by Brian Lumley
“Your feet? Yes, they looked—”
She flicked the fur wrap so that it flew wide below her knees. “They are ugly!” she said.
For a moment she stared down in something like horror at her feet, then said; “My mother was stolen from your green Earth by Ithaqua. She was given into the care of the Children of the Winds until I was born. Later, in my father’s absence, having learned that he had fathered a child upon a human woman, the plateau people stole me away in a raid and brought me here; my mother too, but she died from the wound of a harpoon hurled in the fighting. They say she was very beautiful.
The elders raised me. When I was ten a physician, specially trained for ten years to perform one work, cut my feet down from the great webbed pads they were to their present shape. He was supposed to leave them looking like normal human feet, so that I would forget my origins, but the operation was not very successful. For a long time I was in constant pain.”
A moment longer I looked at her feet. They were the shape of human feet but with square looking, nailless toes and a covering of smooth scar tissue. Then she flicked her wrap back into place.
“When my feet had healed, about a year after the operation, I had a terrible dream of great angry winds and of the physician whose knives had scarred me. When I awakened the elders told me that there had been an accident; that same physician had fallen from a window of his room high in the outer wall of the plateau. A freak gust of wind, they said.
“When I told them that I had sent that wind to kill him—sent it in my sleep to settle a debt I hardly recognized in my waking hours—then they stood in awe of me and knew that they could never suppress that in me which was of Ithaqua. Thus I became what I am.
“But there,” she looked at me and sighed. “Now you must go. Soon I meet with the elders again and I need a few hours sleep. The seeing drained me. Today was especially hard. I became too involved with my father’s awful justice. He has never come so close to trapping me before. But, Hank Silberhutte, I am glad you are my friend And I know that if I call you will come to me. Now go.”
“There’s a lot you could tell me, many questions you—”
“Your questions will he answered, in time.” She stood up, holding her wrap about her. She held out her free hand and I took it, following her to the curtained exit. “Only promise me,” she said, “that however tempted you may be, you will never look into my mind uninvited. When I want you to know my thoughts, you shall know them.”
“I promise.”
“Wait!” she cried as I was about to leave. “You gave me something I did not ask for. Now take it back.” She leaned forward, brushed my lips with hers, and quickly withdrew. Seeing the mischief rising in her eyes I reached out my arms to her, and she drew the curtains in my face and was gone.
On returning to my room I felt suddenly exhausted. That experience I had shared with Armandra’s psyche had severely sapped my strength, as much as the fight against her father’s alien will had taxed hers. Since the others were not back yet from their sightseeing, I lay down and slept.
No sooner had I awakened than they returned. They were tired, but so full of what they had seen I decided that in the near future I most explore the plateau for myself.
“This place,” said Whitey, “is a maze of marvels. We’ve seen the wells that supply half of the plateau’s water, and the cavern where weeds and mushrooms grow at the edge of the geyser flats. We’ve seen cave pools chock-full of fish, and watched the Eskimos spearing them.”
“From the other side of the plateau,” Tracy cut in, “we’ve seen the rim of Borea’s sun. Like the moons, it never moves; only its upper curve shows. There’s a forest of pines on that side, too, and in the distance a great stretch of woodland that reaches to the horizon. It looks like a rather flat version of Canada.”
Jimmy was less enthusiastic. “We saw the pool of oil where they draw their fuel in wooden buckets, and we saw the dark tunnel whose entrance has a skull carved above it as a warning: We felt the horror lurking there, emanating from forbidden nether-caves. No one knows what lies at the tunnel’s lower level; its mysteries have never been explored. It reeks of—fear!”
When Tracy shivered I knew it was not because of any normal chill she might feel. “It’s funny,” she said. “Jimmy and Whitey felt this—this thing—and so did Charlie Tacomah. All of the People of the Plateau feel it when they are close to the tunnel. No one will enter it, not by a single step. And yet I felt nothing. Well, I felt something, but not fear. If anything, I felt safer there. But not really safe, if you know what I mean.” Suddenly she clung to my arm: “Hank when can we … I mean, do you think—”
“Tracy,” Whitey cut her off. “Let’s have it out in the open. We must all have thought of the same thing, and I’ve been trying my best to see what the outcome might be. You know, I’ve been looking for a hunch. But I haven’t found one.”
