"Yes, what is it, man?"
"You should not have killed the Utalian, majesty. If it is ordained that a living man and a living woman accompany the Prince's body to the Place of the Dead, to die there with him, their spirits serving him in death, why choose from among the palace staff? We all have family, we all have friends, we all stand something to lose. But majesty, if you were to break with tradition, if you were to send instead two strangers whose loss meant nothing to the palace, the palace staff would love and revere you even more than they already do."
* * * *
Volna's beautiful face smiled at him. He did not know what she was thinking. He never knew. No one did. She might reward him or have him slain on the spot. "Why do you tell me this, Prokliam?" she asked.
"For saving me when it was thought I would accompany—"
"No. There must be another reason."
"If you do this deed and if the palace and the people love you for it, and if the scepter of power should slip from Bontarc's hand to yours, and if, when it came time to select your prime minister...."
"Ha! Ha! Ha! We have an ambitious palace butler."
"But surely you—"
"Yes, Prokliam. I understand. I won't deny it. Perhaps I had the Utalian slain impetuously. But there's still the girl."
"I'll fetch her at once, majesty."
"And if," mused Volna, no longer aware of the seneschal's presence, "we could find another stranger, a man, to accompany the body of Prince Jlomec on the Journey of No Return, not only the palace, but the people as well would love me. A stranger...."
"Take me to your King," Bram Forest told the palace guard.
The guard smirked. "Do you think any stranger in the realm is granted an audience with King Bontarc, fool?"
"It is a matter of life and death."
"But whose life and death?" demanded the guard, roaring with laughter. "Yours, idiot?"
"It is about Ylia the Wayfarer."
"I know of no Ylia the Wayfarer. Begone, dolt!"
"It is about Prince Jlomec."
The guard's eyes narrowed. The word had been passed by no less a person than Prokliam the seneschal that anyone with information concerning the death of the royal Prince should be brought at once not to Bontarc but to Princess Volna. Could the guard, could he, Porfis, do less?
"Very well," he said. "Come with me."
Unarmed, but aware of his giant's strength and the mission which had seen him spend the first hundred years of his life in a crypt on Earth, Bram Forest went with the guard.
The way was long, through chambers in which priceless tapestries hung, through narrow, musty corridors into which the light of day barely penetrated, through rooms in which ladies in waiting and courtiers talked and joked, up bare stone stairs and through heavy wooden doors which Porfis the guard opened with a key which hung at his belt. The doors opened slowly.
Bram Forest entered a large room. It was, he could see at a glance, a woman's bower. Someone was standing at the far end of the room, in shadow. He squinted. He took two slow steps into the room. He began to run.
"Ylia! Ylia!" he cried.
Too late he saw the fetters binding her arms. Too late he saw her bite savagely at something and twist her neck and spit the gag from her mouth. Too late he heard her cry:
"Bram! Bram Forest! Behind you!"
He turned barely in time to see Porfis the guard, his whip-sword raised overhead hilt-first. He lifted his arm, but it was swept aside in the downward rush of the sword. Something exploded behind his eyes and all eternity seemed to open beneath his feet. He plunged into blackness with Ylia's name on his lips.
* * * *
Unconscious, he was taken with Ylia through subterranean passages to the Royal Dock on the River of Ice. The barge with Jlomec's embalmed body waited. It was very cold on the river. The Place of the Dead beckoned from the unseen end of the Journey of No Return.
At first Retoc the Abarian was too stunned by what he witnessed to think coherently. With the other Tarthians of royal blood he had received an unexpected summons to appear at the Royal Dock on the River of Ice and, before he could even try to fathom what it was about, an escort of Nadian guards had come to fetch him.
It was cold and murky on the banks of the River of Ice. The two men, Retoc and Hultax had arrived barely in time to see them unfastening the hawsers of the Royal Barge. Curious, he pushed closer through the crowd of nobles. Suddenly, before the barge was quite unmoored, as it swayed and rocked on the currents of the river, Nadian soldiers appeared with a platform on poles slung across their shoulders, the usual means of intra-city transportation for Nadian royalty. But this was no royalty Retoc saw on the platform, although they were dressed as royalty.
