Clouds were boiling up in the south as the night closed down. The sea was running in long easy swells as it had done for all these days but there was a difference, a pulse and a stir that quivered all through the ship’s keel.
Broca, stretching huge shoulders, looked away to the south and then down at Heath.
“I think you talk too much to my woman,” he said.
Before Heath could answer the other laid his hand lightly on the Earthman’s shoulder. A light grip but with strength enough behind it to crack Heath’s bones.
He said, “Do not talk so much to Alor.”
“I haven’t sought her out,” Heath snapped savagely. “She’s your woman—you worry about her.”
“I am not worried about her,” Broca answered calmly. “Not about her and you.”
He was looking down at Heath as he spoke and Heath knew the contrast they made—his own lean body and gaunt face against the big barbarian’s magnificent strength.
“But she is always with you on the deck, listening to your stories of the sea,” said Broca. “Do not talk to her so much,” he repeated and this time there was an edge to his voice.
“For heaven’s sake!” said Heath jeeringly. “If I’m a fool what are you? A man mad enough to look for power in the Moonfire and faithfulness in a temple wench! And now you’re jealous.”
He hated both Broca and Alor bitterly in this moment and out of his hate he spoke.
“Wait until the Moonfire touches you. It will break your strength and your pride. After that you won’t care who your woman talks to or where.”
Broca gave him a stare of unmoved contempt. Then he turned his back and settled down to look out across the darkening sea.
After a while, the amusing side of the whole thing struck Heath, and he began to laugh.
They were, all three of them, going to die. Somewhere out there to the south, Vakor came like a black shepherd, driving them toward death. Dreams of empire, dreams of glory and a voyage that tempted the vengeance of the gods—and at such a time the barbarian chief could be jealous.
With sudden shock he realized just how much time Alor had spent with him. Out of habit and custom as old as the sea he had helped to while away the long hard hours with a sailor’s yarns. Looking back he could see Alor’s face, strangely young and eager as she listened, could remember how she asked questions and wanted to learn the ways and the working of the ship.
He could remember now how beautiful she looked with the wind in her hair, her firm strong body holding the Ethne steady in a quartering sea.
The storm brewed over the hours and at last it broke.
Heath had known that the Sea of Morning Opals would not let him go without a struggle. It had tried him with shallows, with shifting reefs, with dead calms and booming solar tides and all the devices of current, fog and drifting weed. He had beaten all of them. Now he was almost within sight of the Dragon’s Throat, the gateway to the Upper Seas and it was a murderous moment for a storm out of the south.
The night had turned black. The sea burned with white phosphorescence, a boiling cauldron of witch-fire. The wind was frightening. The Ethne plunged and staggered, driving under a bare pole, and for once Heath was glad of Broca’s strength as they fought the sweep together.
He became aware that someone was beside him and knew that it was Alor.
“Go below!” he yelled and caught only the echo of her answer. She did not go but threw her weight too against the sweep.
Lightning bolts as broad as comet’s tails came streaking down with a rush and a fury as though they had started their run from another star and gathered speed across half the galaxy. They lit the Sea of Morning Opals with a purple glare until the thunder brought the darkness crashing down again. Then the rain fell like a river rolling down the belts of cloud.
Heath groaned inwardly. The wind and the following sea had taken the little ship between them and were hurling her forward. At the speed she was making now she would hit the Dragon’s Throat at dawn. She would hit it full tilt and helpless as a drifting chip.
The lightning showed him the barbarian’s great straining body, gleaming wet, his long hair torn loose from its knots and chains, streaming with wind and water. It showed him Alor too. Their hands and their shoulders touched, straining together.
It seemed that they struggled on that way for centuries and then, abruptly, the rain stopped, the wind slackened, and there was a period of eerie silence. Alor’s voice sounded loud in Heath’s ears, crying, “Is it over?”
“No,” he answered. “Listen!”
They heard a deep and steady booming, distant in the north—the boom of surf.
