lost in the tangle of vines upon a small island a few hours off the coast of Shann. There were legends that it had been a great city once, and a strange one. A king with curious powers had built it, a king in league with beings better left unnamed, so the whispers ran. The stone had been quarried with unnamable rites, and the buildings were very queerly shaped, for mysterious purposes. Some of its lines ran counterwise to the understanding even of the men who laid them out, and at intervals in the streets, following a pattern certainly not of their own world, medallions had been set, for reasons known to none but the king. Smith remembered what he had heard of the strangeness of fabulous Vonng, and of the rites that attended its building, and that at last some strange plague had overrun it, driving men mad…something about ghosts that flickered through the streets at mid-day; so that at last the dwellers there had deserted it, and for centuries it had stood here, slowly crumbling into decay. No one ever visited the place now, for civilization had moved inland since the days of Vonng’s glory, and uneasy tales still ran through men’s minds about the queer things that had happened here once.

  “Julhi lives in these ruins?” he demanded.

  “Julhi lives here but not in a ruined Vonng. Her Vonng is a splendid city. I have seen it, but I could never enter.”

  “Quite mad,” thought Smith compassionately. And aloud, “Are there no boats here? No way to escape at all?”

  Almost before the last words had left his lips he heard something like the humming of countless bees begin to ring in his ears. It grew and deepened and swelled until his head was filled with sound, and the cadences of that sound said,

  “No. No way. Julhi forbids it.”

  In Smith’s arms the girl startled and clung to him convulsively.

  “It is Julhi!” she gasped. “Do you feel her, singing in your brain? Julhi!”

  Smith heard the voice swelling louder, until it seemed to fill the whole night, humming with intolerable volume.

  “Yes, my little Apri. It is I. Do you repent your disobedience, my Apri?”

  Smith felt the girl trembling against him. He could hear her heart pounding, and the breath rushed chokingly through her lips.

  “No—no, I do not,” he heard her murmur, very softly. “Let me die, Julhi.”

  The voice hummed with a purring sweetness.

  “Die, my pretty? Julhi could not be so cruel. Oh no, little Apri, I but frightened you for punishment. You are forgiven now. You may return to me and serve me again, my Apri. I would not let you die.” The voice was cloyingly sweet.

  Apri’s voice crescendoed into hysterical rebellion.

  “No, no! I will not serve you! Not again, Julhi! Let me die!”

  “Peace, peace my little one.” That humming was hypnotic in its soothing lilt. “You will serve me. Yes, you will obey me as before, my pretty. You have found man there, haven’t you, little one? Bring him with you, and come.”

  Apri’s unseen hands clawed frantically at Smith’s shoulders, tearing herself free, pushing him away.

  “Run, run!” she gasped. “Climb this wall and run! You can throw yourself over the cliff and be free. Run, I say, before it’s too late. Oh, Shar, Shar, if I were free to die!”

  Smith prisoned the clawing hands in one of his and shook her with the other.

  “Be still!” he snapped. “You’re hysterical. Be still!”

  He felt the shuddering slacken. The straining hands fell quiet. By degrees her panting breath evened.

  “Come,” she said at last, and in quite a different voice. “Julhi commands it. Come.”

  Her fingers twined firmly in his, and she stepped forward without hesitation into the dark. He followed, stumbling over debris, bruising himself against the broken walls. How far they went he did not know, but the way turned and twisted and doubled back upon itself, and he had, somehow, the curious idea that she was not following a course through corridors and passages which she knew well enough not to hesitate over, but somehow, under the influence of Julhi’s sorcery, treading a symbolic pattern among the stones, tracing it out with unerring feet—a witch-pattern that, when it was completed, would open a door for them which no eyes could see, no hands unlock.

  It may have been Julhi who put that certainty in his mind, but he was qui
te sure of it as the girl walked on along her intricate path, threading silently in and out among the unseen ruins, nor was he surprised when without warning the floor became smooth underfoot and the walls seemed to fall away from about him, the smell of cold stone vanished from the air. Now he walked in darkness over a thick carpet, through sweetly scented air, warm and gently moving with invisible currents. In that dark he was somehow aware of eyes upon him. Not physical eyes, but a more all-pervading inspection. Presently the humming began again, swelling through the air and beating in his ears in sweetly pitched cadences.

