The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  He kissed her, and she whispered, “I think you’re not afraid of danger.”

  “On the contrary, I’m a cautious man.” He held her off, where he could look straight into her eyes. “I owe Egil something on my own, but I will not murder. The fight must be fair, and Cond will have to take care of himself.”

  “Fair! Was Egil fair with you—or me?”

  He shrugged. “My way, or not at all.”

  She thought it over awhile, then nodded. “All right. As for Cond, you will give him a blood debt, and pride will make him fight. The Lhari are all proud,” she added bitterly. “That’s our curse. But it’s bred in the bone, as you’ll find out.”

  “One more thing. Zareth and Helvi are to go free, and there must be an end to this slavery.”

  She stared at him. “You drive a hard bargain, wild man!”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes and no. Zareth and Helvi you may have, if you insist, though the gods know what you see in that pallid child. As to the other…” She smiled very mockingly. “I’m no fool, Stark. You’re evading me, and two can play that game.”

  He laughed. “Fair enough. And now tell me this, witch with the silver curls—how am I to get at Egil that I may kill him?”

  “I’ll arrange that.”

  She said it with such vicious assurance that he was pretty sure she would arrange it. He was silent for a moment, and then he asked, “Varra—what are the Lhari searching for at the bottom of the sea?”

  She answered slowly, “I told you that we are a proud clan. We were driven out of the High Plateaus centuries ago because of our pride. Now it’s all we have left, but it’s a driving thing.”

  She paused, and then went on. “I think we had known about the city for a long time, but it had never meant anything until my father became fascinated by it. He would stay down here days at a time, exploring, and it was he who found the weapons and the machine of power which is on the island. Then he found the chart and the metal book, hidden away in a secret place. The book was written in pictographs—as though it was meant to be deciphered—and the chart showed the square with the ruined building and the temples, with a separate diagram of catacombs underneath the ground.

  “The book told of a secret—a thing of wonder and of fear. And my father believed that the building had been wrecked to close the entrance to the catacombs where the secret was kept. He determined to find it.”

  Sixteen years of other men’s lives. Stark shivered. “What was the secret, Varra?”

  “The manner of controlling life. How it was done I do not know, but with it one might build a race of giants, of monsters, or of gods. You can see what that would mean to us, a proud and dying clan.”

  “Yes,” Stark answered slowly. “I can see.”

  The magnitude of the idea shook him. The builders of the city must have been wise indeed in their scientific research to evolve such a terrible power. To mold the living cells of the body to one’s will—to create, not life itself but its form and fashion….

  A race of giants, or of gods. The Lhari would like that. To transform their own degenerate flesh into something beyond the race of men, to develop their followers into a corps of fighting men that no one could stand against, to see that their children were given an unholy advantage over all the children of men… Stark was appalled at the realization of the evil they could do if they ever found that secret.

  Varra said, “There was a warning in the book. The meaning of it was not quite clear, but it seemed that the ancient ones felt that they had sinned against the gods and been punished, perhaps by some plague. They were a strange race, and not human. At any rate, they destroyed the great building there as a barrier against anyone who should come after them, and then let the Red Sea in to cover their city forever. They must have been superstitious children, for all their knowledge.”

  “Then you all ignored the warning, and never worried that a whole city had died to prove it.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, Treon has been muttering prophecies about it for years. Nobody listens to him. As for myself, I don’t care whether we find the secret or not. My belief is it was destroyed along with the building, and besides, I have no faith in such things.”

  “Besides,” mocked Stark shrewdly, “you wouldn’t care to see Egil and Cond striding across the heavens of Venus, and you’re doubtful just what your own place would be in the new pantheon.”

  She showed her teeth at him. “You’re too wise for your own good. And now good-bye.” She gave him a quick, hard kiss and was gone, flashing upward, high above the tree-tops where he dared not follow.

  Stark made his way slowly back to the city, upset and very thoughtful.

