A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay

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Chapter 9: OCEAXE

Maskull's second day on Tormance dawned. Branchspell was already above the horizon when he awoke. He was instantly aware that his organs had changed during the night. His fleshy breve was altered into an eyelike sorb; his magn had swelled and developed into a third arm, springing from the breast. The arm gave him at once a sense of greater physical security, but with the sorb he was obliged to experiment, before he could grasp its function.

As he lay there in the white sunlight, opening and shutting each of his three eyes in turn, he found that the two lower ones served his understanding, the upper one his will. That is to say, with the lower eyes he saw things in clear detail, but without personal interest; with the sorb he saw nothing as self-existent -- everything appeared as an object of importance or non-importance to his own needs.

Rather puzzled as to how this would turn out, he got up and looked about him. He had slept out of sight of Oceaxe. He was anxious to learn if she were still on the spot, but before going to ascertain he made up his mind to bathe in the river.

It was a glorious morning. The hot white sun already began to glare, but its heat was tempered by a strong wind, which whistled through the trees. A host of fantastic clouds filled the sky. They looked like animals, and were always changing shape. The ground, as well as the leaves and branches of the forest trees, still held traces of heavy dew or rain during the night. A poignantly sweet smell of nature entered his nostrils. His pain was quiescent, and his spirits were high.

Before he bathed, he viewed the mountains of the Ifdawn Marest. In the morning sunlight they stood out pictorially. He guessed that they were from five to six thousand feet high. The lofty, irregular, castellated line seemed like the walls of a magic city. The cliffs fronting him were composed of gaudy rocks -- vermilion, emerald, yellow, ulfire, and black. As he gazed at them, his heart began to beat like a slow, heavy drum, and he thrilled all over -- indescribable hopes, aspirations, and emotions came over him. It was more than the conquest of a new world which he felt -- it was something different....

He bathed and drank, and as he was reclothing himself, Oceaxe strolled indolently up.

He could now perceive the colour of her skin -- it was a vivid, yet delicate mixture of carmine, white, and jale. The effect was startlingly unearthly. With these new colors she looked like a genuine representative of a strange planet. Her frame also had something curious about it. The curves were womanly, the bones were characteristically female -- yet all seemed somehow to express a daring, masculine underlying will. The commanding eye on her forehead set the same puzzle in plainer language. Its bold, domineering egotism was shot with undergleams of sex and softness.

She came to the river's edge and reviewed him from top to toe. "Now you are built more like a man," she said, in her lovely, lingering voice.

"You see, the experiment was successful," he answered, smiling gaily.

Oceaxe continued looking him over. "Did some woman give you that ridiculous robe?"

"A woman did give it to me" -- dropping his smile -- "but I saw nothing ridiculous in the gift at the time, and I don't now."

"I think I'd look better in it."

As she drawled the words, she began stripping off the skin, which suited her form so well, and motioned to him to exchange garments. He obeyed, rather shamefacedly, for he realised that the proposed exchange was in fact more appropriate to his sex. He found the skin a freer dress. Oceaxe in her drapery appeared more dangerously feminine to him.

"I don't want you to receive gifts at all from other women," she remarked slowly.

"Why not? What can I be to you?"

"I have been thinking about you during the night." Her voice was retarded, scornful, viola-like. She sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and looked away.

"In what way?"

She returned no answer to his question, but began to pull off pieces of the bark.

"Last night you were so contemptuous."

"Last night is not today. Do you always walk through the world with your head over your shoulder?"

It was now Maskull's turn to be silent.

"Still, if you have male instincts, as I suppose you have, you can't go on resisting me forever."

"But this is preposterous" said Maskull, opening his eyes wide. "Granted that you are a beautiful woman -- we can't be quite so primeval."

Oceaxe sighed, and rose to her feet. "It doesn't matter. I can wait."

"From that I gather that you intend to make the journey in my society. I have no objection -- in fact I shall be glad -- but only on condition that you drop this language."

"Yet you do think me beautiful?"

"Why shouldn't I think so, if it is the fact? I fail to see what that has to do with my feelings. Bring it to an end, Oceaxe. You will find plenty of men to admire -- and love you."

At that she blazed up. "Does love pick and choose, you fool? Do you imagine I am so hard put to it that I have to hunt for lovers? Is not Crimtyphon waiting for me at this very moment?"

"Very well. I am sorry to have hurt your feelings. Now carry the temptation no farther -- for it is a temptation, where a lovely woman is concerned. I am not my own master."

"I'm not proposing anything so very hateful, am I? Why do you humiliate me so?"

Maskull put his hands behind his back. "I repeat, I am not my own master."

"Then who is your master?"

"Yesterday I saw Surtur, and from today I am serving him."

"Did you speak with him?" she asked curiously.

"I did."

"Tell me what he said."

"No, I can't -- I won't. But whatever he said, his beauty was more tormenting than yours, Oceaxe, and that's why I can look at you in cold blood."