The woman, conscious and bound hand and foot, was the Virgin of the Wayfarers who had witnessed Prince Jlomec's death. The man, unconscious, his head propped high on pillows, was the white giant who once on the Plains of Ofrid had almost strangled Retoc.
A hatred such as he had never known flashed through Retoc's brain. He was so close he could see the gentle up-and-down motion of the giant's chest as he breathed. Then, beyond the platform, he saw Volna. Volna smiled at him. The platform bobbed by, was placed on the barge at the foot of Jlomec's bier. The remaining hawsers were cut loose.
There was, Retoc thought triumphantly, no return from the Place of the Dead.
But still, the white giant had recovered from what looked like certain death once, had vanished abruptly and fantastically when he would have died again. What was good enough for Volna the Beautiful was not necessarily good enough for Retoc of Abaria. He watched only long enough to see the royal barge pushed out into the icy currents of the river, then he turned and made his way to the second tier of observers, where Hultax stood among the lesser nobility and the military officers of the planet Tarth. He found Hultax and whispered for a time in his ear.
* * * *
Hultax's face blanched. "But lord," he protested, "there is no return ... it is obvious the man will die ... you couldn't expect me to...." Hultax, frightened, confused, could neither think clearly nor express himself properly. His mouth hung open.
"Earlier, Hultax," Retoc said with a hard smile, "you craved action. I give you action. Take a boat. There are some moored down-river for the use of Nadian priests on their religious pilgrimages to the banks where the stilt-birds dwell. Overtake the royal barge. Board it. Slay the man and the woman."
"But I—the Place of the Dead...."
"Fool!" hissed Retoc. "I didn't ask you to visit the Place of the Dead. That's up to you. If you slay them first, on the River of Ice, and can bring back proof ... but the longer we talk, the further they are. You'll go?"
It was phrased as a question; actually, it was a command. Grim-faced, the whip-sword trailing at his side, Hultax left the crowd of soldiers and made his way downstream. A few moments later he had poled a wooden skiff out into the icy current and went down-river in pursuit of the royal barge.
* * * *
The guards had unbound Ylia's fetters on the barge, knowing she could never swim for safety in the waters of the River of Ice. She sat now at the foot of Jlomec's bier, with Bram Forest's handsome head cushioned on her lap. It was very cold there on the river. Wind blew, rustling the reeds which grew along the bank. They had long since emerged from the river's underground cavern. The swift current carried them now through a country of ice, a tundra. The reeds, twice as tall as a man, seemed to thrive on the riverbanks. They swallowed everything.
Bram Forest opened his eyes, and looked at her, and smiled. He tried to sit up, wincing as pain knifed through his head. "We seem to make a habit of this," he said, smiling again.
"Shh, you mustn't talk."
She leaned close. He could smell the animal perfume of her body, like musk and jasmine. Impulsively, she kissed him softly on the lips. His arm went around her neck. He pulled her head down and drank deeply of her.
"Why ..." she began, all breathless.
"B
ecause I love you. I think I loved you the first moment I saw you. But I didn't know it then." He laughed softly, gently, and she did not know why this should be so.
"Why do you laugh?"
"I was an infant, the son of the Queen. Of Queen Evalla. Portox the scientist fled with me, the last of the royal Ofridian blood, to the other side of the solar system, to a world the twin of this, a world we never see because the sun always stands between us, a world called Earth. There I would wait until maturity. There I would be given the strength and the wisdom I needed. And then I would return to Tarth and right the ancient wrong. Well, I have returned. I love you. It is enough, Ylia. I want to think of the future, not the past."
Ylia let him kiss her again. "Isn't it the same, the future and the past? Aren't they one? I too am of Ofridian blood, Bram Forest, of the lesser nobility. There are hundreds of us, living nomadic lives on the Ofridian Plains, where once our great nation stood."
"I didn't know that. It wasn't in Portox's training. Now Portox is dead. I buried him on this world called Earth. He could not even come back to his native Tarth."
