The Halfling and Other Stories

by Leigh Brackett

  “We know nothing of this Conna,” he said. “We come in peace. But if you want war we will make war. If you kill us others will come—many others. Our ship is huge and very terrible. Its fire alone can destroy your city. Will you let us in, old man, or must we…”

  After a long time the other said slowly, “What is your name?”

  “Rand,” said Conway.

  “Rand,” repeated the old man softly. “Rand.” He was silent for a time, brooding, his chin sunk on his breast. His eyes were hooded and he did not look again at Conway.

  Abruptly he turned and issued orders in his own tongue. Then, to the Earthmen, he shouted, “Enter!”

  The great stone was rolled away.

  Conway went back to the others. Both Esmond and Rohan were furious.

  “Who gave you the right—” Rohan began, and Esmond broke in passionately:

  “You shouldn’t have threatened them! A little more talk would have convinced them.”

  Conway looked at them contemptuously.

  “You wanted in, didn’t you?” he demanded. “All right, the gate’s open and they’ll think twice about getting tough with us after we’re through it.”

  He unbuckled his gun belt and tossed it, holster and all, to a man on the wall. It was a gesture and no more because he had hidden a small anaesthetic needle-gun under his coverall in case of need—but it would look good to the Iskarians.

  “I’d do the same if I were you,” he said to the others. “Also, I would send the men back. They’re not going to do us any good inside the wall and they might do us harm. Tell them to bring the trade goods and one of the radios from the sledges and then return to the ship—and stand by.”

  Rohan scowled. He did not like having the command taken from him. But Conway’s orders made sense and he relayed them. Then he tossed his own gun to one of the warriors. Esmond did not carry one. The men went away, back to the sledges.

  “Remember,” said Conway, “you never heard of ‘Conna,’ or his son.”

  The others nodded. They turned then and went into the city and the stone gate was closed behind them.

  The old man was waiting for them, and with him a sort of honor guard of fifteen tall fighting men.

  “I am Krah,” said the old patriarch. He waited politely until Esmond and Rohan had said their names and then he said, “Come.”

  The guard formed up. The Earthmen went—half guest, half captive—into the streets of the city.

  They were narrow winding streets, rambling up and down over the broken ground. In some places they were scoured clean to the ice by the whistling wind, in others they were choked by drifts. Conway could see now that the buildings were all of solid stone, over which the cold shining mail had formed for centuries, except where the openings were kept clear.

  The people of the city were gathered to watch as the strangers went by.

  It was a strangely silent crowd. Men, women and children, old and young, all of them as stalwart and handsome as mountain trees, with their wide black pupils and pale hair, the men clad in skins, the women in kittles of rough woolen cloth. Conway noticed that the women and children did not mingle with the men.

  Silent, all of them, and watching. There was something disquieting in their stillness. Then, somewhere, an old woman sent up a keening cry of lament, and another took it up, and another, until the eerie ochone echoed through the twisting streets as though the city itself wept in pain.

  The men began to close in. Slowly at first, now one stepping forward, now another, like the first pebbles rolling before the rush of the avalanche. Conway’s heart began to pound and there was a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Esmond cried out to the old man, “Tell them not to fear us! Tell them we are friends!”

  Krah looked at him and smiled. His eyes went then to Conway and he smiled again.

  “I will tell them,” he said.

  “Remember,” said Conway harshly. “Remember the great ship and its fires.”

  Krah nodded. “I will not forget.”

  He spoke to the people, shouting aloud, and reluctantly the men drew back and rested the butts of their spears on the ground. The women did not cease to wail.

  Conway cursed his father for the things he had not written in his notes.

  Quite suddenly, out of a steep side lane, a herd boy drove his flock with a scramble and a clatter. The queer white-furred beasts milled in the narrow space, squealing, filling the air with their sharp, not unpleasant odor.

