by Lin Carter
What followed was uncanny.
Suddenly the aged priest was gone.
His robes fell in upon themselves, collapsing upon emptiness.
The ceramic bottle fell to the crystal pave and broke in a thousand ringing shards.
A loose bundle of robes lay there in a heap. But the gaunt and mummy-like figure of Phuun… was gone!
Then there came waddling through the twilight a comical, fat-paunched, scarlet lizard with great, solemn, humorous, and philosophical eyes under its trilobate crest of gold.
It was the Ushongti they called Old One.
It waddled and flopped up the steps and under the crystal dome. Squatting on its hind legs, its stubby tail thrust out behind to balance it in a position absurdly like that of a kangaroo, the Old One folded its four-fingered paws over its fat belly and peered down solemnly and at the soiled, bedraggled bundle of discarded raiment Then it bent to poke- about in the tangle of cloth.
It drew therefrom a naked infant.
It was small and rosy-golden; and it kicked fat legs sleepily, and cooed and gurgled. like some ridiculous caricature of a nurse, the fat, wise old lizard cuddled the tiny naked thing against its wobbling paunch—cradled it gently in unhuman, scarlet-scaled arms. With one pointed, gold claw-tip it tickled the babe and made it laugh!
Then, as M’Cord watched with dazed, bewildered, unbelieving eyes, the Old One turned and waddled off, the baby cradled tenderly against its scaly breast. It vanished in the gloom that had come down upon the garden .., and was gone!
“What—?” M’Cord mumbled between stiff lips.
“The mysteries of Ophar are beyond our knowledge and beyond the reach of our comprehension,” Thaklar said.
“But what will happen to—to—?”
The princeling shrugged.
“The Ushongti will care for the babe, as they have done before, until such time as it is grown enough to join the naked children in the woods,” he said. “Come … let us go. We can do nothing here, now; there will be no defilement of this place.”
He turned and strode back in the direction of the camp.
M’Cord took a last look at the Pool, then followed him.
As for Phuun, the Valley had been kind. He had been given that which he had come here in search of. More of youthfulness than he might have wished, but then, that is often the way with those who seek miracles. Sometimes they find them to be greater than they had desired, and more irrevocable.
Phuun had found peace. He had even found judgment —of a sort
XXIV. The Walking Trees
M’Cord went stumbling back to camp at Thaklar’s heels in a numb, wordless daze.
The pearly twilight had deepened now into velvet gloom. Above them, the under-surface of the illusory barrier that was the “sky” of the enchanted Valley was a dome of darkest jade. Still from rim to rim the ripples of gilt light wandered. The sky was like a calm lake inverted above them by some sorcerer’s spell, its placid waters trembling with the light of unseen stars.
They had come here to rape Eden, to despoil it of its treasures. But those treasures were calm, and peace, and innocence, and eternal youthfulness.
This was an Eden with no Serpent in it. They had each brought into Eden their own Serpent, coiled within their breasts, gnawing and feeding upon their own hearts.
For Inga the Valley had brought release from shame and guilt, escape from intolerable memories, and freedom.
For Karl the Valley had brought madness, or so it seemed: for he had run off bellowing into the night like a maddened thing.
For Phuun the Valley had brought erasure of his sins— retrogression into the innocence of infancy. He would grow into a young boy again with time, but he would become a different person. Phuun, or that collection of experiences and memories and traits grouped together under that name, was no more.
To him the Valley had been kind. It had given him that which is but rarely given to mortal man … a second chancel
And—the others? What had become of them under the pall of darkness which so mysteriously enshrouded the garden?
They found Zerild near the camp. The dancing girl was wild-eyed and distraught. She hurried to them as if eager for the reassurance of their normalcy.
“Has the world gone mad?” she blurted. Her face was flushed, her silken hair disordered, and fear was naked in her immense eyes. “Chastar became drunk with the golden wine and sought to force himself upon me,” she gasped. “I fought him off and fled into the woods to escape him. There I beheld the F’yagha girl, naked as a child, laughing with the golden children and gathering flowers. She did not seem to know me nor to understand my words!”
