The Valley of Creation Page 7

  They scrambled down through the tunnel, over broken shards of glass masonry the grenade had ripped from its walls. Now a dim circle of starlight ahead showed their exit.

  They burst out of it into the starlit gully of the little dry stream, and tripped over a huge, striped, prostrate body. The tiger, Grih, had not escaped the tunnel quite in time and the outblast of the grenade had stunned or killed him.

  "I hope it got that cursed wolf too!" raged Lefty. "I should have killed him when I wanted to first!"

  Nelson, at that moment, heard a wolf-howl from nearby, and realized that Tark had escaped the blast in time.

  "He rouses the city!" Shan Kar cried furiously. "But Barin shall pay the penalty for his trick! If we can reach our horses—"

  They scrambled furiously up the gully of the dry streambed to the forested ridge. Nelson, gasping, turned and looked back. Out of torchlit Vruun, four-footed shapes were racing swiftly on their track. A terrific wolf-cry echoed up from that band of racing creatures, a heart-stopping sound.

  Nelson seemed to himself in the next minutes, to be watching from another dimension as the three of them fled through the forest along the ridge. He was two men, and one of them was watching like a disembodied ka of himself while the other self expended every ounce of energy in flight.

  "We're near the horses!" Shan Kar encouraged. "Diril will be waiting with them."

  Again, from much closer behind them, came Tark's terrific hunting-cry. Lefty Wister stopped and whirled around, his pinched face a white blur, his voice hoarse and wild.

  "I won't be hunted by that brute! I'll kill him!" He had his gun raised, was crouched, looking back.

  "Lefty, keep your head!" cried Nelson, checking in mid-stride to turn back.

  "Leave the man or you die with him!" cried Shan Kar from the darkness ahead.

  He ought to, Nelson knew. It was sheer folly to try to save the Cockney, whose brain had given way to unreasoning hatred and horror.

  He owed no more to Lefty than to the others. Mere fortune of war had thrown him into company of the hardbitten, crime-stained little band and he had no loyalty due to any of them. But the ingrained tradition of supporting a comrade-in-arms was too much for Nelson.

  He turned back, grabbed the Cockney's arm. "Lefty, come—"

  It was as far as he got. That brief delay had been enough for those who followed to overtake Lefty and himself. Dark, leaping shadows of wolf and tiger came plunging through the dry brush. Tark's thought-cry leaped ahead of him.

  "We will not kill if you—"

  Lefty Wister's automatic poured a stream of fire at the vague shadow of the wolf. Nelson saw Tark dodge with inhuman swiftness an instant before the other fired, then saw the wolf at the Cockney's throat.

  He heard Lefty's bubbling, horrible scream as he triggered his own pistol at the dim shapes rushing upon him.

  He saw the blazing, awful eyes of a striped beast leaping toward him from the right. An upraised giant paw eclipsed everything as he tried to swing his gun around in time.

  Then Nelson saw nothing.

  Chapter IX

  JUDGMENT OF THE GUARDIAN

  "The man stirs, mistress! I told you that he was but stunned."

  Nelson heard that queer voice inside his mind, as he floated through infinities of aching darkness.

  "Tark, it might be better for him if he had died out there in the forest!"

  It seemed to Nelson that time had doubled back upon itself and that he lay again in the squalid inn in Yen Shi as he had lain that night he had first heard the thought-voices in his dreams.

  But the throbbing pain in his head was no dream. He tried to raise his hand toward his temple and discovered by the attempt that his sitting body was bound in a chair.

  Fear and memory pounced together upon Nelson's mind. He made a convulsive effort and opened his eyes. Brilliant sunlight from an open window caught his eye first and then the detail of the room focused slowly.

  It was a high-ceilinged, long gallery with pale blue glassy walls. The sunlight danced and quivered and shimmered off those walls, sunbeams seeming to play around the room.

  Nsharra sat in a chair six feet from him, and the great wolf, Tark, crouched like a dog beside her. Both were watching him. Subconsciously, he'd expected it. He'd remembered their disputing thought-voices as he had heard them at Yen Shi. He knew he'd heard them more clearly now because he still wore the thought-crown.

