Beyond the golden stair

by Bok, Hannes, 1914-1964

  Ksor s brown tongue lashed forth a second time and licked up the springing hoimdl

  There was another noisome breath as it closed its jaws and waggled them from side to side, mimching.

  But by that time Hibbert and Mareth had raced for the shelter of the trees, their hands gripped together so firmly that the two were as one. What remnants of humanity the forest had retained asserted themselves now. It protected Hibbert and Mareth as best it couldl

  The peacock fans unfurled and waved wildly, scattering showers of spangled gleamings, every glint accompanied by the tinkle of glass. TTie virid hands lifted to thrust back the Ksor s towering bulk. The tubers of the bladder plants popped like thumping drums. The crimson mouths screamed imprecations, and the cactis whipping limbs snapped oflE their thorns in a plague of tiny arrowsl

  By threat and by plea to the Ksor s senses, they and unnamed others sought to hurt or tempt and so stay it—and what a pitiful few instants those were of lucidity and sacrifice, as ineflFectual as all the years of madness!

  They were to the Ksor like little
  Fast though Hibbert and Mareth might nm, they could scarcely escape the Ksor. The tingling which had coursed through Hibbert ever since his arrival in Khoire, an unobtrusive and not unpleasant sensation, sharpened now to flashes of shooting agony. It stabbed his crippled leg so intensely that he thought the bone must have snapped, then knew that it had not, else he could not still be stumbling onward.

  The beast's roars flared on their trail. Mareth*s foot

  caught on a root. Hibbert dragged her along. Tall as she was, her slimness was of shght weight, yet even that lightness was a tremendous strain on his dying wind and faltering heart

  For a while, the verdure parted before them, opening a way, then closing behind them, and knitting together into a woven wall that impeded the Ksor no more than a mat of straw can hold back a flood The green hands pushed Hibbert and Mareth along, but only for a while.

  It was, after all, a jungle of madness, and the seconds of shocked sanity had passed. Where it had sought to protect them, it became indifferent, even spiteful and hindering!

  And now that the hands were beating Hibbert back, the snaky creepers tripping him and dropping down on him like ill-knotted nooses, he would have stopped defeated, but Mareth urged him on. The last Ksor-flash had been but one of its leaps away. Another spring and surely it woidd crush themi

  Hibbert gasped, strangling, his lungs scorched as if cranmied with embers. The blood throbbing in his temples and behind his eyes afflicted him with a drunmiing blindness. Then at last there was no more flame in his chest and he ran for Mareth's sake alone on legs he could not feel.

  And now he was tiunbling into the blackness of his blindness and thought himself fainting, but it was the blackness of another planel Mareth had spied a hidden opening and dragged him into it. Air shrieked past his ears—^they were falling, and from what inconceivable height?

  He saw far below two bright forms arrowing at an obhque angle toward them. Then he and Mareth met them with a jarring impact—their own reflections!

  They had dropped to a slanting mirror-floor, so steep that it seemed a shde. All aroimd was nothing but darfcaess.

  Their skidding slowed to a stop. The floor was level, and had been all along, but they had timibled from a place stretching almost at a right angle to this one, so that they had dropped from it practically on a parallel with this glassy pave.

  They lay panting, too exhausted to rise, and cheek to cheek. Then Mareth stirred, looked at him wonder-ingly and gladly, and smiled. They sat upright, and she laid her slim hands to his cheeks, drawing him nearer. Her eyes searched deeply into his own. She kissed him.

  He swept his arms around her and held her very tightly. Their heartbeats matched. Her lips were soft and sweet.

  At last he remembered, and groaned. **You love me —^nowl But vidll you love what I may become during the Changer

  **0h, but already you have made itl*' She pointed to the pavement whereon they sat, and forced his head to bend that he might see. "Behold yourself 1'^

  Reluctantly, he took his arms from around her, bent over the reflecting floor, and studied what never could have been the face with which he had been bom. It was a strangers! And he knew that he looked upon what few men of his world ever had been privileged to see—his very own soull

  Nor was he sure that he was much pleased by what he saw, though at no time had he ever imagined his inner self to be some splendid entity. He lifted and looked at his large hands. They were thick-fingered and strong as Scarlatti's had been.