Thaklar nodded somberly. “The girl was touched by one of the shining bubbles, and her mind has been washed clean of all memories. We go in search of her now.”
“There is yet more!” Zerild panted. “Her brother! I met him, blundering and crashing through the brush, roaring like a maddened slidar. His face was streaming blood, and his clothes were ripped away. He did not seem to know me, either. He … he went on all fours, like a beast! Has the whole world gone mad, or is it I?”
Thaklar grunted, his face moody, yet there was fierce satisfaction in his eyes.
“The Valley defends itself by strange magic against intruders,” he said. “Those who are free of evil taint, forced against their will to enter here, may escape enchantment. All others are—changed. But what of the wolf? You saw him not after fleeing from him? He did not follow you into the further woods?”
The frightened girl shook her head, eyes wide, and opened her mouth to speak. But at that moment a shrill cry rang out—the voice of a young girl, lifted in fear and pain.
“Chastar!” the Hawk prince swore.
“That sounded like one of the children,” said M’Cord. Thaklar seized his arm with fingers like steel clamps. Suddenly there was fear in his eyes, too.
“If he has dared to lay hands of lust upon one of them . . he muttered. He did not finish the remark, but left the words hanging in the air.
“What, then?” demanded the Earthman.
Thaklar shook his head ominously. “Then must we all fear for our lives, my brother! For if the Sleeping Ones awaken—”
“You mean the gods?”
“No; those that were left here by the gods to protect the sanctity of the Valley. The lizard-folk but tend the gardens and the Pool; but there are others….”
Zerild clutched his shoulder, nodding to the circle of trees which ringed the garden.
“The cry sounded as if it came from there,” she said. With a curt word to M’Cord, Thaklar began to run in the direction from which the scream had come. He had bidden M’Cord stay behind, but the Earthman ignored it. If there was danger of some sort, he refused to linger behind while Thaklar faced it alone.
He had noticed that peculiar circle of trees when first they had come into this enchanted place. They had been spaced with such regularity as to suggest that they had been planted by intelligent direction. And they had completely encircled the garden, like a protective wall. M’Cord had puzzled over it at the time, but so many strange discoveries and marvels had come to his attention since that he had let this little strangeness slip his mind. But he remembered they were oddly different from the other trees that grew in the forests further down the Valley.
They found Chastar by the trees.
He had seized upon one of the golden children. Sometimes they wandered idly into the gardens, for no particular reason. M’Cord had seen them dancing on the mossy turf, or splashing in the lake, or playing amidst the flowers. They paid scant attention to the six outsiders, did not answer their questions, and soon wandered off again into the dim, far places.
But this young girl had wandered in alone, and had chanced to be found by the drunken outlaw, who was inflamed and frenzied by the wine the lizard-folk brewed.
He had seized her and pulled her down and was struggling with her on the turf when Thaklar burst upon the scene, with
M’Cord not far behind.
The girl was adolescent; perhaps she did not understand what Chastar was trying to do, but the violence and hunger of him frightened her, and she had cried out. Now he was fighting to master her, his hands moving over her tender young body, his mouth seeking hers fiercely. The bewildered innocent fought like a young tigress but she was only a child and Chastar was a fully grown man, and a powerful one.
Thaklar bore no weapons, of course; nor did M’Cord. And the outlaw wore his energy guns strapped to his thighs. But there was no need for them to attempt to subdue him with their bare hands.
For one of the guardians was … awake!
The girl struggled in Chastar’s arms and again she cried out—a single, piercing, bell-like note.
Behind them one of the trees… stirred.
Its roots pulled up out of the soil with a sucking sound. Its drooping, willow-like branches, which quivered to a wind that none of them could feel, now coiled and trembled with tension as the upper body of a cobra vibrates before it strikes.
M’Cord did not need Thaklar’s arm to restrain him from going forward. He stood as if rooted to the spot, and his blood turned to ice within his veins as he watched the incredible thing.