  As he came back into the great square, heading toward the barracks, he stopped, every nerve taut.

  Somewhere, in one of the shadowy temples, the clapper of a votive bell was swinging, sending its deep pulsing note across the silence. Slowly, slowly, like the beating of a dying heart it came, and mingled with it was the faint sound of Zareth’s voice, calling his name.

  CHAPTER IX

  He crossed the square, moving very carefully through the red murk, and presently he saw her.

  It was not hard to find her. There was one temple larger than all the rest. Stark judged that it must once have faced the entrance of the fallen building, as though the great figure within was set to watch over the scientists and the philosophers who came there to dream their vast and sometimes terrible dreams.

  The philosophers were gone, and the scientists had destroyed themselves. But the image still watched over the drowned city, its hand raised both in warming and in benediction.

  Now, across its reptilian knees, Zareth lay. The temple was open on all sides, and Stark could see her clearly, a little white scrap of humanity against the black unhuman figure.

  Malthor stood beside her. It was he who had been tolling the votive bell. He had stopped now, and Zareth’s words came clearly to Stark.

  “Go away, go away! They’re waiting for you. Don’t come in here!”

  “I’m waiting for you, Stark,” Malthor called out, smiling. “Are you afraid to come?” And he took Zareth by the hair and struck her, slowly and deliberately, twice across the face.

  All expression left Stark’s face, leaving it perfectly blank except for his eyes, which took on a sudden lambent gleam. He began to move toward the temple, not hurrying even then, but moving in such a way that it seemed an army could not have stopped him.

  Zareth broke free from her father. Perhaps she was intended to break free.

  “Egil!” she screamed. “It’s a trap…”

  Again Malthor caught her and this time he struck her harder, so that she crumpled down again across the image that watched with its jeweled, gentle eyes and saw nothing.

  “She’s afraid for you,” said Malthor. “She knows I mean to kill you if I can. Well, perhaps Egil is here also. Perhaps he is not. But certainly Zareth is here. I have beaten her well, and I shall beat her again, as long as she lives to be beaten, for her treachery to me. And if you want to save her from that, you outland dog, you’ll have to kill me. Are you afraid?”

  Stark was afraid. Malthor and Zareth were alone in the temple. The pillared colonnades were empty except for the dim fires of the sea. Yet Stark was afraid, for an instinct older than speech warned him to be.

  It did not matter. Zareth’s white skin was mottled with dark bruises, and Malthor was smiling at him, and it did not matter.

  Under the shadow of the roof and down the colonnade he went, swiftly now, leaving a streak of fire behind him. Malthor looked into his eyes, and his smile trembled and was gone.

  He crouched. And at the last moment, when the dark body plunged down at him as a shark plunges, he drew a hidden knife from his girdle and struck.

  Stark had not counted on that. The slaves were searched for possible weapons every day, and even a sliver of stone was forbidden. Somebody must have given it to him, someone…

  The thought fl
ashed through his mind while he was in the very act of trying to avoid that death blow. Too late, too late, because his own momentum carried him onto the point…

  Reflexes quicker than any man’s, the hair-trigger reactions of a wild thing. Muscles straining, the center of balance shifted with an awful wrenching effort, hands grasping at the fire-shot redness as though to force it to defy its own laws. The blade ripped a long shallow gash across his breast. But it did not go home. By a fraction of an inch, it did not go home.

  While Stark was still off balance, Malthor sprang.

  They grappled. The knife blade glittered redly, a hungry tongue eager to taste Stark’s life. The two men rolled over and over, drifting and tumbling erratically, churning the sea to a froth of sparks, and still the image watched, its calm reptilian features unchangingly benign and wise. Threads of a darker red laced heavily across the dancing fires.

  Stark got Malthor’s arm under his own and held it there with both hands. His back was to the man now. Malthor kicked and clawed with his feet against the backs of Stark’s thighs, and his left arm came up and tried to clamp around Stark’s throat. Stark buried his chin so that it could not, and then Malthor’s hand began to tear at Stark’s face, searching for his eyes.

