by Lin Carter
Even to him, the sin of Chastar and Phuun was an unholy thing. Even he shrank back from what they contemplated with disgust and horror. It was as if a sect of Moslems had plotted the theft of the Black Stone from Mecca—the holiest relic from the holiest sanctuary of all Islam!
It was as if renegade Christians somehow schemed to hold for ransom the Garden of Eden itself.___
Suddenly he knew he had to find Thaklar, to tell him the enormity of Chastar’s plot. For if the soul-sick priest and the half-mad outlaw should succeed in their fantastic
coup, they would seize control over the very planet itself. They could plunge the desert world into a holy war so devastating as to be beyond belief. They could strike a death blow to the heart of an ancient civilization.
They could destroy a world. Or drive it mad!
IV
THE PATH TO
PEACE
XXII. Shadow over Eden
He headed back to the central gardens, to the area about the pond where the six generally made their base. He went recklessly, leaping over small streams, blundering through the flowerbeds, careless of being seen.
Thaklar could have no inkling of the incredible thing they planned, the outlaw and the fallen priest. The gloomy, grim predictions of the Hawk prince might or might not be proved true—the gods, whose invisible presence yet seemed to linger over this holy place, might strike down the desecrators by some miracle. Or they might not….
Therein shall be given to each according to his deserving …
It was a contorting thought, that strange phrase Thaklar had quoted from The Book back on the slopes, once they had come through the Broken Land unscathed. It seemed to imply that the Valley could take care of itself— that Ophar was not without its own defenses.
Well, maybe so, M’Cord thought. But there was a coldness in his guts, an uneasiness in the back of his mind. Eden itself had needed an angel with a flaming sword to guard its gates from those who would enter therein. And they had seen no angel here….
What had Thaklar said back on the rim of the crater? M’Cord recalled the scene to memory with difficulty; so much had changed since they had come through the Barrier of Illusion, so much was different in this enchanted, timeless garden, that memories of what had gone before were vague and dim, like memories of a forgotten life.
Chastar had said he must have misjudged the Hawk, that he had thought the princeling would have betrayed them on the Road. And Thaklar—what had he said in reply?
There was no need for me to betray you, for you will betray yourselves in the end.. .all of you.
Well, maybe the unseen forces that watch over the Valley will mete out punishment and reward, M’Cord thought. And maybe not. Heaven helps those who help themselves: it was an old saying back on Earth, M’Cord knew; and he suspected that there was still something to it even here. Fatalism is all very well—for fanatics. But M’Cord had always made his own way, never expecting anyone else would do it for him. And that hard rule applied even here in the Valley, surely!
The ungainly tent Nordgren had put up loomed in front of him. Never had it seemed so intrusive, so out of place, as here and now. A sudden cold, inexplicable thrill of uneasiness went through M’Cord.
Maybe the Valley could defend itself against intruders.
But, if so—could it discriminate between the evil and innocent?
To eradicate the hideous threat to its tranquility that Phuun and Chastar represented—might it not destroy them all?
If the unseen guardians struck against the desecrators— would they stay their hand against those who planned no desecration?
M’Cord had a horrible suspicion that they would not. The angel with the flaming sword does not weigh motives in the balance of judgment. She lifts her blazing brand against those who would enter Eden from innocent scholarly curiosity, and those who would gain entry from the blackest and most despicable of motives.
Against Thaklar. And M’Cord. And Nordgren.
Against—Inga!
He hesitated, unable to decide what to do, who to warn first. He was confused, not knowing what was going to happen, but grimly certain that something was. Maybe Ophar could defend itself and maybe not—but could they risk the chance? So many myths about this place had now been proved true. Maybe that ominous phrase from The Book was also prophetic.
The only thing to do was to get out now, before the slumbering guardians of the Valley… woke!
What was that cry?
Startled, he lifted his head, questing from side to side as a beast does, scenting danger on the wind.
A woman’s voice—muffled, but audible.