  His face had aged by years. Its features had coarsen-

  ed, the forehead widened a Uttle and the brows grown shaggy. His mouth was more full-Upped, sensually weak. Save for that breadth of brow, those wide-set eyes, and his own olden coloring, his face was very like that which once had been Scarlatti's—the dwarf eaten by the Ksor.

  He had not noticed until now that his garments had been burst and rent by the Change. Also his shoes pinched danmably despite their broken laces. He H struggled out of them and observed half-himiorously:

  ^ **! dont know myselfl Whatever I might have

  thought of myself, it certainly wasn t that I was a mental giantl'*

  Mareth laughed. "Nor are you, my love! You are still merely a man, not so handsome as those of Khoire, nor so wise, yet strong and earnest as ever any man should be, in any world. And oh, now I know you. For now yoiu-s is that face which so long I have awaited, that face of which I have dreamedl"

  Then they were both silent and very close for a long, long while that was only a moment. In fancy or in fact, there no longer was any gulf between them.

  No gulf?

  Hibbert groaned and held Mareth the more tightly. "The Ancient Law! At last you love me—and now Ive got to go back to my own world, alone! Mareth, Tm missing you already when I think of what that means!'*

  "No matter how long the search, how bitter the struggle, you will find your way back to me?"

  He swore that he would.

  But he couldn't help wondering.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Again the Flamingo

  They had dropped into a remote comer of the Hall of Blackness from a hitherto imsuspected opening. With Uttle diflSculty, Mareth foimd that green-walled chamber wherein Patur was waiting.

  Against Hibbert's increased bulk, he seemed small and frail. He had been feverishly threading his omnipresent necklace through his fingers. Now he cried:

  "You are back, and safel'* He dropped the necklace to gather Mareth close, and he beamed approvingly at Hibbert. '"Khoire protected youl'' Hibbert thought of the Ksor and was not so sure. "And the others?"*

  Mareth told him about them. Hibbert bent to retrieve the fallen beads and learned at last why Patur took such comfort from them.

  From each of the rounded stones, faint current pulsed, thrilling the nerves of the fingertips with faint sensation. One bead was the warmth of smooth soft flesh, another the lazy heat of a smnmer sun. There were globules with ihe soothing chill of virgin moonlight, the nipping tang of frost, the bite of ice. Some of the stones were crisply dry and pleasant as happy letters from an old regretted love, and the brown petals scenting a rose-jar. And others were moistly reminiscent of dank fallen leaves and sum-

  199

  moned memories, even olfactory ones, of a lorn autumn forest.

  No, it was no rosary, but rather a device to lull tense senses and comparable to the alcohol and tobacco of Hibbert's world. Small wonder that Scarlatti had been startled and dissatisfied with the cigarettes which he had tested—the Khoireans had probably improved on them, disastrously according to the giant's viewpoint.

  The gianti Ah, but Scarlatti had died a dwarf I

  Mareth broke into his regrets over Scarlatti and Carlotta by telling Patur of her love for Hibbert
Patur said:

  *1 will not say that I rejoice at this news, but I am not surprised. Mareth's form and interests have always been only too human.** And lest Hibbert be oflFended, he added smiling: "As obviously mine also." i! He made no comment on the suddenness of

  Mareth's affection. Things were done differently in Khoire. There was no need for prolonged courtships when only a glance assured one of another's character.

  Then Patiu: grew sad. T am deeply sorry that you must depart from Klhoire, but so the wise Law has decreedl You love Mareth and she loves you. For a while, just that knowledge must be enough for you both. You would not be so selfish as to wish to take her with you down to your homeland, where monsters pretend to be men ,and death, if not in violent from, yet comes swiftly from natural causes. There below she must age and die in the triumph of form over will. Here above she may retain the bloom of youth for untold centuries—and you too, once you have earned your way back to her side. Also, she is of the Qsin, the Watchers, and neither could nor would forsake her duties I"

  I

  Again the Flamingo 201

  Hibbert said: "Mareth belongs up here. I wouldn't dream of taking her back with me/'

  Patur nodded, pleased. 'Were you to stay here as at present you are, you would only become a burden to her, for you are not equipped for life in Khoire. You have proved your sincerity and goodwill, but now you must prove your resourcefulness. You must seek out those teachers with whom our Qsin commimicate, and I am forbidden by the Law to name them. It will not be easy, and often you will despair.''