  “Hm-m-m…have you brought me a man from Earth, my Apri? Yes, an Earthman, and a fine one. I am pleased with you, Apri for saving me this man. I shall call him to me presently. Until then let him wander, for he can not escape.”

  The air fell quiet again, and about him Smith gradually became aware of a dawning light. It swelled from no visible source, but it paled the utter dark to a twilight through which he could see tapestries and richly glowing columns about him, and the outlines of the girl Apri standing at his side. The twilight paled in turn, and the light grew strong, and presently he stood in full day among the queer, rich furnishings of the place into which he had come.

  He stared round in vain for signs of the way they had entered. The room was a small cleared space in the midst of a forest of shining pillars of polished stone. Tapestries were stretched between some of them, swinging down in luxuriant folds. But as far as he could see in all directions the columns reached away in diminishing aisles, and he was quite sure that they had not made their way to this place through the clustering pillars. He would have been aware of them. No, he had stepped straight from Vonng’s stone-strewn ruins upon this rug which carpeted the little clear space, through some door invisible to him.

  He turned to the girl. She had sunk upon one of the divans which stood between the columns around the edge of the circular space. She was paler than the marble, and very lovely, as he had known she would be. She had the true Venusian’s soft, dark, sidelong eyes, and her mouth was painted coral, and her hair swept in black, shining clouds over her shoulders. The tight-swathed Venusian robe clung to her in folds of rose-red velvet, looped to leave one shoulder bare, and slit, as all Venusian’s women’s garments are, to let one leg flash free with every other step. It is the most flattering dress imaginable for any woman to wear, but Apri needed no flattery to make her beautiful. Smith’s pale eyes were appreciative as he stared.

  She met his gaze apathetically. All rebellion seemed to have gone out of her, and a strange exhaustion had drained the color from her face.

  “Where are we now?” demanded Smith.

  She gave him an oblique glance.

  “This is the place Julhi uses for a prison,” she murmured, almost indifferently. “Around us I suppose her slaves are moving, and the halls of her palace stretch. I can’t explain it to you, but at Julhi’s command anything can happen. We could be in the midst of her palace and never suspect it, for there is no escape from here. We can do nothing but wait.”

  “Why?” Smith nodded toward the columned vistas stretching away all around them. “What’s beyond that?”

  “Nothing. It simply extends like that until—until you find yourself back here again.”

  Smith glanced at her swiftly under lowered lids, wondering just how mad she really was. Her white, exhausted face told him nothing.

  “Come along,” he said at last. “I’m going to try anyhow.”

  She shook her head.

  “No use. Julhi can find you when she is ready. There is no escape from Julhi.”

  “I’m going to try,” he said again, stubbornly. “Are you coming?”

  “No. I’m—tired. I’ll wait here. You’ll come back.”

  He turned without further words and plunged at random into the wilderness of pillars surrounding the little carpeted room. The floor was slippery under his boots, and dully shining. The pillars, too, shone along all their polished surfaces, and in the queer light diffused throughout the place no shadows fell; so that a dimension seemed to be lacking and a curious flatness lay over all the shining forest. He went on resolutely, looking back now and again to keep his course straight away from the little clear space he had left. He watched it dwindle behind him and lose itself among the columns and vanish, and he wandered on through endless wilderness, to the sound of his own echoing footsteps, with nothing to break the monotony of the shining pillars until he thought he glimpsed a cluster of tapestries far ahead through the unshadowed vistas and began to hurry, hoping against hope that he had found at least a way out of the forest. He reached the place at last, and pulled aside the tapestry, and met Apri’s wearily smiling eyes. The way somehow had doubled back upon him.

  He snorted disgustedly at himself and turned again to plunge into the columns. This time he had wandered for no more than ten minutes before he found himself coming back once more into the clearing. He tried a third time, and it seemed had taken no more than a dozen steps before the way twisted under his feet and catapulted him back again into the room he had just left. Apri smiled as he flung himself upon one of the divans and regarded her palely from under knit brows.

  “There is no escape,” she repeated. “I think this place is built upon some different plan from any we know, with all its lines running in a circle whose center is this room. For only a circle has boundaries, yet no end, like this wilderness around us.”

  “Who is Julhi?” asked Smith abruptly. “What is she?”