"Darling, don't you see? That's exactly why the ancient wrong must be righted, why Retoc must pay for his infamous deeds. So Portox and the millions of other Ofridians, slain, all slain, can sleep eternally in peace. You are their champion."
"But revenge? What is revenge if—"
"You are the champion of the future too! Don't you see, oh, don't you? Of all the unborn tomorrows when the Ofridian nation may live again. Of all the unborn tomorrows when the nations of Tarth can live together in peace and harmony. Don't you understand that?"
"It's funny. I try to see my mother's face. Queen Evalla. But all I see is you. She's the past, Ylia. You're the future." He held her lightly.
"There is no future for anyone as long as Retoc the Abarian rules, and dreams of Tarth, all Tarth, as his domain."
Bram Forest stood up. The cold winds blew. He looked at the blue-cold body of Jlomec, lying in state, at the ice-choked river, at the banks of rustling reeds. He did not have to ask where they were. He knew. "Perhaps," he said at last. "I only mean that if I do this thing it will be more to see that future generations live in peace than to bring vengeance on a power-mad Abarian."
"Oh, Bram! That's what I wanted you to say. I wanted to hear you say that. For tomorrow! For all our tomorrows."
* * * *
Bram Forest walked to the rail of the barge, and gripped it, and looked out over the ice-flows. He recited:
"An ape, a boar, a stallion,
A land beyond the stars.
A Virgin's feast, a raging beast,
A prison without bars."
"Why, what an unusual poem!" Ylia cried. Then: "Hold me close, it's so cold. And I'm afraid, Bram Forest...."
"Of the Place of the Dead?"
"Yes, yes. The Place of the Dead."
"It and the poem are entwined," Bram Forest said musingly. "I know they are. Together, they're my destiny."
"And the destiny of all Tarth?"
"Perhaps. Portox liked to think so, I guess."
"I like to think so, Bram Forest." She smiled up at him tremulously. "And my destiny as well."
"Ylia," he asked abruptly, "what do you know about the Golden Ape? You mentioned it to me once, when you thought I ... well, when you thought I endangered your virginity."
"Why, nothing beyond what the legends say."
"And what do the legends say?"
"It is written in the most ancient of our religious beliefs that the messenger to the Place of the Dead is a Golden Ape. Naturally, in these same beliefs, a defiled virgin is supposed to kill herself. Thus, in a way of speaking, she goes to the Golden Ape. You see?"
* * * *
Bram Forest smiled down at her. "What would you think if I told you the Golden Ape was real? If I told you that there actually was a Place of the Dead?"
"For the spirits of the departed?" Ylia asked in a very small voice.
"No. Man can't presume to know about that. It's in the realm of the gods. I mean a place which somehow borders on Tarth and yet ... yet is beyond the stars. A place which, when wayfarers returned from it miraculously long and long ago, gave rise to the legends."
"Borders on Tarth ... yet beyond the stars? How can this be?"
"Portox found it and explained it with his science," Bram Forest insisted. "Earth and Tarth, twin worlds, yet so different, forever unseen one by the other, on opposite sides of the sun. They're unique in the solar system, Ylia. Portox thought—if the memory he planted in my mind is correct—that they're unique in the entire universe. Somehow, a million million years ago, a world split, becoming two worlds. But ordinary space ... I don't know, the memory is confused ... could not hold them. There is a warp of space, a place where space bends. Learn to master the warp and you go instantly from Tarth to Earth, or back again. That was the way Portox brought me, as an infant, to Earth." He held aloft his arm, showing her the steel-silver disc. "With this I can travel back and forth at will. Without it, either Earth or Tarth would be my prison...." His voice trailed off.
Then he blurted: "'A prison without bars!'"
"What...."
"The prophetic poem. Part of the poem. Anyway, Ylia, Earth and Tarth exist at either end of this space warp, connected thus through normal space where there should be no connection. And someplace along the warp—where ordinary space-time distances don't matter...."
"I'm sorry, Bram Forest. I don't understand you."