A woman in pain…
He turned toward the Nordgrens’ tent. The garden seemed to dim, as if there stood a shadow over Eden; as if something that had long slumbered was now—awake!
He unseamed the tent-flap and looked within.
And found himself in a small, tight, private hell.
She had taken off her thermalsuit and stood there naked to the waist. Her back was to him and she was bent over, clinging to the mainpole with both hands. They were not tied, those hands, he saw with a sick feeling deep in his guts.
Her back and shoulders were bare and white and smooth. Her firm breasts hung loose as she bent before the switch.
The switch in the hands of her brother.
His back was toward M’Cord, but every time he drew back for another blow, M’Cord got a glimpse of his face. It was the face he had seen before, when Nordgren had discovered them embracing by the Pool.
It was slick with sweat, that face. The mouth was open, the lips drawn back from the teeth in a ghastly grimace that was more like the snarl of a beast than a human smile.
The eyes were hot and feral. A beast’s eyes are more sane. These burned with a sick joy, a twisted ecstasy.
The switch with which he flogged her had been tom from one of the bushes. It laid red lines across the tender whiteness of her back and shoulders. With every slow, stinging stroke the man gasped a hoarse phrase, repeated over and over, jerked from the core of his being:
. . kissed,him! … touched him! … embraced him! … fondled him! … like a bitch in heat… animal! Animal! Kissed him!..
The girl was not bound to the mainpole, but she did not try to avoid the lashing blows or to get away. Her body shuddered, wincing involuntarily at every stroke. From time to time a muffled whimper, a faint, choked cry, was wrung from her tightly closed lips. But she did not try to evade the whipping.
He could not see her face, could M’Cord. It hung down, hidden beneath the damp tousle of her blond hair. He was glad, at least, not to see her face. For perhaps her eyes, too, held that sick ecstasy that burned in the eyes of her brother.
M’Cord stood watching for one frozen moment of shock.
Then he stepped forward, snatched the wet switch from Nordgren’s hand, broke it and flung it away, and drove his balled fist into the center of the fearful, astonished, furious face Nordgren turned upon him. Teeth snapped with a soul-satisfying crunch under his blow. The other man stumbled back and fell with a bleating cry.
Face grim-set, M’Cord strode to where Nordgren had fallen, got a handful of his garments, dragged him to his feet, and hit him again.
“No! Don’t hurt him!”
Inga flew between them, her eyes filled with terror, and stooped over her brother, who lay moaning through bloody lips.
M’Cord watched without expression as she raised his blond head upon her white breast and touched his bruised mouth with tender, trembling fingers, crooning wordlessly to him.
He made a growling sound of disgust deep in his throat and turned to go.
Inga sprang to her feet as if to say something, perhaps to plead that he keep their guilty secret to himself. Behind her, Nordgren staggered up to sit on one of the cots, his face ravaged and haggard with some emotion to which M’Cord did not try to give a name.
Maybe Thaklar was right; they would destroy themselves.
They had found no Serpent in this Eden. So they had brought their own evil with them.
He half turned to say something to the girl … he could never recall what.
But then it happened.
Through the open tent-flap drifted a shimmering bubble of trembling opal light.
It was frail, that floating, insubstantial sphere. A dimly luminous globule which blurred with changeful, rainbow hues. It drifted past M’Cord; it drifted to Inga, who stood immobile, arms outstretched—
It drifted into the valley between her breasts and vanished!
The change that came over her, the swift, magical transition, was incredible.
As her flesh absorbed the floating orb of glimmering light, the lines of care and worry, of pain and tension, faded from her face. Fright and shock and alarm died in the depths of her blue eyes. They were, for the first time since M’Cord had known her, calm and sweet and innocent.
The dark stains of guilt and shame were gone from them: they were as pure and clear and happy as had been the amber eyes of the naked golden children of the woods.
