Генри Каттнер - Lands of the Earthquake

The fire leaped again. Through it the slim, crowned figure was faintly visible. It shimmered before his eyes, curiously unfocused inside the screen of flame. It divided, drew apart.

The fire sank. There were two figures inside the burning ring. But only for a moment. Then Irathe swept up her skirts in one smooth motion and stepped over the low–burning flames. Her eyes were violet–bright, the color of the fire. Her face was dazzling with a beauty more burning than the old Irathe ever knew. But danger was in the face now, danger and a fierce, unstable joy.

Behind her a motionless girl stood in the enchanted ring. Not a girl—a marble figure, pale as stone, drained of all life, the marble hair lying upon the marble shoulders, the marble robes sweeping straight to the floor. Hands clasped before her, eyes closed, serene and empty, the figure of Kerak’s Oracle had taken shape in the ring and remained there while Irathe stepped lightly away from all that remained of her old self.

It was the same face—if it could be, when all that meant life had been drained from it. Boyce saw now that he might have known those marble features in Kerak—or could he have known them, in that inhuman repose, without the spark which meant Irathe glowing behind them? His memory had been too imperfect then. He had not known her face or her name, and nothing about the lifeless Oracle’s features had reminded him of her other self.

The Huntsman, still bending to stroke the head of one snarling cat–creature, spoke as if to the beast, his voice soft.

“I had loved her before the—change. How could I stop loving her, afterward? And there was nothing left alive in the good half for a man to love, so it had to be Irathe as she is now—evil, terrible to the mind and the eye and most so for a man like me who can see beneath the surface. But to my heart, she is still Irathe, and my love.”

Suddenly he slapped the snarling beast across the face. It twisted its head with cat–ike quickness and slashed at his wrist with bared fangs. The Huntsman laughed and cuffed it aside.

“They could not destroy the marble image which was all that remained when that half of Irathe’s mind which was good and sinless split from the half which was evil, knowing too much of magical things. Irathe wanted to destroy it. The sight of it seemed to madden her. She was not Irathe now and the knowledge of her own incompleteness was more than she could bear with that marble thing as a reminder.

“ They were indifferent. They had what They wanted; they would not help further. So Irathe, thinking to get the white marble being out of her sight and memory, drove it into the drifting lands and hoped she might forget it.

“The gods alone know what thoughts move in that still, stone mind. But some memory of her mother’s people led her to Kerak, and they took her in. Then Irathe sent a cage of fire to keep her imprisoned, hoping the City would drift away and rid her forever of that shape which had been herself.

“But it was not so easy. The two halves of her were not wholly parted. A bond between them remained, a bond so strong that while it stretches between Kerak and the City, the two are anchored together and cannot drift apart. That means, of course, that Irathe must conquer Kerak’s Oracle. She does not know the way. She has worked a long, long while on that secret.

“By now she is very wise—far wiser than I. I think she knows the answer which will mean the conquest of her other half. But the Oracle, too, is wise. And Tancred, Kerak’s magician, is a rival in some ways even for Irathe. So she could not gain an entrance into Kerak—until she found you.”

Boyce broke in abruptly, cutting off the slow, reminiscent voice that seemed to be watching the past unfold as it spoke on.

“You’re lying,” he declared, with all of Guillaume’s arrogance. “I knew her too.” He hesitated. He would not say, “I loved her too.” That was a matter between him and the real, complete Irathe, if ever they met again. But once they had met—he was sure of that—and she had been whole.

“I know you did.” The Huntsman gave him one glance under the tiger–striped hood, and hatred and envy was in the glance. But his voice was calm. “You knew her as I did, in one of her moments of completion. You see, there are certain times when the cage of flame does not prison Kerak’s Oracle. The time is now, Boyce.”

The dark eyes were sombre.

“You have listened to me, William Boyce, because I had information you needed. But why do you suppose I troubled to make these explanations?”

Boyce hesitated. But before he could speak he sensed a change in the Huntsman’s face, bright and triumphant as lightning flickering across a leaden autumn sky.

And suddenly Boyce knew his mistake. He had a flash of keen regret, the knowledge that he had, somehow, walked blindly into a trap—and then, for an intolerable instant of spinning vertigo, the walls before him tilted and slipped sidewise and dissolved into roaring chaos.

Tumbling mists shrouded him. Another mind, another power, was using him as a man’s hand wields a machine. His body, his eyes, his thoughts, were not his own now. Briefly he crouched in a timeless, lightless place, the deepest citadel of his self, where no Intruder could reach.

The monstrous claustrophobia slackened—was gone.

He stood again before the laughing Huntsman.

Thick, wordless sounds spewed from his lips as he tried to speak. The Huntsman’s eyes were ablaze with triumph.

“Is it hard to use your tongue, Boyce?” he mocked. “That will not last long. In a moment the feeling will pass. When a man has been out of his body it is not always easy to return.”

Boyce hunched his shoulders, feeling such anger as he had never known before against this sorcerer who could use him at will as a man dons a glove and doffs it.

He felt warmth beginning to return to his limbs, though he had not felt their coldness till now.

“You—”

“Speak! You have done me a great service, Boyce. I owe you an honest answer, at least.”

“What have you made me do?”

The Huntsman sobered. And now his eyes glittered with something very much like madness.

“You have done an errand for me. Not your body—but another part of you, your mind, your soul, perhaps. I sent that to Kerak a moment ago. Have you forgotten my words? This is one of the brief cycles during which the Oracle is free of her cage of flame.”

“ What did you do? ”

“I used you to summon the Oracle here. Free from her cage, she can go where she wills—but the spell of emptiness holds her, even now. She comes to the City now, because you called her, Boyce.”

Boyce spoke hoarsely.

“Why should she come to my call?”

“Should a woman not come when her lover calls? When her husband summons?” The Huntsman dwelt on the words, as he would have gripped the sharp blade of a dagger. What showed on his face was pure Jealousy.

Lover? Husband? But it was Irathe who had come to earth—

“I will give you death if you like,” the Huntsman said quietly. “It is best of all. Better than life. Perhaps in death you may join Kerak’s Oracle.”

That passion–drained calm, more than the Huntsman’s previous mockery, roused Boyce. He thought—with a breath this sorcerer can drive me as a wind drives a leaf. But—

“Curse your magic!” Boyce roared. The ice had gone from his limbs. The fire of rage melted the paralyzing chill.

For so long had the Huntsman dueled with the rapiers of magic that he had apparently forgotten more primitive methods of battle. Boyce’s fist smashed home on the man’s jaw, a solid, vicious blow that jolted his arm clear back to the shoulder.