“So, Outlander, Thrala flies to your arms—”
Garin whirled about. Kepta was hunched on the broad seat of the jet throne.
“No, I am not dead, Outlander—nor shall you kill me, as you think to do. I go now, but I shall return. We have met and hated, fought and died before—you and I. You were a certain Garan, Marshall of the air fleet of Yu-lac on a vanished world, and I was Lord of Koom. That was in the days before the Ancient Ones pioneered space. You and I and Thrala, we are bound together and even fate can not break those bonds. Farewell, Garin. And do you, Thrala, remember the ending of that other Garan. It was not an easy one.”
With a last malicious chuckle, he leaned back in the throne. His battered body slumped. Then the sharp lines of the throne blurred; it shimmered in the light. Abruptly then both it and its occupant were gone. They were staring at empty space, above which loomed the rose throne of the Ancient Ones.
“He spoke true,” murmured Thrala. “We have had other lives, other meetings—so will we meet again. But for the present he returns to the darkness which sent him forth. It is finished.”
Without warning, a low rumbling filled the Cavern; the walls rocked and swayed. Lizard and human, they huddled together until the swaying stopped. Finally a runner appeared with news that one of the Gibi had ventured forth and discovered that the Caves of Darkness had been sealed by an underground quake. The menace of the Black Ones was definitely at an end.
Although there were falls of rock within the Caverns and some of the passages were closed, few of the Folk suffered injury. Gibi scouts reported that the land about the entrance to the Caves had sunk, and that the River of Gold, thrown out of its bed, was fast filling this basin to form a lake.
As far as they could discover, none of the Black Ones had survived the battle and the sealing of the Caves. But they could not be sure that there was not a handful of outlaws somewhere within the confines of Tav.
The Crater itself was changed. A series of raw hills had appeared in the central plain. The pool of boiling mud had vanished and trees in the forest lay flat, as if cut by a giant scythe.
Upon their return to the cliff city, the Gibi found most of their wax skyscrapers in ruins, but they set about rebuilding without complaint. The squirrel-farmers emerged from their burrows and were again busy in the fields.
Garin felt out of place in all the activity that filled the Caverns. More than ever he was the outlander with no true roots in Tav. Restlessly, he explored the Caverns, spending many hours in the Place of Ancestors, where he studied those men of the outer world who had preceded him into this weird land.
One night when he came back to his chamber he found Dandtan and Trar awaiting him there. There was a curious hardness in Dandtan’s attitude, a somber sobriety in Trar’s carriage.
“Have you sought the Hall of Women since the battle?” demanded the son of the Ancient One abruptly.
“No,” retorted Garin shortly. Did Dandtan accuse him of double dealing?
“Have you sent a message to Thrala?”
Garin held back his rising temper. “I have not ventured where I can not.”
Dandtan nodded to Trar as if his suspicions had been confirmed. “You see how it stands, Trar.”
Trar shook his head slowly. “But never has the summoning been at fault—”
“You forget,” Dandtan reminded him sharply. “It was once—and the penalty was exacted. So shall it be again.”
Garin looked from one to the other, confused. Dandtan seemed possessed of a certain ruthless anger, but Trar was manifestly unhappy.
“It must come after council, the Daughter willing,” the Lord of the Folk said.
Dandtan strode toward the door. “Thrala is not to know. Assemble the Council tonight. Meanwhile, see that he,” he jerked his thumb toward Garin, “does not leave this room.”
Thus Garin became a prisoner under the guard of the Folk, unable to discover of what Dandtan accused him, or how he had aroused the hatred of the Cavern ruler. Unless Dandtan’s jealousy had been aroused and he was determined to rid himself of a rival.
Believing this, the flyer went willingly to the chamber where the judges waited. Dandtan sat at the head of a long table, Trar at his right hand and lesser nobles of the Folk beyond.
“You know the charge,” Dandtan’s words were tipped with venom as Garin came to stand before him. “Out of his own mouth has this outlander condemned himself. Therefore I ask that you decree for him the fate of that outlander of the second calling who rebelled against the summoning.”