The dark emotions and terrors erased from her weary face made her seem ten years younger. The white oval of her features, framed in tendriled gold, glowed with an inner serenity—with a free and joyous purity such as M’Cord had seldom seen in a human visage. Sometimes you saw that glowing, happy calm in the carved features of a Buddha, but seldom in the face of man or woman.
She looked down at herself wonderingly. She still wore the baggy, travel-stained trousers of her thermalsuit. With a childlike pout of displeasure she regarded the ungainly garments. And before either Nordgren or M’Cord could think or move to stop her, she opened the pressure-seams and stripped them off, letting them fall carelessly to her feet.
Nude and pure and lovely as an image of glowing alabaster, she stood poised before them for a moment—slim and cool and virginal, like a statuette of Diana or Psyche!
Then she threw back her head and laughed—a sweet, bell-like peal of happy laughter—innocent and carefree as a sprite.
And then she was gone.
They plunged after her, through the swinging tent-flap, out into the enshadowed garden, where luminous globules of uncanny opalescence floated on the breeze like goblin lanterns.
Like a fleeing dryad they glimpsed her white form go glimmering through the gloom of the garden and into the dark woods beyond.
And she was gone into the woods—naked and innocent and free, to join the golden and undying children who dwelt there.
“Inga! INGA!” Nordgren bawled out in a hoarse shriek. Intuitively guessing what he was about to do, M’Cord turned to hold him back—why, he did not know. But the other man twisted free and ran after the fleeing girl. He tripped and fell and stumbled through the flowers, and vanished in the direction the girl had gone.
And M’Cord stood there, baffled and helpless, wondering if the unseen guardians of Ophar were already beginning to strike them down invisibly, one by one….
XXIII. By the Pool
Someone stood beside him, clutching his shoulder in strong fingers as if to restrain him from going after the two.
He turned with a growl to strike out; but it was Thaklar.
“What has happened here, my brother?” the Hawk prince demanded harshly.
“The Earth girl… touched by a bubble from the Pool … she ran naked into the woods….”
“And her brother?”
“Nordgren went after her to bring her back.”
Thaklar nodded grimly, his eyes brooding and thoughtful.
“So it has begun, at last,” he said somberly. M’Cord made a move as if to pull away but the grip of those steely fingers tightened, restraining him.
“Do not go after them, my brother. Stay out of it.”
“But—Inga—!” protested M’Cord.
“You have chosen her for your woman, have you not? Well, do not fear. If she has been touched but lightly— only one bubble, did you not say?—then she may recover knowledge of herself soon; and she will be safer in the woods than here, where the emanations of the Pool are more numerous and more frequent.”
“But we can’t just let her go off by herself like this, damn it!” M’Cord swore.
Thaklar shook his head gently. “Among the children of the woods she will be safe. There is nothing to harm her there, where even the beasts do not kill to feed…”
Suddenly remembering the lithe cat-creature he had watched at the edge of the Valley, and how it had fed on a ripe fallen fruit, M’Cord realized that there was something in Thaklar’s words, after all. The Hawk prince had been of a lineage which from the beginning of time had guarded some of the secrets of Ophar; perhaps he knew more about the enchanted Valley and its mysteries than he had told.
“What about Nordgren? He ran off to find her, to bring her back..
“He will never return. The Change is upon him, as well, I fancy. It is thus that the Valley defends its own… Have you hurt yourself, my brother? Your hand—”
M’Cord looked down to realize for the first time that his knuckles were cut and bleeding.
He shrugged. “I struck him—pulled them apart,” he grunted. In a few, short words he described the scene he had interrupted, and what Inga and Nordgren had been engaged in before he had come bursting in upon them.
An expression of fastidious distaste flickered in Thaklar’s fierce yellow eyes. But a shadow of pity was there, as well.
“A sickness, this thing between brother and sister … I have heard of such sicknesses before, but they are rarely found among my people.”
“Thank God, they’re rare enough among my people too, I’m glad to say!” The other man smiled softly.