  As though that pungency were a trigger, a shutter clicked open somewhere in Conway’s mind and he knew that he had seen these streets before, known the sounds and smells of the city, listened to the harsh staccato speech. The golden wheeling of the stars overhead hurt him with a poignant familiarity.

  Conway plunged again into that limbo between fact and dream. It was far worse this time. He wanted to sink down and cling to something until his mind steadied again but he did not dare do anything but walk behind the old man as though nothing on Iskar could frighten him.

  Yet he was afraid—afraid with the fear of madness, where the dream becomes the reality.

  Beads of sweat came out on his face and froze there. He dug his nails into his palms and forced himself to remember his whole life, back to his earliest memory and beyond, when his father must have talked and talked of Iskar, obsessed with the thought of what he had found there and lost again.

  He had not spoken so much of Iskar when his son was old enough to understand. But it seemed that the damage was already done. The formative years, the psychologists call them, when the things learned and forgotten will come back to haunt one later on.

  Conway was a haunted man, walking through that strange city. And old Krah watched him sidelong and smiled and would not be done with smiling.

  The women wailed, howling like shewolves to the dark heavens.

  CHAPTER IV “Go Ask of Her…

  It seemed like centuries to Conway, but it could not have been so long in actual time before Krah stopped beside a doorway and pulled aside the curtain of skins that covered it.

  “Enter,” he said and the Earthmen filed through, leaving the guard outside, except for five who followed the old man.

  “My sons,” said Krah.

  All grown men, far older than Conway, and scarred, tough-handed warriors. Yet they behaved toward Krah with the deference of children.

  The ground floor of the house was used for storage. Frozen sides of meat and bundles of a dried mosslike stuff occupied one side. On the other was a pen and a block for butchering. Apparently there was no wood on Iskar, for the pen was built of stone and there were no doors, only the heavy curtains.

  Krah lifted another one of these, leading the way up a closed stair that served as a sort of airlock to keep out the draughts and the extreme cold of the lower floor. The upper chamber was freezing by any Earthly standards but a small, almost smokeless fire of moss burned on the round hearth and the enormously thick walls were perfect insulation against the wind. Immediately Conway began to sweat, probably from sheer nervousness.

  A girl sat by the hearth, tending the spit and the cooking pot. Obviously she had only just run back in from the street, for there was still snow in her silvery hair and her sandals were wet with it.

  She did not lift her head when the men came in, as though such happenings were not for her to notice. Yet Conway caught a sidelong glance of her eyes. In the soft light of the stone lamps her pupils had contracted to show the clear blue iris, and for all her apparent meekness, he saw that her eyes were bright and rebellious and full of spirit. Conway smiled.

  She met his gaze fairly for a moment with a curious intensity, as though She would tear away his outer substance and see everything that lay beneath it—his heart, his soul, his innermost thoughts, greedily, all in a minute. Then the old man spoke and she was instantly absorbed in the turning of the spit.

  “Sit,” said Krah, and the Earthmen sat on heaps of furs spread over cushions of moss.

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nbsp; The five tall sons sat also but Krah remained standing.

  “So you know nothing of Conna,” he said.

  Conna’s son answered blandly, “No.”

  “Then how came you to Iskar?”

  Conway shrugged. “How did Conna come? The men of Earth go everywhere.” Unconsciously he had slipped into Krah’s ceremonial style of phrasing. He leaned forward, smiling.

  “My words were harsh when I stood outside your gate. Let them be forgotten, for they were only the words of anger. Forget Conna also. He has nothing to do with us.”

  “Ah,” said the old man softly. “Forget. That is a word I do not know. Anger, yes—and vengeance also. But not forget.”

  He turned to Rohan and Esmond and spoke to them and answered them courteously while they explained their wishes. But his gaze, frosty blue now in the light, rested broodingly on Conway’s face and did not waver. Conway’s nerves tightened and tightened and a great unease grew within him.

  He could have sworn that Krah knew who he was and why he had come to Iskar.