"Did Surtur forbid you to be a man?"

Maskull frowned. "Is love such a manly sport, then? I should have thought it effeminate."

"It doesn't matter. You won't always be so boyish. But don't try my patience too far."

"Let us talk about something else -- and, above all, let us get on our road."

She suddenly broke into a laugh, so rich, sweet, and enchanting, that he grew half inflamed, and half wished to catch her body in his arms. "Oh, Maskull, Maskull -- what a fool you are!"

"In what way am I a fool?" he demanded, scowling not at her words, but at his own weakness.

"Isn't the whole world the handiwork of innumerable pairs of lovers? And yet you think yourself above all that. You try to fly away from nature, but where will you find a hole to hide yourself in?"

"Besides beauty, I now credit you with a second quality: persistence."

"Read me well, and then it is natural law that you'll think twice and three times before throwing me away.... And now, before we go, we had better eat."

"Eat?" said Maskull thoughtfully.

"Don't you eat? Is food in the same category as love?"

"What food is it?"

"Fish from the river."

Maskull recollected his promise to Joiwind. At the same time, he felt hungry.

"Is there nothing milder?"

She pulled her mouth scornfully. "You came through Poolingdred, didn't you? All the people there are the same. They think life is to be looked at, and not lived. Now that you are visiting Ifdawn, you will have to change your notions."

"Go catch your fish," he returned, pulling down his brows.

The broad, clear waters flowed past them with swelling undulations, from the direction of the mountains. Oceaxe knelt down on the bank, and peered into the depths. Presently her look became tense and concentrated; she dipped her hand in and pulled out some sort of little monster. It was more like a reptile than a fish, with its scaly plates and teeth. She threw it on the ground, and it started crawling about. Suddenly she darted all her will into her sorb. The creature leaped into the air, and fell down dead.

She picked up a sharp-edged slate, and with it removed the scales and entrails. During this operation, her hands and garment became stained with the light scarlet blood.

"Find the drude, Maskull," she said, with a lazy smile. "You had it last night."

He searched for it. It was hard to locate, for its rays had grown dull and feeble in the sunlight, but at last he found it. Oceaxe placed it in the interior of the monster, and left the body lying on the ground.

"While it's cooking, I'll wash some of this blood away, which frightens you so much. Have you never seen blood before?"

Maskull gazed at her in perplexity. The old paradox came back -- the contrasting sexual characteristics in her person. Her bold, masterful, masculine egotism of manner seemed quite incongruous with the fascinating and disturbing femininity of her voice. A startling idea flashed into his mind.

"In your country I'm told there is an act of will called 'absorbing.' What is that?"

She held her red, dripping hands away from her draperies, and uttered a delicious, clashing laugh. "You think I am half a man?"

"Answer my question."

"I'm a woman through and through, Maskull -- to the marrowbone. But that's not to say I have never absorbed males."

"And that means..."

"New strings for my harp, Maskull. A wider range of passions, a stormier heart..."

"For you, yes -- But for them?..."

"I don't know. The victims don't describe their experiences. Probably unhappiness of some sort -- if they still know anything."

"This is a fearful business!" he exclaimed, regarding her gloomily. "One would think Ifdawn a land of devils."

Oceaxe gave a beautiful sneer as she took a step toward the river. "Better men than you -- better in every sense of the word -- are walking about with foreign wills inside them. You may be as moral as you like, Maskull, but the fact remains, animals were made to be eaten, and simple natures were made to be absorbed."

"And human rights count for nothing!"

She had bent over the river's edge, to wash her arms and hands, but glanced up over her shoulder to answer his remark. "They do count. But we only regard a man as human for just as long as he's able to hold his own with others."

The flesh was soon cooked, and they breakfasted in silence. Maskull cast heavy, doubtful glances from time to time toward his companion. Whether it was due to the strange quality of the food, or to his long abstention, he did not know, but the meal tasted nauseous, and even cannibalistic. He ate little, and the moment he got up he felt defiled.

"Let me bury this drude, where I can find it some other time," said Oceaxe. "On the next occasion, though, I shall have no Maskull with me, to shock.... Now we have to take to the river."

They stepped off the land onto the water. It flowed against them with a sluggish current, but the opposition, instead of hindering them, had the contrary effect -- it caused them to exert themselves, and they moved faster. They climbed the river in this way for several miles. The exercise gradually improved the circulation of Maskull's blood, and he began to look at things in a far more way. The hot sunshine, the diminished wind, the cheerful marvellous cloud scenery, the quiet, crystal forests -- all was soothing and delightful. They approached nearer and nearer to the gaily painted heights of Ifdawn.

There was something enigmatic to him in those bright walls. He was attracted by them, yet felt a sort of awe. They looked real, but at the same time very supernatural. If one could see the portrait of a ghost, painted with a hard, firm outline, in substantial colors, the feelings produced by such a sight would be exactly similar to Maskull's impressions as he studied the Ifdawn precipices.