  "Yes," said Nsharra quietly. "You are in Vruun, where you wished to come, Eric Nelson."

  It was strange to hear his name from her lips and to remember that night in Yen Shi when he had told it to her between kisses. And it was stranger, to Nelson, to see her here sitting in her chair like a gray-eyed young princess in white silk and to realize that this was the singsong girl of that faraway night.

  "Lefty?" he said. He said it without hope and the girl nodded her dark head slightly.

  "Tark was forced to kill him. It was courageous of you to turn back for him. If you had not you too might have—"

  She stopped. But Nelson, every sense sharpened to acuteness by his situation, seized on the unfinished sentence.

  "I too might have escaped, you were going to say? Then Shan Kar did escape?"

  Nsharra said nothing but her lids had half-veiled her eyes for a moment and Nelson knew that he had guessed correctly. For a moment, he wondered what Nick Sloan and Shan Kar would do now. Sloan wouldn't give up the campaign to crush the Brotherhood-not with a fortune in platinum to win.

  Then, mentally, Eric Nelson shrugged his shoulders. What difference did it make to him now?

  "Are you going to kill me too?" he asked directly.

  "Are you afraid of death?" Nsharra countered.

  He answered levelly. "I don't want to die. But I think I can manage it if I have to."

  Nsharra smiled faintly. "That is an honest answer, Eric Nelson." Then her face sobered swiftly. "But it is not mere death you have to fear."

  Tark looked up at the girl. The wolf's thought came clearly to Nelson.

  "Mistress, I did what I could with the others of the Council. But your father is grimly resolved and Quorr and Hatha demand vengeance."

  "And Ei?" questioned Nsharra's thought.

  "Who knows the Winged One's mind?" countered the wolf. "They will all be here soon to judge the man."

  Nelson had watched this silent discussion between the girl and wolf in a strange fascination that had undertones of horror. Witch-girl and her familiars! Mistress of kuei, Li Kin had called her! Not human, not wholly human—

  Nsharra apparently read the thought behind his staring gaze. For a quick flush mantled her olive face.

  "You are here for judgment, not I, outlander!" she flashed. "Do not look at me so!"

  Witch-girl, maybe, but utterly feminine in that reaction, Nelson thought. The door opened suddenly and a man stood in the doorway looking in at them.

  Nelson knew at once this was the Guardian of the Brotherhood — Kree, Nsharra's father. He had the stamp of authority on his face. He was old enough to have iron-gray hair but he stood sword-straight in the doorway. He wore a loose black silken tunic and trousers, and over them a long, gold-worked black cloak.

  His piercing dark eyes were bent upon Nelson, but it was to Nsharra and Tark he spoke.

  "So the outlander has regained his senses? That is well. The Clan leaders wish to see him."

  He came into the room, and a great tiger stalked softly in after him. And with click of hoofs on the floor came too the big fire-eyed black stallion whom Nelson remembered also from Yen Shi.

  Wings swished and through the broad open window swept an enormous eagle that perched lightly on the back of Nsharra's big chair.

  Clan-leaders of the Brotherhood! Beast-eyes and bird-eyes watching him, judging him! Nelson's stomach began to crawl. It wasn't just fear. It was the outer world tradition of man and beast as separate orders of being that put a horror of this unhuman panel of judges into his mind.

  Tark
rose to his feet and looked at Kree and at the stallion and tiger and eagle.

  "Before you judge, brothers, remember that this outlander is the last thread by which we may still draw Barin out of danger!"

  Kree looked somberly at the great wolf. "It is your love for my son and daughter that speaks, Tark. These outlanders and their weapons are our greatest peril."

  The stallion, Hatha, looked at Nelson with fiery eyes and Nelson heard his savage thought.

  "This man should die. He seeks to help Shan Kar make L'Lan like his outer world, a place where our races are driven, enslaved brutes."

  The raging thought of the great tiger Quorr instantly supported Hatha.

  "Blood of our dead calls for vengeance! These outlanders have brought death into our land and must taste death!"

  Nsharra's thought interrupted, as she rose from her chair.

  "Yet this man sinned in ignorance! He knew nothing of the Brotherhood in all his life till he came to L'Lan."