“You don’t come over too well, Whitey,” I told him. “You mean we’re stuck here?”
He nodded. “I think so. It looks like we’re here for good. If these people have been on Borea for thousands of years and haven’t found a way back yet, what chance do we stand?”
Tracy looked miserable so I put my arm round her. “Not much of a chance,” I agreed. Then I thought of Armandra and realized that the thought of staying on Borea hadn’t really been bothering me too much.
“Still,” I added, “never say die.”
For me the next month passed slowly. I seemed always to be waiting for a call from Armandra, but I only saw her twice, at meetings of the council to which I was invited as a courtesy. On both occasions. though, I had caught her eyes on me when she thought I was looking elsewhere. Between times my dreams were full of her.
Once I dreamed we walked together on the wind between the worlds. We moved where stars were frosted to the firmament and Borea was far away. And yet, though I saw Armandra mostly in my dreams, there was always this peculiar feeling that she was with me in the waking world also. I began to suspect that she was “peeking” into my mind. If so, then she knew well enough by now my feelings for her.
I say the time passed slowly, and yet there were diversions. The plateau’s weapon-masters took me in hand and I was trained for three hours daily in a variety of weapons. I soon discovered that what skill could not achieve in a tight spot might often be realized by use of my considerable size and strength. And my strength never failed to amaze my instructors.
During one such session Northan entered the exercise cave. I was throwing a harpoon at a painted target of woven hide when the warlord came in. I saw him and his presence put me off; my throw went a few inches wide of the bull.
Northan grinned and picked up a harpoon. “Not nearly good enough,” he said. “If that target was a wolf, he’d be tearing you in half by now.”
He turned, casually hurled his weapon and it slammed home dead center of the target, hurrying its barbs. We moved to the target together. “Now that was a cast,” Northan chuckled.
He tugged at the shaft of his harpoon but it was stuck fast. Lifting a foot to the target, he strained. Still the harpoon would not come. He grunted, shrugged, stepped back. I caught hold of both weapons, one in each hand, placed a knee against the target and pulled the harpoons free in a snapping of leather thongs. Northan’s face went gray, then darkened over. Before he could speak I said, “That wolf you mentioned might not find me such easy meat, Northan. Perhaps, seeing you weaponless, he’d turn on you instead.”
It was just a small incident, but word of this second encounter spread as rapidly as the story of our confrontation on the snow-ship. Whitey had warned me on more than one occasion that the warlord would bring me down if he could, and having seen Northan’s face as he strode angrily from the exercise cave I could only agree.
Still, I had things other than the strutting warlord to worry about.
As the weeks passed I grew almost to envy Tracy. She was with Armandra almost every day, learning the royal routine and spee
dily becoming the Woman of the Wind’s constant companion along with Oontawa. When she was not with Armandra, Tracy spent most of her time with Jimmy. I noticed the strong bond developing between them and was pleased.
And if any member of my team was in his element, surely it was Jimmy Franklin. Apart from Tracy’s attentions, he was now in a position to study the old tribes as they had really been. The Nootka and Micmac, Chimakua and Algonquin, Huron and Ojibwa, Onondaga, Chilkat, Mohawk and Tlingit; all of the northern tribes of old were represented, and Jimmy must surely have felt that he was now among the ancestors of his race.
I had asked him about the plateau’s Indians, about their weapons. Why had I seen no single trace of the traditional bow and arrow? It all had to do with the nature of Borea and its people, he told me. In a world where alien, elemental powers were used as super-weapons, mere bows could easily be made useless. Temperatures could be sent down to a point where bowstrings, and even the wooden bows themselves, would break at the slightest pressure Arrows could simply be blown aside. On the other hand, spears, harpoons and handaxes were less susceptible to such forces.