* * * *
"I'm not sure I understand myself. Tarth is a primitive world. It is beyond our science. It is even beyond the science of Earth, I believe, and Earth is a millennium ahead of Tarth in its development. But Portox knew. Anyhow, someplace along the warp—in ordinary distances along the space-time continuum perhaps a billion light years distant from either Earth or Tarth, is a third world. On the warp it is very close. The River of Ice leads to it. We call it the Place of the Dead."
"But the Golden Ape—?"
"—inhabits the so-called Place of the Dead. Their world was dying, but Portox saved them. I think ... the science is beyond me ... the entropy of their galaxy was running down ... their world perishing, freezing ... when somehow with his great science Portox claimed for their use the unavailable energy in their ... their thermodynamic system, and saved them."
"Why do you frown so?"
"Words. Words only. I don't understand. I can only act."
"You can act," Ylia said, hugging herself tight against him. "For Tarth and the future."
"For Tarth and the future," Bram Forest said, but he hardly heard the words.
Ahead of them in the cold clear air a wall seemed to rise. It came up so suddenly, and, in fact, the air had cleared so suddenly from the accustomed murkiness, that Ylia was afraid. "It is in the legend," she whispered. "The Black Wall, Bram Forest. And beyond it—the Place of the Dead."
"More accurately, an edge-on view of the space-warp, where it meets the normal world." But although he spoke the words of Portox, Bram Forest did not sound too confident.
"We're coming closer to it, Bram. Hold me!"
He held her. There was nothing else he could do. The current swept the barge on inexorably. The Black Wall reared ahead of them, frowned down at them, seemed to block off all the rest of the universe and all reality whether of Earth or of Tarth....
The barge penetrated the wall. Black and solid-seeming, solid as stone, it yet offered no resistance. The barge disappeared within it.
Behind the barge, rope-trailing so close that its prow almost scraped the royal wood, was a skiff in which, shaking and afraid yet somehow triumphant because he had heard Bram Forest's strange words, was Hultax the Abarian.
CHAPTER XV
The Golden Ape
Hultax the Abarian shook himself. He had lost consciousness as every nerve-ending in his body had screamed with pain. Did this have something to do with the warp—warping?—Bram Forest had mentioned. Hultax the Abarian did not know.
But he did know that he was alive, as alive as anyone could be or had a right to be in the Place of the Dead. And he did know, gratefully, that the intense cold of the River of Ice was gone.
He wondered how long he had been unconscious. He blinked his eyes. A balmy, pink-tinted sky. A pink sun, not on the horizon, when indeed the sun might be pink, but overhead. On the horizon—Hultax blinked again and thought he was mad—a second sun, smaller, paler, the ghost of green in color.
The royal barge was in ruins. It had piled up on some rocks. The bier of Jlomec, Prince of Nadia, had been thrown clear. He could see it on the bank, also in ruins. He stood up unsteadily, then waded through the shallow water in which he'd regained consciousness, over to the wreck of the royal barge. The fingers of his right hand were poised inches from the hilt of his whip-sword. Slay Bram Forest and the girl if the wreck hadn't already killed them? He shook his head. Bram Forest knew more about this strange place, this world of the pink sun and the green sun, than he did.
* * * *
He climbed over the wreckage, and finally came upon the two bodies. He went down on his knees beside them. They were covered with blood. They were broken—broken being the only word that could describe them. They had been crushed, perhaps by falling timber, perhaps by the bier of Jlomec as it hurtled over the side. There probably was not a bone in either of their bodies, at least a major bone, which had not been crushed.
They were dead.
With a craftiness which surprised even himself, Hultax remembered the dead Bram Forest's words. It was the bracelet with the shining disc which gave Bram Forest the power to appear and disappear at will, as Retoc had described. Or, as Bram Forest had put it, to journey between the worlds. Carefully, Hultax took the bracelet—it was miraculously intact—from the crushed, broken arm of Bram Forest's corpse. He circled his own arm with it and felt, or imagined he felt, an instantaneous source of power surge through his body. Without looking back at the broken bodies of the man and woman who had found love and, finding it, died in each other's arms, he made his way from the river bank across a pleasant green meadow. Far in the distance he saw a dark blur which looked like a forest. It was many miles away, almost at the limit of vision.
The 8th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Milton Lesser Page 35
