Henry Kuttner - The Well of The Worlds

Around them, on the steps, the emerging and awakening Isier still streamed down toward the square. And just below them, half-hesitating, Nethe stood looking back. Her vivid, dangerous face with its Etruscan smile and its enormous, snake-like eyes was luminous with anger, and perhaps with fear. She was glaring past them, at the curtains from which they had come. Turning, Sawyer saw Alper’s heavy face looking through the fluttering folds. He moved back when he met Nethe’s glare. Nethe hissed a furious burst of words in her own tongue and then twisted like a serpent, turning to glance down into the square.

Klai’s cold hand slipped trembling into Sawyer’s.

“Look,” she said in a frightened whisper. “The Goddess!” Suddenly she ducked her head and pulled the fur-lined hood of the coat she still wore over her face. “Maybe no one will know me!” she said frantically. “I’ll hide if I can. Oh, if only grandfather knew!”

Sawyer pressed her hand in useless consolation and looked down over the square at the double file of tall Isier figures which moved forward at a rapid stride through the crowd. They walked in a V-formation, opening up a way with the apex of their lines. The long robes swirled as they strode.

The apex of the oncoming V reached the foot of the steps. It opened. And the appalling figure of the Isier Goddess stepped forth…

For an instant complete disbelief made Sawyer’s mind reel. Disbelief of this whole dreamlike world. The ground did not exist under him, nor the sky overhead. He must still be in Fortuna; this incredible place called Khom’ad had no reality at all. In the whole drifting journey down the ice-tunnel he had been sure, under the surface of his mind, that at the far end they would come out into the open, snowy wastes around the Pile. Or into some cavern at best, down under the mine. But this was no cavern. The sky was open overhead, and the sun could be seen sinking in it. What sun? The sun that shone on Earth? Where was Khom’ad? Where—

The Goddess spoke, a deep and hollow and resonantly musical sound.

“Klai,” she said. And the girl shuddered heavily, sighed and dropped her hood.

The Goddess was a tall, swaying column of total darkness which balanced on its height a blank, pale, passionless face with two great green eyes faceted like emeralds and too bright to look into. At first glance, she seemed not to be there at all except as the pale mask floating upon a column of blindness. The eyes of the beholder dazzled and tried in vain to focus upon the garment that clothed her. The straight-falling robe was black, but a black out of which all light had so entirely gone that it could hardly be perceived at all. Where the figure stood, a hole in the air seemed to stand too.

The Goddess had no face. Hers was the only figure here to wear two masks, fronting both forward and back. In the oval openings where the eyes should be two large, flat lenses caught the light and shot it forth again blindingly, emerald-green, faceted. Sawyer wondered what the world must look like through those cut surfaces. Did the Goddess see as a spider does, in solid banks of complex, faceted images?

The green gaze like two tangible rays of light touched Klai, knew her, dismissed her for the moment and dwelt speculatively on Sawyer. He felt burned where the green fire touched him. As the gaze moved past him, Nethe burst into sudden, impassioned speech, trying in vain to draw the eyes of the Goddess to herself. It was useless. The gaze moved on toward the curtains out of which the drifting Isier came…

Sawyer turned to watch. Alper’s face was dimly visible, peering out, trying with a fatal curiosity to see what was happening. He saw. He met the searching green beams that swept from the sockets of the Goddess-mask, and Sawyer saw him go rigid for an instant, and then move stiffly forward.

Like a man hypnotized—perhaps he was hypnotized—he stepped out between the curtains and came down the steps slowly, moving with an automaton’s gait. Nethe’s breath hissed softly through her teeth. Alper’s hand was in his pocket, and the Firebird was nowhere to be seen…

The Goddess spoke for the second time, her voice hollow and resonant inside the mask. The column of her guards moved forward. And with a sudden, sinuous leap, Nethe sprang between the three humans on the step and the advancing Isier. She screamed angry commands at them, her voice running deep with latent music even when she was angriest. The guards hesitated, looked toward the Goddess. It crossed Sawyer’s mind that if Nethe were really destined to assume that terrible mask and robe in three days, the guards might well pause before flatly disobeying her.

The Goddess spoke again, dispassionately. Nethe swooped forward toward her, in a swirl of ice-white robes. The two stood face to face for a long moment, each swaying just a little, like two hooded cobras poised to strike.

“She’s threatening the Goddess,” Klai whispered faintly. “She’s saying what she’ll do after—Oh, wait! Listen!”

The Goddess spoke in a voice that rang across the square. Nethe swayed back, hissing. From the crowd, Isier and Khom alike, a low gasp rose.

“What is it?” Sawyer demanded urgently. “What did she say?”

“Hush,” Klai said anxiously. “Let me listen. She—she isn’t going to surrender the Double Mask without a fight. She challenges Nethe to the Unsealing of the Well. That means one of them will die. It’s her right. If she wants to take the chance, she can do it. She—”

“I thought these Isier were immortal?” Sawyer said.

“To outsiders, yes. But there’s one weapon that destroys them. The reigning Goddess controls it. I don’t know what it is. No Khom knows. If the Goddess unleashes the weapon she can be destroyed by it herself, of course. But she makes the challenge anyway. She says she’ll kill Nethe at the Unsealing of the Well, or die at Nethe’s hands.” Klai drew another of those deep, unsteady breaths. She laughed, a weak, small sound. “I’ll have a grandstand seat for a big event,” she said, smiling up at Sawyer.

“What do you mean,” he asked, clasping her hand harder. “What’s the—the Unsealing?”

“A ceremony,” Klai told him. “Where they need sacrifices, naturally! And the Goddess knew me. Now I’ve got something to look forward to!”

Nethe had gone rigid before the triumphant, challenging figure she confronted. She seemed imperceptibly to shrink into herself a little, to draw back. Klai laughed. Nethe heard, for she turned her head slightly and the little lamps at her ears swung backward against the cheeks of her mask. She hissed once more, a chain of furious, musical phrases at the Goddess. Then she whirled toward the waiting group on the steps. She shot one slanted, lethal glance from her snake-like eyes at Klai. The girl caught her breath and huddled against Sawyer. Nethe’s crescent-smile deepened ominously. The large, luminous eyes moved to Alper, still standing rigid, facing the Goddess.

“I’ll get to you later,” she said in a rapid, low voice. “When you’re questioned, keep quiet about the Firebird. Remember what I say or we’ll all die. Alper, do you hear me?”

Numbly he nodded his heavy head.

She turned away and swept down toward the Goddess as a file of the Isier guards came upward toward the humans. The lofty, inhuman faces did not glance down, but their hands were like cold iron on Sawyer’s arms, urging him forward down the steps. Alper came slowly awake and struggled briefly, and Klai collapsed in the grip of the oblivious gods. Half stumbling, half walking, they went rapidly down into the square in the strong, cold hands of the Isier.

The sunset grew lurid behind the storm-clouds as the Goddess’s men took their captives down winding streets toward the glass towers of the temple. It was darkening fast here, and lights went on one by one as the long file wound its way among the evening crowds. Here in the narrow byways the prisoners were led single file, so that Sawyer and Klai could no longer speak. The girl had thrown her hood back now, and was scanning the familiar streets anxiously, hoping hard for recognition.