by Lin Carter
For no apparent reason, M’Cord suddenly shivered.
It was warm and summery here. Why, then, did he feel the cold breath of the Unknown upon his nakedness?
XX. The Crystal Grail
Later on that afternoon, M’Cord got restless and decided to take a walk.
Thaklar had vanished on some ramble of his own; Zerild was napping golden and naked among the flowers, careless as a nymph. Nordgren was off exploring somewhere and, as for Phuun, the little priestling had found the earthenware crocks in which the Ushongti store their fermenting wine, and had drunk himself into insensibility. Nobody knew where Chastar had gone off to. That left M’Cord and Inga.
“How about it? Take a walk?” he invited. “Now that I got my new leg, or my old leg back, or whatever, I feel like giving it some exercise. Want to come along?”
Bent over her brother’s notes, which she was transcribing, she looked at him without even really seeing him.
“A walk? … Karl says we should stay close to camp,” she murmured.
“Let Karl stay as close to camp as he wants to,” he grunted. “There’s nothing that can harm us here. C’mon; it’s too nice a day to waste it scribbling all that stuff.”
She regarded him wistfully. “It would be nice, but Karl says—”
He made a rude noise.
“That for Karl! All you ever say is Karl says …’ C’mon; you’re a big girl now. Let the march of science get along without you for an hour. Let’s stretch our legs!”
“Well… just for a little while,” she said. “Which way shall we go?”
He pointed off to his right, beyond the miniature lake.
“We haven’t gone that way, any of us; we came from over there. So let’s see what there is to be seen.”
She nodded submissively and they started off. M’Cord felt as gay and lively as a boy; not only was it heaven to be free of the nagging pain and the half-dead, crippled leg, but he felt exhilarated in mind and spirit in a way he had not felt in too many years. Normally taciturn, he found himself joking and clowning, trying to coax a smile out of her, to bring a little gaiety into her mood. He wanted to see her laugh. The image of that naked golden girl-child in the wood haunted him; she had been fresh and free, laughing and alive. Inga should be like that, he thought, and wondered what it was in her mind or personality, or in her past, that kept her silent and withdrawn and solemn so much of the time.
She began to sweat in her thermalsuit, which she wore, still primly seamed to the neck-band.
“Why don’t you skin out of those hot things?” he asked. She flashed a startled look at him; her expression was so filled with instinctive horror that he burst out laughing.
“Hey, I don’t mean you should slink around in your skimpies as bare as Zerild,” he tried to reassure her. “But surely you’ve got something a little cooler to wear?”
“Karl says—” she began, timidly.
“ ‘Karl says; Karl says,’ ” he mimicked her tone with a grimace. “Don’t you ever say ‘Inga wants’—whatever it
is that Inga does want? You talk about your brother like he was brother, father, and husband, rolled up in one.”
Quite suddenly, she was weeping.
Not a sound escaped her tight-pressed lips. But great tears came welling one by one from those limpid eyes, to river down her cheeks. The expression of agony on her face was so acute and so terrible that M’Cord was frightened. Then he softened.
“Hey,” he said awkwardly. “I’m sorry. Really, I am! I guess I got a big mouth; anyway, don’t pay no attention to me. I didn’t mean to make you cry—”
He stopped short, for she had halted suddenly, and he almost blundered into her. She was staring at something out of his line of vision, and her expression was so filled with amazement that there was no room there for agony or tears.
He turned to see what had surprised her . .. and saw it.
Some twenty feet beyond where they had paused, a pavilion stood amid the azure moss. There was a circular dais of three steps, which rose from the level of the moss and then declined into a depthless hollow like a vast cup.
It was roofed with a smooth, rounded dome, that cup; and the dome was held high by seven slender pilasters, spiral-fluted like the horns of unicorns.
Carved entirely-from pure, dew-clear crystal was that pavilion—three-stepped dais, cup-like bowl, spiraling pilasters, and hollow dome. The dome was cut and polished like a gigantic lens; the crystal of the dome bent awry the dim fall of light in a torrent of illumination.
Beneath the lens of the dome, the cup was like a grail cut from pure crystal.
It was filled to the brim with—glory!
Imagine pure white light, intolerably brilliant. Imagine that immaculate radiance somehow—curdled—into a liquid. Imagine that incandescent white liquid whipped into a froth, a seething foam of beaten light.
That was what they saw in the crystal grail: a grail filled to the brim with foaming light!
They stared—rapt—exalted!
A feeling of standing in a holy place stole upon them; they had almost knelt before the crystal grail, but something restrained them.
It was filled with glory, that place. A freshness was in the air, like the air of April gardens washed clean by an April rain. Joy rose up within them, for no reason; their blood sang in their veins. Their minds were filled with joy, and the fragrance of the rose of Eden was in their nostrils.
They felt young, exuberant—light—free. They forgot about their bodies, did not feel the heaviness of their meat, the sordid gurgling of body fluids, the muffled pump and squeeze of the heart, the lungs bloating and deflating like absurd, fatty bellows. They felt like pure spirit—exalted, flushed with joy, filled to the brim with light as the crystal pool was filled.