The tree had pulled itself up out of the soil by now. It sidled forward, hairy black roots wriggling beneath it like snakes. Drooping fronds bent forward extended toward the outlaw, who saw or knew nothing but the slim childlike body that lay helpless, panting in the circle of his arms.
Then the tree was upon him. Branches flashed like slithering tentacles to encircle his throat. His eyes bulged in an expression of shocked amazement that would have seemed comical at another time. His mouth opened to yell —to curse—but no sound came therefrom.
Branches lashed about him like the coils of an anaconda. They pulled him off the girl and dangled him in the air, inches above the mossy turf, kicking and struggling frantically.
The sobbing girl sprang to her feet and darted off with a single frightened backward glance.
“We must help him,” M’Cord growled between his teeth. Thaldar shook his head.
“We can do nothing to help him now,” he said heavily. “And if we try, the other Sleeping Ones will rouse themselves to deal with us in the same manner. They sleep but lightly, you see….”
He turned; Zerild was there watching, cramming her knuckles into her open mouth so that she would not scream. He put his arms about her shoulders and turned her about so that she could not see the end of it.
“Come,” he said. They went back into the garden while the tree crushed the life from Chastar the red wolf.
XXV. When the Valley Woke
No longer did the Valley seem fair and tranquil. There were forces within it, they now knew, that were vast and hidden and terrible. Forces that could transform an old, old man into a puling infant, or drive a girl over the brink of madness, or slay a man suddenly and horribly.
On the way back, Zerild fell to her knees and was sick— rackingly, horribly sick. It was as if she spewed up all the venom and rancor that had built up within her all these years of treachery and betrayal.
It left her pale and weak and shaken. But Thaklar tended her gently, as one might tend a child. He wiped the vomit from her face with a bit of cloth, hushed her tears, and when she was too weak to stand, he gathered her up in his strong arms and bore her thusly back to their camp, her head swaying with exhaustion, drooping wearily against his chest.
By the margin of the pond he put her down and gave her cool water to drink.
Then he squatted beside her on his heels, staring off into the gloom that hung over the garden.
The Ushongti were not to be seen. The lizard-folk were gone from the garden, to whatever place they nested. Nor were any more of the naked children of the woods to be found amidst the gardens.
Only the three of them were left.
“I should have seen it coming,” Thaklar muttered heavily. “The darkness. It is the Night-of-Gods, the khiah-i-huatha whispered of in the oldest myths. The Darkening-time. It comes over the Valley when the sleeping forces stir and wake to protect The Holy against those who would intrude upon and defile its tranquility.”
“Can we get out alive, do you think?” M’Cord asked hoarsely.
“If we leave now, perhaps. But we must be gone at once, and without delay.”
M’Cord started to move, then paused.
“What about Inga? And Nordgren. We can’t just leave them here!”
Thaklar was sweating; it glistened on his brow and on the bridge of his nose. He shook his head.
“Listen to me, ’Gort, my brother. This Valley is like a great machine, designed for a purpose. For many purposes. The gods are not here: they sleep in Yhoom—wherever and whatever Yhoom may be, which I know not. But it is not a machine of metal parts, such as those your people brought here. The Valley machine is composed of forces, forces vast and huge and powerful beyond our comprehension. Forces balanced against each other in tension, and bound together in rhythm and equipoise. We have disturbed that delicate balance by merely coming here; we disturb it, even now, simply by being here. Like a great machine, the Valley has resources built into its very nature for cleansing itself of impurities. Of grit, you could say. Once those forces have been stirred to wakefulness, they are swift to slay—as the red wolf was slain when he sought to violate the child. Nothing that creates a disturbance within the interplay of those forces whereof the machine is composed is permitted to exist here for very long. If we leave here now, taking nothing with us that is of the Valley, we may yet escape with our lives, and with ourselves unchanged, save in those matters wherein already the Valley has changed us. But to linger once the Darken-ing-time has come is madness and folly. We must go now, or remain here forever, and be changed—to innocent, forgetful childishness, as was the F’yagha girl, or to brutish madness, as I suspect the dok-i-tor her brother has been changed.”