  Reason told him that this was ridiculous. It had been many years since Krah had seen his father and in any case they were physically dissimilar. Nor did it seem likely that he should have preserved intact any of his father’s mannerisms.

  Yet he could not be sure and the uncertainty preyed upon him. The old man’s bitter gaze was hard to bear.

  The five sons neither moved nor spoke. Conway was sure that they understood the conversation perfectly and he reflected that, according to Krah, they had lived with Conna as his brother. They seemed to be waiting, quite patiently, as though they had waited a long time and could afford to wait a little longer.

  From time to time the girl stole a secret smoldering look at Conway and in spite of his uneasiness he grew very curious about her, wondering what devil of unrest lurked in her mind. She had a fascinating little face, full of odd lights and shadows where the glow of the fire touched it.

  “Trade,” said Krah at last. “Friendship. Study. They are good words. Let us eat now, and then rest, and I will think of these good words, which I have heard before from Conna.”

  “Look here,” said Rohan rather testily. “I don’t know what Conna did here but I see no reason to condemn us for his sins.”

  “We speak the truth,” said Esmond gently. He glanced at Conway, waiting for him to ask the question that was his to ask. But Conway could not trust himself and finally Esmond’s curiosity drove him to blurt out, “What was Conna’s crime?”

  The old man turned upon him a slow and heavy look. “Do not ask of me,” he said. “Ask of her who waits, by the Lake of the Gone Forever.”

  That name stung Conway’s nerves like a whiplash. He was afraid he had betrayed himself but if he started no one seemed to notice. The faces of Esmond and Rohan were honestly blank.

  “The Lake of the Gone Forever,” Esmond repeated. “What is that?”

  “Let there be an end to talk,” said Krah.

  He turned and spoke to the girl in his own tongue and Conway caught the name Ciel. She rose obediently and began to serve the men, bringing the food on platters of thin carved stone. When she was done she sat down again by the fire and ate her own dinner from what was left, a slim, humble shadow whose eyes were no more humble than the eyes of a young panther. Conway stole her a smile and was rewarded by a brief curving of her red mouth.

  When the meal was finished Krah rose and led the Earthmen down a corridor. There were two curtained doorways on each side and beyond them were small windowless cells, with moss and furs heaped soft to make a sleeping place.

  Ciel came quietly to light the stone lamps and it seemed to Conway that she took special note of the cubicle he chose for his own.

  “Sleep,” said Krah, and left them. Ciel vanished down a narrow back stair at the end of the hall.

  The Earthmen stood for a moment, looking at each other, and then Conway said sullenly, “Don’t ask me any questions because I don’t know the answers.”

  He turned and went into his chamber, dropping the curtain behind him. In a vile mood he sat down on the furs and lighted a cigarette, listening to Rohan’s low half-angry voice telling Esmond that he thought Rand was acting very strangely. Esmond answered soothingly that the situation would be a strain on anyone. Presently Conway heard them go to bed. He blew out his lamp.

  He sat for quite a while, in a terrible sweat of nerves, thinking of Krah, thinking of the narrow valley that lay so nearly within his reach, thinking of his father, hating him because of the black memories he had left behind on Iskar, so that now the way was made very hard for his son.

  Heaven help him if old Krah ever found out!

  He waited for some time after everything was still. Then, very carefully, he lifted the curtain and stepped out into the hall.

  He could see into the big main room. Four of Krah’s brawny sons slept on the furs by the embers. The fifth sat crosslegged, his spear across his knees, and he did not sleep.

  Conway glanced at the back stair. He was perfectly sure that it led to the women’s quarters and that any venturing that way would bring the whole house around his ears. He shrugged and returned to his cell.

  Stretched out on the furs he lay frowning into the dark, trying to think. He had not counted on the hatred of the Iskarians for Earthmen. He wondered for the hundredth time what his father had done to make all the women of Iskar wail a dirge when they were reminded of him. Ask of her who waits, by the Lake of the Gone Forever…

  It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that they were under close watch and that it was a long way through the city for an Earthman to go and stay alive, even if he could get away from Krah.

