Генри Каттнер - Lands of the Earthquake

In that year there had been no question. He had followed her because he could not help himself. It was sheer infatuation, obsession—as if a spell had been laid on him to follow wherever she went. And she went to her big, quiet, secret house on the river in New York. And there, with him and with her servants, for a long, long while she had worked at—something.

What? He had not known, even then. There were wide gaps in his memory. There were blanks, induced deliberately he thought, to keep her purpose secret. But if she had chosen him because of his likeness to Guillaume, his remote kinship with Guillaume—then her purpose must have been connected with Kerak and the destruction of the Crusaders. Why? It seemed a trivial thing to stretch over so wide a range of time and space, to involve such infinite effort.

In the end—careful, careful, he reminded himself—in the end had come that thing which was too terrible to recall—the thing that had sealed off his memory of the whole year, like scar–tissue to protect a wound too deep to heal without it.

Something about Them ….

A dark procession coming up from the river, with tiny lights twinkling and tiny bells ringing, and a breath of cold as searing as heat blowing before them to warn all beholders away.

Watching them from an upper window—congealed with an incredulity and a revulsion that would not accept what he saw—something about a doorway he watched, and They parading through it toward him, walking like men, though they were not and never could be men themselves.

Her head had turned upon his shoulder. She was looking up at him and smiling a wise, malicious smile.

“I warned you,” she said. “Even then, I warned you. You shouldn’t have stayed that long. So I had to do whatever I could to make sure you’d forget.” She laughed, as lightly as she had laughed when she kicked the fallen red man on the pier. “You forgot!” she said gaily.

Suddenly Boyce knew there was something wrong here. He realized the wrongness so quickly that his body moved before he was aware that he had stirred. He found himself on his feet facing the divan, and he knew he had flung Irathe the from his shoulder and sprang away as if the touch of her were loathsome.

“ It wasn’t you ,” he said, his voice sounding thick and strange. “I know now—it was someone else, not you!”

He saw her lovely, brightly tinted face convulse as if a flame had shot up behind it, lighting a violet glare in her eyes and drawing her beautiful, bright features into a grotesque shape of evil.

“It was. It was! ” she screamed. There were fury and passion in her voice, and a strange, wild grief he could not understand. But above all, there was evil, sheer, pure evil such as he had never dreamed to see so nakedly in a human face. No face could be wholly human and hold so much of it.

“No!” he shouted and saw her double suddenly, with a motion like a striking snake, and snatch at something hidden inside the loose top of her high scarlet boots.

He should have taken warning. He should have dodged. But she moved too fast for him. She straightened and her red arm flew back, and he saw something black and blurred flying straight at his face. He saw it come, and grow enormously and spread to shut out all the room behind it. But he did not see it strike, for he was no longer there to see or feel.

He floated in oblivion, rocking on mists like the clouds that move over the face of the drifting lands….

Pain in bright, regular flashes roused him slowly. He groaned and stirred, not knowing it was himself who moved. It hurt to breathe. He opened his eyes and looked up blankly at a high window framing a fantastic panorama, twilight and a City lighted as always with colored lanterns swinging in the breeze above wet, narrow streets.

He tried to get up, and could not. Little by little, awareness came back. He was lying on the floor by the divan. His wrists and ankles were tied tightly—with vicious tightness—as if Irathe had drawn the bonds with all her strength. His head ached and he had been struck a number of times across the face, by the stiff, stinging feel of it. Also, he thought, she must have driven her booted toes into his ribs, to judge by the pain that accompanied each breath.

He wondered how long he had lain here. There was no way of telling time—if time existed at all inside the City. There were things he had to do. Godfrey still lay imprisoned, hoping for rescue from Kerak, and he knew there were other duties he might remember later, when his head stopped spinning.

What had happened? He had angered Irathe, of course—he was not quite sure how, but he had touched her in a very sore spot if the fury in her voice and her actions had been any criterion.

And yet—it had not been she. Lying there on the floor, he forgot for a moment his more urgent problems in the all–encompassing mystery of just who that crowned girl was whom he remembered so vividly. The name, the face—yes. But this fiery–eyed girl with evil like a lantern burning in her—no, it had not been she….

He stirred again, and said softly, to himself, “ Irathe. ”

Instantly there was a sound in the room. Bare feet came across the floor almost in silence, cautiously, and a brown face bent above his, unfamiliar from this awkward angle on the rug.

“Master,” said a gentle voice with fear in it, “master—do you know me?”

* * * * *

She was brown and bare–limbed, and she wore heavy golden bands on wrists and ankles, and a golden collar about her throat. She was the little guide who had taken him from Nain’s temple to meet Irathe and her quarrelsome fellow–conspirators. He had not yet had time to wonder about that strange combination, or what Irathe had been doing there among them, in disguise.

“Master,” the girl whispered again, her eyes rolling above him so that the whites showed as she watched the corners of the room for—Irathe? Was she a servant of Irathe herself, or was this show of terror genuine? He could not trust anyone at all to the City now.

“Master, I followed all the way,” the brown girl whispered. “I must ask a question, master. Are you Jamai’s man?”

Boyce’s head ached. He did not know Jamai except as a name and a menace. He was tired of all this intrigue of which he knew so little and he had no strong feeling just now for any in the City but one.

“I’m no one’s man but my own,” he said angrily. “But if Jamai is against Irathe, I’d like to know him. Is that what you want?”

She smiled a white smile above him.

“Thank you, master.” The brown face disappeared briefly. Then he felt hands turning him gently, felt the coldness of a blade against his wrists, felt the intolerable tightness of his bonds fall away.

“That will be painful, master, in a moment,” she warned, working on his ankles. “When the pain passes, we will go.”

He rubbed his wrists.

“Where?”

“If the gods are with us and we leave this tower alive”—her eyes rolled again, fearfully—“we go to one who is Jamai’s deadliest foe.”

“And Irathe’s?”

She looked down evasively.

“We must go quickly,” she said. “It is better not to talk until we’re free of this house.”

Boyce shrugged. His limbs were beginning to prickle with returning circulation, but the pain in his side lessened as he waited, and he was eager to go. He could deal with Irathe later, and he would. That was a promise to himself.

The brown girl was holding one of the draperies aside and beckoning to him. There was a grille in the wall, and a steep stairway winding down into blackness. Limping, Boyce followed her into the dark.