He broke the long silence. "Those mountains have most extraordinary shapes. All the lines are straight and perpendicular -- no slopes or curves."

She walked backward on the water, in order to face him. "That's typical of Ifdawn. Nature is all hammer blows with us. Nothing soft and gradual."

"I hear you, but I don't understand you."

"All over the Marest you'll find patches of ground plunging down or rushing up. Trees grow fast. Women and men don't think twice before acting. One may call Ifdawn a place of quick decisions."

Maskull was impressed. "A fresh, wild, primitive land."

"How is it where you come from?" asked Oceaxe.

"Oh, mine is a decrepit world, where nature takes a hundred years to move a foot of solid land. Men and animals go about in flocks. Originality is a lost habit."

"Are there women there?"

"As with you, and not very differently formed."

"Do they love?"

He laughed. "So much so that it has changed the dress, speech, and thoughts of the whole sex."

"Probably they are more beautiful than I?"

"No, I think not," said Maskull.

There was another rather long silence, as they travelled unsteadily onward.

"What is your business in Ifdawn?" demanded Oceaxe suddenly.

He hesitated over his answer. "Can you grasp that it's possible to have an aim right in front of one, so big that one can't see it as a whole?"

She stole a long, inquisitive look at him, "What sort of aim?"

"A moral aim."

"Are you proposing to set the world right?"

"I propose nothing -- I am waiting."

"Don't wait too long, for time doesn't wait -- especially in Ifdawn."

"Something will happen," said Maskull.

Oceaxe threw a subtle smile. "So you have no special destination in the Marest?"

"No, and if you'll permit me, I will come home with you."

"Singular man!" she said, with a short, thrilling laugh. "That's what I have been offering all the time. Of course you will come home with me. As for Crimtyphon..."

"You mentioned that name before. Who is he?"

"Oh! My lover, or, as you would say, my husband."

"This doesn't improve matters," said Maskull.

"It leaves them exactly where they were. We merely have to remove him."

"We are certainly misunderstanding each other," said Maskull, quite startled. "Do you by any chance imagine that I am making a compact with you?"

"You will do nothing against your will. But you have promised to come home with me."

"Tell me, how do you remove husbands in Ifdawn?"

"Either you or I must kill him."

He eyed her for a full minute. "Now we are passing from folly to insanity."

"Not at all," replied Oceaxe. "It is the too-sad truth. And when you have seen Crimtyphon, you will realise it."

"I'm aware I am on a strange planet," said Maskull slowly, "where all sorts of unheard of things may happen, and where the very laws of morality may be different. Still as far as I am concerned, murder is murder, and I'll have no more to do with a woman who wants to make use of me, to get rid of her husband."

"You think me wicked?" demanded Oceaxe steadily.

"Or mad."

"Then you had better leave me, Maskull -- only -- "

"Only what?"

"You wish to be consistent, don't you? Leave all other mad and wicked people as well. Then you'll find it easier to reform the rest."

Maskull frowned, but said nothing.

"Well?" demanded Oceaxe, with a half smile.

"I'll come with you, and I'll see Crimtyphon -- if only to warn him."

Oceaxe broke into a cascade of rich, feminine laughter, but whether at the image conjured up by Maskull's last words, or from some other cause, he did not know. The conversation dropped.

At a distance of a couple of miles from the now towering cliffs, the river made a sharp, right-angled turn to the west, and was no longer of use to them on their journey. Maskull stared up doubtfully.

"It's a stiff climb for a hot morning."

"Let's rest here a little," said she, indicating a smooth flat island of black rock, standing up just out of the water in the middle of the river.

They accordingly went to it, and Maskull sat down. Oceaxe, however, standing graceful and erect, turned her face toward the cliffs opposite, and uttered a piercing and peculiar call.

"What is that for?" She did not answer. After waiting a minute, she repeated the call. Maskull now saw a large bird detach itself from the top of one of the precipices, and sail slowly down toward them. It was followed by two others. The flight of these birds was exceedingly slow and clumsy.

"What are they?" he asked.

She still returned no answer, but smiled rather peculiarly and sat down beside him. Before many minutes he was able to distinguish the shapes and colors of the flying monsters. They were not birds, but creatures with long, snakelike bodies, and ten reptilian legs apiece, terminating in fins which acted as wings. The bodies were of bright blue, the legs and fins were yellow. They were flying, without haste, but in a somewhat ominous fashion, straight toward them. He could make out a long, thin spike projecting from each of the heads.

"They are shrowks," explained Oceaxe at last. "If you want to know their intention, I'll tell you. To make a meal of us. First of all their spikes will pierce us, and then their mouths, which are really suckers, will drain us dry of blood -- pretty thoroughly too; there are no half measures with shrowks. They are toothless beasts, so don't eat flesh."

"As you show such admirable sangfroid," said Maskull dryly, "I take it there's no particular danger."