“But are the same sort of things happening to the others?” he asked Thaklar. The warrior replied that he did not know. M’Cord scratched the stubble on his jaw. “I left Phuun over that away, dead drunk,” he began. Light flashed up in Thaklar’s eyes.
“Did you tell him about the Pool?” the prince demanded with a strange urgency throbbing in his voice which M’Cord could not understand. Bewilderedly, M’Cord nodded and started to describe the revelation he had learned from the inebriated priest, but Thaklar cut him off with a sharp gesture.
“Come—swiftly! It matters not what they had planned; the Valley is awake now. Forces have been set in motion by our own deeds that could destroy us all. Come—which way is the Pool?”
M’Cord told him as best he could. Thaklar headed in that direction, running. Not understanding any of this, M’Cord began racing to keep up with the flying strides of the other.
The garden was dark and desolate and curiously deserted. Suddenly M’Cord realized what was so strange about its appearance, and that was that the Ushongti had vanished. Usually there were three or four of the amiable, fat lizard-folk to be seen waddling here and there about the pond or the flowerbeds at any given hour of the night or the day.
Now, not a single one was anywhere to be seen!
It was odd; it was strange. Where could they have gone? Where could they all be hiding—and why?
They found Phuun where they had expected to find him. He was kneeling by the brink of the Pool, at its very lip. And in his hands was the ceramic wine bottle he had been drinking from when M’Cord had last seen him.
Now the bottle was empty; soon it would be full again —but not with wine!
“We must stop him!” M’Cord said, trying to pass Thak-lar; but the Hawk prince restrained him.
“Why?” he asked simply. “He has reached at last that for which he came so far to find. It would be unwise to come between him and that which he sought. Let him bring down upon him his own doom, as do all who come here with evil in their heart. And, besides, my brother: are we entirely free of guilt in this matter, you and I? Had it not been for my aid, they could never have come through the Broken Land. And you—what have you done?”
It occurred to M’Cord, as he stood there, that he must somehow have revealed to the drunken prie
st the spot where the Pool could be found. He could not recall having said it in so many words, but with an unconscious nod or glance he must have shown the renegade priest the true direction.
He bit his lip and fell silent. Side by side, they stood watching the sacrilege.
He was very drunk by now, was Phuun. So drunk that he could no longer stand erect. He must have crawled on’ his hands and knees up the three shallow crystal steps, and between the spiral-fluted pilasters to the edge of the Pool that lay beneath the dome that was like an immense crystal lens, focusing unknown rays from the depths of the void to play eternally upon the seething foam of the Water of Life.
He crouched there, giggling and tittering to himself, fondling with claw-like hands the empty bottle.
His eyes saw nothing but the Pool, and the Glory it contained. The brilliance of the luminous fluid bedazzled him; he stared, half blinded, into the curdled and seething radiance, a beatific smile upon his wrinkled face.
Then, muttering and crooning to himself—in words too faint for them to hear—he bent and plunged both hands in the blazing foam!
He straightened up, the bottle filled with liquid light, blazing like a lamp of hollowed agate in his hands. With wet, trembling hands, which glowed faintly from the luminosity, he raised the bottle to his lips—
But did not drink thereof.
For the bubbles claimed him for their own.
He had stirred and roiled the waters of the Pool when he plunged his arms therein. Now the foam frothed and bubbled, disturbed by his touch. And from the fragile foam lifted a wobbling cluster of opal globules that floated about him like a storm of soap-bubbles.
They touched him everywhere—upon the brow, the eyes, the face, the hands. They touched his robe in a hundred places. And, with each touch, they vanished … it was as if his dry and thirsty body drank them in.
But not merely one bubble, as had sunk into the soft vale between Inga’s breasts, erasing the lines of care from her features and the stain of guilt from her eyes, making her young and joyous and innocent again—but bubbles in their dozens and their hundreds that rose and clustered about the unwary priest, and vanished into him….