They knew what it was, of course.
Jhay yam-i-Jaah; the Pool of Eternity, wherein seethes forever the glorious Water of Life….
A thousand legends proclaimed this place was holy. A thousand ages sanctified it as once on another world was sanctified another Garden, and a Tree.
The eternal gods of Mars had walked here once, a billion years ago.
Here had they made man, the Timeless Ones. Molded him into being out of the flesh of beasts. Instilled within his brain the divine spark of reason and intelligence that blazed up through the red murk of bestiality like a star shining through the roiling smokes of war.
They were holding hands, like children, without knowing it.
They turned to look into each other’s eyes and saw there the same wonder and awe that was in their own.
Then, in that marvelous daze that had come upon them, 168
they clung to one another, seeking comfort in the animal warmth of body against body in the unbearable presence of supernal Mystery.
They kissed, and clung.
And then her brother was there, his face white and wet and working, his eyes wild with rage and horror, damning them weakly, in a stammering voice that poured fourth filth like stinking ordure in the white radiance of that holy place where they had found the Water of Life. And found each other…
The Old One told them something about it, but not much. It was not that the lizard-creature refused to answer their questions; it was that they did not know the right questions to ask.
Bubbles—or something very like bubbles—broke constantly from the foaming glory ta drift idly on the breeze like globes of trembling and insubstantial light.
… Avoid them lest they touch your flesh, the calm whisper echoed in their minds. For they do work strange transformations upon men, making them young again.
“Is that bad?” murmured Chastar, half to himself, with an eager, leering grin.
“The golden children we met in the outer precincts of the Valley!” Nordgren stammered. “Have they been touched by these—these bubbles?”
… Many times, the Old One whispered gravely. Some of the childlike ones have been here from the Beginning, returned to youthfulness again and
again by drinking of the Water … others came here as you came, seeking the Source of Life and the Mysteries thereof. They were incautious and drank too deep, and became as children again, even in their minds …for the Water robs the mind of its memories, even as it robs the body of its years … therefore;, hearken unto me, and beware!
More than this the lizard-creature would not tell them; in fact, it seemed reluctant to discuss the Pool at all. And now that the matter had been brought out in the open, they began to notice the bubbles it had warned them against. Now and again they were to be seen, floating about idly, drifting on the breezes. They wandered about the dreaming garden, quivering globes of opal luminance, frail as a vapor, exquisite as a moth. The six avoided them and were careful not to be touched by one of them, fearful of the results.
Nordgren was on fire with excitement. The discovery of the Pool was of such transcendent importance that it took precedence even over his fury at having discovered M’Cord and his sister in an embrace. The living fossils alone had excited his scientific curiosity to a high pitch— the Valley, he said, was somehow immune to the hidden forces of change and development and age and evolution. But the mysterious fluid of the Pool solved that riddle, while posing another of even greater magnitude.
“Doubtless the liquid is highly radioactive; perhaps it contains some hitherto unknown isotope in suspension … something that works directly on the glands, slowing or even reversing the cumulative process of glandular breakdown we call aging. But, if it works on men and beasts, might it not have the same effect on vegetation? Trees and flowering plants have nothing resembling the glandular secretory systems found in the higher mammals, but they do have a built-in aging system . .. the bubbles that drift from the Pool must touch them in passing, rendering them young and ageless, too. Think of it!” he whispered, his pale, ascetic features rapt with fervor. “These trees and flowers and bushes, which represent unknown or long-extinct species, may be each of them millions of years old!”
XXI. The Theft of Eden
Late that same afternoon, prowling about restlessly, M’Cord found the little priestling, drunk as usual. He was propped up against a boulder grown thick with azure moss, starred with small, brilliant flowers like minute gems. The Martian blinked sleepily at M’Cord, who paused by him.
“Hi, Phuun. You missed it. We found the Pool,” M’Cord grunted. Something gleamed, quick and sly and furtive, in the slitted, opaque eyes of the other, and was gone.
His wrinkled features broke into something which was probably supposed to be a smile. He giggled, offered M’Cord a ceramic bottle of the champagne-like wine. Nothing loathe, the Earthman accepted it and stretched out on the mossy turf.
“Soon now, it will be very soon … we knew we would find it, you see,” the old priest mumbled. He was very drunk—so drunk that he probably didn’t know it was M’Cord he was speaking to.
“What’ll be ‘very soon now’?” M’Cord inquired, taking a long swig from the earthenware bottle.
Something glittered and was gone again in the little man’s vulpine eyes.
“Our power,” he whispered. “We shall be kings, the red wolf and I. Aye, and greater than kings! No holy Jamad has ever wielded such power as we shall have. There will be lives to play with, the destiny of nations to fondle like toys. We shall be as gods, the wolf and I… gods!”
M’Cord eyed him quizzically. On the chance that the wizened little priestling was actually as out-of-his-mind drunk as he seemed to be, he tried a question on him.
“Phuun, you’re a priest, or you once were, anyway. Why have you, of all people, been hunting Ophar? There isn’t any treasure here—we haven’t seen any gold or jewels or anything, yet, and I’ll bet there aren’t any to be found. So what did you hope to get here, anyway?”
