The Valley of the Flame Read online

  It would have been symbiosis, except that the parasites had nothing to give the trees upon which they lived as on a world. Trees and living vines and the rubbery pale moss that bordered the path, there was no other vegetation here.

  But of the fantastic there was much. Before Raft's amazement had died they crossed a brook, a half mile further on, by a narrow bridge that might have been made of glowing plastics. No fish were visible through that glassy translucence, and as Raft looked down, he felt that nothing remotely normal could ever exist in those enchanted waters. For the stream, too, was wrong.

  It was silent. It did not purl and ripple softly over the rocky bed. Small cascades and waterfalls dropped, with hypnotic, quiet slowness, into the pools beneath. Ripples spread out very gently, very slowly, to die against the mossy banks.

  It was not water. Water it could not be. It seemed half congealed.

  Yet when Raft, with a questioning glance at Vann, knelt beside the brook and lifted cupped hands to his mouth, it was water. Droplets escaped from between his fingers and floated down gently to fall upon the thirsty moss.

  Slowly as the boulders that had dropped upon Parror's castle the waters glided on—silently. It was Oberon's glade, where sorcery lay heavy. The sweet fragrance of the living vine-flowers hung on the clear air.

  What spell holds this land, Raft thought? What magic stooped and touched it once, long ago? Surely a god walked here once. But what god? One of Earth, or one from beyond even the stars?

  Silently, he let Vann urge him along the path. The sooner he reached his destination, the sooner his questions might be answered.

  But the monotony of the journey grew tiring at last. Once a castle, a small structure compared to Parror's fortress, was visible under the shelter of the forest, but the soldiers by-passed it without a glance. Raft eyed the scar-faced Vann.

  "How much further have we to go?"

  "It is still a long way."

  He was right. The hours dragged past, and Raft's occasional glances at his wristwatch made him conscious of a puzzling new factor. They must have covered more than fifteen miles, but his watch said that only fifteen minutes had passed. Overhead that brightness in the green vault had not moved. The sun, apparently, stood still over Paititi.

  Nor had it moved when, a long while later, they came out of the forest at the edge of a mile-wide clearing—or what seemed to be a clearing.

  Directly ahead, blocking the way, stood a turreted palace that would have seemed huge except for the trees that dwarfed it. Even so, it was an enormous structure.

  What lay beyond it Raft could not see, but he could make out a shapeless pale cloud that hung in the sky beyond those thrusting pinnacles, a formless whiteness that seethed and curled slowly into new suggestions of luminous hugeness.

  A broad river ran toward the castle, and under it. The torrent plunged into a high-arched opening beneath that architectural colossus, and was lost.

  Raft was stumbling and exhausted. The two long journeys, first through the underground tube that led to Paititi, and then this fast hike, had turned his muscles to water. He was so utterly tired by now that he saw his destination through a sort of mist; and Vann's voice came from a long distance away. He let himself be urged forward, mechanically moving his legs to keep up with the soldiers.

  There was a courtyard. Figures moved about it. A throng of brightly clad figures, with the half-Egyptian faces of the cat-people, all intent on the spectacle in their midst. A high-pitched singing came from a man crouching atop a high stone block.

  Exultant wildness shrilled out as he chanted a song in the language Raft did not understand. The crouching man played some complicated string instrument that sounded vaguely like the bagpipes.

  In the center of the courtyard two men were fighting. One was a giant, tall, smoothly-muscled, with a strong face already masked by blood. The other man was more remarkable. Raft's eyes were drawn to him.

  He was like Parror, and yet unlike. In place of the sleek, powerful look of the puma, this man was as lithe and swift as the hunting cheetahs of the old Hindu rajahs.

  Supple and light, his hair a fine mist about that strong, delicate face, the man sprang out of his opponent's way, laughing, and slashed down with claws.

  He wore a glove, a gauntlet, that was tipped with three curved metal blades like talons. Needle-sharp they were, for three long cuts opened like mouths across the larger man's bare chest, and blood spouted.

  The minstrel's song rose to a thin shrilling in which there was something drunken and almost mad. The music sang and sang. It cried of love and death, and in it was the choking, musty smell of fresh blood.