The storm began again.
Dawn came, hardly lighter than the night. Through the flying wrack Heath could see cliffs on either side where the mountain ranges narrowed in, funneling the Sea of Morning Opals into the strait of the Dragon’s Throat. The driven sea ran high between them, bursting white against the black rock.
The Ethne was carried headlong, a leaf in a millrace.
The cliffs drew in and in until there was a gap of no more than a mile between them. Black brooding titans and the space below a fury of white water, torn and shredded by fang-like rocks.
The Dragon’s Throat.
When he had made the passage before Heath had had fair weather and men for the oars. Even then it had not been easy. Now he tried to remember where the channel lay, tried to force the ship toward what seemed to be an open lane among the rocks.
The Ethne gathered speed and shot forward into the Dragon’s Throat.
She fled through a blind insanity of spray and wind and sound. Time and again Heath saw the loom of a towering rock before him and wrenched the ship aside or fought to keep away from death that was hidden just under the boiling surface. Twice, three times, the Ethne gave a grating shudder and he thought she was gone.
Once, toward the last, when it seemed that there was no hope, he felt Alor’s hand close over his.
The high water saved them, catching them in its own rush down the channel, carrying them over the rocks and finally over the bar at the end of the gut. The Ethne came staggering out into the relative quiet of the Upper Seas, where the pounding waves seemed gentle and it was all done so quickly, over so soon. For a long time the three of them stood sagging over the sweep, not able to realize that it was over and they still lived.
The storm spent itself. The wind settled to a steady blow. Heath got a rag of sail up. Then he sat down by the tiller and bowed his head over his knees and thought about how Alor had caught his hand when she believed she was going to die.
4 “I Will Wait!”
Even this early it was hot. The Upper Seas sprawled along the equator, shallow landlocked waters choked with weed and fouled with shifting reefs of mud, cut into a maze of lakes and blind channels by the jutting headlands of the mountains.
The wind dropped to a flat calm. They left the open water behind them, where it was swept clean by the tides from the Sea of Morning Opals. The floating weed thickened around them, a blotched ochre plain that stirred with its own dim mindless life. The air smelled rotten.
Under Heath’s direction they swung the weed-knife into place, the great braced blade that fitted over the prow. Then, using the heavy sweep as a sculling oar, they began to push the Ethne forward by the strength of their sweating backs.
Clouds of the little bright-scaled dragons rose with hissing screams, disturbed by the ship. This was their breeding ground. They fought and nested in the weed and the steaming air was full of the sound of their wings. They perched on the rail and in the rigging, watching with their red eyes. The creature that rode Heath’s shoulder emitted harsh cries of excitement. Heath tossed him into the air and he flew away to join his mates.
There was life under the weed, spawning in the hot stagnant waters, multiform and formless, swarming, endlessly hungry. Small reptilian creatures flopped and slithered through the weed, eating the dragon’s eggs, and here and there a flat
dark head would break through with a snap and a crunch, and it would watch the Ethne with incurious eyes while it chewed and swallowed.
Constantly Heath kept watch.
The sun rose high above the eternal clouds. The heat seeped down and gathered. The scull moved back and forth, the knife bit, the weed dragged against the hull and behind them the cut closed slowly as the stuff wrapped and coiled upon itself.
Heath’s eyes kept turning to Alor.
He did not want to look at her. He did not wish to remember the touch of her hand on his. He wished only to remember Ethne, to remember the agony of the Moonfire and to think of the reward that lay beyond it if he could endure. What could a temple wench mean to him beside that?
But he kept looking at her covertly. Her white limbs glistened with sweat and her red mouth was sullen with weariness and even so there was a strange wild beauty about her. Time and again her gaze would meet his, a quick hungry glance from under her lashes, and her eyes were not the eyes of a temple wench. Heath cursed Broca in his heart for making him think of Alor and he cursed himself because now he could not stop thinking of her.