The renegade priest giggled again, and wiped his mouth with the back of one bony hand.
“Power … and youth,” he muttered, as if to himself. “The greatest treasure of all … power, such as no man has ever dreamed of since the world was young. And immortality…”
“Immortality?” M’Cord repeated the word skeptically. “Is that really so important?” He thought it was pretty damn important, himself, but he hoped to draw the little tosspot out and get him to talking freely.
Phuun took a long pull from his bottle and when he took it from his lips and lay back gasping for breath, his eyes were vague and haunted with some memory, some taint of an emotion which M’Cord could not clearly read.
“To be young again … never to die … aiyii! Gods, never to cross over the Bridge of Fire and stand before the Three who slumber forever in Yhoom! … Never to stand, naked and alone, before the Timeless Ones, for … judgment
There was something in his voice when he hoarsely whispered that last word that made M’Cord’s blood run cold. If it was fear, it was a fear so enormous, so utterly hopeless, that it became a terror.
He blinked hazily up at M’Cord, as if finally seeing whom he had been speaking to.
“Aye, F’yagh. . . I have done those things in my toll of days that makes hie dread the Place of Judgment… for I, who was once a Servant of the Gods and privy to Their Laws, know all too well the .. .the price that l must pay for that which I have committed!”
His bright, fearful eyes went vague and dim again and slid away. He mumbled brokenly to himself, his wrinkled face a mask of dread and sorrow, clinging with trembling hands to the bottle as a drowning man might cling to a bit of wood.
He shivered, as if suddenly cold.
“I fear, F’yagh. I fear to grow old, for then death is near, and after death I must go down to judgment before They Who Slumber in Yhoom … and too well do I know the price and the punishment They will exact from me for that which I have done. But, to grow young again, and ever-young! To stave off death, forever! Never to see the hour when my poor spirit is riven from its house of flesh, and scourged across the Bridge of Fire to stand naked and helpless before the Timeless Ones! … For that, F’yagh, I would dare any blasphemy; for that, F’yagh, I dared come even here to The Holy, to Ophar, against the interdiction of the gods!”
His voice died to a mumble again, and M’Cord had to bend close to his thin lips to hear his words.
“You have never sinned as I have sinned, F’yagh! Never done that from which your own soul shrinks, shuddering, in loathing… so that, in the end, you come to hate yourself … for that you have become the epitome of all that you ever despised or condemned in others….”
His voice died away, he lay there muttering brokenly to himself, oblivious to M’Cord’s presence. The Earthman eyed him askance. He could almost find it within him to feel sorry for the old man, even to pity him a little.
M’Cord’s had been a hard life, and the code he lived by was a hard code. There was little room for pity within him; but it seemed natural to him, lying there, watching the twisted face of the wretched thing which had once been a priest, to pity that which it had become.
Something the old man had mumbled earlier nagged at him. He rose on one elbow and caught the drunken man’s attention.
“Phuun—why will just finding the Valley and the Pool give you and Chastar so much power? This place is forbidden to men—shunned by them. To have reached it at all is a sin against your creed, so how do you expect to wring power from something like that?”
The rheumy eyes of the old man wandered about and suddenly focused on his face. The withered face broke into a smile so cunning, so gloating, that it could only be described as ghastly.
“He who holds the secret of The Holy,” the renegade whispered hoarsely, “holds power naked in his hands. Think, fool! This vale—this garden, and all that it contains—is sacrosanct to the People! From the white pole of the north to the white pole of the south, there is no man nor woman who would not lay down life itself to protect the preciousness of Ophar from… desecration.”
The word hung there between them. It seemed to echo in M’Cord’s mind, repeating itself endlessly, over and
over.
Phuun smiled. The smile was sick with self-loathing, but there was an ugly, twisted sort of triumph in it, too.
“The word shall go out from here to the Nine Nations that the wolf and I and his woman hold mastery over The Holy. If the faithful among the People do not wish us to defile the sacred places with blasphemies so irrevocable as to forever desecrate Ophar, they will yield power over themselves into our grasp, and we shall command them … and they shall obey us in all things … for we hold to ransom the Valley Where Life Was Bom….” He began to laugh.
M’Cord stared at the tittering little thing with unbelieving eyes.
This was what the outlaw and the renegade priestling had meant by “treasure”!
To have captured the huatan of Ophar—to hold it under threat of defilement until the Nine Nations capitulated to their demands! The enormity they contemplated was beyond belief: it was a blasphemy so immense as to almost defy description.
M’Cord got to his feet shakily and went away from where Phuun lay, sodden with wine, gloating over a sin that sickened even himself.
He had no religion, had M’Cord; not even the Neo-Christian creed in which he had been bom. He gave no reverence to any gods or to any church. But this was a private thing, a matter that lay between himself and his own soul. And he felt no contempt or derision for the faiths of other men. Indeed, he felt a certain degree of respect for the ancient worship of the Martians, whose religion was older than all the creeds of his own world by millions of years.
