Генри Каттнер - Lands of the Earthquake

Behind them, leaning on the leash, the Huntsman came in his tiger–striped garments. Blood smeared his pale face, and he was laughing as he came—but not from mirth. Boyce remembered Irathe’s words. Yes, it might be madness, that wild, mirthless sound that echoed among the pillars. But a cold madness, that knew its own power.

Behind his tiger–beasts, leaning on the leash, the huntsman came in his tiger–striped garments.

“It was you , then—in the crystal—fighting my will!” Irathe cried furiously. “You dared, Jamai—”

He came on, laughing deep in his throat.

“I? Was it Jamai? Or was it the Huntsman? I have two selves, Irathe, even as you. You should know that! William Boyce, I owe you thanks. Never before have I found the secret way to the throne. Till I looked into your mind through the crystal, I had not known that the King was dead. I had not even known that I was dead!”

“ Jamai! ” Irathe shrilled.

“Even you, Irathe, are vulnerable. You are afraid. All of us are afraid of something—death, or pain, or magic. Because you are sane—even you, Irathe—but I have lost my vulnerability. I had not known it before, but I know now.

“How can a man love good and evil—fire and ice—and stay sane? You were wise to make the choice you did. It meant death, but death is better than life. I made the other choice. I have followed Irathe through all the hells in all the universe!”

A shadow darkened above the crystal globe. The white mists gathered closer overhead, clustering about the hemisphere to hide the City’s roofs below. Kerak, far and small, was hidden by the pallid veils.

“ Jamai! ” Irathe cried again, and he smiled.

“No, Irathe,” he said, his voice dropping. “It is the end. I love you, and I love the Oracle. I will not see her enslaved to your evil will. I know what evil is in you.

“But I would not see her gain power over you again, because then she would look at me, and know the evil that has flowered within me since she saw me last. Both you and she must die, Irathe—and for all I care, all the worlds may die with you!”

Irathe’s mouth curved. “I have summoned Them. You are too late—much too late.”

The shadow was like thunderheads above the crystal roof, darkening the great room. Jamai roared with laughter.

“Let Them come!” he shouted. “Let Them slay! I know the answer now—and it is Death! Kill and be killed! I am wiser than you all, for I am mad—and I say the answer is Death!”

It was almost too dark now to see, but Boyce could make out the sudden upward sweep of a tiger–striped arm, and the whip of the loosened leash. And he could see the instantaneous forward sweep of the two long, low, powerful bodies at the Huntsman’s knee. His laughter seemed to madden them, and their screaming snarl of rage echoed the curious snarl in his own voice as they launched themselves forward toward the throne where the dead King sat.

Dimly Boyce saw the beautiful, screaming faces of the beasts, met the glow of their luminous eyes—and sprang forward before the Oracle, swinging his sword.

It was too dark to see the tiger–things, though they were almost upon him. It was too dark to see the two girls or the throne or the pillars, and the Huntsman’s mad laughter rang disembodied through the blackness. There was a singing in Boyce’s ears, a sound of tiny bells very near…

A hot–breathed snarl sounded in his face. He heard claws click on pavement as the beast launched itself at his throat. Of itself, the sword swung in his hands. It met hard, muscular resistance that held for a moment and then seemed to fall away, left and right over the razor–edge of the blade.

There was a sudden, hot reek of blood in the air, but he was scarcely aware of it. For now shadows moved through the dark, and it seemed to Boyce that his flesh moved with them, shudderingly, on his bones. Cold struck into his mind and his body, numbing, paralyzing….

* * * * *

An icy wind rushed past him, swaying the darklike curtains before it. Briefly, dimly, the dark parted. He saw in one terrible glancing flash a robed figure moving as no human figure ever moved.

He saw Irathe facing it, her arms flung high, her black hair swirling wide on the blast, her face dazzling. He saw one more thing—a second snarling figure before him, crouching for a leap; lips wrinkled back over curved fangs as it glared at him out of wild, mad eyes.

Then the darkness closed in again, like dropping curtains. Through it he could hear Irathe’s voice, high and shrill, speaking words whose very sound was a meaningless blasphemy to the ear. No human tongue was ever meant to shape such sounds.

The chant rose higher, thinner, like they were cramped like ice around the hilt of his ears and his brain except when the shriek of that icy wind drowned them out.

The cold was in his bones now. His hands were cramped like ice around the hilt of his sword. Hearing that feral snarl, he swung it up with infinite effort. A lithe, beast–smelling body thudded against him. Claws raked his thigh, and the snarl was in his very ear. Furiously, struggling against the cold, he flung it off, slashing downward—missed.

Now the chant of Irathe’s strangely changed voice, resonant with that insistent hell–sound, filled all the darkness. And he sensed even through the cold and his confusion a motion among the robed, unseen figures—a motion he knew because his flesh told him by its shuddering shrink when They drew near.

With one last despairing effort he lifted the sword as he heard that snarl again. This time it struck home. The snarl was a howl. A body thudded to the floor and was silent. The figures were closing in around him, and he knew that when they reached him, he would die.

One last thing remained. He could not reach Irathe to silence her triumphant chant, but the Oracle stood at his back. He could reach her.

He could kill her.

She at least need never be captive again to the black evil of her twin self. And if the Oracle died—perhaps—Irathe too might die. It was a forlorn and desperate thing he meant to do, but he knew in his frozen horror and revulsion that it was best for them all.

She was very near, within reach of his arm. He touched her—for the first time. He had wondered often before now if she would be marble to the touch, cold, hard. She was not cold. For an instant it bewildered him, and then he knew. He was himself so paralyzingly cold in this unnatural icy dark that even marble might seem warm to him.

And as he drew her toward him, his arm closing about her shoulders, he felt her giving slowly, almost reluctantly, to his pull, her body bending as he brought her within reach of his sword.

He shortened his grip upon it. In the deadly dark he laid its sharp edge against her throat.

She did not stir. But he could hear her quickened breathing.

Very gently he bent his head and kissed her for the first time and the last his conscious memory would ever know. And under his lips he felt warmth and life come slowly back into the Oracle of Kerak. Slowly, softly out of that distant place in which she had dwelt so long, the Oracle of Kerak returned to the world of the living.

Against his mouth her lips moved. Against his heart her heart stirred—beat more strongly. In his arms her body that had been marble relaxed into flexible, living flesh. The tie between them which Irathe herself had brought into being was a cord that drew her irresistibly through the gates of forgetfulness and enchantment. She stirred, sighed—

The spell broke!

She wrenched free and was gone into the darkness. And as she moved, it seemed to Boyce that Irathe’s voice faltered. For an instant assurance went out of it and she stumbled in the midst of a phrase. Suddenly he thought he understood. They were the two halves of a single being.