Nevertheless he instinctively tried to get on to his feet and failed. A new form of paralysis was chaining him to the ground.

"Are you trying to get up?" asked Oceaxe smoothly.

"Well, yes, but those cursed reptiles seem to be nailing me down to the rock with their wills. May I ask if you had any special object in view in waking them up?"

"I assure you the danger is quite real, Maskull. Instead of talking and asking questions, you had much better see what you can do with your will."

"I seem to have no will, unfortunately."

Oceaxe was seized with a paroxysm of laughter, but it was still rich and beautiful. "It's obvious you aren't a very heroic protector, Maskull. It seems I must play the man, and you the woman. I expected better things of your big body. Why, my husband would send those creatures dancing all around the sky, by way of a joke, before disposing of them. Now watch me.. Two of the three I'll kill; the third we will ride home on. Which one shall we keep?"

The shrowks continued their slow, wobbling flight toward them. Their bodies were of huge size. They produced in Maskull the same sensation of loathing as insects did. He instinctively understood that as they hunted with their wills, there was no necessity for them to possess a swift motion.

"Choose which you please," he said shortly. "They are equally objectionable to me."

"Then I'll choose the leader, as it is presumably the most energetic animal. Watch now."

She stood upright, and her sorb suddenly blazed with fire. Maskull felt something snap inside his brain. His limbs were free once more. The two monsters in the rear staggered and darted head foremost toward the earth, one after the other. He watched them crash on the ground, and then lie motionless. The leader still came toward them, but he fancied that its flight was altered in character; it was no longer menacing, but tame and unwilling.

Oceaxe guided it with her will to the mainland shore opposite their island rock. Its vast bulk lay there extended, awaiting her pleasure. They immediately crossed the water.

Maskull viewed the shrowk at close quarters. It was about thirty feet long. Its bright-coloured skin was shining, slippery, and leathery; a mane of black hair covered its long neck. Its face was awesome and unnatural, with its carnivorous eyes, frightful stiletto, and blood- sucking cavity. There were true fins on its back and tail.

"Have you a good seat?" asked Oceaxe, patting the creature's flank. "As I have to steer, let me jump on first."

She pulled up her gown, then climbed up and sat astride the animal's back, just behind the mane, which she clutched. Between her and the fin there was just room for Maskull. He grasped the two flanks with his outer hands; his third, new arm pressed against Oceaxe's back, and for additional security he was compelled to encircle her waist with it.

Directly he did so, he realised that he had been tricked, and that this ride had been planned for one purpose only -- to inflame his desires.

The third arm possessed a function of its own, of which hitherto he had been ignorant. It was a developed magn. But the stream of love which was communicated to it was no longer pure and noble -- it was boiling, passionate, and torturing. He gritted his teeth, and kept quiet, but Oceaxe had not plotted the adventure to remain unconscious of his feelings. She looked around, with a golden, triumphant smile. "The ride will last some time, so hold on well!" Her voice was soft like a flute, but rather malicious.

Maskull grinned, and said nothing. He dared not remove his arm.

The shrowk straddled on to its legs. It jerked itself forward, and rose slowly and uncouthly in the air. They began to paddle upward toward the painted cliffs. The motion was swaying, rocking, and sickening; the contact of the brute's slimy skin was disgusting. All this, however, was merely, background to Maskull, as he sat there with closed eyes, holding on to Oceaxe. In the front and centre of his consciousness was the knowledge that he was gripping a fair woman, and that her flesh was responding to his touch like a lovely harp.

They climbed up and up. He opened his eyes, and ventured to look around him. By this time they were already level with the top of the outer rampart of precipices. There now came in sight a wild archipelago of islands, with jagged outlines, emerging from a sea of air. The islands were mountain summits; or, more accurately speaking, the country was a high tableland, fissured everywhere by narrow and apparently bottomless cracks. These cracks were in some cases like canals, in others like lakes, in others merely holes in the ground, closed in all round. The perpendicular sides of the islands -- that is, the upper, visible parts of the innumerable cliff faces -- were of bare rock, gaudily coloured; but the level surfaces were a tangle of wild plant life. The taller trees alone were distinguishable from the shrowk's back. They were of different shapes, and did not look ancient; they were slender and swaying but did not appear very graceful; they looked tough, wiry, and savage.

As Maskull continued to explore the landscape, he forgot Oceaxe and his passion. Other strange feelings came to the front. The morning was gay and bright. The sun scorched down, quickly-changing clouds sailed across the sky, the earth was vivid, wild, and lonely. Yet he experienced no aesthetic sensations -- he felt nothing but an intense longing for action and possession. When he looked at anything, he immediately wanted to deal with it. The atmosphere of the land seemed not free, but sticky; attraction and repulsion were its constituents. Apart from this wish to play a personal part in what was going on around and beneath him, the scenery had no significance for him.

