by Rick Shelley
I drew Wellivazey's swords and probed the rubbery ground with it. I could sink the blade in almost to the hilt with very little effort. It came out just as easily as my feet did, without a hint of clinging dirt. I got down on one knee and sank a hand into the ground. It felt like rubbery jelly. If I really pressed, put all of my strength into it, I could get my hand, even my arm, down into it, about halfway to the elbow. The stuff below had the same kind of texture, it was just thicker, firmer.
I shook my head as I climbed back into the saddle. The obstacles on this trek seemed designed more to test my sanity and my threshold of boredom than my strength or bravery.
"I think I'm missing something here, kids," I said. "I just can't figure out what it is." If there actually was something more subtle going on, maybe I really was the hero who was all balls and no brains, too dense to puzzle it out. If the Great Earth Mother was really the Big Bad Mama she was cracked up to be, she ought to be able to show a little more power.
Of course, even with the piddling tests that had been thrown in front of me, I was almost out of it. If I hadn't been so thoroughly exhausted by then, I might have felt some humiliation.
The rubbery plain slowed us more than I had guessed, whether because the horses were so tired, the gumbo was so thick, or the plain was wider than I first thought, I'm not sure. It may have been a combination of any or all of those. But we moved on steadily through the night. Several times my danger sense hiccupped and I saw low shadows moving-or thought I did. But the shadows didn't come close and I couldn't make out what they might be.
By dawn, I was so tired that I had trouble keeping my eyes open. The rubber plain was a slate gray and there looked to be a little more than a mile left of it. At the slow walk that seemed to be the most efficient pace for the horses in it, we would need another twelve or fifteen minutes to get to the ridge ahead of us… with no real guarantee that the ridge marked the end of this slop.
Then I saw another of those shadows on the plain. With sunlight playing on the ground, the shadow was low, triangular, and black, moving almost directly toward us, cutting through the rubber surface without any difficulty at all. It looked exactly like a shark fin cutting through the surface of the ocean. The way my danger sense started ringing my head as the shadow came closer, I was ready to concede that it was a shark-some weird variety that could swim through semiliquid rubber almost as quickly as its marine cousins could swim through water.
There was no Jaws theme in the background, getting louder as the shark approached. The fin came on, changing direction to come straight at me. Off to the side, a couple of hundred yards away, I saw three more fins, idling, I guess, moving in lazy circles. I pulled Dragon's Death and urged the horses on toward the ridge… and what I hoped was the end of the rubbery "ocean." I watched the first shark as it came on, and I turned Electrum at the last second, leaned over, and slashed at the front of the fin. My sword slowed drastically when it hit the rubber, fighting through the surface, losing much of the force of my blow.
But there was still enough juice behind it to wound the shark, to make it break surface.
It opened gaping jaws to shows rows and rows of flat needlelike teeth. My second blow shortened the snout by a foot, and blood flowed onto and into the gray rubber surface. Off in the distance, the other sharks quickly caught the scent of blood and homed in on it. I gave Electrum my heels and he tried to gallop. The result was an awkward, bouncing run like a carousel horse gone out of control, but we were moving faster than the remaining sharks, and that was all that mattered. Two of them continued toward the blood and the thrashing of the shark I had wounded. The last shark changed course to try to intercept us.
The race was close, but we got out of the goop onto firm, sandy soil with maybe two seconds to spare.
Okay, stick another white feather in my cap. I had run from danger again. I was getting to like it. But I also felt that I had to make a gesture, more than the shark I had given the nose job to. That was unavoidable, not heroics. I dismounted and walked back to the edge of the goop. The shark that had tried to intercept us was circling right close to the shore (I guess I have to call it that). I drew Dragon's Death again and waited for him. When he was as close as he could get, I stabbed down with my six-foot elf sword-stabbed rather than slashed this time-aiming for that same point just in front of the fin. The shark struggled for a moment, and I pulled my sword out. The shark went belly up in a hurry, and drew the other two, with more fins visible in the distance, coming on at full speed.
I didn't wait. I had made my gesture, thumbed my nose at convention.
When we got to the top of the ridge north of the shark pond, I rudely reined Electrum to a halt and dismounted in such a hurry that I almost fell, not quite getting my foot clear of the stirrup. When I got to the ground, I dropped to my knees. It wasn't an act of faith. It wasn't prayer. More likely, it was disbelief. I couldn't quite accept what I was seeing.
I could see the shrine, the central temple of the Great Earth Mother.
This time, I know I cried, and I couldn't do anything but let the tears come until there were no more left to shed. Then I looked to the sky, fearing some final cruel trick by fate, the appearance of the seventh moon, showing up just soon enough to torture me at coming so close.
There were no moons at all in the sky at the moment. The sixth had set just before dawn.
The temple was still some distance away-at least ten miles, I figured, perhaps more. It was at the far end of a very large, very flat valley. The temple was up on a broad shelf a little above the valley floor. The only thing I had to base my estimate of distance on was a rough guess that 'Jie central temple had to be at least as large as the two shrines that had held the balls of the Great Earth Mother. That would make the shelf that the temple sat on approximately two miles wide and deep. The temple certainly looked like it had been fashioned from the same basic design, at least on the outside, a pseudo-Greek temple with rows of columns around it.
