Fenn studied the maps. Strange maps of a strange Earth. The Numi must have traveled far. The names and inscriptions were in a tongue he did not know but Arika pointed out desert and jungle and mountains, forest land and sea, and there was nothing that resembled the island he had drawn while in that uncanny sleep.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t here.”
A quick glance passed between Arika and Malech. She unrolled another scroll, the last.
“This,” she said, “is the birthplace of the Numi. You remember the Hall of Eternal Night in the temple, Fenn? All their birthland is like that, I have heard, white and cruel and very cold. It is what humans call the Great Dark.”
“I don’t understand,” said Fenn. “What is the Great Dark?”
“The other side of the world,” she answered. “Its face is turned always away from the Sun, toward the black gods of night that men say spawned the Numi.”
Fenn concentrated on that last map. Endless areas of whiteness, broken here and there by the dim outlines of continents. In imagination, remembering that hall that he had glimpsed, he could see the jagged mountains rearing under a black sky shot with fire and at their feet the wrinkled ice of oceans.
It was Malech’s quick eye that saw it first. “Here!” he said. “Look here, see it!” He traced with his strong finger. “Away from the Sun, beyond even the Shadow, well into the Great Dark itself. Here is the edge of the sea and here—two rivers and an island!”
He laughed, a short harsh burst of merriment, and then was still.
Arika whispered. “This is a thing of wonder. It is a miracle from the gods.”
And Fenn said, as he seemed always to be saying, “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I! Listen to me, Fenn—listen carefully and try to remember.” Her hand had caught his now, gripping it almost cruelly, as though she would grip his mind that way.
“I tried to call your memory back. I gave you the drug to throw down all your conscious barriers and I tried to draw aside the bars that keep your memory prisoned. I called to you and you answered, naming yourself Fenn-way, and you talked quite readily.
“But the things you spoke of were not of this world you stand in now! You told of great buildings and of things that roared in the sky and in the streets and under the earth. You told of day and night, of the things we have never seen—the moon, the stars, dawn, sunset.”
Her fingers tightened until her nails brought blood. “Fenn, your memories were of the world that was before the coming of the dark star—the world before Destruction!”
He was glad of her hand holding him. Because suddenly the solid earth dissolved beneath him and he was falling, spinning, crying through a reeling vortex.
He whispered, “I remember, I remember.”
He put his face between his hands. He shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh, and presently the palms of his hands were wet with a salty moisture.
I remember.
But did he? He still had no full memory of a past life. He had only flashes of a life, disjointed, infinitely strange—painful and yet somehow distant, somehow not of his flesh.
He asked hoarsely, “If I remember that far past, does that mean that I belong to that past? That RhamSin somehow dragged me out of it?”
Arika shook her head. “It seems impossible. And yet the powers of the Numi priests are great.”
Malech interrupted, asking him passionately, “Where are the Palisades?”
Fenn was too numbed with horror to answer. He felt suspended over an abyss that yawned between two worlds, himself a stranger to them both.
Malech’s hands rose in a fierce aborted gesture and Arika warned him back. She said in the compelling voice that Fenn had answered in his dream, “Fenn, show me the Palisades.”
Without thought or volition, he placed a finger on the charcoal map.
Malech’s eyes suddenly blazed. He said in an exultant whisper, “It was what RhamSin was trying to get from him—the secret of the Citadel’s location. And now we have it. In Fenn we have it!”
Fenn had begun to talk. It was like a dead man slowly speaking.
“The dark star,” he said to no one. “They looked at it through their telescopes. They watched it rushing closer and they told us that the world as we knew it would die. A dark star, coming out of space to kill the world.”
Arika whispered, “Do you remember the Destruction?”
“No. It was not to be—not just yet. The dark star would pass the Sun. They had it charted, they knew what it would do. It would take away some of the planets, the outer ones, and go on—and the worlds that were left would be tom and changed.”
He added slowly, “There was a terrible fear on the world. Not for ourselves but for our children. Sometimes we would not believe it could happen. We looked at the great cities and the mountains and the green land. We looked at the sea and we did not believe it could ever change.”
“But it did,” Arika said somberly. “Legend tells how it did—how when the dark star passed all Earth was rent and shaken and its spinning slowed, so there was no more day and night. How the cities were thrown down and the mountains moved and the seas ran wild and millions died.”
“They knew what was coming,” said Fenn in his dead strange voice. “It was why they built the Citadel, to preserve man’s knowledge and power for those who might survive.”
Malech was shaken with bitter mirth. “And the Numi have hunted for that legended Citadel without dreaming that it lay in the Great Dark from which they came! They mapped this place New York and didn’t know the Citadel was there! And now, with Fenn’s help, we shall find it!”
Fenn looked at him and at Arika with hopeless eyes. “What difference does it make to me who wins the Citadel? The only world I can remember perished—how many thousand years ago?”
Arika’s face flashed and she took his hands warmly, strongly, into hers. “Fenn, don’t you realize what you can do? You are human—all human. You’ve seen a little of how humans live in this world—slaves of the Numi here in the cities or as outlaw tribes in the wilds. That has gone on since the Numi first came out of the darkness that bred them.