So preoccupied was he, that his arm partly released its clasp. Oceaxe turned around to gaze at him. Whether or not she was satisfied with what she saw, she uttered a low laugh, like a peculiar chord.

"Cold again so quickly, Maskull?"

"What do you want?" he asked absently, still looking over the side. "It's extraordinary how drawn I feel to all this."

"You wish to take a hand?"

"I wish to get down."

"Oh, we have a good way to go yet.... So you really feel different?"

"Different from what? What are you talking about?" said Maskull, still lost in abstraction.

Oceaxe laughed again. "It would be strange if we couldn't make a man of you, for the material is excellent."

After that, she turned her back once more.

The air islands differed from water islands in another way. They were not on a plane surface, but sloped upward, like a succession of broken terraces, as the journey progressed. The shrowk had hitherto been flying well above the ground; but now, when a new line of towering cliffs confronted them, Oceaxe did not urge the beast upward, but caused it to enter a narrow canyon, which intersected the mountains like a channel. They were instantly plunged into deep shade. The canal was not above thirty feet wide; the walls stretched upward on both sides for many hundred feet. It was as cool as an ice chamber. When Maskull attempted to plumb the chasm with his eyes, he saw nothing but black obscurity.

"What is at the bottom?" he asked.

"Death for you, if you go to look for it."

"We know that. I mean, is there any kind of life down there?"

"Not that I have ever heard of," said Oceaxe, "but of course all things are possible."

"I think very likely there is life," he returned thoughtfully.

Her ironical laugh sounded out of the gloom. "Shall we go down and see?"

"You find that amusing?"

"No, not that. What I do find amusing is the big stranger with the beard, who is so keenly interested in everything except himself."

Maskull then laughed too. "I happen to be the only thing in Tormance which is not a novelty for me."

"Yes, but I am a novelty for you."

The channel went zigzagging its way through the belly of the mountain, and all the time they were gradually rising.

"At least I have heard nothing like your voice before," said Maskull, who, since he had no longer anything to look at, was at last ready for conversation.

"What's the matter with my voice?"

"It's all that I can distinguish of you now; that's why I mentioned it."

"Isn't it clear -- don't I speak distinctly?"

"Oh, it's clear enough, but -- it's inappropriate."

"Inappropriate?"

"I won't explain further," said Maskull, "but whether you are speaking or laughing, your voice is by far the loveliest and strangest instrument I have ever listened to. And yet I repeat, it is inappropriate."

"You mean that my nature doesn't correspond?"

He was just considering his reply, when their talk was abruptly broken off by a huge and terrifying, but not very loud sound rising up from the gulf directly underneath them. It was a low, grinding, roaring thunder.

"The ground is rising under us!" cried Oceaxe.

"Shall we escape?"

She made no answer, but urged the shrowk's flight upward, at such a steep gradient that they retained their seats with difficulty. The floor of the canyon, upheaved by some mighty subterranean force, could be heard, and almost felt, coming up after them, like a gigantic landslip in the wrong direction. The cliffs cracked, and fragments began to fall. A hundred awful noises filled the air, growing louder and louder each second -- splitting, hissing, cracking, grinding, booming, exploding, roaring. When they had still fifty feet or so to go, to reach the top, a sort of dark, indefinite sea of broken rocks and soil appeared under their feet, ascending rapidly, with irresistible might, accompanied by the most horrible noises. The canal was filled up for two hundred yards, before and behind them. Millions of tons of solid matter seemed to be raised. The shrowk in its ascent was caught by the uplifted debris. Beast and riders experienced in that moment all the horrors of an earthquake -- they were rolled violently over, and thrown among the rocks and dirt. All was thunder, instability, motion, confusion.

Before they had time to realise their position, they were in the sunlight. The upheaval still continued. In another minute or two the valley floor had formed a new mountain, a hundred feet or more higher than the old. Then its movement ceased suddenly. Every noise stopped, as if by magic; not a rock moved. Oceaxe and Maskull picked themselves up and examined themselves for cuts and bruises. The shrowk lay on its side, panting violently, and sweating with fright.

"That was a nasty affair," said Maskull, flicking the dirt off his person.

Oceaxe staunched a cut on her chin with a corner of her robe.

"It might have been far worse.... I mean, it's bad enough to come up, but it's death to go down, and that happens just as often."

"Whatever induces you to live in such a country?"

"I don't know, Maskull. Habit, I suppose. I have often thought of moving out of it."

"A good deal must be forgiven you for having to spend your life in a place like this, where one is obviously never safe from one minute to another."

"You will learn by degrees," she answered, smiling.

She looked hard at the monster, and it got heavily to its feet.

"Get on again, Maskull!" she directed, climbing back to her perch. "We haven't too much time to waste."

He obeyed. They resumed their interrupted flight, this time over the mountains, and in full sunlight. Maskull settled down again to his thoughts. The peculiar atmosphere of the country continued to soak into his brain. His will became so restless and uneasy that merely to sit there in inactivity was a torture. He could scarcely endure not to be doing something.