  Stark voiced a deep bestial sound in his throat. He moved his head suddenly, catching Malthor’s hand between his jaws. He did not let go. Presently his teeth were locked against the thumb-joint, and Malthor was screaming, but Stark could give all his attention to what he was doing with the arm that held the knife. His eyes had changed. They were all beast now, the eyes of a killer blazing cold and beautiful in his dark face.

  There was a dull crack, and the arm ceased to strain or fight. It bent back upon itself, and the knife fell, drifting quietly down. Malthor was beyond screaming now. He made one effort to get away as Stark released him, but it was a futile gesture, and he made no sound as Stark broke his neck.

  He thrust the body from him. It drifted away, moving lazily with the suck of the currents through the colonnade, now and again touching a black pillar as though in casual wonder, wandering out at last into the square. Malthor was in no hurry. He had all eternity before him.

  Stark moved carefully away from the girl, who was trying feebly now to sit up on the knees of the image. He called out, to some unseen presence hidden in the shadows under the roof, “Malthor screamed your name, Egil. Why didn’t you come?”

  There was a flicker of movement in the intense darkness of the ledge at the top of the pillars.

  “Why should I?” asked the Lord Egil of the Lhari. “I offered him his freedom if he could kill you, but it seems he could not—even though I gave him a knife, and drugs to keep your friend Helvi out of the way.”

  He came out where Stark could see him, very handsome in a tunic of yellow silk, the blunt black weapon in his hands.

  “The important thing was to bait a trap. You would not face me because of this—” He raised the weapon. “I might have killed you as you worked, of course, but my family would have had hard things to say about that. You’re a phenomenally good slave.”

  “They’d have said hard words like ‘coward,’ Egil,” Stark said softly. “And Varra would have set her bird at you in earnest.”

  Egil nodded. His lip curved cruelly. “Exactly. That amused you, didn’t it? And now my little cousin is training another falcon to swoop at me. She hooded you today, didn’t she, Outlander?”

  He laughed. “Ah well. I didn’t kill you openly because there’s a better way. Do you think I want it gossiped all over the Red Sea that my cousin jilted me for a foreign slave? Do you think I wish it known that I hated you, and why? No. I would have killed Malthor anyway, if you hadn’t done it, because he knew. And when I have killed you and the girl I shall take your bodies to the barrier and leave them there together, and it will be obvious to everyone, even Varra, that you were killed trying to escape.”

  The weapon’s muzzle pointed straight at Stark, and Egil’s finger quivered on the trigger stud. Full power, this time. Instead of paralysis, death. Stark measured the distance between himself and Egil. He would be dead before he struck, but the impetus of his leap might carry him on, and give Zareth a chance to escape. The muscles of his thighs stirred and tensed.

  A voice said, “And it will be obvious how and why I died, Egil? For if you kill them, you must kill me too.”

  Where Treon had come from, or when, Stark did not know. But he was there by the image, and his voice was full of a strong music, and his eyes shone with a fey light.

  Egil had started, and now he swore in fury. “You idiot! You twisted freak! How did you come here?”

  “How does the wind come, and the rain? I am not as other men.” He laughed, a somber sound with no mirth in it. “I am here, Egil, and that’s all that matters. And you will not slay this stranger who is more beast than man, and more man than any of us. The gods have a use for him.”

  He had moved as he spoke, until now he stood between Stark and Egil.

  “Get out of the way,” said Egil.

  Treon shook his head.

  “Very well,” said Egil. “If you wish to die, you may.”

  The fey gleam brightened in Treon’s eyes. “This is a day of death,” he said softly, “but not of his, or mine.”

  Egil said a short, ugly word, and raised the weapon up.

  Things happened very quickly after that. Stark sprang, arching up and over Treon’s head, cleaving the red gases like a burning arrow. Egil started back, and shifted his aim upward, and his finger snapped down on the trigger stud.