“The outlander has admitted his fault?” questioned one of the Folk.
Trar inclined his head sadly. “He did.”
As Garin opened his mouth to demand a stating of the charge against him, Dandtan spoke again:
“What say you, Lords?”
For a long moment they sat in silence and then they bobbed their lizard heads in assent. “Do as you desire, Dweller in the Light.”
Dandtan smiled without mirth. “Look, outlander.” He passed his hand over the glass of the seeing mirror set in the table top. “This is the fate of him who rebels—”
In the shining surface Garin saw pictured a break in Tav’s wall. At its foot stood a group of men of the Ancient Ones, and in their midst struggled a prisoner. They were forcing him to climb the crater wall. Garin watched him reach the lip and crawl over, to stagger across the steaming rock, dodging the scalding vapor of hot springs, until he pitched face down in the slimy mud.
“Such was his ending, and so will you end—”
The calm brutality of that statement aroused Garin’s anger. “Rather would I die that way than linger in this den,” he cried hotly. “You, who owe your life to me, would send me to such a death without even telling me of what I am accused. Little is there to choose between you and Kepta, after all—except that he was an open enemy!”
Dandtan sprang to his feet, but Trar caught his arm.
“He speaks fairly. Ask him why he will not fulfill the summoning.”
While Dandtan hesitated, Garin leaned across the table, flinging his words, weapon-like, straight into that cold face.
“I’ll admit that I love Thrala—have loved her since that moment when I saw her on the steps of the morgel pit in the caves. Since when has it become a crime to love that which may not be yours—if you do not try to take it?”
Trar released Dandtan, his golden eyes gleaming.
“If you love her, claim her. It is your right.
“Do I not know,” Garin turned to him, “that she is Dandtan’s. Thran had no idea of Dandtan’s survival when he laid his will upon her. Shall I stoop to holding her to an unwelcome bargain? Let her go to the one she loves…”
Dandtan’s face was livid, and his hands, resting on the table, trembled. One by one the lords of the Folk slipped away, leaving the two face to face.
“And I thought to order you to your death.” Dandtan’s whisper was husky as it emerged between dry lips. “Garin, we thought you knew—and, knowing, had refused her.”
“Knew what?”
“That I am Thran’s son—and Thrala’s brother.”
The floor swung beneath Garin’s unsteady feet. Dandtan’s hands were warm on his shoulders.
“I am a fool,” said the American slowly.
Dandtan smiled. “A very honorable fool! Now get you to Thrala, who deserves to hear the full of this tangle.”
So it was that, with Dandtan by his side, Garin walked for the second time down that hallway, to pass the golden curtains and stand in the presence of the Daughter. She came straight from her cushions into his arms when she read what was in his face. They needed no words.
And in that hour began Garin’s life in Tav.
THE MOON THAT VANISHED
By Leigh Brackett
I
DOWN TO THE DARKLING SEA
THE STRANGER was talking about him—the tall stranger who was a long way from his native uplands, who wore plain leather and did not belong
in this swamp-coast village. He was asking questions, talking, watching.
David Heath knew that, in the same detached way in which he realized that he was in Kalruna’s dingy Palace of All Possible Delights, that he was very drunk but not nearly drunk enough, that he would never be drunk enough and that presently, when he passed out, he would be tossed over the back railing into the mud, where he might drown or sleep it off as he pleased.
Heath did not care. The dead and the mad do not care. He lay without moving on the native hide-frame cot, the leather mask covering the lower part of his face, and breathed the warm golden vapor that bubbled in a narghile-like bowl beside him. Breathed, and tried to sleep, and could not. He did not close his eyes. Only when he became unconscious would he do that.
There would be a moment he could not avoid, just before his drugged brain slipped over the edge into oblivion, when he would no longer be able to see anything but the haunted darkness of his own mind, and that moment would seem like all eternity. But afterward, for a few hours, he would find peace.
