Lin Carter - The City Outside the World (22 page)

"Why, it is the little imp," muttered Thoh distractedly. "However did he get here—and what is he about?"

"He's going to jump!" said Sastro. Thoh looked at him questioningly.

"Whatever for?"

Then Kiki raised his thin arms above his tousled head and cried out—

"For my Lady! For her! O, God of my people—
awaken/"

And hurled himself over the brink, and fell.

Ryker shut his eyes, feeling sick. Valarda choked back a sob and let her head fall forward so that her long hair hid her face. And the old Israeli said something in a low voice. It was in Hebrew and none of them could understand that tongue, but it sounded like a prayer.

The others looked at one another. Thoh seemed curiously effected. He bit his lip, eyes hooded, brooding upon the pit where the young boy had fallen to his death. His expression was unreadable.

And then there came another interruption.

From the shadows, Zarouk strode forth, grinning, a

long sword naked in his hand. Behind him others moved, muttering, their hands heavy with steel. It would seem that the invaders had followed Prince Thoh and his retinue, descending the great stair in silence, careful to conceal their presence.

Zarouk looked at Thoh, then at Ryker and Valarda. He grinned hugely and waved his sword in a mocking salute. His desert raiders crowded close behind him, eyeing Thoh's guards belligerently, eager for the kill.

One rush, and victory would be theirs. And they knew

it.

The next surprise, however, was that of Thoh. For he shrugged back his heavy cloak, and showed the desert men his hands. They were tender and soft, those hands, and there were too many jeweled rings upon their fingers, but now they bore something else.

Ryker's guns. The guns that Valarda had stolen from him when he had slept his drugged sleep, there on the isthmus when she had deserted him.

Ryker had forgotten all about them. He knew they must be somewhere here in Zhiam, but he had not thought about them.

Evidently, Prince Thoh had.

His slim, beringed hands might be soft and womanish, but they bore a heavy weight of death.

And now it was Thoh's turn to smile and Zarouk who paled, bit his lip, looked uncertain, and stepped backwards, lowering his sword.

A deadly tension grew in the air between the two groups of men. Taut it was and near to breaking. And when it broke, guns would rave and steel would flash crimson and blood would be spilt—here, in this holy place, even here!

And then, the last interruption—

From far away, the murmur of bells. Many they were,

faint and far—a distant chiming, cold and pure and sweet! Like bells of glass or crystal . . . like tiny chimes of ice . . . ringing, crystalline music!

And, from the dark mouth of the pit wherein Kiki had thrown himself, a faint glimmer of dim light—cold it was, and blue and white, like brilliance that was reflected from mirrors of ice.

The music rang clearer now, and sharper!

The dim luminescence about the mouth of the pit . . . brightened!

Whatever it was, it was coming up the shaft—
and getting nearer!

24. Child of Stars

Light—pure, sparkling light
—poured up out of the black pit like a fountain of shimmering fire!

The cold and awful glory of it shone back from thrice ten thousand crystal facets, till every plane and angle of the cavern, every mineral encrustation, every glassy stalactite, blazed like a billion, billion diamonds, reflecting an utterness of light, a purity of light, beyond description as it was beyond belief.

One of the bandits sank to the cavern floor in a crouch, huddling in the dust. He covered glazed, horror-struck eyes with hands that shook, shielding his gaze from that ineffable radiance.

" Zhagguaziu .
. ."he moaned. Then said no more; neither did he move.

Zarouk stared into the seething splendor, his face blank with awe. Forgotten now were his red dreams of conquest and empire. He looked upon the glorious god he had thought to be a demon, and there was wonder in his heart, childlike and simple.

The blaze of glory faded now, as if the splendid creature somehow realized that its brilliance was too intolerable for mortal men to bear. It . . .
veiled
itself, and dimmed its fires a bit, and floated there in midair above the floor of the cavern.

