The Birthgrave (56 page)

The sun was full in the sky, and soon they would wake. There were no dangers on the beach now that the day had come there. So I turned my back, and I ran down toward the sea and lost my footprints in its chilly advancing foam. Southward then. Behind me the tongue of land where I had seen the sick redness of the fire in my dream; ahead the far cliffs at the end of the bay.

* * *

By noon I was past those far cliffs, and there were no more cities.

The day grew hot, the sky hard and blue. I left the warm sand in the afternoon, having found a way up from the beach. On the headland spreading trees clustered, and waist-high ferns wove around their trunks. It was an uninhabited place, run wild, full of strange bright flowers and the calls of birds. I wandered through it, keeping the sea on my left hand as a guide.

Sunset stained scarlet, purple, green, between the branches, and the trees were thinner. I could see ahead an open place between them, a wide comparatively bare valley set into the woods, and I became aware that the sounds of the woods and the cries of the birds had stopped. I hesitated, listening. All around me was the silence of fear, yet I felt nothing at all. Cautiously I went on, and the quiet seemed to grow more and more intense. Uneasily I stopped again, and listened, and this time I heard a new sound, felt rather than heard, a high thin drumming in the air that made me want to shake my head to clear it.

Step by step now, linking my body to each tree and shadow, I edged to the brink of the valley, and, looking out, I saw what I expected to see there.

Asutoo had spoken to me long ago of the silver sky chariots of the gods, which sometimes rode to earth, and in Ankurum and later in the mountains of Eshkorek, I had looked up and seen the stars which moved, burning, across the dark. But I remembered now the falling star I had seen when I rode to Darak's camp in the hills—the star with a trail of golden fire, which seemed to come down in the plains beyond. What had passed above us on the beach also issued a trail of flame. Perhaps in my unconscious self I had equated those two consciously unrecognized facts; perhaps I had followed deliberately, with the stupid fascinated curiosity of all breathing things, the fall of this brightest, closest star.

Its silver oval rested in the valley, seeming to pulse and tremble with impossible light, and around it the grass was blackened.

Last sunlight dropped red flakes across the trunks, as I moved out beyond the trees.

1

I
NDIGO NIGHT COLORS
filled the valley and the woods, but the light of the great star remained, pale, and very bright. I had crawled a way to a stand of the wild trees grouped about a hundred feet from the thing; I sat in their shadow, staring out at it, almost mesmerized. I could not go any nearer, for there was no more cover, and I could not go back because . . . All reasoning seemed suspended. As on the beach,
this
was so alien to me, made so little sense in my world, that when I sat before it, nothing else seemed believable either. I had thought at first perhaps it was the star which lived, but after a while a piece of the silverness slid aside, and four figures came out into the dark. The star was hollow, and these were the gods who rode in it. Like the star, they were silver, and moved twinkling around their chariot, across the burned grass.

My eyes probed, trying to pierce the darkness that showed beyond the opening in the star. Curiosity tingled; I felt an incredible urge to move forward, to enter the darkness. I dug my fingers into the valley grass, half afraid I would rush toward the glittering danger before I could stop myself. And then the horror began.

Abruptly a figure reappeared around the silver thing's side. Beside the opening it paused, hesitating, then turned to the stand of trees, and began to run toward me. The three others followed. At first I could not believe what I saw. But they drew nearer and nearer, and I was spectator no longer. On fright-numbed legs I got up, and propelled myself away from them, staggering and stumbling in the tall grass. No use for cover now; they knew I existed, and had broken whatever sacred privacy they held as their due. I ran from tree line to tree line, making desperately back the way I had come, for the shelter of the woods. But I knew all the time that they would outrun me. Thrusting out between ferns and narrow trunks, I met a silvery glowing shape in my path, and spinning around and back, found another. They circled me, hemming me in, and quickly the last two hunters had joined them, and I was trapped in a ring of light and fear. I raised frantic eyes to the lost woods above the valley. I did not even have a knife, not even a stick, though what use would these things have been? Against such a death as they had given the great lizard on the beach, to use a blade or spear was even more pitiful than to stand empty-handed. The light which came from them blinded me. Drunk with terror, I wished they would destroy me then and there, for the suspense of waiting was unendurable.

Then one of them spoke. I did not understand what was said. It was a new tongue, and very different from anything I had ever heard. After a moment the words stopped. A glittering shape leaned forward. Now is death, I thought, but it drew back, and something lay on the grass at my feet. When I would not touch it, the figure motioned to itself, and I saw that it wore one of these things on its wrist. In the senseless blur of bewilderment and fear there seemed no point in refusal. I picked up a silver band in which a green gem winked, and clipped it on my wrist.

“Now we can understand one another,” a man's voice said.

