She was pleased at the admiration of the two men and was delighted further when Nunganey timidly proffered to the grim Aztianian a broad belt of Siwan and plastron of the same, with a handsome beaver fur blanket. In the south, Gwalchmai had been more accustomed to wearing ornaments of feathers than these heavy beaded articles. He took the gifts, but grumbled aside to Corenice:
*I'd trade the whole outfit, fine as it is, for the hind leg of a dead deer, well roasted, and a baked squash with it!"
She laughed and Nunganey smiled anxiously, not understanding.
"You men! A rag would suit you all your little lives, had you but your bellies full twice a day! Now these are the first fine new clothes I have had for ten thousand years and I think such a marvelous present was well worth the waiting!"
So, with quip and answering jest, they took once more to the forest road, which led now at long last to friends.
6 The Island Under The Sea
In the days that followed they were taken to the hearts of the simple kindly people, who gladly gave them welcome. Gwalchmai learned to admire them as a dignified and noble race. Accustomed to a higher level of civilization among his own people, he at first thought of them as savages, but he soon realized that although they did no stone carving and had no system of writing, in their own way they were as skillful in astronomy as himself. Their eyes were as keen as his to pick out the tiny star in the Little Dipper which they called "the baby on the mother's back" and they could see things upon the moon which he could not discern. With their fine memories to aid them, they could recite lineages much farther back than his and quote from ancient speeches or tell stories in rolling lines equal to the finest compositions of Merlin's bards. They had an instinctive sense of drama and would act out a tale with such expressive gestures that a deaf man could have followed and enjoyed it.
As a fighting man, he was impressed by their ability, physique and courage. He joined in their hunts against wolf, bear and wolverine, testing their courage as they were observing his. When he killed in singlehanded encounter the great cougar of the North, he earned their respect as a man, though they were in awe of him as Glooskap, the mischievous mountain god.
Winter came and the youths played in the snow, wrestling, sliding on hides down icy slopes, snowballing one another. Gwalchmai vied with them as they strove for skill in the swift uproarious game of the Snow Snake, hurling darts at the crooked peeled stick sliding so erratically down the slope. Laughing, young and joyous, they slogged through the woods on snowshoes, and groaned together kneading out one another's cramps.
In the wickams, Corenice, world old, lived after long years the life of humans, mimicking their ways as much as her metal body would permit. No eyes as quick as hers to find and thread the needle some old feeble hand had dropped; no fingers as soft and gentle as hers to comfort an aching body racked with pains of the winter cold; no arms that could rock a baby weary of the cradle board more quickly into quiet slumber.
The muted tinkling of tiny bells which accompanied her slightest movement fascinated the children. The elfin sounds charmed the adults also, confirming their knowledge that she was far from being as other women. No one feared her; they feared only the coming of the day when she and her mate must leave them.
Both listened to the elders in council and did not presume to give advice, considering themselves as transients. Gwalchmai's sympathetic heart burned to hear of the wrongs they had suffered from the Nor-um-Begans and though he said little, he was becoming fixed in the mood Corenice had wished him to develop. It was not without purpose that she had planned to spend the winter with the People of the Dawn. Although he had already agreed to be Corenice's man, until her purpose was accomplished, he felt drawn to them for it seemed to him that their ways were much similar to the ways of his own far distant land. It was this feeling that she had wished to foster. Now there would be no drawing back.
He and Nunganey became firm friends as the winter wore on, being nearly the same age. When the snow disappeared from the woods and the river was free from ice, the village began to prepare for the inevitable spring raid which was fast approaching. The young maidens made tearful farewell to their families and left for a secret place deep in the hills and the men and boys made ready to fight their usual hopeless battle.
Now Corenice was ready also to try to forestall that coming attack. As the two announced that they must depart, neither was surprised that Nunganey insisted upon going with them to aid in the furtherance of the plans she had secretly made.