  Then suddenly, discreetly, he remembered that he had not yet reported the latest developments to the search parties headed by Dweil, and to the Great Ones.

  'Tfou have but few moments remaining!" he warned, and left them.

  They made good use of his absence. But all too soon a brassy fanfare rang from aloft, and dazzling white rays abruptly crossed lances like the swift formation of jagged luminous crystals. Hibbert's ears hummed and he blinked.

  Patur returned with four of the blue-clad folk, the protectors of the golden stair. He pointed up to the light and explained: "The representative of the Great Ones watches from above our observance of the Law." He and Mareth touched their foreheads. "John Hibbert, it is time for you to leave Khoirel"

  The blue-robes ranked themselves behind Hibbert. Mareth took his arm and led him through the dark corridor.

  "When you return," she whispered, '1 will be waiting. And though you never return, still I will wait!"

  He heard soft and wistful music.

  "It is night in yoin: homeland/' she said. *Tou are hearing the starsl And harken—the moon is rising."

  But he would not heed that deepening mellow call, that distant blare of a northland frost-giant's horn chilling its prey to easy capture. He lifted her slender hand to his Hps. A minute or so more, and he might never see her again!

  In the room of the Frame, the blue-robes busied themselves with the black circle's gems. Mareth tore oflF her crystal pendant and closed Hibbert's fingers over it.

  "It is a better remembrance than a lock of hair,** she said. "It is attuned to my life-force and thus is a part of me." It quivered with colors and throbbing warmth, more aUve than any photograph—it kissed his hands and his eyes.

  "And a second keepsake I will give you," Mareth said, with a wary look at Patur, who after all had the kindness to stand a Httle removed from them. She arose on tiptoe and her hps brushed Hibbert's cheek.

  She whispered: "These words! Nor ever forget them!" Then she spoke with her voice rather than her thought, and so softly that they made little color. 'Va khoseth yagal" Had Patur been watching closely, which he was not, he would have but thought that she was giving Hibbert his last kiss.

  She withdrew reluctantly from Hibbert's clasp and drifted to Patur's side at the base of one of the Fu dogs. It glared from high above, fire wreathing from its nostrils—alive!

  And now the black frame's jewels caught and relayed each other s rays and wove them into a cloth of glowing gold. The doorway to the Forefathers' World was open!

  No longer sympathetic but all cold eflBdency, Patur pointed. The stair has formed. Descendr And again from aloft, from unseen clarions, the brazen fanfare sounded.

  There was nothing to do but obey, and easier said than done. Hibbert dragged slowly over to the golden-glowing disc so like a great gong, but he could not take his eyes from Mareth. He wondered why she had whispered those three cryptic words and what they could possibly mean, never guessing what her intention had been.

  "Va khoseth yagar Had they been a simple statement of love in the ancient and unknown tongue of Khoire? Or a password to the teachers whom he must seek below? Were they a riddle whose solution might lead him to those teachers?

  Would he ever know?

  ""I'll be backl" he called fiercely from in front of the golden disc. He snatched one last backward look. Patur was as aloof and unmoved as a far star. Mareth quickly fingered a tear from her cheek and smiled confidently for him, her head held proudly high.

  Then he lunged into the disc and the yellow haze enwrapped him. Before it had curtained away the last vestiges of Kloire, he saw the Fu dogs stirring on their pedestals—they seemed to stretch and yawn. Then, from over the heads of the oldster and the girl, they vaulted down to the mirrored floor and trotted up to the ebon frame and its glowing circle. They squatted on their haimches before it, sharp-eyed and wary.