"How secretive you are, Maskull!" said Oceaxe quietly, without turning her head.

"What secrets -- what do you mean?"

"Oh, I know perfectly well what's passing inside you. Now I think it wouldn't be amiss to ask you -- is friendship still enough?"

"Oh, don't ask me anything," growled Maskull. "I've far too many problems in my head already. I only wish I could answer some of them."

He stared stonily at the landscape. The beast was winging its way toward a distant mountain, of singular shape. It was an enormous natural quadrilateral pyramid, rising in great terraces and terminating in a broad, flat top, on which what looked like green snow still lingered.

"What mountain is that?" he asked.

"Disscourn. The highest point in Ifdawn."

"Are we going there?"

"Why should we go there? But if you were going on farther, it might be worth your while to pay a visit to the top. It commands the whole land as far as the Sinking Sea and Swaylone's Island -- and beyond. You can also see Alppain from it."

"That's a sight I mean to see before I have finished."

"Do you, Maskull?" She turned around and put her hand on his wrist. "Stay with me, and one day we'll go to Disscourn together."

He grunted unintelligibly.

There were no signs of human existence in the country under their feet. While Maskull was still grimly regarding it, a large tract of forest not far ahead, bearing many trees and rocks, suddenly subsided with an awful roar and crashed down into an invisible gulf. What was solid land one minute became a clean-cut chasm the next. He jumped violently up with the shock. "This is frightful."

Oceaxe remained unmoved.

"Why, life here must be absolutely impossible," he went on, when he had somewhat recovered himself. "A man would need nerves of steel.... Is there no means at all of foreseeing a catastrophe like this?"

"Oh, I suppose we wouldn't be alive if there weren't," replied Oceaxe, with composure. "We are more or less clever at it -- but that doesn't prevent our often getting caught."

"You had better teach me the signs."

"We'll have many things to go over together. And among them, I expect, will be whether we are to stay in the land at all.... But first let us get home."

"How far is it now?"

"It is right in front of you," said Oceaxe, pointing with her forefinger. "You can see it."

He followed the direction of the finger and, after a few questions, made out the spot she was indicating. It was a broad peninsula, about two miles distant. Three of its sides rose sheer out of a lake of air, the bottom of which was invisible; its fourth was a bottleneck, joining it to the mainland. It was overgrown with bright vegetation, distinct in the brilliant atmosphere. A single tall tree, shooting up in the middle of the peninsula, dwarfed everything else; it was wide and shady with sea-green leaves.

"I wonder if Crimtyphon is there," remarked Oceaxe. "Can I see two figures, or am I mistaken?"

"I also see something," said Maskull.

In twenty minutes they were directly above the peninsula, at a height of about fifty feet. The shrowk slackened speed, and came to earth on the mainland, exactly at the gateway of the isthmus. They both descended -- Maskull with aching thighs.

"What shall we do with the monster?" asked Oceaxe. Without waiting for a suggestion, she patted its hideous face with her hand. "Fly away home! I may want you some other time."

It gave a stupid grunt, elevated itself on its legs again, and, after half running, half flying for a few yards, rose awkwardly into the air, and paddled away in the same direction from which they had come. They watched it out of sight, and then Oceaxe started to cross the neck of land, followed by Maskull.

Branchspell's white rays beat down on them with pitiless force. The sky had by degrees become cloudless, and the wind had dropped entirely. The ground was a rich riot of vividly coloured ferns, shrubs, and grasses. Through these could be seen here and there the golden chalky soil -- and occasionally a glittering, white metallic boulder. Everything looked extraordinary and barbaric. Maskull was at last walking in the weird Ifdawn Marest which had created such strange feelings in him when seen from a distance.... And now he felt no wonder or curiosity at all, but only desired to meet human beings -- so intense had grown his will. He longed to test his powers on his fellow creatures, and nothing else seemed of the least importance to him.

On the peninsula all was coolness and delicate shade. It resembled a large copse, about two acres in extent. In the heart of the tangle of small trees and undergrowth was a partially cleared space -- perhaps the roots of the giant tree growing in the centre had killed off the smaller fry all around it. By the side of the tree sparkled a little, bubbling fountain, whose water was iron-red. The precipices on all sides, overhung with thorns, flowers, and creepers, invested the enclosure with an air of wild and charming seclusion -- a mythological mountain god might have dwelt here.

Maskull's restless eye left everything, to fall on the two men who formed the centre of the picture.