Ryker blinked through tear filled eyes, trying to make out its shape and nature through the blinding light. There

was an inner core of brilliance brighter than the rest, a slim, tapering spindle, like the flame that dances on the wick of a candle. This was light of an utter purity of white, a spark of white—one spark, perchance, of that supernal flame that burns in the heart of stars.

But between the awful glory of that inner core, lacy veils of shimmering luminescence, filmy and fragile— like the wings of moths, shimmering and shot through with a thousand tints and hues—like floating draperies of sheerest gauze, spun by sorcery from the stuff of glowing opals—drifted and swirled and coiled about the brilliance of the core, veiling it from view.

Whatever it was, it was no devil. It was too beautiful to exist, too lovely to be real. And far too perfect in its glory to have aught of evil within it.

Pure light it was, pure energy, like the soul of a star.

Somehow—although it had no eyes, no organs of any kind—it saw them, the puny creatures of flesh and bone and blood that crouched or huddled or cowered far beneath its airy dance.

And somehow, although it had no mouth, no organs of speech, it spoke to them. The voice of the Glory was a thin, cold song and it whispered deep within their very minds, that song, cold and sweet and wild as the polar winds that sang through pinnacles of ice at the utter and secret pole of the world.

Why dost thou feed life to me, when sacrifice is forbidden from of old, and I have no need of such sustenance?

Sweet, sweet was the singing of the Glory within their brain, cool, and serene, and passionless.

It was such a little life, so short, so young! Thou knowest that I have forbidden the taking of life, and will not countenance the shedding of blood. Poor, puny crea-

tures that ye be, with lives as brief as any candle-flame, why must ye shorten that which is already cruelly brief? Thy offering I return to thee, and I must chastise thee, and sternly, that ye sin in this manner against me no more.

Veils of drifting coruscation drew aside, parted asunder . . . and there, cradled and swathed in living light was the boy, Kiki, naked and beautiful and alive, his face gentle and dreaming, his eyes filled with wonder.

"Kiki!" breathed Valarda, breathlessly. The swirling mists of brilliance deposited the boy, whole and unharmed, upon the cavern floor. He stretched bare arms, and yawned, showing a little pink tongue, then looked about him dazedly, as bemused as one who just awakened from strange and lovely dreams.

Seeing Valarda and Ryker and Herzog chained to the stony stalagmites, he smiled and came over to them. About his body there yet clung a dim, pulsing luminescence, a wisp of that greater Glory which filled all of the cavern with its splendor.

He touched their chains with shining fingers and, somehow, strangely, they were free.

First he freed Valarda in this manner, then the old Israeli, and Ryker last of all. Pausing before Ryker, he looked up into the man's dark face, wonderingly.

"Oh!" he murmured. "You are weary, and you thirst! But that should not be. A moment—
there!"

He touched Ryker with glowing hands—brow, mouth and breast—and gently, as a child might touch an injured dove. A weird, cold thrill ran through Ryker's nerves, an icy tingle, electric yet bracing. And then he felt the weakness and stiffness and the exhaustion drain from his lame and weary muscles and numb limbs. It drained away and it was gone, as if it had never been. He flexed strong hands,

unbelievingly. Even the sores on his wrists, where scaly verdigris-eaten metal had bitten deep in his flesh as he fought the shackles, even those were healed. And so was the thirst that tortured him, and he felt whole and well and filled with strength again, like one who wakens from a deep, long sleep, refreshed and invigorated.

The boy turned to look at the hovering Glory.

"Did 1 do it right, Lord?" he inquired.

Thou knowest that it is well done,
said the Glory.
And now touch thou the old one, too, and heal his suffering.

The boy smiled dreamily and went to where the old scientist hung in his chains, his lined and homely face filled with awe and wonderment. The boy said something to the old man shyly, and touched him with light-misted fingers as he had touched Ryker.

"What . . . have you done . . . to Kiki, Lord?" whispered Valarda.

