Генри Каттнер - Lands of the Earthquake

The effect upon the people was electrical. Faces turned up, suddenly pale in the uncertain light of the lanterns. There was a little echoing moan that seemed to run like a breeze over the whole crowd, a sound coming in one breath from every throat there. And then, like magic, the crowd began to melt away.

Doors opened all along the street to receive them. Here and there someone beat impatiently at closed panels, calling in a low voice to those within. No one called loudly. It seemed to Boyce that within a moment after the first shrilling sounded from overhead, there was no one left upon the street.

The bright crowd had scurried by under the stone images and then, in a twinkling, the wet street was empty except for a straggler or two who glanced curiously at Boyce standing there alone and then vanished into the nearest shelter.

There was a patter of feet on stone. Boyce looked down. The brown girl was motioning impatiently to him.

“Come,” she said urgently. “Come—hurry! There’s no time!”

He went uncertainly toward her over the wet pavement. It was not fast enough to suit his guide. She swooped down on him, seized his arm and pulled him along at a run toward a door behind one of the stone beasts.

“What is it?” Boyce demanded. “I don’t understand—”

“ They come,” the girl said. “Hurry! In here—quick, before They reach this street!”

The door creaked on its hinges. Within was darkness and Boyce remembered Guillaume’s warning to go carefully. He held back a little, not sure whether it would be more dangerous to enter or to stay outside.

Then from the street before him a little breath of cold air blew past, fluttering his cloak. It was a cold that seared like heat. And terror came with it—terror and such a revulsion as he had not known since the moment in the fog when he first came to this land and saw from a hilltop the dark procession winding down toward the City gates.

It was They indeed—those who walked among a twinkle of lights and a twinkle of tiny bells and a cloud of darkness that veiled them mercifully from sight. They who went upright like men, and were not men— They whom he knew he had seen once with the woman whose name and face he could not remember—or forget.

The old sickness came over him when he thought of Them. He turned swiftly and stumbled down three steps and fell against the door the brown girl held for him. He was shaking hard. He felt the cold burning down the street as the door shut behind him, heard the first thin tinkling of the bells. And the high shrilling from overhead was like a ringing in the ears, maddening, impossible to shake away.

The door shut out most of the noise. It was dark now, but a firm hand took his elbow and he hurried down an unseen hall beside the pattering steps of his guide.

What kind of a woman is it I’m hunting? he wondered, when all I know about her is that she once went familiarly with Them?

“The King summoned Them again,” the girl in the dark beside him volunteered, speaking in her strangely accented patois. “There must be strange things happening among the tents tonight. A rumor is that the lords have attacked that castle in the mountains you can sometimes see from our walls.”

So there was some connection, then, Boyce thought. Perhaps at last the pattern was beginning to click into place, and his own part in it might come clear.

A door opened before him upon light and smoke and voices. The brown girl pushed him through.

He saw first a lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling over a broad table. The table was tiled into intricate patterns, and some sort of game seemed to be in process upon it. A circle of men bent above the counters, their faces in shadow because of the hanging lamp.

One of them was laughing and sweeping counters in. They were carved and jeweled pieces a little like chessmen, and each one rang with a different note when the players touched it.

When the door opened there was a little hush and the men looked up.

“The man from Nain’s temple,” the brown girl said.

“You’re late,” one of the players declared. “Have you brought what you promised?”

“Waste no time on him,” someone else urged in a belligerent voice. “He’s made us wait too long already. His stories are probably lies from the beginning. I say—waste no time.”

Boyce looked at them blankly. Guillaume had not told him about this. The Crusader had been lying on the last brink of exhaustion and there were obviously things he was unable to recall. This must be one of them.

Obviously Guillaume had been pretending to offer secrets for sale on the castle defense or Tancred’s strength or something else that the lords of the City would buy. Boyce felt a surge of anger and dismay. The risks were great enough, certainly, in his coming here at all, without walking into a trap unarmed and unwarned.

There was only one course to take. He strode forward with Guillaume’s arrogant, rolling step and struck the table a blow that made all the counters jump on their squares and ring faintly together.

“By all the gods!” he roared with Guillaume’s great bellow. “You’ll take what I give and wait my pleasure on it!”

There was an angry murmur around the table. Chairs scraped back across the tiled floor and one man rose and threw down the counter he had been holding. It rolled across the board, jingling as it went.

“You speak with a big voice, for a traitor,” the man said. He was young, by his tone, and slender in an ankle–length robe of chain steel, slit on both sides above the knee to show red leather boots and red breeches. He carried two long daggers in his belt, and his plumed hat’s brim dipped broadly down in front to shade his eyes.

“Later we’ll brawl if you still want it. Now you’ll give us your news if we have to tear it out of you.” He glanced around the table. “Many of us would rather take it that way. I would myself.” He laughed and laid both hands on his dagger–hilts.

One of the others, a short, broad man with flaming red hair, jumped to his feet and tossed back the purple cloak he wore to show the long barbed whip coiled like a belt about his thick waist.

“Why should we pay the dog anything for his secrets?” he demanded in an unexpectedly high voice. “I know a way to make him howl! We’ll—”

A white–haired man in a white fur cloak lifted his hand placatingly.

“Friends, friends, be silent! Let the man speak.”

“Let him lie, you mean,” the red–head said sullenly. “The last time we met him and his friend they promised us Kerak on a silver tray and that was the last we saw of them. They’ve had payment already for secrets they never told us. It was wonderful how fast they vanished once they got their hands on our silver.

“Now this one comes back alone and talking as lordly as Jamai himself. How do we know where the other one is? Offering the same secrets to someone else who’ll get to Jamai before us—that’s my word on it. I’m finished. Deal with him as you will. I say—let him die.”

Boyce laughed contemptuously.

“The least talk the loudest,” he said. “I’m back among you—isn’t that proof enough of good faith?”

He wondered if it was. Evidently Guillaume and Godfrey had dealt with these men just before their capture by Jamai. And the story of that capture must be secret or he would not now be in danger for having disappeared without reason. Desperately he wondered what secrets Guillaume had meant to invent for them. If he could only have found Godfrey first.

“Enough babble, enough!” the red–haired man broke in. “I want my own answer! Will you lead us by that secret way you spoke of, dog? That I’ve paid for and I demand your word on it. Are you ready to take us secretly to Kerak when our master gives the signal?”