by Lin Carter
He bent and grasped her shoulders and drew her to her feet.
“Well,” he said gruffly. “Well, perhaps I shall take you along to make the meals. But do not grovel at my feet like a whipped khirth! When you were proud and free and untamed, I loved you. I do not love servility; but you can come—to mend my raiment and prepare my meals, remember! Only that, nothing more!”
Despite the harshness of his words, his voice was tender and almost joking, and there was something in his face which M’Cord had never seen there before, nor ever thought to see.
She saw it, too, the woman. And smiled through her tears and the tangle of her long black hair—a smile no longer proud or mocking, but shy, curiously shy—as a young girl smiles when for the first time she has seen ardor and the desire for her in the face of a boy.
And he smiled, too; and something was decided between them, and M’Cord guessed—correctly—that, whatever would be there between them in the days to come, it would not be a matter of the mending of clothing or the making of meals.
He watched them with wonderment, and shook his head.
The Valley had worked its magic upon the two of them, as well. On Thaklar. On Zerild!
They, too, were changed.
They, too, were—healed! And whole again.
Without even taking the time to eat the evening meal, they bundled up their gear and made ready to depart. Thaklar cautioned them against taking along anything that was part of the Valley. They could not even fill the waterskins from the pond.
The gear that had belonged to the others they simply left where it lay. But Thaklar took the weapons Chastar had stripped from them back in Ygnarh, and the outlaw’s weapons as well, save for the pistols he had worn when the walking tree had slain him.
The other gear they left behind. The extra blankets and bedrolls and clothing. There was no point in loading themselves up with things they would not need and could not easily carry. And, said Thaklar, the garden could—cleanse itself. That which they discarded would quickly crumble into dust, he said. For decay is one of the forces built into the world-old machine that was the Valley; thus it was that it rid itself of that which did not belong here.
And there was something to his words, M’Cord realized with a shiver. The tent Nordgren had put up still stood, a blot on the tranquility of the eternal garden. But the tent was not eternal, and already the insidious forces of decay were at work upon it. The heavy nioflex of which it was made was tough and sturdy—durable enough to hold its sheen through a decade of use. But already it was dull and blotchy-looking; a film of mold had rooted itself in the glistening synthetic fabric, and had eaten into the material, fretting its edges into raggedness. And something had gotten into the vacuum pockets of the flap, opening the pressure-seams that should have been able to withstand hurricanes without parting. Now the flaps dangled open, loosely swaying in the breeze.
The tent already had the look of something abandoned —dilapidated—slumping into decay.
M’Cord was glad to be gone from this uncanny place where the sturdiest synthetic fabric in existence crumbled to rags overnight. And he was fretful and impatient, nervous at each moment of delay.
That feeling of being watched by unseen eyes was upon him again. He felt eyes against his back, and the sensation was so uncanny that it made his skin creep and his nape-hairs stiffen like a dog’s hackles.
They all felt it; Zerild was subdued and obedient, and her eyes clung constantly to Thaklar, as if for reassurance —as if she drew strength and comfort from his very nearness. She did not leave his side for a moment, if she could help it.
It would have been nice to have made their goodbyes to the Old One and his friendly, hospitable brethren, but the Ushongti were nowhere to be seen and must still be hidden in their nests, whose whereabouts none of them had ever known. With a little pang of guilt, M’Cord realized that he had never even thanked the great, comical, kindly lizard-creature for the healing of his crippled leg. So suddenly had events rushed forward to their climax, and so bewildering had been the discoveries and transformations of this single day, that it had slipped his mind.
But perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps the wise, philosophical old lizard could read the gratefulness in his heart with its strange, telepathic gifts. He hoped so.
He stood for a moment, making a silent goodbye to the garden and to those who tended it, remembering all that had happened to him here.
Then he turned, shouldered his knapsacks, and trudged after Thaklar and Zerild, in the direction of the edge of the Valley.
M’Cord had half expected that when they reached the wall of the walking trees they would find the sleeping guardians awake, aroused, and alert to stand against them.
But this did not happen. The trees were awake, all right, their tentacular branches stirring with unnatural agitation, but they remained firmly rooted in the sod. The three travelers passed swiftly through the ring of their boles— shudderingly aware of being watched by truculent, suspicious, even hostile eyes—but emerged therefrom onto the mossy plains without being attacked or even having their way impeded.
The mysterious darkness still cloaked the Valley. They could not see across its breadth to the far walls of the crater. But Thaklar led them to the foot of the stony stair with that unerring compass-like faculty the Martians have, and nothing happened to disturb or alarm them along the way.
They entered the woods cautiously, for here it was very dark indeed, and there was no telling what might be lurking within the gloom, awaiting them.
The naked children had fled, it seemed, into the deepest parts of the forest. At least they encountered not a one of the slim, golden inhabitants of the wood during their journey through it.
In one moonless glade, however, they encountered a beast.