They toiled until they could not stand. Then they sprawled on the deck in the breathless heat to rest. Broca pulled Alor to him.
“Soon this will all be over,” he said. “Soon we will reach the Moonfire. You will like that, Alor—to be mated to a god!”
She lay unresponsive in the circle of his arm, her head turned away. She did not answer.
Broca laughed. “God and goddess. Two of a land as we are now. We’ll build our thrones so high the sun can see them.” He rolled her head on his shoulder, looking down intently into her face. “Power, Alor. Strength. We will have them together.” He covered her mouth with his, and his free hand caressed her, deliberate, possessive.
She thrust him away. “Don’t,” she said angrily. “It’s too hot and I’m too tired.” She got up and walked to the side, standing with her back to Broca.
Broca looked at her. Then he turned and looked at Heath. A dark flush reddened his skin. He said slowly, “Too hot and too tired—and besides, the Earthman is watching.”
He sprang up and caught Alor and swung her around, one huge hand tangled in her hair, holding her. As soon as he touched her Heath also sprang up and said harshly, “Let her alone!”
Broca said, “She is my mate but I may not touch her.” He glared down into Alor’s blazing eyes and said, “She is my mate—or isn’t she?”
He flung her away. He turned his head from side to side, half blind with rage.
“Do you think I didn’t see you?” he asked thickly. “All day, looking at each other.”
Heath said, “You’re crazy.”
“Yes,” answered Broca, “I am.” He took two steps toward Heath and added, “Crazy enough to kill you.”
Alor said, “If you do you’ll never reach the Moonfire.”
Broca paused, trapped for one moment between his passion and his dream. He was facing the stern. Something caused his gaze to waver from Heath and then, gradually, his expression changed. Heath swung around and Alor gave a smothered cry.
Far behind them, vague in the steaming air, was an emerald sail.
The Lahal must have come through the Dragon’s Throat as soon as the storm was over. With men to man the rowing benches she had gained on the Ethne during the calm. Now she too was in the weed, and the oars were useless but there were men to scull her. She would move faster than the Ethne and without pause.
There would be little rest for Heath and Broca and the woman.
They swayed at the sculling oar all the stifling afternoon and all the breathless night, falling into the dull, half-hypnotized rhythm of beasts who walk forever around a water-wheel. Two of them working always, while the third slept, and Broca never took his eyes from Alor. With his tremendous vitality it seemed that he never slept and during the periods when Heath and Alor were alone at the oar together they exchanged neither words nor glances.
At dawn they saw that the Lahal was closer.
Broca crouched on the deck. He lifted his head and looked at the green sail. Heath saw that his eyes were very bright and that he shivered in spite of the brooding heat.
Heath’s heart sank. The Upper Seas were rank with fever, and it looked as though the big barbarian was in for a bad go of it. Heath himself was pretty well immune to it but Broca was used to the clean air of the High Plateaus and the poison was working in his blood.
He measured the speed of the two ships and said, “It’s no use. We must stand and fight.”
Heath said savagely, “I thought you wanted to find the Moonfire. I thought you were the strong man who could win through it where everybody else has failed. I thought you were going to be a god.”
Broca got to his feet. “With fever or without it I’m a better man than you.”
“Then work! If we can just keep ahead of them until we clear the weed—”
Broca said, “The Moonfire?”
“Yes.”
“We will keep ahead.”
He bent his back to the scull and the Ethne crept forward through the weed. Her golden sail hung from the yard with a terrible stillness. The heat pressed down upon the Upper Seas as though the sun itself were falling through the haze. Astern the Lahal moved steadily on.
Broca’s fever mounted. He turned from time to time to curse Vakor, shouting at the emerald sail.
“You’ll never catch us, priest!” he would cry. “I am Broca of the tribe of Sarn and I will beat you—and I will beat the Moonfire. You will lie on your belly, priest, and lick my sandals before you die.”