And there seemed to be one more series of obstacles in the way-a real doozy.
Call it a million dominoes, just to keep the number very even. I wasn't about to try counting them. I wasn't even going to go to much trouble to make a respectable estimate. There were certainly at least one million, perhaps two or three.
Dominoes. I didn't see any pips or any dragon designs, but I didn't have any doubt about what they were. These dominoes were about twenty feet by ten feet by three feet thick. Even at a distance the colors looked vivid: black and white; bright red, orange, yellow, blue, green, and purple; various shades and tints of those colors. Virtually all of the dominoes were standing on end, and they appeared to be arranged in an elaborate pattern like those you see on the news when college kids go after the constantly escalating record for tumbling the most dominoes in a single, spectacular chain reaction. The entire floor of the valley, as far as I could see to east or west, and completely across from north to south, was covered with those gigantic dominoes. On the far side, maybe a mile east of the temple, there were several stacks-dominoes that hadn't yet been added to the display, or perhaps just extras left after the pattern was complete.
And I thought I was bored? I didn't care to meet the person who had placed all those dominoes out there, but I had a sneaking hunch that I pad discovered the secret hobby of the Great Earth Mother.
I had another sneaking hunch as well, a premonition I would have wagered heavily on if there had been anyone to take my action. I would have bet that those dominoes were going to get tipped before I got to the temple on the other side of the valley. Being that certain, I spent a lot of time studying the patterns that the dominoes were arranged in, trying to pick out the safest route through the mess.
"I wonder how long it will take all of those dominoes to fall once they start?" I asked.
Nobody answered, which was just as well.
I could remember an announcer on television talking about a setup in some college gym in Japan. The dominoes would need more than
half an hour to fall, and those were regular-sized dominoes, and a lot less than a million of them. I guessed that it would take several hours for all of these to fall, especially if it was set up so that they would go one at a time, not with parallel lines dropping together.
I didn't see anything that looked like it might be a trigger for several rows going simultaneously.
"Let's eat first," I decided. I used the last of the wood Geezer was carrying to build a fire. I wasn't worried about giving away our position. If the Great Earth Mother didn't already know exactly where we were, she wouldn't be much of an adversary. Anyway, those camping meals are just so much cardboard unless you eat them as hot as possible.
I decided to eat big. Like as not it would be my last meal, so I splurged, fixing a full half-dozen of my packaged dinners. It still wasn't a proper Varayan feast, but I did what I could and let the horses graze while I was doing it. The only thing missing was beer. A six-pack of Michelob Dry would have topped everything off perfectly.
When I finished eating, I stood and let out a couple of well-deserved belches before I mounted Electrum and said, "Let's go, boy." I have never, to the best of my recollection, used the phrase "giddy-up" to a horse. I'd be too self-conscious… I just know any self-respecting horse would turn his head to laugh at me.
Before we could get to the valley floor and all of those humongous dominoes, we had to descend a long, gentle slope, too easy to pose any threat even to tired horses unless they were galloping full out, and mine weren't. I was looking ahead, still concentrating on the patterns of the dominoes, when somebody started playing games with the law of gravity.
All of a sudden, down was straight out to my left. Abruptly. We were still on the slope, and the horses kept walking, but my senses started screaming that we were about to fall sideways, parallel to the ground. The horses seemed to be doing a fly act, walking on the wall. Then we flip-flopped just as suddenly and down was straight out to my right. After yet another hiccup of reality, down was straight up. It never changed the actual working of things, just the perception. We didn't fall, but the horses neighed and tried to break and run… and I ended up losing most of that big meal I had just eaten.
It did take my mind off the dominoes for a time.
Then we reached the beginning of the domino pattern. There were still no pips visible on any of the blocks, but the proportions were right. They were dominoes to all intents and purposes.
At least up and down straightened themselves out before we got to them.
I had spotted a lane between two rows of dominoes that seemed to extend about a third of the way across the valley before giving way to rows running east and west. I couldn't be sure of a safe path beyond that. The angle had been wrong from the ridge. Navigation would have to be by guess and luck once we got that far, if we got that far. And as near as I could judge from the spot where I had done my studying, the pattern appeared to start and end right over under the temple-the way golf courses start and end right by the clubhouse.
The moment I edged Electrum between the first two dominoes, I heard a distant thump, and I knew that the pattern had been tripped. The thumps came regularly-all too close together-and I hurried the horses down the lane I had chosen. If the dominoes were all aligned properly, we would be safe there even if the blocks on both sides of us went down.
The metronomic precision of the heavy stones falling came closer and moved farther away, came back, paralleled us. Distance translated to volume, which gave me a constantly updated clue as to where the action was taking place. I stopped at the end of the safe lane I had picked up from the ridge and looked both ways, trying to decide which way to go next. There was a section that looked terribly confused just ahead, as several rows of dominoes met, crossed, and went off at different angles. I chose the shortest path to another straight row, and this time I really put my heels to Electrum. The sound of falling blocks was coming straight toward us.