  “She is—a goddess, perhaps. Or a devil from hell. Or both. And she comes from the place beyond the light—I can’t explain it to you. It was I who opened the door for her, I think, and through me she looks back into the light that I must call up for her when she commands me. And I shall go mad—mad!”

  Desperation flamed from her eyes suddenly and faded again, leaving her face whiter than before. Her hands rose in a small, futile gesture and dropped to her lap again. She shook her head.

  “No—not wholly mad. She would never permit me even that escape, for then I could not summon up the light and so open the window for her to look backward into that land from which she came. That land—”

  “Look!” broke in Smith. “The light—”

  Apri glanced up and nodded almost indifferently.

  “Yes. It’s darkening again. Julhi will summon you now, I think.”

  Rapidly the illumination was failing all about them, and the columned forests melted into dimness, and dark veiled the long vistas, and presently everything clouded together and black night fell once more. This time they did not move, but Smith was aware, remotely, of a movement all about them, subtle and indescribable, as if the scenes were being shifted behind the curtain of the dark. The air quivered with motion and change. Even under his feet the floor was shifting, not tangibly but with an inner metamorphosis he could put no name to.

  And then the dark began to lift again. Light diffused slowly through it, paling the black, until he stood in a translucent twilight through whose veil he could see that the whole scene had changed about him. He saw Apri from the corner of his eye, heard her quickened breathing beside him, but he did not turn his head. Those columned vistas were gone. The limitless aisles down which he had wandered were closed now by great walls uplifting all around.

  His eyes rose to seek the ceiling, and as the dusk lightened into day once more he became aware of a miraculous quality about those walls. A curious wavy pattern ran around them in broad bands, and as he stared he realized that the bands were not painted upon the surface, but were integrally part of the walls themselves, and that each successive band lessened in density. Those along the base of the walls were heavily dark, but the rising patterns paled and became less solid as they rose, until at half-way up the wall they were like layers of patterned smoke, and farther up still bands of scarcely discernible substance more tenuous than mist. Around the heights they seemed to melt into pure light, to which he could not lift his eyes for the dazzling brilliance of it
.

  In the center of the room rose a low black couch, and upon it—Julhi. He knew that instinctively the moment he saw her, and in that first moment he realized nothing but her beauty. He caught his breath at the sleek and shining loveliness of her, lying on her black couch and facing him with a level, unwinking stare. Then he realized her unhumanity, and a tiny prickling ran down his back—for she was one of that very ancient race of one-eyed beings about which whispers persist so unescapably in folklore and legend, though history has forgotten them for ages. One-eyed. A clear eye, uncolored, centered in the midst of a fair, broad forehead. Her features were arranged in a diamond-shaped pattern instead of humanity’s triangle, for the slanting nostrils of her low-bridged nose were set so far apart that they might have been separate features, tilting and exquisitely modeled. Her mouth was perhaps the queerest feature of her strange yet somehow lovely face. It was perfectly heartshaped, in an exaggerated cupid’s-bow, but it was not a human mouth. It did not close, ever. It was a beautifully arched orifice, the red lip that rimmed it compellingly crimson, but fixed and moveless in an unhinged jaw. Behind the bowed opening he could see the red, fluted tissue of flesh within.

  Above that single, clear, deep-lashed eye something sprang backward from her brow in a splendid sweep, something remotely feather-like, yet no such feather as was ever fledged upon any bird alive. It was exquisitely iridescent, and its fronds shivered with blowing color at the slight motion of her breathing.

  For the rest—well, as the lines of a lap-dog travesty the clean, lean grace of a racing greyhound, so humanity’s shape travestied the serpentine loveliness of her body. And it was definitely humanity that aped her form, not herself aping humanity. Somehow she was so right in every flowing, curving line, so unerringly fashioned toward some end he could not guess, yet to which instinctively he conceded her perfect fitness.

  There was a fluidity about her, a litheness that partook more of the serpent’s rippling flow than of any warm-blooded creature’s motion, but her body was not like any being, warm-blooded or cold, that he had ever seen before. From the waist up she was human, but below all resemblance ended. And yet she was so breathtakingly lovely. Any attempt to describe the alien beauty of her lower limbs would sound grotesque, and she was not grotesque even in her unnamable shape, even in the utter weirdness of her face.