I thought at first my lost Power had come back to me, but then I realized this phenomenon stemmed from the wristband.

“Don't be afraid,” the voice said. “We mean you no harm.”

The voice was so like a human voice it reassured me, even though I was not certain if that were an effect of the band or not.

“If you mean me no harm,” I panted, “why hunt me through the valley?”

“This is the woman from the beach,” another male voice cut in. “White hair and the strange face-mask.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the first voice. “My name,” it added, “is Yomis Langort. We would like you to come with us, back to our ship.”

“Your
ship
?” I queried. “But it has no sail.”

Yomis Langort laughed. “No, that's very true. But then it has no need of one.”

“I will not come with you,” I said.

“Why not? Surely you're not afraid? With that creature on the beach you seemed brave enough. And you're curious, aren't you—about our sail-less ship?”

I turned my head and looked back at it between the trees. Perhaps they would destroy me if I did not come. Perhaps they would not harm me if I went with them. And the conviction was growing on me that these, at least, were not gods, only men.

“I will go with you, Yomis Langort,” I said.

“Good.”

We turned.

“Be careful not to touch us,” he said. “This is a protective clothing we wear. Look—” He picked a handful of grass and brushed it against his arm. The grass twisted and shriveled, and I thought once more of Asutoo's gods.

“I am warned,” I said.

So we walked toward the hollow star.

* * *

I had not realized before how huge it was. The dark opening I had stared at was several feet from the ground, yet, as we drew near it, there came the purr of life, and the doorway slid down far enough for us to enter. Lights came on softly as the opening slid up once again and closed itself. A semicircular room with open doors giving onto a corridor beyond. The room was quite plain, but the walls and floor and domed ceiling shimmered in the light-glow. Here my four guards—companions, captors—stripped the silver from their bodies and let it fall by the walls. The walls hummed and opened, and a draft of air like an indrawn breath pulled the clothing inside and shut again. I did not marvel at all; I had expected strangeness, and these things were at least logical as well as strange.

The men—they
must
be men—stretched and grinned as if glad to be free of the silver stuff. Under it they wore trousers, boots, and close-fitting, unornamented shirts of a white material with a metallic gleam. Low-slung on the hips was a broad belt, one man's red, two of the others brown, while the belt of Yomis Langort was black and violet. Otherwise there seemed little difference in them. Each was tall and leanly muscular, with tanned skin, blue eyes, and light-colored hair that was shorn at the nape of the neck. Their ages were peculiarly indeterminate, the faces young, the bodies strong, but around and behind the eyes the look of a longer life that has seen much.

“Come with me,” Yomis Langort said. He went through the open doors into the corridor beyond. I followed, and the three others fell into step behind me. The corridor shone with cool light. At intervals along its length, black and silver painted symbols appeared on the walls. From time to time a humming vibration would stir deep in the ship. The corridor stretched on and on without side turnings.

Abruptly Yomis Langort turned aside, facing one of the painted symbols. Concealed doors, which the symbol seemed to indicate, moved apart, but he did not enter.

“If you will wait here a moment,” he said to me, politely.

I went closer, and looked into a large oval room. The floor seemed like glass that was opaque and transparent at once. Tall, incredibly thin pillars of the same luminous stuff and set at apparently random intervals tapered upward to a ceiling flooded by pale gold light. There appeared to be no other furnishing. A scent of alien things—pleasant but alarming—drifted in the room, and I hung back, more because of this than any suspicion of imprisonment.

“First you run after me,” I said, “then you tell me ‘wait.'”

I glanced at the face of Yomis Langort, and saw on it that indulgent amusement I have seen on the face of a bandit with the time to be good-humored as he tries to coax some nervous, skittish animal into the horse-field.

“Yes,” I said, “you are not mistaken. I am not at ease.”

“There's nothing to worry you here,” he said. And then firmly: “Please.”

There seemed no choice, so I went past him into the room, and the doors whispered shut behind me.

Alone, I wandered over the crystalline floor, ran fidgety, quick fingers across the icy surface of the pillars. I waited a long while, and grew weary of standing, so sat myself on the floor. At once a gasp came from the near wall, and through an opening glided a round, backless couch of some semi-transparent material. I walked about the couch, half afraid to sit on it. It seemed the thing had read my mind, or perhaps some mechanism had judged what I wanted by my action of sitting. Finally I tried the couch, which was both resilient and firm. A silly game came into my mind. “Water!” I said aloud, to see if there would be any response. There was. Almost immediately, through the wall, came a slender one-legged table, bearing a tall flagon made of what seemed to be a sort of milky glass. I sniffed at the liquid inside it; water glittered and tasted cold and sparkling on my tongue. “Wine,” I said. And another table entered with a brown glass goblet like a hollow egg on a tall stem. Russet fluid seared my nostrils and burned my mouth like acid. Strange wine, then, that the sky gods drank. I called for apples, but when they came, in a green tripodal bowl, they were a curious shape and had a speckled skin, and the peaches were too long and covered by soft red fur. I recollected then that I spoke through the intermediary of the wrist-band. All these things were equivalents, and it was perhaps dangerous to make any further demands, not knowing what I might receive.

