Garan the Eternal (6 page)

PART
TWO

Chapter One

Lord of Yu-Lac

Often have I (who was Garin Featherstone in the world beyond the Mist Barrier, and am now Gar an of the Flame, mate to that Royal Lady, Thrala, Daughter of the Ancient Ones) listened to the half-forgotten tales of that regal race who fled from a dying planet across the void of space to land upon the antarctic continent of our young world and blast out there the great crater of Tav for their future dwelling place.

From time to time, we are told, they renewed the vigor of their line by calling certain men from the world outside the barriers they had erected. I had been one of those so called. But I came in a later age and in a dark time. For evil had come into the crater and conflict riven apart the dwellers therein. And now at present, since that crushing defeat we wreaked with the help of outraged nature upon Kepta, Lord of the Black Flame, and those who followed him, but two of the Ancient Race remain, my lady wife and her brother Dandtan.

At the moment of his overthrow Kepta had made certain dark promises concerning our uncertain future and also some gibing reference to the far past which had caught my interest. For he said that the three of us, Thrala, Kepta, and I, were bound together. We had lived and fought before, even as we would live and fight again.

There is a Garan who lies in the Cavern of the Sleepers and whose story Thrala has told me. But before him — long before — there were others.

For when I questioned the Daughter about Kepta’s words, she took me into one of the curious bubble-like rooms where are mirrors of seeing embedded in tables. And
there she seated herself on a cushioned bench, drawing me down beside her.

“Far and long have we come, beloved,” she said softly, “but not so far or not so long that I cannot recall the beginning. And you remember?”

“Nothing,” I answered, my eyes on the mirror.

She sighed. “Perhaps that is but just — mine was the fault — so mine the burden of memory. What we did, we two, in the great city of Yu-Lac on the vanished world of Krand, has lain between us for long — long. It being gone at last, I half fear to summon it again.”

I arose abruptly.

“Let it be then.”

“Nay!” she caught my hand. “We have paid the price, three times over have we paid it. Once in Yu-Lac and twice in the Caverns. Our unhappiness is gone, and now it pleases me to look again upon the most splendid act I have ever witnessed. Behold, my Lord.”

She raised her slender hands above the mirror. It misted.

I stood on a fancifully carved balcony of opalescent stone looking down upon a fantastic city not yet awakened from the hours of sleep. In the rosy sky, strange to my half- earthly eyes and yet familiar, were the first golden strands of earthly dawn. Yu-Lac, the Mighty, lay below me and I was Lord Garan, Marshal of the Emperor’s Air Fleet, peer of the Empire.

By birth I had no right to either title or position, for my mother had been a lady of the court and my father an officer. They broke the law forbidding mating between different clans and castes by their secret marriage and so doomed me from birth to be one of the wards of the state and the lowliest of the low.

Luckily for me, and those unfortunates like me, the Emperor Fors, when he ascended the Rose Throne in the Palace of Light, issued a decree opening army service to state wards. In my fifteenth year I made my choice and submitted myself to the military brand.

The life was a hard one, but it was escape from far worse and — having some ambition and ability, doubtless inherited from my father — I rose step by step. Fourteen years later I was Marshal of the Imperial Air Fleet and a military lord, created so by the Emperor’s own hand.

But the soldier who stood on the balcony, looking down
upon the wondrous beauty which was Yu-Lac in the dawn, was neither happy nor contented. All his hard-won honors were no more to him than the diverse scars which seamed his flesh. For he had dared (though no man knew it) to raise his eyes and heart to one as far above him as Krand’s red sun was above her yellow fields.

I, a veteran of countless small border wars and raiding parties, was as lovesick and despondent as the youngest and most callow recruit uneasily slumbering in the barracks below my tower. Though I resolutely put aside my unholy longing throughout the day, yet at night and in the dawning my memory and dreams broke loose from control, nor did I try too hard to leash them.

like the penitent priests in the great temple of On I tortured myself by memories which inflicted twice the pain of any body hurt. By my companions I was counted a seasoned warrior, cold of heart and uninterested in aught but the pressing affairs of my office. And yet —

Three years — By On, could it be so long? Then I had been commander of the Emperor’s flagship, the thrice happy vessel which was selected to bear the Lady Thrala from her temple school in Toran to her father’s crystal palace which crowned the central hill of Yu-Lac.