“But you can change all that, Fenn. You can free us from the Numi. You can make the world as it was before the Destruction—a good world for men to live in. You can give men back all their lost knowledge!”
“Or would you prefer,” Malech said, “to give the Citadel to the Numi so that with the knowledge in it they can rivet fetters on us forever?”
A blaze of anger leaped up in Fenn’s mind. “No! Men built the Citadel, men like us—-for men like us!”
He was remembering again the tragic last hope of that doomed world, the hope centered in the Citadel that was to be man’s answer to the coming night.
“Then help us find it, that its secrets may belong to man!” Arika pressed. “We can get you out of the city and the outlaw humans out in the wilds will aid us in this quest. Will you lead the way?”
Fenn felt iron resolution hardening swiftly in his mind, a resolve born as much of bitter hatred of the Numi as of loyalty to his own kind.
He said between his teeth, “I will lead you. And if the Citadel has power in it—it will be used to destroy the Numi or to drive them back into their darkness.”
He added eagerly, “And it may be that there at the Citadel, at the place New York that I remember so strangely, I shall remember all my past!”
Malech was on his feet, his face flaring with excitement. “I’ll begin preparations at once! We’ll need to have horses ready and slip out of the city tomorrow ‘night’!”
He swung aside the curtain to leave. As he did so, with startling suddenness, a man stumbled in from outside. He came as though the howling wind had brought him—a quite human man, with the marks of the lash on his back.
“Temple soldiers are searching the quarters!” he cried and then he caught sight of Fenn. His eyes widened and his mouth became an open oblong in his seamy face. He started to speak.<
br />
Malech stepped between them, reaching on hand to the small man’s shoulders, turning him around as he demanded, “Which way are they coming?”
“From the tomb of the kings, ransacking every house. We’re spreading the word.”
The edge of Malech’s free hand took him in a slicing blow under the ear. The little man folded quietly over his own middle and Malech shoved him behind a water cask in the lean-to.
Fenn crossed the room. He gripped Malech by the shoulders. “That man knew me,” he said harshly. “Why would you not let him speak?”
“Don’t be a fool,” snapped Malech. “He saw a stranger and was surprised. He would have sold you to the Numi for a sack of com.”
Arika’s face was white with fury and despair. “RhamSin was too cunning to be completely deceived by my trick! If we had had but one day more….”
Fenn’s hard new determination would not let him share their despair. He said, “We are going to find the Citadel! Since we can’t wait until tomorrow night we go now.”
“But horses—” Malech objected.
Fenn cut him short. “I saw paddocks of horses near the gates. We can steal mounts. Quickly!”
Arika gave him a startled glance as though revising her estimate of him. But she caught fire from his resolution. “He is right, Malech—we must risk it now!”
She brought forth the mourner’s cloaks for them. While Malech was hastily improvising one for himself from a length of cotton smeared on the hearth, Arika rolled the map-scrolls and tied them in her girdle.
Fenn led the way out. The narrow alley was deserted but in the distance they saw furtive figures running from house to house with the warning. The parching wind enveloped them in clouds of dust and the Sun burned red and evil in an ochre sky.
“Which gate?” snapped Fenn.
“This way,” said Malech. “The Desert Gate.”
The driven dust made everything obscure as they went swiftly, their heads down. Temple and cliffs were veiled by the blowing haze. Fenn could see no soldiers yet.
They skirted the edge of a market square, deserted except for a few folk sleeping huddled in the stalls. Beyond the market were the great stock pens and the quartering places of the caravans lying inside the Desert Gate.
Next to the wall of the caravan building was the fenced horse paddock. There were at least fifty horses in it, shaggy creatures patiently standing with their heads away from the wind-driven dust. There were also a half dozen saddled horses, powerful sleek animals, tethered separately.
“There are our mounts, waiting for us,” Fenn said.
“They’re Numi horses!” Malech warned. “They don’t like human riders and you’ll have trouble….”
“Don’t worry—I’ll manage,” Fenn snapped. “But first I want a look at Ute gate.”
From around the corner of the paddock fence he peered. He saw the road, hollowed deep by the wind, and the posts that marked the gateway and beyond them the way that led over the hills to the desert and freedom.
A dozen Numi soldiers guarded the gate and their big, sleek steeds were picketed within the gateway.
“We can’t ride through them!” Malech said. “It’s hopeless!” Fenn’s eyes had begun to gleam with an unholy light. He said to Arika, “Give me your dagger—and then you two mount and hold a horse ready for me.”
Arika stared, then gave him the weapon. She and Malech slipped back to the corner of the paddock where the saddled Numi horses were tethered.
Fenn sprang to the bars of the paddock gate. He took them down silently. Then he went through the shaggy horses to the rear of the paddock.
He suddenly drew the dagger point in a long shallow scratch down the quarter of the nearest horse. The animal recoiled with a whinnying scream of pain and terror.
Fenn scratched another horse. It too screamed. The shaggy herd began to mill frightenedly, scared by the outcries and the smell of blood.