  Hibbert went down the golden tunneFs steps past the walls of adamant yellow flowers and leaves. He squeezed through the lattice work of the vines and

  tiptoed gingerly on the brittle velvet of the moss which slashed his naked feet And now he was standing on the bottom step.

  The blue flamingo's pool lay just outside the light and he saw it as though through yellow glass, its waters spangled with the uprush of aiu*eate bubbles, a cauldron of seething molten gold. One movement more and he would leave the light for a drab world of vanity, avarice, and deceit—^but he would not enter it alone, nol For with him as constant companion would go a bitter hunger and an aching loneliness.

  For a twinkling, his resolution wavered, the cry of his heart drowning the bidding of his will. The blue-robes above must have seen him falter as others might have faltered before him, and they knew what to do. They snapped off the stairway's current Hibbert dropped down into the pool and into darkness—

  Into agonyl It was that same excruciating pain which had riddled every cell of his body when he had first stepped into Khoire, and it ate and eradicated all his consciousness with the crunch of acid teeth. Perhaps it was the necessary readjustment from one set of physical limitations back to the other.

  It wore away slowly, fraction by fraction of degree. As an infant fresh from the torture of birth becomes faintly aware of the life it has entered, gradual detail succeeding detail, so Hibbert awoke once more to sensation and reason.

  He heard the rasping purr of the frogs somewhere down in the darkness, the fluting laughter of the cicadas, and the deep, twanging plucked-note which was the cry of an owl. Before his wide eyes hung a faintly glowing spot which intensified and became the lopsided, three-quarters moon. The stars were very large and very bright, like diamonds spread on a

  jeweler's dark cloth of sky for the temptation of foolish angels.

  Down in the sawgrass burned further stars, those mirrored in the black water and others of wan orange and ebbing green which flitted restlessly—the swamp-land's fireflies.

  He waded from the pool to the dry parapet and stood staring at the dying ripples. He raised his eyes. Somewhere only a few hundred feet above, Mareth was waiting—^farther from him than the moonl

  He remembered her pendant. Its touch was no longer pulsant and warm. He uncurled his fingers and looked at it. In Khoire, it had been clear and glowing, a bubble of riotous rainbows. Here it was opaque, dull, and colorless as the stone which the Chinese call dead jade and which they say their gods have worn, and, in wearing it, have drawn the stony
life from it, killing it.

  Even as he brooded over it, its ribbon thinned away to a gray cobweb, coiled upward like a tendril of smoke and was gonel The pendant feU apart into powder and was whisked by a breeze from his palm, fluttering dissolving away in a whiff of whirling dust. Their elements were those of an ahen, incomparably finer world, and they could not endure the forces of his own. Fairy gold, turning to ashes in mortal hands!

  Now his only souvenir were those words which Mareth had whispered, or words which he might have dreamed—^unless he were not dreaming still.

  Dreaming? Ah, God nol Was there not the proof of his changed self? He bent for confirmation to the glassy pool and looked long and longer at the face which never had been his own.

  Then he heard a sound of clapping as if somewhere in the distance a lone pair of hands were beating

  together, applauding—whom? It came louder and from overhead like an ovation of an angell He gazed up at a double twinkle like the onrush of blinking blue meteors, glints from the lustrous wings of a descending bird-It was the blue flamingo returning to its pool, not slain by Burks after all! Or was it Burks himself? It scattered scarcely a drop as it settled on the water and stood waiting for the ripples to smooth away. Then as Hibbert had done, it cocked its head down at its reflection. Then it lifted its head and preened itself. It stretched out a wing to contemplate it, and saw Hibbert.

  A bronze-glinting eye burned at him, and he heard its voice in his mind instead of with his ears. ^'Some-body here already?*' They were the crisp tones of Burksl

  Hibbert cried: *'Burks, is it really you?^ ^t s me, all right. But who the hell are you? Tve never seen you before, but you know my namel*' *Tm Hibbert, don t you remember?^ TEIibbert?^ The long neck snaked up in surprise, then craned forward. ''Hibbert, hey? You look a danmed sight more like FrankI And so that's what you were like inside all the timel'' His laughter crunched wryly. "A hell of a jokeP