The Imperial Princess had been surrounded by the countless courtiers of her suite, but one blessed night she had slipped away from them all and entered the control cabin where it had been my heaven-directed whim to stand watch alone. Thrala, not Imperial Highness, had she been when our snatched hour was over.

Twice had I seen her since. Once on the day when I had knelt at the Emperor’s feet to receive the staff of my office and had dared to raise my eyes to that golden throne at his right hand. And the second? It was in the royal pleasure gardens where I was awaiting an audience. She had passed with her ladies. Who was I with the military brand seared deep in my shoulder muscle to look upon the Peerless One?

The castes of Krand were rigidly ordered. A man might rise to honor in any one but he could not pass into another. A peasant might become a lord of the land and a noble but neither he nor his sons might serve at court nor in the fleet So a soldier of the forces, even though he bore a title, had no right to long for a daughter of the Learned Ones. They were our rulers and great nobles, far above the commoners in the breadth of their knowledge. They had as
much ability to harness and bend to their will both men and natural forces as I had over the mindless slaves of the fields, that subhuman race which the Learned Ones had produced in the laboratories. They were a race apart, blessed — or cursed — with superhuman powers.

But Thrala was my beloved and all the decrees of the Emperor and the chains of ancient custom could not alter that fact nor blot her image from my heart. I think I would have finished out my life, content at last only to worship my dreams of her, had not brooding Fate decided a far different future for all the pigmy men creatures who crawled about that globe which was Krand.

That morning I was not left long to indulge in self-pity and fruitless longings. A tiny bell chimed in the room behind me, giving notice that someone desired to enter my sleeping chamber. I crossed to the disk on the wall and ran my hand across it. Upon its polished surface then appeared the likeness of my aide-de-camp, that young rascal, Ana tan of Hol.

“Enter,” I said into the mouth tube beside the disk, my voice thus unlocking the door.

“Well, scamp, what scrap have you gotten into?” I asked resignedly, being well used to meeting in the early morning a contrite but guilty young officer who wished me to get him out of some entanglement into which his reckless, youthful spirits had plunged him.

“For wonder,” he answered brightly, “none. Praise be to On. But there is a messenger from the palace below.”

In spite of my self-schooling, my pulse quickened. I turned again to my calling disk and ordered the military clerk in my inner office to assure the messenger that I would receive him as soon as I was properly accoutered.

Anatan busied himself with laying out my trappings and equipment while I splashed in my adjoining bath. He kept up the while a steady chatter of gossip and rumor from both barracks and court

“Lord Kepta is going to pay us a visit,” he said.

I dropped the tunic for which I had reached.

“Kepta of Koom?” I asked shortly, hoping that my perturbation had not been noted.

“Who else? There is only one Kepta of whom I have knowledge.” His sudden round-eyed innocence did not deceive me.

But Anatan, for all his careless talk and ways, had ever
been loyal to me and I did not fear that he would betray me now. There was no one I hated more than Kepta of Koom, who had the power to crush me like an insect and who would be only too quick to use that same power should he ever suspect the true state of my feelings toward him.

In every pile of fruit there is one piece softer and more inclined to rot than the others — and that same piece unless removed will, in time, corrupt the rest. To my mind the Master of Koom was the rotten piece among the Learned Ones.

He did not mingle much with the rest of his caste fellows but kept close to the huge black stone citadel of his dark, wind-swept city, there carrying on secret experiments in his laboratories far under the crust of Krand. Just what those experiments were, not one of the Learned Ones could tell, but I had my suspicions and they were not pleasant ones. To all knowledge there is both a dark and a light side and, if rumor spoke true, Kepta turned to the dark far oftener that he did to the light. I had heard stories and even traced a tale or two, but without proof what could I do? Lord Kepta was a Learned One by birth and I was a state ward, who by the Emperor’s favor had won some fame and position. Should I care to retain both, or even my life, it would be well for me to forget vague stories.