It was an impassioned speech, a display of volubility unusual for Thaklar, who was of nature a man of few words. But M’Cord refused to be swayed by them.
“I’m not going without the girl,” he said stubbornly. “And that’s that. Maybe you’re right, and we should get out of here now before we get killed by those walking trees … but I don’t know, Thaklar; I don’t set such a big value on myself, that I can hightail it out of here and leave Inga behind to take care of herself…”
“She has forgotten you; she has even forgotten herself,” said Thaklar somberly. “The Valley has taken her into itself by now, I think. What is the word you Outworlders use? Assimilated; the Valley has assimilated her. She is a part of it.”
“Maybe. And maybe not. She was only touched by one bubble, remember. Anyway, whether she’s lost her memories permanently or not, she deserves a chance. My people have remedies for the mind that has been injured or made ill; I owe her that much, at least. To see her taken care of. Whether she ever remembers me or not.”
Thaklar looked at him with a wondering and bemused expression on his face. And when he laughed, softly, it was a laughter that had no bitterness nor mockery in it.
“The Valley has changed you, too, my brother: whether you know it yet or not.”
“Eh?”
“I think that you have learned how to love a woman again,” Thaklar said gently. “When you came here, there was a wound deep within you. You had been hurt sorely once, by a woman—as had I. There was a hard thing within you, a core of bitterness, like a knot of scar-tissue— a scab upon the heart. And now the Valley has worked its magic upon you, healing that wound as the Old One healed your tom leg, making it sound and whole again. Do you not love the woman, my brother?”
“I—” M’Cord started to speak, then checked himself and hesitated. What, after all, had passed between them except a few unimportant words, and a single kiss?
“I think you’re right; I do love her; God help me!” he said at last, in a choked voice.
Thaklar smiled gently.
�
��God will help you, I think. The Valley understands love, my brother. It is the twin of happiness, and the brother of peace. Love is one of the forces that go to make up the wholeness of the machine. Very well, then; we will search for her together, you and I. Perhaps the guardians of the Valley will know and understand—for they sleep no longer, since we have awakened them in our folly and madness!”
M’Cord was vastly relieved. He said as much, gruffly, as was his way. Thaklar nodded.
“But there is one thing which we must do, ’Gort my brother. We must leave this place, and make our new camp at the edge of the Valley where the steps are cut into the stone of the cliff-wall. From that place we can search the woods for your woman … it will be a sign to the forces which, even now, watch us that our intentions are to leave here as soon as possible…. ”
He got to his feet purposefully.
But he did not walk away.
For suddenly Zerild was there. She had thrown herself 202
at his feet, sobbing wildly. And her arms crept up to embrace his long legs. And he looked down at her with an expression written upon his face in a language of the heart which even M’Cord could read.
XXVI. The Surrender
She lifted her face to him. It was wet with tears and wild with conflicting emotions. And her eyes—no longer sharp and fierce with mockery—were frightened and open as those of a child.
“Do not leave me. Take me with you,” she panted.
“Now why should you, who spumed me once, wish to go at my side now?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head furiously, black tresses tousling over slim, bare shoulders. And she clung to his legs with surprising strength.
“I cannot ask you to forgive me, prince. And I do not ask it. Take me with you on any terms you like. As your woman! Or your servant. Even as your slave. But do not leave me alone here in this awful place where men are turned to babes or beasts, or rent apart by trees that have learnt to walk! I will cook for you, tend your beasts, mend your clothes. Anything! I will do anything you ask—only do not leave me alone in this place where trees can walk and women go mad! Take me with you, I beg of you—yes, I—even I!—Zerild!—who never begged aught of a man before—beg it of you, of you whom I have wronged so terribly—and laughed at—and made mockery of—and spumed! See me, prince! Tamed and bumbled at last .. . and do not spurn me, prince, as once I wantonly did spurn you…