  Turn and dodge and slay.

  Metal grated as the two taloned gloves clawed together. The men bounded apart as though on springs instead of muscles of flesh. The giant shook his head, wiping crimson from his eyes. The other paused, with a careless gesture, to glance at Raft. His irises were blazing yellow. He had slit-like pupils.

  His blond hair, almost orange, was oddly marked by shadowy patterns of cloudy black. As he smiled, Raft almost expected to see the sharp teeth of a predatory leopard. Red droplets fell from those murderous gauntlets to a brown thigh. He called a question.

  Vann answered, and the yellow-haired man lifted one shoulder impatiently. He spoke a few casual syllables, and turned back to the giant, lifting a taloned glove.

  For answer his opponent leaped in, and the two agile figures were again lost in that deadly, graceful dance. Vann, his eyes glowing, touched Raft's arm.

  "Come. You must sleep now."

  Raft's brief excitement had died. The dull stupor of exhaustion made a protective barrier around Raft. Without another glance at the duel, he went with Vann through a portal, along halls and up spiraling ramps, lost in a foggy dimness of sheer physical tiredness. He felt Vann's hand halt him at last.

  "Sleep, now. Darum will see you after you've rested."

  "Darum?" Raft saw cushions at his feet, and dropped heavily upon them. "Who's Darum?"

  "You just saw him fighting. He is the Great Lord. He rules. But now he fights, and after that—"

  Vann's voice died away, merging with the faint, drowsy humming of—of what?

  A purring, sub-sonic vibration thrilled through Raft. Deep, comforting it throbbed through the very structure of the castle. As though the castle lived. As though the hidden pulse of life stirred in the stone.

  That alien whisper lulled Raft to sleep.

  CHAPTER VI.

  MAD KING

  MANY HOURS LATER, Raft awoke, refreshed but stiff and aching. Colored light came through tall windows, pastel patterns that shifted and glowed on the pallor of the thick carpet.

  He was in what seemed to be a sleeping-chamber. There were mirrors on the walls, many of them, and the room, he noticed, had no corners. It was a silken, padded nest, strewn carelessly with silks and pillows, and with low, round couches here and there.

  There was an oval door in the wall, but no shadow loomed against it. That did not, however, mean that there was no guard. Raft yawned, stretched, and felt his muscles and joints crackle with stiffness. But, aside from various dull aches, he felt alert and ravenously hungry.

  The dim humming still vibrated through him. He turned to the window, pushed open a pane, and stepped out onto the balustraded porch beyond. There he paused, staring.

  Overhead the sun had moved a fraction—that was all. He saw it vaguely, for a towering pillar of mist dimmed his vision. Looking down, he understood the reason.

  Beneath him a gulf opened. The porch overhung a broad platform lower down which jutted out over an abyss clouded with white fog. A silver torrent of ice shot out in an arc and fell away into that incredible depth.

  Not ice, no, for it moved slowly. It was the river that flowed beneath the castle, to drop into the gulf that lay directly under Raft. He tried to probe the depths, but the boiling maelstrom of mist baffled him. The cataract fell and was lost.

  Fell—slowly. Mist rose slo
wly too, a gelid ghost towering high above the castle. The deep humming was louder now, and the stone beneath Raft's feet vibrated to its murmuring. Subsonic. The crashing roar of a waterfall, resolved by some physical warp or distortion into that dim throbbing he felt rather than heard.

  Frowning, Raft left the balcony. He was beginning to understand a little now. His mind, refreshed by deep sleep, was clearer. Slow water, stones that fell like feathers, a sun that dragged itself wearily across that green sky. Time, it seemed, was different here. Was this lost land actually on Earth? The same Earth that held the Amazon Basin, and Rio, and New York? Perhaps not.

  He tried to fathom the mystery of the oval door. He could not, but it slipped upward and vanished suddenly, and Vann stood on the threshold, his scarred face alert.

  "So you're awake," Vann said in the Indio. "Good. Darum wants to see you, but he's resting now. You'll want a bath."

  "And food," Raft said. "Does Darum wear those gloves all the time?"

  Vann called a command over his shoulders. Then he stepped forward into the room, smiling.