Kepta was highly popular with a certain class of officer in my corps. He entertained lavishly at intervals and his purse was always open to those in temporary financial difficulties. But to my suspicious mind it appeared that he wished to get as many of the soldiers as possible under obligation to him. I had always some civil plea of duty ready in answer to his frequent invitations and, under my guidance, Anatan, and the better sort of his comrades, did likewise.

It was not often, however, that the Master of Koom ventured out of his tall keep. He preferred to entice his company to him, rather than to issue forth to seek it beyond his fortress. But for the past month there had been a mustering of the Learned Ones within Yu-Lac and he had doubtless been summoned to join them by the Emperor.

If he were coming to take his place among his peers he had not been expected so soon, that much I knew. As Commander of the Airport of Yu-Lac, I had been given no warning of his coming so that I might make ready a berth for his private ship among the pleasure and traveling craft of the Emperor’s household. His sudden, almost unannounced
arrival meant trouble for everyone, I thought impatiently.

I buckled on my jeweled scale armor, made more for ceremonial show than defense, and snapped the catch of my sword belt. From Anatan’s hand I took my silver war cloak and left the apartment.

The ramp which led from my private suite to the public offices curled about the center core of the cone-shaped tower in a graceful, though steep, spiral. Its walls were floridly frescoed with conventionalized scenes of warfare and the chase, occupations always bracketed together in the minds of my race. But here and there mirrors of vision were set deep into the smooth finish of the painted surface so that the passerby might be in instant touch with any part of the great military depot of which the cone tower was the heart.

It pleased me now to check upon the efficiency of my under officers as I passed. Here I caught a glimpse of one of the almost obsolete mounted troops returning from early morning maneuvers. The men rode at ease, their small, scaly-skinned grippon mounts eager for the shelter of the stables, dragging their heavy armored tails in the dust of the parade ground. But two such troops remained and their duties were light — acting as the Emperor’s guard when he wished to travel in state.

Commerce, in the persons of the frontier-breaking city merchants, had first demonstrated the advantages of deserting our island-infested seas and mountainous lands for the quicker and easier mode of travel by air. The military was not long in following the example set it. Infantry and grippon troops were speedily disbanded; the arrogant and all- powerful Air Force developed and consolidated its position within a single decade. The navy vanished from the decaying harbors of Krand, unless a handful of ships, rotting as they rolled at anchor, could be dignified by a title which had once been proudly borne by half a million war vessels.

Not content with the profits and the supremacy it had raped from the forces of defense, the Air Ministry was attempting, as I had first suspected and could now prove, to establish an ironbound monopoly. What wild goal they had set for themselves only On knew, and yet, despite all warnings, rulers of Krand refused to stir against them.

I fingered my sword hilt as I went. Men no longer turned to metal to solve their hates and passions; the weapon I
wore was but a pretty toy, borne purely as insignia of rank. War meant more subtle armaments — liquids that burned or froze, death which curdled the very air about its victim. And horrors undreamed of by mankind-at-large had been evolved in the distant laboratories. A spark leaping out — what man could foresee the end? And this gathering of the Learned Ones at Yu-Lac. No wild border tribe was in revolt; the five great nations were at peace as they had been for years. It was said on every hand that there was naught to fear — Yet I was troubled and my hand sought my sword hilt by way of reassurance.

The messenger from the palace, a smart young officer attached to the Emperor’s guard, was alertly awaiting my arrival.

“The throne desires the presence of the worthy Lord Garan,” he recited formally. “He will be pleased to present himself in the Hall of the Nine Princes upon the third hour.”

“To hear is to obey, in this as in all things.” I murmured the standard reply demanded of a recipient of a royal message.

He slipped to one knee and touched the pavement before me in salute.

At the third hour? Then I still had time to break my fast before I must go. Taking Anatan by the arm I went into the eating chamber used by all those who lodged within the confines of the tower. We took our seat at a polished table which stood with one side tight against the wall. Anatan thrust down a tiny plunger in the table top twice. The wall panel facing us sank back and our food bowls slid out. The stuff was well flavored and highly nutritious but so prepared with artificial colorings and tastes that no one could ever swear as to the original content of any dish. This fashion, introduced by the overcivilized city dwellers, had never found favor with me and I longed for the cruder but, to me, more succulent dishes one found set out in the frontier camps or in small country inns.