Генри Каттнер - Lands of the Earthquake

It was dim in the valley, and he could see lights burning among the roofs. Some of them came brilliantly through the crystal; some glowed like lanterns through the colored stuff of the tented towers. The city looked like a carnival alight with festive lamps. But there was something about it that he did not like. Was it memory, he wondered, or something more deeply rooted than memory—instinct itself warning him of what lay within those high walls?

Beyond them the mists rolled again over the far reaches of the valley, and beyond the mists were more mountains. They swept up and up, peak upon jagged peak, range upon rising range, until the low clouds hid them.

But upon one of the foremost peaks a gigantic castle lay. Boyce narrowed his eyes against the haze and the distance, and tried in vain to make out the shape of the building. The mists between thinned for a moment, like the curtains of a stage drawing back.

He saw the great crenelated towers, with a scarlet banner like a tongue of flame blowing tremendously from the topmost height of the great donjon–keep. It was a castle such as he had seen often enough in old pictures, a mighty fortified heap of walls and towers, strangely familiar in this—this dream, this incredible land of mist and mountains.

Then the clouds rolled in again and the castle with its banner like a flame was blotted out as if memory itself had revealed it for a moment and then forgotten again, or as if the mists of the past had swallowed forever those anachronistic towers.

Boyce got slowly to his feet.

Not until then did the laughter come again, deep now, with amusement and a snarl that underlay the amusement.

Boyce turned. The sound seemed to come from above, and after a moment the mists drew back and he saw the one who laughed. Standing on a ledge a little way up the face of the rock, with mist swirling around him, a tall man watched him. Boyce stared incredulously.

At first glance he could not be sure the man was not actually furred like a tiger, for his long, muscular limbs and lithe body were tawny and striped with a fur of velvety sheen. But the man’s grinning face was pale, and his black hair under the tiger–skin hood lay smooth.

He was leaning back against a leather strap he held with both hands, and Boyce could see dimly the surge of sleek bodies around his knees. The strap was a leash, but the creatures he held upon it were invisible in the fog.

The tiger–striped man’s lip lifted in a smile like a snarl, and he took one hand from the leash to make a signal to Boyce—intricate, swift motions of the fingers that were blurred to the sight. About his knees the leashed animals surged instantly into activity, and the man laughed fiercely and seized the strap again, wrestling with his pack. But his eyes were questioning upon Boyce.

He waited, struggling with his beasts. The smile faded. He made the quick, cabalistic gesture again, again fought with his pack to quiet it as he waited. This time he scowled, and the scowl was scarcely fiercer than the smile had been.

Boyce lifted both hands, palm out, in the universal gesture of peace. It was all he could do. He had no answer for the mysterious sign, though dimly he felt he should know what the answer was.

Laughter leaped into the other man’s face, instant murderous delight, as if this failure was what he had longed for. Boyce thought for the fraction of a second that he saw recognition in the pale, dangerous countenance above him. He thought the man knew him, had hoped for the chance at enmity and laughed now in terrible delight because the chance had come.

The laughter swelled to a roar, triumphant, with a tiger snarl in the sound, and the man shouted out a deep halloo like a huntsman calling to his pack. One striped, tawny arm flung out in a gesture of warning. He was motioning Boyce to run. He was pointing down the narrow trail toward the valley, and the unseen beasts leaped about his knees, almost free of the loosened leash.

Boyce turned uncertainly, bewilderment fogging his mind. Everything had happened too suddenly, and he was not yet sure at all that he was not asleep and in a dream where a tiger–striped nightmare warned him to flee from snarling nightmares tugging at their leash. He did not like the thought of running. He did not—

With one last halloo the Huntsman slipped the strap. Over the lip of rock Boyce saw smooth bodies pouring down at him, five, six, seven sleekly furred beasts as large as mastiffs and as lithe as serpents. One lifted an almost human face to snarl at him.

It was a beautiful, demented face, half–tiger, half–cat—the strange semi–human countenance of animal faces in medieval tapestries. But the beast was neither cat nor dog. It was something he had never seen before. Circe’s beasts might have had such faces.

He turned and ran.

The trail was steep. Mist blew around him as he plunged downward, never sure that the next step might not carry him over some unseen abyss. Behind him the Huntsman’s laughter rang wildly through the fog, the cliffs echoing it back until the whole valley seemed to laugh with him. From the beasts came a low, deep snarling, but no other sound. They might be far behind, they might be already at his heels. Boyce did not dare turn to look.

The steep trail curved around the face of the rock and leveled slowly toward the valley floor. Stumbling, panting, dizzy with incredulity, Boyce ran on.

When the ground was level underfoot and the drifting mist revealed to him that he had come at last to the base of the cliffs, he paused for a moment to get his bearings. There was silence behind him. Even the Huntsman’s laughter was quiet now and no snarling rolled through the fog.

He stood on a sandy plain among clumps of low–growing shrubs. Far off a glow of feint color staining the mist told him where the city lay, but he was not sure at all that he dared seek out that city. He needed time to think, to search his mysteriously closed memory for things he so desperately needed now to know.

Where was he—in what impossible land? What did he want here? For he had come through the crystal window in answer to a compelling urge toward—something. An urge to follow— her —to find her? That nameless, all but faceless woman who wore an iron crown and whose very memory was like a chain to draw him after her wherever she might go.

Where had he known her? What had she been to him? Why did the shiver of recollected danger ripple over him whenever he let her memory float back into his mind? He had no answers to these or any other questions. He only knew he was lost in the fog of an incredible land and he did not think he dared seek out that city which was its only familiar landmark.

The Sorcerers’ City. Its name came into his mind blindly. It was an evil city, full of strange enchantments and stranger men and women. He felt a sudden urge to look upon it, and struck out on impulse through the fog toward a rise of ground he saw a little distance away.

From the eminence the city was clearer, veiled and unveiled by the constant, silent drifting of blue–grey clouds. Enigmatically the great walls rose, enclosing their clusters of lighted towers, their crystal roofs, their tented canopies that glowed like lanterns from the lights within.

Through the mists a sound came faintly to him. He turned. Far away, winding through the cloudy plain, he saw a procession coming toward the city. There was a curious darkness over the long, wavering column. Tiny lamps gleamed through it and the sound of bells rose and fell as the procession wound its way through the fog. He was near enough to make out a little of those who walked in the line….

Boyce had no recollection of what happened next. He only knew he was sitting on the sandy ground, his face in his hands, while waves of sickness receded slowly as he sat there. He was shaking all over.