So, on a bland day in the Sugar Moon, they dropped down the river in Nunganey's stout log canoe, fighting the incoming tide, until it turned and raced backward with them, leaving their warmhearted friends lining the river-bank, calling farewells.
Nunganey raised his paddle in one final salute to the disappearing land and then all about {hem lay only the boundless sea. He, for one, had no expectation of ever returning.
In his own mind, he was already dead.
As they headed into the eye of the rising sun, the direction in which, so many times, the invading fleet had been observed to vanish, Gwalchmai's keen eye caught a golden glint winking low on the horizon. Corenice followed his gaze and nodded.
"The Vimana? In truth, it is coming to meet us and I must send it back. I have been in touch with it all these white months, guarding it from drifting in too close in storms and helping it to avoid floating ice. It wants Uo be with us, but that is no purpose of mine at present. There are other plans."
She looked steadily in that direction for some time and he could not tell when it disappeared, but looking up later from his even paddling he found that the gleam had gone.
They labored on and on, farther than the bravest fisherman had ever dared to go out into the waste. Nunganey was silent, teeth clamped tight, looking ever and again at his strong new bow to give himself courage. Gwalchmai had helped to make it, but the Abenaki had strung it with a bowstring twisted from his mother's hair, that it might avenge his sister and never miss. He thought of her often, but deepest in his heart, stronger even than family ties, were thoughts of Cosannip, his comrade and brother by the rites of mingled blood.
Corenice still wore her stout hide garments and the hood which covered her resplendent hair. As an additional disguise she had stained her face and hands with dye of berries and roots until now she seemed sister in hue to the Hien.
So they appeared to be what they hoped to be taken for, three native fishermen, blown out to sea aganst their will.
The canoe rose and fell upon the hills of ocean as the stately rollers marched under on their lonely parade from the far coasts of Europe. A little after midday, Nunganey raised his paddle and pointed ahead.
The prow dipped and the others could not see what he had indicated. On the next high wave a tall thin pinnacle of black rock showed plainly, though far away, like an upright needle almost buried in crumpled satin.
"Akuinekl" muttered Nunganey.
"Nor-um-Bega!" Corenice corrected softly.
An hour later, favored by a following wind, they were close enough to see foam clots and streamers drifting by-born, Gwalchmai thought, where waves crashed against that stony obstacle. But as they drew nearer, he could see that the dashing spray did not actually touch the rock at all. Instead, the waves went creaming up and up toward Heaven, flatly and high, some little distance away, bubbling back, sliding down again as though a wall of glass lay between the peak and the attacking surf.
Yet there was nothing tangible to be seen, except an almost imperceptible turbulence in the air, like the convection currents of heat which go streaming up from hot iron, or a ledge of blistering rock on a scorching summer day.
To the left lay quieter water. Into this they steered, avoiding the turmoil of crashing breakers ahead. Here, bobbing less furiously, though still fighting eddies and sucking whirlpools, they could discern that not far beyond lay an end to the water, a rim over which it could not pour, a titanic hole in the ocean I
&nbs
p; Forging through little choppy waves which, on the lee side, lapped up against the phantasmal barrier, they approached it closer. The voyagers soon saw through it, far below, the shining roofs of stone buildings, glittering metal plate on spire and dome and pinnacles, gay paint on low stone mansions and high facaded temples.
Broad white paved streets and avenues geometrically divided the blocks of buildings, and velvety green grass in park and plot was set about it all, like a toy city erected upon a carpet.
And all a hundred feet below the level of the broad Atlantic, with nothing more substantial than a breath of quivering air between that land of glamor and the ocean's fury!
"As Atlantis sank and the glaciers melted, the waters were released into the oceans. The sea level rose on all the coasts of the world. It lifted here as well and at the same time the island settled lower. Through the ages the power units have lessened in strength. Although the ocean cannot seep through the force wall, the islanders devised a way to pierce it at its upper edge where it is attenuated and much weaker," announced Corenice.