It was one of the primordial cat-creatures, such as M’Cord had seen upon first entering the Valley. Then it had eyed him indifferently, paying no attention to his presence. Now the lithe, tawny thing that Nordgren had suggested might be a living fossil from the past—an ancestor of the Martian race; one of the beasts from whose flesh the Timeless Ones had shaped and molded the Firstborn of the People in the Beginning—now it turned upon them, the great cat, baring long ivory fangs in a snarl of menace, eyes burning green-gold through the velvet gloom.
It made no move to attack them, however; it crouched at the far end of the glade, growling deep in its chest in an attitude of watchful menace.
“It is even as I said,” grunted Thaklar. “The Valley has turned against us now, and thrusts us forth from within it.
Even the placid, gentle beasts have tamed against ns and threaten us.”
M’Cord nodded. Adam and Eve had been driven from their own garden thusly, by an angel with a flaming sword. And the eyes of that angel had blazed, he suspected, with watchful fires no less threatening than the eyes of the beast that crouched, spitting and growling, to watch them go.
And so they went from Eden.
XXVII. Expelled from Eden
Not long thereafter, they emerged from the edge of the woods and found that Thaklar’s sense of direction had proved unerring, for they were near the eastern wall of the immense crater, and the foot of the stone stair was before them.
They made camp there, in the open space between the bottom of the cliff and the margin of the forest. Bedrolls were laid out and a hasty, ill-prepared meal was devoured. They were too hungry and tense and fatigued to do more than wolf down the cold food, moisten their throats with water from the scant supplies in the waterskins, and turn to their blankets. It had been an endless day, thronged with strange discoveries and horrible events, and their minds were exhausted with marvels and revelations. They sank into a deep, dreamless sleep the moment they stretched out and composed themselves for slumber.
And dawn came, paling the inverted lake of sky, and they awoke, rested and refreshed. And the Night-of-Gods was over, they realized. No more did they endure the scrutiny of invisible eyes; no more did malignant
life and sentience stir in the weird trees.
But they had been thrust out of Eden, and they knew it. They could not linger too long—even here, at the edge of the Valley—with impunity.
M’Cord was up before the others. He made his morning coffee and drank it down, draining it in savage gulps, hot, black, bitter, and strong. It drove the fogs of sleep from his brain, and filled him with a fixed sense of purpose, and a grim, unwavering determination to search the woods for some sign of Inga before starting the long road back to Ygnarh.
Thaklar volunteered to assist him, and Zerild would have come as well, had not the Hawk prince sternly bade her remain behind to tend the camp, to which she acquiesced with a meekness M’Cord had never before discerned in her demeanor.
It would seem that when Zerild surrendered herself to a man, she did so utterly! At last the dancing girl had found the man of all men who could master her! He grinned at Thaklar without words and the prince returned the smile, sensing M’Cord’s thought.
He was vastly satisfied, was Thaklar. He had found that for which he had searched so long.
The Valley had given unto him according to his deserving.
They entered the woods and began to hunt for the missing girl. Even now, in the pearly twilight of dawn, the woods were empty. Not merely deserted; it was as if they had been abandoned by all life. The small creeping things who made of the forest their home had fled, or so it seemed, into the deep heart of the woods as if to avoid the taint of their presence. Naught rustled through the fallen leaves, or chittered from the motionless boughs, or scurried down the mossy aisles between the mighty boles of black and gnarled and knotted wood. Nor did they feel the pressure of invisible eyes watching them as they searched.
And, toward midday, they found a glade deep within the forest, where a bubbling pool lay open beneath the jade-and-golden sky.
And the girl was there!
She lay nude, curled up on a cushion of sapphire moss, her golden hair spread about her. She was sleeping as a child sleeps, deeply and profoundly. And if she dreamed any dreams, they were peaceful and pleasant ones, for she smiled slightly in her slumber.
M’Cord bent over her and spoke her name hoarsely. She stirred in her sleep, and blinked up at him, blue eyes open and soft. The stain of guilt was gone from those eyes, he saw, and the shadow of shame. And her face no longer reflected the tension that had lined it with weariness: it was as calm and smooth and radiant as a young girl’s. Whether the drifting bubble blown to her from the Pool of Life had taken years from her or merely cleansed her mind of all memories of sin, she looked years younger.
She smiled up at him sleepily, then yawned and stretched languidly and sat up.
“Oh, M’Cord! I have had the strangest dream,” she said.
“You—remember me?” he demanded harshly.
Her eyelashes fell demurely, veiling the candor of her eyes.
“Of course I remember you,” she said softly. “How could I forget—you!”
‘Thank God!” he said in a voice that shook, and drew her to her feet. She came into the shelter of his arms as if coming home, to a place where she belonged. He crushed her to him, but tenderly, and their lips met. She returned the pressure of his mouth with a kiss that was at once virginal and passionate.
Then, over his shoulder, she caught sight of Thaklar as he stood there watching them with a small, gentle smile softening the hard planes of his face.