Fenn suddenly cried out, a long shrill howl with an eerie wolf note in it, and leaped forward at the herd with his reddened dagger upraised. Instantly, the whole herd bolted out of ‘he paddock.
There was only one way for them to go. They poured out with a great thundering of hoofs and an explosion of dust— fifty horses, stampeding in panic toward the Desert Gate.
The Numi had no chance against that onslaught. It came too suddenly even to give them time to run. The wild-eyed herd crashed over them, broke their picket line, carried their own steeds out with them.
And close on the heels of that stampede, so close that they were almost a part of it, came Fenn and Malech and Arika.
Fenn had been fighting the Numi horse since the instant he had leapt on its back and only the fact that it too was panicky kept it from setting itself to throw him.
“Swords!” he yelled to Malech. “Get swords!”
Ahead of them in the gate sprawled the broken furry bodies of the Numi soldiers caught by the stampede. They would need the weapons that lay there but Fenn dared not check his own steed now.
Malech heard him and with catlike deftness pulled up his steed long enough to reach down for two of the Numi blades.
“Soldiers come!” warned Arika’s cry.
A half-dozen Numi were running out from the horse paddock, after them. Fenn laughed, as he caught the sword Malech tossed him and gave his bolting steed its head.
“We have their horses—let them catch us!”
They went full gallop down the road. The forefront of the stampede had gone on to wear itself out among the villages.
The road climbed to a low pass through the hills. Beyond the pass lay desolation—of copper Sun and coppery sky and under them the rusty barren earth.
“It is far to the Great Dark—and RhamSin will follow!” Arika warned. “He will follow to the world’s end for the Citadel!”
CHAPTER VI The Quest of Yesterday
They had left the caravan track and struck out across the open desert. They had no guide but the gossip of the drovers that Malech had heard in the marketplace.
“Where or how far the place of the outlaw tribesmen may be I don’t know,” he told Fenn. “But it lies in this direction, away from the Sun.” He pointed to his shadow stretching out before him.
Fenn asked, “How do you know these men will help us?”
“They have all suffered from the Numi. Every living human has in one way or another. And to find the Citadel—they’ll help!”
Fenn looked at the barren earth and said, “We had better find them soon.”
They went on, keeping their shadows always before them, pushing the horses as hard as they dared.
Fenn rode silently, withdrawn in his own thoughts. He had had it out with the Numi horse and won his battle and after that brief violence his mind had turned again to himself. He thought of the things that had been said between himself and Arika and Malech and the decision that he had made so swiftly and with such conviction.
His mood was not one of doubt or hesitation. It was only a hardening and clarifying of what was in his mind. In the city he had felt confused and driven, tortured by the blankness of his memory, raging against a world he could not understand. Here, where he was free of walls and houses, he could think again.
He still did not know who he was or where he came from or how. He had a feeling that when he reached New York he would remember. But even if he did not he remembered other things—the world that was before the dark star and the Numi, the pride and the courage of the men who had built the Citadel so that knowledge might not perish from the Earth.
It holds all the past of man, they said, and it will hold the future. The Citadel will stand forever, man’s challenge to the coming night.
Men had built it and it should be given back to man. A deep anger rose in Fenn against RhamSin, who had tried to steal knowledge that did not belong to him—human knowledge to use against humankind! Fenn’s hatred of the Numi was a towering thing and it stood large over everything else—larger even than his passionate d
esire to know himself.
He looked. He looked ahead across the desert, and he thought, Once this earth was green and men lived upon it and were free. It shall be so again!
He smiled at Arika and urged his horse a little faster, impatient of every step that lay between him and his goal.
Here there was no temple gong to tell them day and night. The angry Sun burned forever in the sky. The fierce wind lashed them and the dust-clouds rolled in red and ochre across the land and there was no time. They hungered and they thirsted and now and again they stopped to rest the horses and to sleep.
They had slept twice when Fenn looked back and saw atop a distant rise a plume of dust that was not made by any wind.
He said, “RhamSin.”
Malech nodded. “They will have spare horses, food and water. They will push hard and the Numi are stronger than men.”
Fenn smiled, an ugly smile. He began to lead by devious ways, covering and confusing the track, going on bare rock or on loose earth where the wind would blow away the prints of the horses’ hoofs. And for a time they lost the distant plume of dust.
But Malech said, “They know our direction. They will follow without a track. And remember, RhamSin is a Numi and a priest. He may be able to touch our minds with his enough to guide him.”
Fenn’s mouth hardened. He said nothing and they went on across the bitter land. Hunger became a gnawing pain and then a weakness and an agony but it was forgotten in the pangs of thirst. The splendid horses began to falter. Arika rode bowed and silent and the men were not much better.
At rare intervals Fenn would stop and dig, wherever there was a shadow of green life in some sunken spot or the hollow of a dead watercourse. Sometimes a few drops of muddy water welled up to keep them alive.
They stopped for the third time to rest. Fenn did not sleep. He sat looking over the desert with red-rimmed eyes, thinking of the Citadel and feeling an iron determination not to die.
The plume of dust showed itself again on the horizon. He cursed it and rose to wake the others.
The Halfling and Other Stories Page 10