Then he would turn to Alor, his eyes shining. “You know the legends, Alor! The man who can bathe in the heart of the Moonfire has the power of the High Ones. He can build a world to suit himself, he can be king and lord and master. He can give his woman-god a palace of diamonds with a floor of gold. That is true, Alor. You have heard the priests say it in the temple.”
Alor answered, “It is true.”
“A new world, Alor. A world of our own.”
He made the great sweep swing in a frenzy of strength and once again the mystery of the Moonfire swept over Heath. Why, since the priests knew the way there, did they not themselves become gods. Why had no man ever come out of it with godhead—only a few, a handful like himself, who had not had the valor to go all the way in.
And yet there was godhead there. He knew because within himself there was the shadow of it.
The endless day wore on. The emerald sail came closer.
Toward mid-afternoon there was a sudden clattering flight of the little dragons and all life stopped still in the weed. The reptilian creatures lay motionless with dragon’s eggs unbroken in their jaws. No head broke the surface to feed. The dragons flew away in a hissing cloud. There was utter silence.
Heath flung himself against the sweep and stopped it.
“Be quiet,” he said. “Look. Out there.”
They followed his gesture. Far away over the port bow, flowing toward them, was a ripple in the weed. A ripple as though the very bed of the Upper Seas was in motion.
“What is it?” whispered Alor, and saw Heath’s face, and was silent.
Sluggishly, yet with frightening speed, the ripple came toward them. Heath got a harpoon out of the stern locker. He watched the motion of the weed, saw it gradually slow and stop in a puzzled way. Then he threw the harpoon as far away from the ship as he could with all his strength and more.
The ripple began again. It swerved and sped toward where the harpoon had fallen.
“They’ll attack anything that moves,” said Heath. “It lost us because we stopped. Watch.”
The weed heaved and burst open, its meshes snapping across a scaled and titanic back. There seemed to be no shape to the creature, no distinguishable head. It was simply a vast and hungry blackness that spread upward and outward and the luckless brutes that cowered near it hissed and thrashed in their efforts to escape, and were engulfed and vanishe
d.
Again Alor whispered, “What is it?”
“One of the Guardians,” Heath answered. “The Guardians of the Upper Seas. They will crush a moving ship to splinters and eat the crew.”
He glanced back at the Lahal. She, too, had come to a dead stop. The canny Vakor had scented the danger also.
“We’ll have to wait,” said Heath, “until it goes away.”
They waited. The huge shape of darkness sucked and floundered in the weed and was in no hurry to go.
Broca sat staring at Heath. He was deep in fever and his eyes were not sane. He began to mutter to himself, incoherent ramblings in which only the name Alor and the word Moonfire were distinguishable.
Suddenly, with startling clarity, he said, “The Moonfire is nothing without Alor.”
He repeated “Nothing!” several times, beating his huge fists on his knees each time he said it. Then he turned his head blindly from side to side as though looking for something. “She’s gone. Alor’s gone. She’s gone to the Earthman.”
Alor spoke to him, touched him, but he shook her off. In his fever-mad brain there was only one truth. He rose and went toward David Heath.
Heath got up. “Broca!” he said. “Alor is there beside you. She hasn’t gone!”
Broca did not hear. He did not stop.
Alor cried out, “Broca!”
“No,” said Broca. “You love him. You’re not mine anymore. When you look at me I am nothing. Your lips have no warmth in them.” He reached out toward David Heath and he was blind and deaf to everything but the life that was in him to be torn out and trampled upon and destroyed.
In the cramped space of the afterdeck there was not much room to move. Heath did not want to fight. He tried to dodge the sick giant but Broca pinned him against the rail. Fever or no fever, Heath had to fight him and it was not much use. Broca was beyond feeling pain.
His sheer weight crushed Heath against the rail, bent his spine almost to breaking and his hands found Heath’s throat. Heath struck and struck again and wondered if he had come all this way to die in a senseless quarrel over a woman.
The Best of Leigh Brackett Page 16