Until then he would watch, from his dark corner, the life that went on in the Palace of All Possible Delights.
Heath rolled his head slightly. By his shoulder, clinging with its hooked claws to the cot frame, a little bright-scaled dragon crouched and met his glance with jewel-red eyes in which there were peculiar sympathy and intelligence. Heath smiled and settled back. A nervous spasm shook him but the drug had relaxed him so that it was not severe and passed off quickly.
No one came near him except the emerald-skinned girl from the deep swamps who replenished his bowl. She was not human and therefore did not mind that he was David Heath. It was as though there were a wall around him beyond which no man stepped or looked.
Except, of course, the stranger.
Heath let his gaze wander. Past the long low bar where the common seamen lay on cushions of moss and skins, drinking the cheap fiery thul. Past the tables, where the captains and the mates sat, playing their endless and complicated dice games. Past the Nahali girl who danced naked in the torchlight, her body glimmering with tiny scales and as sinuous and silent in motion as the body of a snake.
The single huge room was open on three sides to the steaming night. It was there that Heath’s gaze went at last. Outside, to the darkness and the sea, because they had been his life and he loved them.
Darkness on Venus is not like the darkness of Earth or Mars. The planet is hungry for light and will not let it go. The face of Venus never sees the sun but even at night the hope and the memory of it are there, trapped in the eternal clouds.
The air is the color of indigo and it carries its own pale glow. Heath lay watching how the slow hot wind made drifts of light among the liha-trees, touched the muddy harbor beaches with a wavering gleam and blended into the restless phosphorescence of the Sea of Morning Opals. Half a mile south the river Omaz flowed silently down, still tainted with the reek of the Deep Swamps.
Sea and sky—the life of David Heath and his destruction.
The heavy vapor swirled in Heath’s brain. His breathing slowed and deepened. His lids grew heavy.
Heath closed his eyes.
An expression of excitement, of yearning, crossed his face, mingled with a vague unease. His muscles tensed. He began to whimper, very softly, the sound muffled by the leather mask.
The little dragon cocked its head and watched, still as a carven image.
Heath’s body, half naked in a native kilt, began to twitch, then to move in spasmodic jerks. The expression of unease deepened, changed gradually to one of pure horror. The cords in his throat stood out like wires as he tried to cry out and could not. Sweat gathered in great beads on his skin.
Suddenly the little dragon raised its wings and voiced a hissing scream.
Heath’s nightmare world rocked around him, riven with loud sounds. He was mad with fear, he was dying, vast striding shapes thronged toward him out of a shining mist. His body was shaken, cracking, frail bones bursting into powder, his heart tearing out of him, his brain a part of the mist, shining, burning. He tore the mask from his face and cried out a name, Ethne!, and sat up—and his eyes were wide open, blind and deep.
Somewhere, far off, he heard thunder. The thunder spoke. It called his name. A new face pushed in past the phantoms of his dream. It swelled and blotted out the others. The face of the stranger from the High Plateaus. He saw every line of it, painted in fire upon his brain.
The square jaw, hard mouth, nose curved like a falcon’s beak, the scars wealed, white against white skin, eyes like moonstones, only hot, bright—the long silver hair piled high in the intricate tribal knot and secured with a warrior’s golden chains.
Hands shook him, slapped his face. The little dragon went on screaming and flapping, tethered by a short thong to the head of Heath’s cot so that it could not tear out the eyes of the stranger.
Heath caught his breath in a long shuddering sob and sprang.
He would have killed the man who had robbed him of his little time of peace. He tried, in deadly silence, while the seamen and the masters and the mates and the dancing girls watched, not moving, sidelong out of their frightened, hateful eyes. But the Uplander was a big man, bigger than Heath in his best days had ever been. And presently Heath lay panting on the cot, a sick man, a man who was slowly dying and had no strength left.
The stranger spoke. “It is said that you found the Moonfire.”
Heath stared at him with his dazed, drugged eyes and did not answer.