  The great eagle turned his head to the others and Nelson barely caught the swift flash of Ei's thought.

  "Nsharra speaks truth. The man may have blundered into killing without realizing his crime."

  Nelson was astonished. Why should the Winged One, seemingly farthest of them all from humanity, speak for him?

  "Have you grown blind who boast sharpest sight, Ei?" raged the tiger. "Can you not see the deadly danger in these men?"

  "Yet we could use him as hostage to free Barin!" Tark reminded them again anxiously. There was a silence in which they all looked at Kree. Nelson realized that, in this Council, the Guardian's decision would carry.

  Kree spoke slowly. "We can do both things you wish. We can use this outlander as a hostage for Barin and at the same time we can punish him for what he has done. This man came into L'Lan to help shatter the Brotherhood. There is a penalty that we invoke on those who sin against the Brotherhood."

  Nelson did not understand. But his brief flicker of relief vanished as he saw the horror that came into Nsharra's eyes.

  "Let the man die rather than that!" she exclaimed. "He does not merit that penalty since he knew nothing of the Brotherhood!"

  "He will learn and he will learn quickly," Kree said grimly.

  "The Guardian is right! The punishment of the ancients for the outlander!" cried Quorr, tiger-eyes blazing.

  "Tark, it shall be one of your clan," Kree told the wolf. "But that one must volunteer."

  "There will be no lack to volunteer for the Brotherhood!" cried the wolf's thought. He raced swiftly out of the room.

  Kree went out too. Tiger, eagle and stallion remained, watching Nelson.

  Nsharra's face had an aching pity on it as she looked at Nelson. And that pity awakened true fear in him.

  "Nsharra, what are they going to do to me?" he asked her.

  "It is the penalty of the ancients," she answered. "Long ago, from the Cavern of Creation, a Guardian brought one of their subtle instruments that he had learned from their records to operate. It has been used rarely to punish those who transgress the Brotherhood."

  "But what is it?" he asked thickly. "Torture?"

  "Not torture nor death," she whispered. "But worse, a—"

  She broke off to hasten across the room toward her father. Kree had returned, wheeling a bulky object in front of him. Nelson felt his fear increasing. He remembered what Shan Kar had said — that the Guardian possessed a queer power of the ancients to effect terrible transformations. A power that had been used only rarely against transgressors but that had left a memory of horror in all L'Lan.

  He stared at the big object Kree had brought. It was an upright man-high platinum box mounted on wheels. The only clues to whatever strange apparatus was inside it were two levers upon its face.

  From opposite sides of the top of the tall box branched two heavy platinum rods. Each ended in a queerly grooved quartz disk three feet in diameter. Each of the two big disks was parallel to the floor.

  Nsharra was appealing to her father. "He does not even know what you plan, father! He will go mad! Does he merit that?"

  "Do the beasts of the outer world merit the slavery and death that this man and his kind deal them?" retorted Kree harshly.

  Nelson tried to reassure himself. He tried to tell himself that the queer platinum apparatus could be only a meaningless relic, that this was mere primitive mumbo-jumbo.

  He couldn't do it. He couldn't conquer the horror that was tightening across his chest like a steel band.

  Tark had come back into the room. And with him was another wolf, a young, rangy dog-wolf, lean of flank and bright of eye, big but dwarfed by the great leader of his Clan.

  "This is Asha of my Clan," came Tark's thought. "He offers to be the one."

  Kree looked at the young wolf. "You know the danger to you, Asha?"

  "I know!" rang the dog-wolf's thought. "It is for the Brotherhood. I am willing."

  "Then stand there, close to the outlander's chair," ordered Kree, pointing.

  Nelson saw the dog-wolf walk over and stand a few feet from him, where the Guardian had indicated. The wolf looked over at him-strangely. Something in that bright unhuman gaze shook Nelson.

  He wouldn't let all this flummery of superstitious rites shake his nerve — he wouldn't!

  Kree wheeled the tall platinum machine between Nelson's chair and the young wolf. He adjusted it so that one of its branching quartz disks was over Nelson's head, the other over Asha the wolf.

  "Let the ancients witness that I use their power not lightly but for the Brotherhood!" intoned the Guardian.