And it was Jimmy, too, who first learned the legends of the plateau, myths that went back for something like five thousand years and maybe more. These tales had it that at a time forgotten in the dim mists of immemorial lore, Ithaqua had been prisoned in the bowels of the plateau. This had followed an act of defiance against the Elders Gods, when he had waged war on the early civilized races of Earth, striding the skies across all the dawn world and ravaging far and wide. The Wind-Walker was imprisoned thus for thousands of years before finally being released (or escaping, the legends were confused on that point) but ever since then he had been leery of the plateau, his one-time prison.
When I heard of this legend I couldn’t help but tie certain facts up together. Strangely enough, Tracy featured strongly in these reckonings of mine. The fact, for instance, that my sister was the only one of all the plateau’s people who possessed a positive defense against the Snow Thing; and likewise that she knew no fear when confronted with that forbidden tunnel deep in the bowels of the plateau, the tunnel, whose almost physical emanations held all others back.
What lay at the other end of that dark shaft, and was it necessarily dangerous to the People of the Plateau? Tracy’s star-stones, after all, were only injurious to us because we had been touched with the contamination of Ithaqua. And while we were naturally wary of the things, still they were far more dangerous—indeed lethal—to the Wind-Walker himself and his minions. Was it possible that the secret of the tunnel was that which Ithaqua also feared, the thing that held him back from destroying the plateau itself and all of its people?
Once, with Whitey, I stood at the entrance to that dark shaft, and both of us felt the thrust of forces that bade us go away or face an indefinite but very real doom. It was not only fear but a wall, a barrier real as any wall of bricks and mortar.
When I asked Whitey what he made of it, he said, “I don’t really know, Hank. I feel much the same as Tracy, I guess. On the one hand this place gives me the creeps—I don’t know what’s going to jump out at me, you know? but on the other hand I feel, well, that the whole future of, oh, of everything is tied up at the far end of this tunnel.”
“Is that a hunch?”
“Yes, a strong one, but don’t ask me to explain it. You couldn’t get me down this shaft anyhow, not even for a ticket back to Earth!”
By the end of the second month I was more or less sure that Armandra had been spying on me mentally. Whether or not she was getting any clear mental pictures I did not really know; I had made no effort to project any thoughts in her telepathic direction. Nevertheless, and despite my suspicions, I stuck to my own promise not to look into her mind, though I admit that I was tempted.
Toward the end of the month, however, her prying had become so intense that I could feel her with me at almost any time in any given twenty-four hour period. At the same time I was being teased by Tracy whenever she saw me. She swore that Armandra’s interest in me knew no bounds, that the Woman of the Winds had sucked her dry of all facts concerning me and my life before Borea! And I believed Tracy, for she made me promise not to repeat anything she told me; Armandra did not want me to know of her interest in me. She was no common woman to throw herself at a man.
Still, Armandra’s constant presence on the borders of my mind bothered me considerably (there are things a man might want to keep secret; emotions, fears and ambitions he might not want to disclose), and so I determined to teach her a lesson if her peeking continued. It was when I had awakened from the middle of a nightmare in which I had fought to free Armandra from her father’s swollen fingers, discovering her presence there at the edge of my surfacing awareness, that I found my opportunity.
“Very well,” I spoke to her deliberately with my mind. “I don’t know what you seek in my thoughts, Armandra, but if it is this—” and here I projected a vivid and exceptionally erotic scene concerning the two of us, a perfectly natural fantasy which until then I had forced myself to keep out of my mind, “—then now you know!”
For a moment longer she was with me and I sensed sudden, explosive outrage, and something else, before she was gone. I waited a minute or two longer but the ether was completely free of telepathic influences. Later I awakened again to find strange, gentle little winds caressing my body and ruffling my hair where I lay upon my bed of furs. And I knew where they came from, for beyond my stone window the gray and white Boreal scene was calm and quiet.