“It is said that you are David Heath the Earthman, captain of the Ethne.”
Still Heath did not answer. The rusty torchlight flickered over him, painting highlight and shadow. He had always been a lean, wiry man. Now he was emaciated, the bones of his face showing terribly ridged and curved under the drawn skin. His black hair and unkempt beard were shot through with white.
The Uplander studied Heath deliberately, contemptuously. He said, “I think they lie.”
Heath laughed. It was not a nice laugh.
“Few men have ever reached the Moonfire,” the Venusian said. “They were the strong ones, the men without fear.”
After a long while Heath whispered, “They were fools.”
He was not speaking to the Uplander. He had forgotten him. His dark mad gaze was fixed on something only he could see.
“Their ships are rotting in the weed beds of the Upper Seas. The little dragons have picked their bones.” Heath’s voice was slow, harsh and toneless, wandering. “Beyond the Sea of Morning Opals, beyond the weeds and the Guardians, through the Dragon’s Throat and still beyond—I’ve seen it, rising out of the mists, out of the Ocean-That-Is-Not-Water.”
A tremor shook him, twisting the gaunt bones of his body. He lifted his head, like a man straining to breathe, and the running torchlight brought his face clear of the shadows. In all the huge room there was not a sound, not a rustle, except for a small sharp gasp that ran through every mouth and then was silent.
“The gods know where they are now, the strong brave men who went through the Moonfire. The gods know what they are now. Not human if they live at all.”
He stopped. A deep slow shudder went through him. He dropped his head. “I was only in the fringe of it. Only a little way.”
In the utter quiet the Uplander laughed. He said, “I think you lie.”
Heath did not raise his head nor move.
The Venusian leaned over him, speaking loudly, so that even across the distance of drugs and madness the Earthman should hear.
“You’re like the others, the few who have come back. But they never lived a season out. They died or killed themselves. How long have you lived?”
Presently he grasped the Earthman’s shoulder and shook it roughly. “How long have you lived?” he shouted and the little dragon screamed, struggling against its thong.
Heath moaned. “Through all hell,” he whispered. “Forever.”
“Three seasons,” said the Venusian. “Three seasons, and
part of a fourth.” He took his hand away from Heath and stepped back. “You never saw the Moonfire. You knew the custom, how the men who break the taboo must be treated until the punishment of the gods is finished.”
He kicked the bowl, breaking it, and the bubbling golden fluid spilled out across the floor in a pool of heady fragrance. “You wanted that, and you knew how to get it, for the rest of your sodden life.”
A low growl of anger rose in the Palace of All Possible Delights.
Heath’s blurred vision made out the squat fat bulk of Kalruna approaching. Even in the depths of his agony he laughed, weakly. For more than three seasons Kalruna had obeyed the traditional law. He had fed and made drunk the pariah who was sacred to the anger of the gods—the gods who guarded so jealously the secret of the Moonfire. Now Kalruna was full of doubt and very angry.
Heath began to laugh aloud. The effects of his uncompleted jag were making him reckless and hysterical. He sat up on the cot and laughed in their faces.
“I was only in the fringe,” he said. “I’m not a god. I’m not even a man any more. But I can show you if you want to be shown.”
He pulled himself to his feet, and as he did so, in a motion as automatic as breathing, he loosed the little dragon and set it on his naked shoulder. He stood swaying a moment and then began to walk out across the room, slowly, uncertainly, but with his head stubbornly erect. The crowd drew apart to make a path for him and he walked along it in the silence, clothed in his few sad rags of dignity, until he came to the railing and stopped.
“Put out the torches,” he said. “All but one.”
Kalruna said hesitantly, “There’s no need. I believe you.”
There was fear in the place now—fear, and fascination. Every man glanced sideways, looking for escape, but no one went away.
Heath said again, “Put out the torches.”
The tall stranger reached out and doused the nearest one in its bucket, and presently in all that vast room there was darkness, except for one torch far in the back.
Heath stood braced against the rail, staring out into the hot indigo night.
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