Ah, my priestess!
laughed the Glory, chiming with faint music as it swirled about to regard her.
She who would have kept the Vow, and lost her throne for keeping it! The child, you ask? He hath only died. His poor, broken flesh it is within my power to heal, but to make him live again—aiee!—am la god, that I can restore life to the dead? Nay! But a tiny portion of myself I placed within his breast, that he might live again—changed, is he, and yet the same child that ye knew. Only, a little different.

Ryker went over to where Valarda knelt before the Glory, and raised her to her feet, and held her against his chest. Then he lifted his head and stared into the lacy, swirling mists of spangled light that veiled from their dazed eyes the splendors of the central fire.

"If you are not a god, what are you, then?" he asked through stiff lips.

The veils of moted splendor swirled and coiled about the curdled purity of flame. A storm of tinkling chimes rang out and faded.

I? I am—Life! Life without end and without beginning! Old as the stars am I, who once was one with them.. . but that was long ago, O very long ago ... at the Creation.

The spangled mists writhed, floating vapors spun from pure light drifting on the air their opal luminescence. The blazing spindle at the core seemed to fade, then to brighten, then to ebb again, like the slow pulsing of a mighty heart.

When the Universe began was I born . . . one with the stars was I, but different—different! For I lived, and knew that I lived, and the great suns about me knew not that they lived. . . thus was I alone in my sentience and my being, and they, the stars, of which I had been born, they knew me not, nor danced as I danced in my joy, for I alone lived.

"Child-of-Stars," whispered Doc Herzog faintly, staring up into the Glory. "Born of the chance interplay of energy—perhaps once in a billion times a billion years such a thing is born, a creature of pure energy, self-sustaining, eternal—"

The Glory laughed, like silver bugles ringing faint and far.

"Yes, the Child-of-Stars am I! Long ages did I drift through the starry spaces, seeking to find another such as I to be my friend. But there was no other one such as I, for I was alone in all that vast immensity! And so, in time, I came down to this little world, as I had visited ten thousand others in my quest, and here—here I found living things that knew and felt and loved and thought, even as I. Different from the Child-of-Stars they were,

their core of splendor trapped in a prison-house of flesh, but, yet, more like to me than aught that I had found among the cold and empty splendor of the star-thronged galaxies. So here I dwelt, befriending the little creatures, one tribe of them that did not flee from me in terror... ah, it was long and long ago!"

"A billion years, maybe," breathed Herzog.

So long as that? Mayhap, old man. But when their brothers turned to rend them for that they worshipped me, I brought them here, here to Zhiam, here to the City that we built together outside the world. Ah, it was hard, hard to open wide the Doors of Time to bring them here to Yesterday, but I was young and strong and filled with love for them, my friends, my people, my little brethren, and I worked the wonder! So that they should be safe from the enmity and the hatred of their own kind, I brought them here to this place and to this age which even time itself had forgotten, and which no men knew, for here it is a billion years before the first men rose to sentience upon this planet, and here I gave unto them that land of peace and plenty, even as I had sworn that I would do ... if they would only keep sacrosanct that Vow which I extracted from them, that no life should be taken here, and no blood spilt.

Doc's old face, lifted to the Glory, was saintly, enthralled, rapt with fascination as he drank in this uncanny tale of a vast exodus across the ages. And, perhaps, he was remembering another age, and another exodus, and another people whose God had brought them also out of bondage and peril, into a promised land of peace and plenty that was to be theirs, so long as they held true to another Vow, and obeyed another set of Commandments.

But that was long and long ago, I see . . . and there be those among my children who weary of their obedience to

that Vow, and would break it, and shed blood against my will . . . and others, too, sprung from the loins of ancient enemies, who have at length pursued us here across the ages! And who would now renew that old, forgotten war—ah, children! Children! How jealously you cling to those little toys of steel and iron that ye love so well—and to those newer toys, as I observe, which your brothers on a younger world nearer to the sun have brought hither . . . well, and well! Then I must chastise thee, and close the Door which ye have opened—and then? And then, ah, then—I shall sleep again, for as I slumbered long centuries here in this place below the world, what lovely dreams I knew, what lovely dreams! But, now, to my toil!