One was reclining, in the ancient Grecian fashion of banqueters on a tall couch of mosses, sprinkled with flowers; he rested on one arm, and was eating a kind of plum, with calm enjoyment. A pile of these plums lay on the couch beside him. The over-spreading branches of the tree completely sheltered him from the sun. His small, boyish form was clad in a rough skin, leaving his limbs naked. Maskull could not tell from his face whether he were a young boy or a grown man. The features were smooth, soft, and childish, their expression was seraphically tranquil; but his violet upper eye was sinister and adult. His skin was of the colour of yellow ivory. His long, curling hair matched his sorb -- it was violet. The second man was standing erect before the other, a few feet away from him. He was short and muscular, his face was broad, bearded, and rather commonplace, but there was something terrible about his appearance. The features were distorted by a deep-seated look of pain, despair, and horror.

Oceaxe, without pausing, strolled lightly and lazily up to the outermost shadows of the tree, some distance from the couch.

"We have met with an uplift," she remarked carelessly, looking toward the youth.

He eyed her, but said nothing.

"How is your plant man getting on?" Her tone was artificial but extremely beautiful. While waiting for an answer, she sat down on the ground, her legs gracefully thrust under her body, and pulled down the skirt of her robe. Maskull remained standing just behind her, with crossed arms.

There was silence for a minute.

"Why don't you answer your mistress, Sature?" said the boy on the couch, in a calm, treble voice.

The man addressed did not alter his expression, but replied in a strangled tone, "I am getting on very well, Oceaxe. There are already buds on my feet. Tomorrow I hope to take root."

Maskull felt a rising storm inside him. He was perfectly aware that although these words were uttered by Sature, they were being dictated by the boy.

"What he says is quite true," remarked the latter. "Tomorrow roots will reach the ground, and in a few days they ought to be well established. Then I shall set to work to convert his arms into branches, and his fingers into leaves. It will take longer to transform his head into a crown, but still I hope -- in fact I can almost promise that within a month you and I, Oceaxe, will be plucking and enjoying fruit from this new and remarkable tree."

"I love these natural experiments," he concluded, putting out his hand for another plum. "They thrill me."

"This must be a joke," said Maskull, taking a step forward.

The youth looked at him serenely. He made no reply, but Maskull felt as if he were being thrust backward by an iron hand on his throat.

"The morning's work is now concluded, Sature. Come here again after Blodsombre. After tonight you will remain here permanently, I expect, so you had better set to work to clear a patch of ground for your roots. Never forget -- however fresh and charming these plants appear to you now, in the future they will be your deadliest rivals and enemies. Now you may go."

The man limped painfully away, across the isthmus, out of sight. Oceaxe yawned.

Maskull pushed his way forward, as if against a wall. "Are you joking, or are you a devil?"

"I am Crimtyphon. I never joke. For that epithet of yours, I will devise a new punishment for you."

The duel of wills commenced without ceremony. Oceaxe got up, stretched her beautiful limbs, smiled, and prepared herself to witness the struggle between her old lover and her new. Crimtyphon smiled too; he reached out his hand for more fruit, but did not eat it. Maskull's self-control broke down and he dashed at the boy, choking with red fury -- his beard wagged and his face was crimson. When he realised with whom he had to deal, Crimtyphon left off smiling, slipped off the couch, and threw a terrible and malignant glare into his sorb. Maskull staggered. He gathered together all the brute force of his will, and by sheer weight continued his advance. The boy shrieked and ran behind the couch, trying to get away.... His opposition suddenly collapsed. Maskull stumbled forward, recovered himself, and then vaulted clear over the high pile of mosses, to get at his antagonist. He fell on top of him with all his bulk. Grasping his throat, he pulled his little head completely around, so that the neck was broken. Crimtyphon immediately died.

The corpse lay underneath the tree with its face upturned. Maskull viewed it attentively, and as he did so an expression of awe and wonder came into his own countenance. In the moment of death Crimtyphon's face had undergone a startling and even shocking alteration. Its personal character had wholly vanished, giving place to a vulgar, grinning mask which expressed nothing.

He did not have to search his mind long, to remember where he had seen the brother of that expression. It was identical with that on the face of the apparition at the seance, after Krag had dealt with it.

[admin]

Chapter 10: TYDOMIN

Oceaxe sat down carelessly on the couch of mosses, and began eating the plums.

"You see, you had to kill him, Maskull," she said, in a rather quizzical voice.

He came away from the corpse and regarded her -- still red, and still breathing hard. "It's no joking matter. You especially ought to keep quiet."

"Why?"

"Because he was your husband."

"You think I ought to show grief -- when I feel none?"

"Don't pretend, woman!"

Oceaxe smiled. "From your manner one would think you were accusing me of some crime."

Maskull literally snorted at her words. "What, you live with filth -- you live in the arms of a morbid monstrosity and then -- "

"Oh, now I grasp it," she said, in a tone of perfect detachment.

"I'm glad."

"Well, Maskull," she proceeded, after a pause, "and who gave you the right to rule my conduct? Am I not mistress of my own person?"

He looked at her with disgust, but said nothing. There was another long interval of silence.

"I never loved him," said Oceaxe at last, looking at the ground.

"That makes it all the worse."

"What does all this mean -- what do you want?"