I left the couch and the scatter of tables and dubious refreshment, and now a sudden claustrophobia took hold of me. It was more than fear, a kind of panicky excitement, as if something vast, terrible, insupportable were about to happen to me, not necessarily damaging or evil, but not for a moment to be borne. And it would happen—must—if I remained here in this room.

I hurried to the place of the hidden doors and, as I had thought, they opened at once. And, as I had also thought, two men turned and blocked my way.

“Please wait a little longer,” one said impassively.

“We have our orders,” the other said. “We're not to let you pass.”

He moved a little so that I could see clearly the weapon thrust through his belt. It was like no other weapon I had ever seen, and this, more than anything, convinced me it could be dangerous.

“For what must I wait?” I asked them.

But in that moment the two guards lost interest in me. They turned abruptly to face the corridor. Doors farther along and to the left had opened, and a man had stepped through. I caught a glimpse of his clothing—black, not white, though a white belt rested on his thin hips. Yomis Langort and another man came through behind him.

I backed into my room, and the doors shut, but it was no safeguard, they would open as soon as the stranger approached them.

The stranger.

I backed farther across the room, between the pillars, until I had reached the far side. My spine rested against the wall. I pressed my hands flat to it, while my blood and brain curdled, and a horse leaped under my breast. I could not think. I could think of nothing.

The doors opened. I tried to shut my eyes but the lids would not stay together. He was alone.

Across the black shirt slashed four violet bars, and, where the material ended and the tanned line of his neck began, some silver insignia was clipped. The thick black hair, grown only to the nape and then lopped short, reminded me of so many things which no longer mattered. He stopped still, facing me.

“I am Rarm Zavid, the captain of this ship,” he said.

Fury and terror flooded into my eyes like tears, into my mouth like blood.

“No,” I screamed at him. “You are Darak. You are Darak, or you are Vazkor—you are the nightmare, the undead—the haunting Karrakaz sends to destroy my will and my life.” I was quite mad by now. Pressed at the wall, I railed against him, and cried, and cursed him, and begged him to leave me. It was the culmination of all the passion and despair I had ever known. “I will not ride with you in the chariot,” I shrieked out at him. “Or fight for you, or bear your children, or watch you die! In the name of all the dead gods of the world, what have I done to conjure you up again!”

I suppose he stood and watched me all this time. He did not come to me, or touch me, or speak to me until the outburst ended. And what ended it was nothing of his will or mine. It was the feel of the wall beneath my hands, trembling and throbbing like a great tortured heart.

Silence closed my mouth. And in the silence I heard the roar of some vast machinery subsiding thrust by thrust. I pulled my hands from the wall. Bewildered, I could only look to him for an explanation, and so it was to him I looked.

“I came here to ask you questions,” he said. “There's no longer any need. You've given me my answer.” The narrow dark eyes gave away nothing at all, yet his face had none of the arrogance of Darak's, nor the cold blankness of Vazkor's. “I think,” he said, “that you've also convinced me that I greatly resemble someone who has been close to you, and died, out there—” He made a vague gesture with one arm, indicating a world which was mine, not his.

“Two men,” I said. “Two men. Now three men. Darak the bandit, Vazkor the sorcerer, Rarm Zavid the captain of a sky-ship which has no sail.”

The madness was spent. Wearily I watched him come closer to me.

“You don't understand what you've done,” he said. “Do you?”

“What have I done?”

“If you truly have no idea, then I don't think that you're ready to be told.”

“All my life,” I said, “knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.”

“My ship,” he said, “this vast space-wanderer. You plucked it out of the sky like a grape from a vine; pulled it down so fast, two shields were damaged. And when we were near enough, you activated our defense beams and killed the dragon-lizard on the beach with them. This impudence not being enough for you, you followed us, and when you found the place we had berthed to repair the shields, you kept open our main hatchway for reasons best known to yourself. This activity gave away your presence. Yomis and three others caught you and brought you back. Since then you've played with circuits of the ship designed to respond only to members of the crew.” He indicated the couch and tables. “And finally you have communicated your emotional distress to the ship, with the results you yourself have just heard and felt.” I said nothing, no longer caring greatly that I did not understand. “Until now,” Rarm Zavid said softly, “the men who watched your planet considered themselves further advanced in development. Now I begin to wonder. I see you are a woman, but beyond that,
what
are you?”