  "Only for tourneys. He's less dangerous when he wears the gloves. I'll show you the bath, Craddock."

  "I'm not Craddock. I told you before I'm not Craddock."

  But Vann paid no attention. He moved levers on the wall, and part of the floor slid aside, revealing a shallow, wide basin filled with a liquid the color of creme de menthe. Gratefully Raft slipped out of his ragged clothes and lowered himself into the bath. Vann watched with a grimace of distaste.

  "It'll take several washings to get you clean," he remarked. "Here." He found a jar and sprinkled blue powder into the water. An astringent, tingling sensation ran across Raft's skin.

  There were brushes, many of them, instruments like Roman strigils, and other gadgets Raft experimented with under Vann's guidance. The water was awkward to handle because of its sluggishness.

  Once Raft dropped a brush. He watched it float gently down till it dug a hole in the water, a hole that gradually refilled, while ripples crept out to the rim.

  But a bath was luxury, and the aches began to leave Raft's muscles. Vann watched unblinkingly, commenting once on the coarseness of his prisoner's hair, and providing a gleaming unguent which Raft's skin absorbed leaving him stimulated. Finally a page appeared, pushing a wheeled table laden with unfamiliar food, and stood motionless, struck with amazement as he eyed the figure in the bath.

  Vann gestured, and the loose-limbed, dapper youngster, with his daintily malicious triangular face, bowed and fled, without removing his startled gaze from Raft.

  "No wonder he's surprised," Vann remarked. "Your musculature is so different from ours that you looked deformed to him. But I'd like to fight you some time, if opportunity arises."

  "Thanks," Raft said. "You'd have a fine time cutting my throat with one of those gloves."

  "Not at all." Vann smiled savagely. "Killing is a different thing entirely. The point in murder is not to be found out. But a fight, a duel—they're very seldom fatal." He found tight garments like his own and helped Raft don them. "I'd have too much of an advantage if I wore the gloves. What weapons do you use usually?"

  "Rifles," Raft said. He explained about duels.

  "Strange," the soldier said. "I should think there'd be little satisfaction in propelling a missile. You wouldn't be able to feel your blade go in. There'd be.no physical pleasure."

  "All right. We'll box, fight with our fists."

  "Depending on impact alone? That doesn't seem interesting. Don't you use swords at all?"

  "Some of us do," Raft said. "But I'm no swordsman myself. What was that you said about murder? Is homicide legal here?"

  "No," Vann said. "We're not barbarians. A murderer has to pay restitution, if he's found out. But only the stupid are caught."

  "Oh," Raft said blankly, tackling a pulpy, acrid fruit like an orange. "There's a police force, then?"

  He had to explain, but finally Vann understood.

  "We have specialists in detection. If a murderer can escape their skill, he's safe enough. The trick is—I think—to conceal the motive. Killers are caught because they haven't disguised their motives." He shook his head deprecatingly.

  "Just what is the set-up here?" Raft asked. "Does Darum rule all Paititi?"

  Vann nodded.

  "Yes. The set-up is—well, that of any civilized land."

  "Sure. Homicide for fun. How is it you can talk the Indio tongue?"

  "You aren't the first outsider to enter Paititi. We have had brown-skinned men here in our fathers' time, though it has always been difficult for us to leave our valley. Parror's ancestors had captive Indios sometimes, and most of us know the language."

  Raft thought that logical. Linguist ability was a mark of the cosmopolitan, even if it never left this hidden valley.

  "And Portuguese?"

  "What?"

  "Falam portugues?"

  "That is strange to me," Vann admitted.

  "Then Parror picked it up? And Janissa, too." Raft nodded thoughtfully.

  Then he remembered the aviator. "Was there a man of my race here, a man named da Fonseca, who had a machine which flew through the air? About—about fifty sleeps ago?"

  Vann's face lighted up. "The machine that flies fell into Paititi about four hundred sleeps ago, killing all but one man, whom Parror took to his castle. Yes, that was da Fonseca, for with his aid Parror read the notebook you left in the Cavern of the Flame."

  Raft put down a morsel untasted.

  "Four hundred sleeps?" he said, a queer hesitation in his voice. "Over a year ago. How long have I been in Paititi, Vann?"