  Superstition, traditional ritual-that was all it was, all it could be. But Nelson's heart had begun pounding hard as he saw the horror grow and grow on Nsharra's pale face.

  Kree's hand fell. It thrust down both of the levers on the face of the platinum machine. From the two big quartz disks, white light sprang downward. One beam of blinding brilliance struck and bathed Nelson, the other struck the dog-wolf on the other side of the enigmatic machine.

  Light? No, force! For Eric Nelson felt himself rocked by a terrific shock as the brilliant beam struck him. His brain shrieked to a nightmare rending sensation. He had a ghastly feeling that he, the real he, was being torn loose from something and dragged through nothingness.

  Chapter X

  DREAD METAMORPHOSIS

  Nelson felt that he was falling, swooping downward like a meteor into bottomless gulfs. It came to him that he was dead and he wondered where his soul was going and what would happen after it got there.

  The abyss rushed by him with a soundless scream as he plunged down and down. And then he struck bottom. It seemed to him that the universe tipped over on him, smothering him in utter darkness.

  Presently, very faintly, there was light again and sound — a dim, blurred web of it lacing around him. He was vaguely aware of something and, after a while, he realized that he was breathing.

  He was breathing heavily. It had a strange hoarse sound in his ears but it was nice to be breathing again. It meant that he was not dead after all. He lay waiting for the terrible giddiness to leave him, so that he could see again.

  But he did not really need to see.

  Across the dark confusion of his mind, a pattern began to grow. It was woven of unfamiliar things. Rustlings, scratchings, clickings, the different tempos of breathing — noises that should have been almost sub-auditory but instead were clear and sharp.

  They were the background of the pattern, the warp. The threads of the woof were brighter, stronger. They were — smells.

  The rich dark smell of horse, strong gray wolf-taint, the sullen crimson reek of tiger, the bright sharp acridity of a great bird. And man-smell, in itself a tapestry of odors, more subtle and complex than those of the beasts.

  Eric Nelson realized with incredulous horror that not only did he know each separate smell but he knew the particular individuality of each. They had names — Hatha, Tark, Quorr, Ei, Kree and Nsharra.

  He leaped br
oad awake then, on a surging shock of fear, and opened his eyes on a world he had never seen before.

  It was a world without color. A world of gray shadings, black and white. He could perceive objects clearly but he perceived them on a strange plane. His field of vision was low and horizontal and there was no perspective. The big shimmering glass gallery appeared as a flat picture painted on a gray wall.

  But he could see. With terrible clarity he could see himself, Eric Nelson, sleeping in a wooden chair six feet away! Instinctively a cry of horror rose to Nelson's lips, and was voiced as a howl.

  Wolf-cry—

  His body slept, but he was not in it and he spoke with the voice of a wolf.

  Eric Nelson hung for a moment on the brink of madness and then clutched desperately at an explanation. Drugs — Kree had given him some vicious drug and he was having hallucinations. Some of his fear turned to anger against Kree. It was a cursed eerie sensation to stand looking at your own body. He wanted to get back into it, quickly.

  He started to move toward it but it did not seem like the motion of will or thought. It was like physical motion. It was like walking on four feet!

  Sinuous play of ropy muscles, lithely springy joints, the cushioned step of padded paws, the light click of claws on the glassy floor-

  Dimly reflected in the glassy wall he saw the whole picture. Eric Nelson slumped sleeping in the chair, Nsharra seated with the eagle perched behind her and Tark at her feet, the great black stallion Hatha, the crouching tiger and Kree — all of them watching. Watching the young dog-wolf Asha pad slowly toward the sleeping man.

  Nelson stopped and the reflection of Asha stopped too. He could see the wolf-face looking back at him from the dim mirror of the wall and a cold certainty that was beyond fear grew in his heart.

  He began to tremble. He felt his lips draw back, and the mirrored Asha bared white fangs at him. Again Nelson cried out in a wolf's voice and he saw the reflection of Asha lift its head and howl.

  Nelson went on toward his sleeping body, tried to touch it. And the image in the wall showed him the young dog-wolf pawing at the chest of the sleeping man and whimpering.