“Oh!” she murmured, breaking free of the embrace. And then, for the first time realizing her nakedness, she pinked in confusion. The rosy flush colored her face and neck and bosom, M’Cord saw. She attempted to cover herself with her hands and her hair.
But he had envisioned the possibility of finding her and had brought clothing from her gear. So while he and the Hawk prince retired from the glade, she slipped into the garments and rejoined them a moment or two later, flushed and breathless but in a fit condition for company.
They headed back to camp. She seemed to have taken no hurt or harm from her experiences and, when M’Cord cautiously asked her what she remembered of the events of yesterday, she seemed to find it difficult to remember much of anything.
“I don’t know,” she murmured hesitantly. “It all seems as though it had happened such a long time ago. … I remember the friendly Ushongti tending their flower-beds by the pond … and how you and I discovered the Pool of Life and … and … each other!” She dropped her eyes bashfully, but could not restrain her lips from smiling at the memory. “But … after that … I don’t seem to remember very much. There was a fight or an argument, I forget which….”
“And then? What happened then?” he prodded, anxious to discover the extent of her amnesia, if that’s what it was.
She shook her head bewildered. Then she smiled—a calm, sweet smile of quickening joyousness that was like a sunrise in its serenity and promise.
“And then I went to play with the children in the woods,” she said simply. “We had such happy games! And then I got sleepy and … just went to sleep. And then you found me,” she finished.
M’Cord did not try to awaken further memories, fearing to stir up things she would be happier to leave forgotten. She remembered her brother but seemed oddly incurious as to what had become of him. And she accepted without surprise that Phuun and Chastar would trouble them no more. She did not even seem to find it odd that Zerild was so changed, and when they re-entered their temporary camp at the foot of the cliffs, she exchanged calm greetings with the dancing girl in a friendly manner, seemingly indifferent to what had chanced to work so miraculous a transformation in the Martian woman.
It was as if the erasure of her memories had caused a mental trauma so violent and dramatic as to erect a wall between yesterday and today. A wall through which only happy memories could pass unhindered; a wall that made everything which had occurred in her former life dim and vague, remote and somehow not very important.
She seemed to have the greatest difficulty in remembering anything about her brother, Karl. Nor did it seem to bother her that he was no longer with them. It was as if he belonged to the past, and was among all the many things she had put behind her.
M’Cord guessed that her every memory of Karl Nordgren was so intrinsically bound up with pain and guilt and fear that when the bubble from the Pool had cleansed her of these taints it had wiped away most of her remembrances of him.
To her, too, the Valley had been kind.
It had given to Inga according to her deserving.
XXVIII. The End of It
But the Valley was not yet done with them, it seemed. There was one final revelation that awaited them before they could put Ophar, its beauties and marvels and terrors, behind them forever.
It lurked, waiting for them, half-hidden behind a flowering bush. Inga shrieked and hid her eyes from the hideousness of the thing that crouched there; Thaklar jerked out an oath and went for his gun. M’Cord laid a hand on his arm to halt him, for the thing did not attack, it crouched there snarling and spitting.
It was hunched and deformed and hideous, its twisted nakedness begrown with dirty tufts of yellow fur. Yellow shag hung across its features, which were twisted in a maniacal snarl of rage and menace. They could see long white fangs bared by the lifting of bearded lips, and the canine muzzle wrinkled, the nostrils open and distended. And through the tangled, matted mane of shaggy fur the eyes that blazed with blue fires were filled with madness.
Its arms ended in dirty paws and its loins and lower limbs were shaggy and satyr-like, terminating in hooves which stamped and tore the turf. It snarled and spat and gobbled at them in a horrible travesty of articulate speech, gesticulating in a threatening manner. But it did not charge them and they passed it hurriedly, with wary backward glances.
“I—I thought all the beasts had fled from this part of the woods!” M’Cord said, breathing easily once the grimacing satyr had vanished into the depths behind them and they were safely past it and into the open space.
Inga uncovered her eyes and peered about.
“How—horrible! Is it gone?” she whispered timidly. “I —I didn’t know there were such ugly things in the forest…
“It is gone, and will threaten us no more,” Thaklar said with strange finality in his tones, and an odd satisfaction, too.
Then they greeted Zerild, and broke camp, and departed at last from the Valley.
And from behind its screen of bushes at the forest’s edge, the thing that Karl Nordgren had become watched them go with burning eyes, and hated them.
It was a long climb to the top of the crater wall, but they made it without too much trouble. Something in the air of the Valley had filled them with energy. They felt, all of them, years younger and far more vital and vigorous. Their strength and endurance and their ability to resist fatigue seemed extraordinary, even to themselves.
Perhaps it was due to the Pool of Eternity. Perhaps some of its vital energies leaked into the very air of the Valley, charging all who breathed thereof with renewed vigor and stamina.
They did not know how else to explain it; but they were aware of the freshness and strength that welled up within them as they climbed. The task should have left them trembling with exhaustion, but it . did not. And they reached the rim of the crater tired and aching, but not overly so.