  Something white came between Stark and Egil, and took the force of the bolt.

  Something white. A girl’s body, crowned with streaming hair, and a collar of metal glowing bright around the slender neck.

  Zareth.

  They had forgotten her, the beaten child crouched on the knees of the image. Stark had moved to keep her out of danger, and she was no threat to the mighty Egil, and Treon’s thoughts were known only to himself and the winds that taught him. Unnoticed, she had crept to a place where one last plunge would place her between Stark and death.

  The rush of Stark’s going took him on over her, except that her hair brushed softly against his skin. Then he was on top of Egil, and it had all been done so swiftly that the Lord of the Lhari had not had time to loose another bolt.

  Stark tore the weapon from Egil’s hand. He was cold, icy cold, and there was a strange blindness on him, so that he could see nothing clearly but Egil’s face. And it was Stark who screamed this time, a dreadful sound like the cry of a great cat gone beyond reason or fear.

  Treon stood watching. He watched the blood stream darkly into the sea, and he listened to the silence come, and he saw the thing that had been his cousin drift away on the slow tide, and it was as though he had seen it all before and was not surprised.

  Stark went to Zareth’s body. The girl was still breathing, very faintly, and her eyes turned to Stark, and she smiled.

  Stark was blind now with tears. All his rage had run out of him with Egil’s blood, leaving nothing but an aching pity and a sadness, and a wondering awe. He took Zareth very tenderly into his arms and held her, dumbly, watching the tears fall on her upturned face. And presently he knew that she was dead.

  Sometime later Treon came to him and said softly, “To this end she was born, and she knew it, and was happy. Even now she smiles. And she should, for she had a better death than most of us.” He laid his hand on Stark’s shoulder. “Come, I’ll show you where to put her. She will be safer there, and tomorrow you can bury her where she would wish to be.”

  Stark rose and followed him, bearing Zareth in his arms.

  Treon went to the pedestal on which the image sat. He pressed in a certain way upon a series of hidden springs, and a section of the paving slid noiselessly back, revealing stone steps leading down.

  CHAPTER X

  Treon led the way down, into darkness that was lightened only by the dim fires they them
selves woke in passing. No currents ran here. The red gas lay dull and stagnant, closed within the walls of a square passage built of the same black stone.

  “These are the crypts,” he said. “The labyrinth that is shown on the chart my father found.” And he told about the chart, as Varra had.

  He led the way surely, his misshapen body moving without hesitation past the mouths of branching corridors and the doors of chambers whose interiors were lost in shadow.

  “The history of the city is here. All the books and the learning, that they had not the heart to destroy. There are no weapons. They were not a warlike people, and I think that the force we of the Lhari have used differently was defensive only, protection against the beasts and the raiding primitives of the swamps.”

  With a great effort, Stark wrenched his thoughts away from the light burden he carried.

  “I thought,” he said dully, “that the crypts were under the wrecked building.”

  “So we all thought. We were intended to think so. That is why the building was wrecked. And for sixteen years we of the Lhari have killed men and women with dragging the stones of it away. But the temple was shown also in the chart. We thought it was there merely as a landmark, an identification for the great building. But I began to wonder…”

  “How long have you known?”

  “No long. Perhaps two rains. It took many seasons to find the secret of this passage. I came here at night, when the others slept.”

  “And you didn’t tell?”

  “No!” said Treon. “You are thinking that if I had told, there would have been an end to the slavery and the death. But what then? My family, turned loose with the power to destroy a world, as this city was destroyed? No! It was better for the slaves to die.”

  He motioned Stark aside, then, between doors of gold that stood ajar, into a vault so great that there was no guessing its size in the red and shrouding gloom.

  “This was the burial place of their kings,” said Treon softly. “Leave the little one here.”

  Stark looked around him, still too numb to feel awe, but impressed even so.