It was our closest call. Half a step slower, and Geezer would have lost his tail, and perhaps more.
Fear drove us on from there. Electrum and Geezer both gave me everything they had, without waiting for my urging. A row of dominoes just to our right chased us for several minutes, then passed us by. The racket of that got the horses moving a bit faster than they should have been capable of.
We had to zig left, then right, past another collapsing row. I had trouble holding the horses on course with dominoes coming toward us from in front-on our left side. But then we had a clear track ahead of us. The dominoes along that lane were already down, clear to the north side of the valley.
We were nearly up to the level of the temple before the horses were willing to check their speed. By that time, we were above the tops of the dominoes. I finally got the animals stopped and looked back across the valley. As near as I could tell, less than ten percent of the blocks had fallen-in more than an hour.
"It's going to take all day for them to finish," I said, somewhat awed by the thought.
I watched for a couple of minutes, fascinated by the display. But the break also gave the horses time to catch their breath-if little more-and when I turned away from the falling dominoes, Electrum and Geezer were ready to climb. Maybe they sensed that the end of our journey was near.
The ledge was even larger than it had appeared from the south ridge. It had to be at least five miles wide and four deep. The temple was situated close to the exact middle of the shelf, and it was perhaps twice the size of the other shrines.
A couple of modest creeks came across the ledge from the hill behind. Electrum and Geezer started walking toward the nearest. They were moving slowly, and they stopped to graze whenever I gave them a slack rein.
"Go ahead, you're entitled," I whispered. I couldn't let them just run for the water in any case. With all the running, they needed time to cool off before they drank. I turned them a little, so they would need longer to work their way to the water, and when we finally got there, I dismounted and dug out the picket line. I hooked the horses to the line so they could get their fill of green grass and cool water. They would be content. Me, I turned and walked toward the temple.
I finished my journey on foot, the way pilgrimages are supposed to be made. I walked the last mile, and I had a feeling that the phrase was appropriate. I had to go around to the south face of the temple again. There were no doors on the west, where I had left the horses.
No soldiers came out to challenge me the way they had at the shrine in the Titan Mountains.
No sea serpents coiled around this temple the way one had around the island temple in the Mist.
No companions walked at my sides.
This temple did have large gold doors, just like the others, only much larger. The gold was beaten into fancy designs. I stood in front of the doors for several minutes and just stared at them. When I took my next step forward, the doors swung open.
I waited until the doors stopped moving, then stepped forward again. I didn't need a formal introduction to know that the woman waiting just inside was the Great Earth Mother. 17 – Great Earth Mother
I'm not sure what I expected. Okay, that was a frequent occurrence. But the apparition of the Great Earth Mother I had seen in her shrine on the island in the Mist hadn't been very promising. Part by part, I guess there was nothing wrong, but as for the combination… the word "hideous" springs readily to mind. Beyond that apparition, I had never been able to completely shake the thought that-just maybe-the Great Earth Mother was really the myth I had taken her for in my early days in Varay, just another primitive fertility symbol. Sure, I should have known better, but I had twenty-one years of "real world" experience compared to less than four years of the buffer zone and Fairy.
I walked through the doorway into her temple, and she was standing there, hands on hips, legs spread a bit, waiting for me. I saw one immediate problem. Scale. The Great Earth Mother was at least fourteen feet tall, maybe a little more-considerably taller than the eunuch who had guarded her shrine in the
Titan Mountains. If I had bumped into her… there is no delicate way to express the images that flickered through my mind at the time. I could have put my face right into her. A problem of scale.
Fortunately or not, I didn't bump into her. I got inside the door and stopped. And stared. She was put together properly, if you allow for proportion, not all mismatched the way her apparition had been. She had dark hair, and curves that kept my eyes roaming over them. She even looked a little familiar. The resemblance wasn't exact, but she reminded me of Raquel Welch back in One Million B.C.-but the Great Earth Mother didn't have even the scantiest of clothes on. Fourteen feet tall, stark naked: that's a lot of skin. She didn't have so much as a jewel in her navel. For that matter, she didn't even have a navel. I noticed that after a few minutes of noticing other things like the fact that if I stood close to her, she would provide shade for a good part of the day.
The Great Earth Mother was certainly beautiful enough to make any man horny, but mortal flesh will only stretch so far, no matter how aroused it gets. She needed more than a Hero, she needed at least a hero and a half.
What a way to go, I thought.
"You're here," she said. Her voice was a bit too deep and husky for my tastes, but I suspect that was a function of her size.
"The obstacles you put in my way weren't really very daunting," I said.
"They amused me."
"And the dominoes?"
She chuckled. "Those have been waiting for just this time. When the last one falls, it will catapult the seventh moon into orbit and the last of Vara's get will be gone."
"You're that ready for your own oblivion?" I asked. I was trying to be cautious. She hadn't immediately snapped my head off, but I had no way to judge how far her tolerance might extend. My danger sense had blown a fuse when I walked through the door. It went crazy, and then it went dead.