And so things stood for perhaps a further week, so that it was a few days into the third month when Oontawa came to bring me Armandra’s invitation to the Choosing of a Champion, when a suitable mate would be found from among all the men of the plateau. I say Oontawa came with an invitation, and yet I was ready to go before she and the others of my small party brought me the news. Armandra had already uttered these words in my mind: “Now you can come to me, Hank Silberhutte, if you want me!”
Simply those few words and yet every nerve in my body was suddenly energized and fires I had only guessed to exist raced in my blood, however unnaturally cold that blood might be. She had called to me, and I would go to her, yes. But on my terms.
We made our way quickly to the Hall of the Elders, and as we went Oontawa told me things I would need to know. I knew of the ritual Choosing of a Champion, but did not know the finer details of the rite. It appeared that since women were slightly in the minority, most of them were sought after as prizes by the unmarried men. Therefore a girl would usually make known to her favorite that she intended to choose a champion, and he in turn would pick a close male friend who he could trust to accept his challenge. When the girl offered herself publicly, her lover would then have to put himself forward for acceptance or rejection, and offer a challenge to anyone else who fancied the girl. His friend would then step forward and a short fight would ensue in which the “usurper” would be “beaten.” That was the way the ritual usually went. Usually.
This time it would be different. For one thing it was Armandra choosing a champion. For another she had made no approaches—no physical approaches, at least—to any of the plateau’s males. Finally, Northan had long made known his ambition to take Armandra to wife. If any man challenged his right to the Woman of the Winds, the warlord would be merciless.
We entered the Hall of the Elders to find its amphitheater tiers of seats already filled to capacity. Young men of all the tribes jostled each other nervously just within the door, elbow to elbow with Eskimo warriors, pure whites, and mixtures of varied background and lineage. We pushed through to a clear space where I saw that a tight circle had been chalked round the base of the dais.
At the head of the dais Armandra stood, head bowed as the ritual demanded, for she must make no sign to any man in the assembly that she favored him. She was absolutely beautiful—white as the fine furs that concealed little of the perfection of her body, the fur boots that hid the imperfection of her feet�
��a gorgeously carved candle of flesh crowned with the living fire of her hair.
Across the hall, in a ring of his own admirers and cohorts stood Northan, powerfully armored in the manner of a warlord. Yet forbidding as his armor was, the black scowl he directed all round him would surely be even more of a deterrent to anyone foolish enough to cross him in this matter.
For the moment no one in Northan’s party had seen me, and from the oily smiles on the faces of his companions I could tell that they expected no interference. Well, let them expect what they would. My chill blood had been fired; Armandra meant so much to me now that death itself would be almost preferable to the thought of her in the warlord’s arms.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I felt Armandra’s mental fingers probing. They brushed me, lingered as if to make certain of my identity, then withdrew. She trembled where she stood, then, without looking up, she spoke.
“This woman now offers herself as wife and seeks a champion. Who will fight for me, for the glory of the plateau and its people?”
Her words were hardly out before Northan stepped forward, climbed the dais steps and took Armandra’s arm. Immediately the blood raced faster in my veins. Now Northan saw me; his hot eyes lingered on me for a second, then contemptuously flicked by me to sweep the hall. There was complete silence. It seemed as if the entire assembly held its breath, waiting for the warlord to speak. And he did.
“I Northan, her champion, claim this woman, to fight for her, for the glory of the plateau and its people. Is there a man to challenge my right? His voice itself was a threat, a promise of violent, certain death to anyone who challenged him. I felt a movement beside me in the crush of people and held back, waiting to see what this disturbance could be.
A young brave was moving forward, hawk-featured and proud, Hushed with reckless excitement. Before he could reach the forward edge of the crowd a friend caught hold of him, whispering urgently, fearfully into his ear. Their eyes went to Northan where he stood watching them, an ugly grin twisting his face. Suddenly the grin dropped away and his lips hardened. His eyes bored into those of the young brave and their message was perfectly clear. So as to make it even clearer, the warlord spoke again.