"It is like the magic ring of smoky air within which Viviene ensorceled Merlin, in the wood of Broceliande," Gwalchmai said. "No one could enter or leave until she decided to set him free."
Nunganey only clutched his medicine bag for protection, but his lips moved silently as he stared down, while they drew closer to that uncanny edge. New vistas continued to open to their gaze and the men were bemused with wonder.
A strong wall of masonry, dividing the island into two segments, separated the city proper from the tilled fields beyond. Gwalchmai could catch the twinkling gleam of hoe or shovel as laborers toiled, too far away for eye to make but their form or dress. The wall was pierced centrally by a single, high-arched gateway, closed and guarded, for he could see the flash of golden armor as a sentry paced his walk. Other glints on the wall proved that it also was patrolled.
Among the fields were set wickams and long houses for the slaves and further yet stretched mile upon mile of forest, interspersed with roofless stone ruins as though there had been other cities now abandoned and overgrown. The tossing green conifers held a scattering of birch and hard woods, thickly covering hills and swales, and out of the dense forest ran a silver streamlet, feeder for a large lake, bisected by the high stone wall. Evaporation from the lake obviously equaled its intake, supplemented by rainfall, so that there was neither dearth of water nor danger of flood.
So lost in these sights had all become that they had no eyes for anything closer at hand, until a loud hail startled them. Looking up, they saw on the peak, less than twenty yards away and about the same distance above them, a crouching white-robed man, peering over the railing set around the platform he stood upon.
He held a mallet poised over the trigger of a stone thrower, which was cranked back and ready. A massive boulder lay in the hopper.
"He says not to move away or he will sink us!" whispered Corenice.
While they still gazed upward, observing now that the mountain was artificial, for the jointings between the black blocks of Cyclopean masonry were clearly to be seen, the sentinel lifted a long trumpet and sent a harsh braying across the city.
Gwalchmai had seen pictures, in his god-father's books, of the pyramids of Khemi, and he had climbed the Mian earth mounds and the myriad steps between the terraces of the teocallis of Tolteca, but this edifice was unlike them all. It much resembled the ziggurats of Babylonia, in the respect that a steep railless ramp wound from base to top in seven decreasing spirals. However, there was machinery where the sentinel stood in the place of the temple sacred to Nabu.
The ramp now bustled with life and movement. Groups of brown and red-skinned slaves came running up, urged to haste by occasional white, red-haired overseers, busily plying metal tipped scourges as though they loved their work.
The slaves stopped on a broad platform, a little above the water level, seizing windlass cranks, bending to their toil as though their very lives depended upon their efforts. The top of the tower revolved, the sentinel walking around to keep the canoe in view, and the three could see a long beam swinging around like a giant's arm. A large, oval box of metal, shaped like a huge closed clamshell, swung from cables at the beam's end.
The sharp edge of this was forced into the area of disturbed air, which boiled and eddied about it as it squealed and the box, lowered by its cables, slapped into the nearby waves, filling the canoe ankle-deep with water.
The flanges separated then, the upper one raising and swinging back, and the guard above motioned them to enter. Gwalchmai and Nunganey hesitated. That open-jawed black clam looked so much like a trap to crunch them I
"This is what we came for, isn't it?" Corenice said daunt-lessly, and she stepped over the rim. The others followed and their little canoe went bobbing away, their last sight as the lid snapped down over their heads and they felt themselves being raised in air.
It was dark as night in the windowless lift and they could not see one another, but they clung together to avoid falling, while it swayed beneath them and the whole fabric rocked and creaked, complaining noisily as ungreased cogs drew the beam and chamber back through the bubble-thin wall of force.
Then the lid of their conveyance swung up and a flood of sunlight dazzled the dilated pupils of the two men. The gaunt faced guard peered in upon them. His look was strained and wild, and his unkempt, dingy white hair flew free about his head and shoulders.
