Henry Kuttner - The Well of The Worlds

Sawyer had one brief, shuddering thought of what Nethe could have done to him with that shirt of Nessus any moment she chose, if his life hadn’t been important to her at the time. How she had done it remained an enigma but the thing of utter blackness had in one instant become a thing of blinding light, growing brighter and brighter as the savages flocked around it, and apparently not actually burning for it did not consume itself. Whatever it fed on, it continued to blaze higher, and the savages continued to surge excitedly around it, more of them appearing out of the woods at every flare of the cloak.

On the other side of that mindlessly phototropic crowd he caught a flash of Nethe’s lantern earrings as she dodged futilely, trying to get to him, and he came back to the realization of danger with a start. She had saved him for her own purposes, but it mattered little whether he was dismembered fatally by a savage or an Isier, and dismemberment would certainly be his end if she caught him.

He whirled and ran…

Beyond the fringe of trees a range of dark hills rose against the silver mist of the sky. Sawyer labored stumbling up the slope, with no clear plan except to put space between himself and Nethe. He did not forget that this was an island, improbably drifting in space. He watched the ground underfoot suspiciously, and presently, between two hills, caught a glimpse of low-lying silver fog that looked like the brink of creation.

It was. He came out on the height of the next hill and pulled up sharply, seizing the trunk of a leaning tree to steady himself. He and the tree leaned together over the abyss. This was the shore of space. Eddies of mist lapped against the sheer drop at his very toes. The tree dangled its roots as a more familiar tree had done far above. Sawyer could see them swaying gently outward below, which probably meant the island was in motion.

Clasping the tree, he leaned out farther, shuddering, and saw that what he had from above taken to be dark clouds were actually islands, many of them, each carrying a cumulus over its center, drifting slowly in long, descending festoons between the upper world and that far-off, shadowy, mysterious world below. Almost like stairsteps, he thought. If you watched your chance, you might climb up from island to island as they rose and fell in their drifting, until, from the topmost, you could reach Khom’ad—

Was that why the city gates were guarded? Did they expect attack?

He glanced up, and caught his breath as he saw that the vast, impending thundercloud which was the under-side of Khom’ad glowed crimson and flickered with glancing white flashes and gleams. It looked like the end of the world. Then he realized that what he saw was nothing more sinister than the burning cloak, which must have become quite a respectable holocaust by now, sending down strong reflections from the overhang of the world above.

He saw something else, too, when he looked back. Two twinkling points of light were moving rapidly toward him up the ravine. Nethe had found her quarry. Sawyer clasped the tree and urged Providence to remember him. For he was quite literally between the devil and the deep. Nethe cut off retreat, and the abyss was a long way down.

Nethe saw him, silhouetted against the silver sky. She laughed in triumph, a clear, strong, musical laugh.

“One last chance,” she called to him as she came. “If you tell me where the Firebird is before I get to you, I’ll let you live.”

Sawyer looked down. He dangled a tentative foot over the void.

“All right,” he told her clearly. “That’s close enough. Stop right there. If you’ve got anything to say, I can hear you. But say it from where you are, because I’d rather jump than let you kill me.”

Nethe laughed, but a little hesitantly. She slowed, and then came on. Sawyer leaned far out. Rocks crumbled underfoot and rattled across the edge.

Nethe paused uncertainly.

“Be sensible, Khom,” she urged. “You can’t stand there forever. I’ll get you when you give out. You have to sleep. You—”

“I’m not a Khom,” Sawyer said in a patient voice. “You can’t order me around and you may as well get used to it. I know where the Firebird fell. And not on this island, incidentally.” He glanced down and wondered if he really did see the motion of crowding figures on the next lower land below.

“Tell me and I’ll spare your life,” Nethe offered, taking a tentative forward step. Casually Sawyer kicked another stone over the edge. She stopped.

“I might tell you,” he said, “if you made it worth my while. Otherwise I’ll just wait until the island grounds against the mainland. I can see they float. I can imagine what the gates of Khom’ad are guarded against. They must be expecting an attack. What made you drop us both on this island, anyhow? Didn’t you know it was crawling with these savages?”

“I didn’t mean to drop either of us on this one,” Nethe told him with some asperity. “If you hadn’t made such a fuss about falling we’d have struck a smaller island. It was right under you when you first dropped. But you had to hang on to that root and argue. So—”

“So that was the plan,” Sawyer murmured. “Drop Alper far enough to kill him and then loot the corpse. Well, now you’ve caught a Tartar. What do you offer me if I give up the Firebird?”

“Death if you don’t!” Nethe cried, and surged forward three eager steps. “So you have it? On you?”

Sawyer kicked another stone over the edge.

“Imagine that’s me,” he said. “With the Firebird.” She paused reluctantly. “No, I haven’t got it on me,” he went on. “You know that, you searched me, didn’t you? Besides, if I had it do you think I’d stay here? I’d use it. I’d—I’d open up the Gateway and go right back where I came from.”

“You fool, you couldn’t open the Gateway,” Nethe said contemptuously.

“Alper did,” Sawyer reminded her.

“There’s more to opening a door than waving a key around,” she told him aloofly. “If I hadn’t already unlocked the Gateway to send Klai through, the Firebird wouldn’t have had any effect at all except to call the real Firebirds down the tunnel.”

“What are real Firebirds?” Sawyer inquired with interest.

Before she could answer, a new sound began to shake the air and both looked up quickly. The deep, heavy clangor of a great bell from somewhere above began to beat wildly through the abyss. Some resonance in its pitch made the island shiver slightly at every peal.

“They’ve seen the islands rising,” Nethe said, her face turned upward and away and her mask seeming to regard Sawyer with a disinterested stare. “It’s the Khom alarm-bell.”

While the echoes still rang, a second bell, farther off, took up the signal, and far away, at the very verge of hearing, a third began heavily to toll. Sawyer imagined the mobilization at the city gates, and he hoped the tuba-shaped weapons were better fit to deal with the savages than a knife through the chest had been.

“Are they really invulnerable?” he asked Nethe. “The savages, I mean?”

“The Sselli? To most things, yes. Like us.”

“Then you are vulnerable too?”

“Not to you, Khom.” She laughed and turned back to him, her eyes baleful. “All living things are vulnerable—to something. Only the Goddess can unleash the weapon that could destroy an Isier. Don’t worry. The Sselli won’t get far. Do you think a little band that size could stand against the Isier?”

Sawyer looked down at the circling swarm of islands upon which he had thought he saw the motion of living things. Perhaps a small band could be driven back, then, but not a large one? He strained his eyes through the dimness, which was beginning now to brighten with reflections from the upper world, long shafts of red and crimson streaming downward past this island and touching with a sort of false sunrise color the rising lands below.