  Quite suddenly, he became aware that someone had crept down the hall outside and stopped at his door.

  Without making a sound, Conway reached into the breast of his coverall and took hold of the gun that was hidden there. Then he waited.

  The curtain moved a little, then a little more, and Conway lay still and breathed like a sleeping man. Faint light seeped in, outlining the widening gap of the curtain, showing clearly to Conway’s eyes the figure that stood there, looking in.

  Ciel, a little grey mouse in her sodden kirtle, her hair down around her shoulders like a cape of moonbeams. Ciel, the mouse with the wildcat’s eyes.

  Partly curious to see what she would do, partly afraid that a whisper might attract attention from the other room, Conway lay still, feigning sleep.

  For a long moment the girl stood without moving, watching him. He could hear the sound of her breathing, quick and soft. At last she took one swift step forward, then paused, as though her courage had failed her. That was her undoing.

  The big man with the spear must have caught some flicker of movement, the swirl of her skirt, perhaps, for she had made no noise. Conway heard a short exclamation from the main room, and Ciel dropped the curtain and ran. A man’s heavier footfalls pelted after her.

  There was a scuffling at the other end of the hall and some low intense whispering. Conway crept over and pulled the curtain open a crack.

  Krah’s son held the girl fast. He seemed to be lecturing her, more in sorrow than in anger, and then, deliberately and without heat, he began to beat her. Ciel bore it without a whimper but her eyes glazed and her face was furious.

  Conway stepped silently out into the hall. The man’s back was turned, but Ciel saw him. He indicated in pantomime what she should do and she caught the idea at once—or perhaps only the courage to do it.

  Twisting like a cat, she set her teeth hard in the arm that held her.

  The men let Her go from sheer astonishment rather than pain. She fled down the woman-stair and he stood staring after her, his mouth wide open, as dumbfounded as though the innocent stones he walked on had risen suddenly and attacked him. Conway got the feeling that such a thing had never happened before in the history of Iskar.

  He leaned lazily against the wall and said aloud, “What’s going on?”

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nbsp; Krah’s son turned swiftly and the look of astonishment was replaced instantly by anger.

  Conway made a show of yawning, as though he had just woken up. “Was that Ciel you were thrashing? She’s a pretty big girl to be spanked.” He grinned at the marks on the man’s arm. “By the way, who is she—Krah’s granddaughter?”

  The answer came slowly in stumbling but understandable English.

  “Krah’s fosterling, daughter of my sister’s friend. Ciel drank wickedness with mother’s milk—wickedness she learn from my sister, who learn from Conna.”

  Quite suddenly the big man reached out and took Conway’s jacket-collar in a throttling grip. Amazingly there were tears in his eyes and a deep, bitter rage.

  “I will warn you, man of Earth,” he said softly. “Go—go swiftly while you still live.”

  He flung Conway from him and turned away, back to the big room to brood again by the fire. And the Earthman was left to wonder whether the warning was for them all or for himself alone.

  Hours later he managed to fall into an uneasy sleep, during which he dreamed again of the icy valley and the hidden terror that waited for him beyond the wall of rock: It seemed closer to him than ever before, so close that he awoke with a strangled cry. The stone cell was like a burial vault, and he left it, in a mood of desperation such as he had never known before. Outside, the wind was rising.

  He came into the big room just as Krah entered from the outer stair. Behind him, very white-faced and proud, came Marcia Rohan. Her cheek was bleeding and her lovely dark hair was wet and draggled and her eyes hurt Conway to look at them.

  “Marcia!” he cried and she ran to him, clinging with tight hands like a frightened child. He held her, answering her question before she could gasp it out.

  “Peter’s safe,” he said. “So is your father.. They’re quite safe.”

  Old Krah spoke. There was a strange stony quality about him now, as though he had come to some decision from which nothing could shake him. He looked at Conway.

  “Go,” he said. “Call your—friends.”