  "I captured you yesterday," the soldier said. "And that was directly after your arrival. I was watching for Parror's return from the outer world. So I knew when to strike."

  "I see," Raft said, though he didn't. "What about this notebook, and the Cavern of the Flame? What's that?"

  "You did not see the Cavern?"

  "I saw a cavern, with some unpleasant creatures in it. Is that what you mean?"

  A shudder shook Vann. Briefly a touch of fear showed in his eyes. "No—no. That is not what I mean." He changed the subject abruptly. "You must see Darum now. Are you ready?"

  "As ready as I ever will be, I suppose."

  "Very well." Vann stood up, turning toward the door. Raft accompanied his guard into a dimly-lighted hall and along it. After a while Vann broke silence.

  "The Great Lord has fought and had his pleasure afterward, and slept. He will be strange now. A word of advice, Craddock."

  "I'm—well, what is it?"

  "Something hangs in the balance now," Vann said thoughtfully, his gaze on the floor as they walked. "For myself, I am not sure. I am on neither side as yet. Darum, too, hesitates.

  "He had you taken from Parror before the—the final step could be taken, but he may yet side with Parror. If he does, that will be well for you. Or perhaps evil, in the end. I cannot see that far ahead. But I will say this, since you are of an alien race, you would do well to heed it. Darum—is mad."

  A little shock went through Raft. He stared at the soldier.

  "Mad? Your king?"

  "Yes."

  "And he rules?"

  "Of course," Vann said. "Why not? For often he is not mad, and when he is, that does not matter much. But with you it may mean the difference between life and death. Perhaps," he went on musingly, "life and death for Paititi. Remember that Darum is not your kind."

  "I hope not," Raft said candidly.

  "He is of our kind," Vann murmured, and his eyes were luminous. "Now—I hope you live. For I'd enjoy a duel with you, Craddock. And here is your way." He held aside a heavy tapestry, revealing a dim corridor. "Go in."

  "Thanks," Raft said.

  He stepped forward. Behind him, Vann let the curtain fall. There was silence, except for the never-ceasing vibration that shook the castle. Even here its steady humming could be felt.

  Raft walked toward another drapery that barr
ed the way ahead.

  A different race, he thought, and a different species. They murder for intellectual pleasure and duel for physical excitement. They see nothing amiss in a mad king.

  He hesitated before the curtain. Then he pushed it aside and stepped through, into a ruddy darknenss.

  The dim, faint glow came from all around. How large the room might be Raft had no way of guessing. He saw shrouded shapes looming before him, and, in heavier shadow, something stirred and looked at him with eyes that were glowing disks. A cool, sharp perfume was in his nostrils. That infernal humming seemed to shake the dark air.

  There was no sound. Raft, after a moment, moved forward. The eyes watched him steadily. At last he could make out a slim figure reclining on a bulkier, shapeless mass—the smooth outline of a jaw, and the cloudy mist of hair fading into invisibility.

  Raft stood there, waiting.

  He sensed that this was not the same man he had seen fighting and laughing in the courtyard. There was a difference, even physically. In the gloom a change had come upon Darum, a strangeness that was indefinable and yet unmistakable.

  "Sit down," the king said, in the Indio tongue. Even his voice had altered. It was passionless, like music heard from very far away.

  Raft fumbled, found a couch, and dropped upon it. The eyes had a touch of green in them as they watched.

  "Listen," Darum said.

  At the king's feet a shadow stirred. Its soft curves were those of a woman, but from that vague figure a subtle breath of terror breathed out, chilling Raft. There was a sound, almost a voice. Woodwind and sighing strings—plaintive, questioning.

  Again the king spoke.

  "Yrann wonders. She wonders why you come to Paititi, Craddock. Music is her voice, for she will not speak. But she asks who are you? What is your world?"

  The soft strings sang again. Sang a question.

  Raft leaned forward, as though to break the spell. But the king's eyes held him.

  "He is a god, Yrann. Craddock was in the beginning, and now he comes again, very near the end. Since his eyes first saw Paititi, a race has been born and draws close to the shadow. The shadow that the Flame casts over all living things."