"Who are ye, strangers?" he creaked in Abenaki. "Why do ye come of choice to Nor-um-Bega?"
Nunganey spoke up proudly: "These be Glooskap and his mate, Bumole, the Night Woman, come to visit Hobba-mock the foul—and I am Nunganey the Abenaki, from Ati-nien, their friend and guide!"
The hawk-faced ancient laughed—a short, unpleasant sound, with disbelief in it—and they could see that his lips were chewed and ragged. His shoulders and arms bore marks of teeth, white scars and new wounds, some scarcely healed, as though in fits of pain or madness he had gnawed at his own flesh in wolfish passion.
"This has been my home since I was whelped," he growled, "and never before have any come here willingly. Since you are among us, believe now you will surely not go away. Strong men are useful!"
His • sharp eyes peered into the shadow of the girl's hood and Gwalchmai feared lest the disguise be pierced, but he only favored her with a sour smile.
"And Caranche, our king, will be well pleased to entertain you, Woman of the Night!"
Yet he helped her courteously enough to step over the rim of the lift, as Corenice pretended timidity in crossing to the platform, extending her gloved hand to be swallowed up in his wrinkled yellow-nailed paw. Several metal boats were bottom-up on the platform, ready for launching, and an oar rack was near by. Avoiding these, she stepped aside and her companions, needing no such assistance, jumped down with their hands close to their weapons. No attempt was made to disarm them.
Nunganey narrowly eyed the docile slaves as they filed down the ramp, urged on by the stinging whips. Cosannip was not there, his sad face announced, as the three followed the lead of the old man and joined the tail of that dreary procession.
"Baraldabay am I," the guard remarked. "Keeper of the Tower. Too old for war, too tough to die. I bide here and watch the Killers go and come and long for death myself. But I am forgotten, it seems, so I live on and on in this dull hole and never go a-roving. It is worse when the moon is full and the mood comes upon me to slay. Perhaps I shall ask for one of you. You are the first who ever came here unless they were brought."
"And perhaps we will be the last," supplemented Core-nice, very softly, with a somber ring in her voice like a funeral bell.
Baraldabay obviously felt that his position was one without honor and was morosely glad to have someone to talk with, even if only for a few moments. As they passed lower along the circling ramp they went by bays curved into the ziggurat's walls. Here were more close-packed arrays of metal longboats, upside-down on rollers, where the crane jaws could
easily grip them and carry them through the thinnest part of the force wall.
Corenice asked, "Will you tell us something of your pastf"
"In the beginning, we Nor-um-Begans were a mighty people. It is said that large ships regularly plied the seas between this place and Atlantis, our homeland—"
Corenice and Gwalchmai exchanged quick glances.
"That was when our shores were above the sea. Then danger threatened our beautiful colony. The land sank and the sea rose. Around our island, to preserve us, was set the charmed wall of invisibility, so strong that nothing could penetrate it at its base and only with much difficulty at the top."
Gwalchmai wondered if this horrible old man was really as mad as he seemed. Had time perverted their history until the truth was no longer known? Did he not understand that he was a descendant of generation upon generation of inbred criminals and wanton murderers? A denizen of a penal colony?
"It is said that the original population of the island was divided into two classes—normal people like myself and others who were so impossibly good that they were impossible to live with.
"The latter were the first settlers, old soldiers from a war who had come bringing their women. They thought killing was a sin instead of being the proudest means of gaining honor! My ancestors came later, a few at a time, and they knew better. They grew stronger and stronger in numbers, until their descendants far outnumbered the earlier colonists* offspring.
"A high, guarded wall divided the island between the two classes. They held it and also the tower, where they worshipped Hun-ya, the square-eyed witch, who is our goddess of battle now. By way of the tower they lifted in their supplies and their wall kept us away from it, so we could not leave if we chose. We were their prisoners, but one night my forefathers carried that wall and put all upon it and in the city to death!
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