"Nothing from you -- absolutely nothing -- thank heaven!"

She gave a hard laugh. "You come here with your foreign preconceptions and expect us all to bow down to them."

"What preconceptions?"

"Just because Crimtyphon's sports are strange to you, you murder him -- and you would like to murder me."

"Sports! That diabolical cruelty."

"Oh, you're sentimental!" said Oceaxe contemptuously. "Why do you need to make such a fuss over that man? Life is life, all the world over, and one form is as good as another. He was only to be made a tree, like a million other trees. If they can endure the life, why can't he?"

"And this is Ifdawn morality!"

Oceaxe began to grow angry. "It's you who have peculiar ideas. You rave about the beauty of flowers and trees -- you think them divine. But when it's a question of taking on this divine, fresh, pure, enchanting loveliness yourself, in your own person, it immediately becomes a cruel and wicked degradation. Here we have a strange riddle, in my opinion."

"Oceaxe, you're a beautiful, heartless wild beast -- nothing more. If you weren't a woman -- "

"Well" -- curling her lip -- "let us hear what would happen if I weren't a woman?"

Maskull bit his nails.

"It doesn't matter. I can't touch you -- though there's certainly not the difference of a hair between you and your boy-husband. For this you may thank my 'foreign preconceptions.'... Farewell!"

He turned to go. Oceaxe's eyes slanted at him through their long lashes.

"Where are you off to, Maskull?"

"That's a matter of no importance, for wherever I go it must be a change for the better. You walking whirlpools of crime!"

"Wait a minute. I only want to say this. Blodsombre is just starting, and you had better stay here till the afternoon. We can quickly put that body out of sight, and, as you seem to detest me so much, the place is big enough -- we needn't talk, or even see each other."

"I don't wish to breathe the same air."

"Singular man!" She was sitting erect and motionless, like a beautiful statue. "And what of your wonderful interview with Surtur, and all the undone things which you set out to do?"

"You aren't the one I shall speak to about that. But" -- he eyed her meditatively -- "while I'm still here you can tell me this. What's the meaning of the expression on that corpse's face?"

"Is that another crime, Maskull? All dead people look like that. Ought they not to?"

"I once heard it called 'Crystalman's face.'"

"Why not? We are all daughters and sons of Crystalman. It is doubtless the family resemblance."

"It has also been told me that Surtur and Crystalman are one and the same."

"You have wise and truthful acquaintances."

"Then how could it have been Surtur whom I saw?" said Maskull, more to himself than to her. "That apparition was something quite different."

She dropped her mocking manner and, sliding imperceptibly toward him, gently pulled his arm.

"You see -- we have to talk. Sit down beside me, and ask me your questions. I'm not excessively smart, but I'll try to be of assistance."

Maskull permitted himself to be dragged down with soft violence. She bent toward him, as if confidentially, and contrived that her sweet, cool, feminine breath should fan his cheek.

"Aren't you here to alter the evil to the good, Maskull? Then what does it matter who sent you?"

"What can you possibly know of good and evil?"

"Are you only instructing the initiated?"

"Who am I, to instruct anybody? However, you're quite right. I wish to do what I can -- not because I am qualified, but because I am here."

Oceaxe's voice dropped to a whisper. "You're a giant, both in body and soul. What you want to do, you can do."

"Is that your honest opinion, or are you flattering me for your own ends?"

She sighed. "Don't you see how difficult you are making the conversation? Let's talk about your work, not about ourselves."

Maskull suddenly noticed a strange blue light glowing in the northern sky. It was from Alppain, but Alppain itself was behind the hills. While he was observing it, a peculiar wave of self-denial, of a disquieting nature, passed through him. He looked at Oceaxe, and it struck him for the first time that he was being unnecessarily brutal to her. He had forgotten that she was a woman, and defenceless.

"Won't you stay?" she asked all of a sudden, quite openly and frankly.

"Yes, I think I'll stay," he replied slowly. "And another thing, Oceaxe -- if I've misjudged your character, pray forgive me. I'm a hasty, passionate man."

"There are enough easygoing men. Hard knocks are a good medicine for vicious hearts. And you didn't misjudge my character, as far as you went -- only, every woman has more than one character. Don't you know that?"

During the pause that followed, a snapping of twigs was heard, and both looked around, startled. They saw a woman stepping slowly across the neck that separated them from the mainland.

"Tydomin," muttered Oceaxe, in a vexed, frightened voice. She immediately moved away from Maskull and stood up.

The newcomer was of middle height, very slight and graceful. She was no longer quite young. Her face wore the composure of a woman who knows her way about the world. It was intensely pale, and under its quiescence there just was a glimpse of something strange and dangerous. It was curiously alluring, though not exactly beautiful. Her hair was clustering and boyish, reaching only to the neck. It was of a strange indigo colour. She was quaintly attired in a tunic and breeches, pieced together from the square, blue-green plates of some reptile. Her small, ivory-white breasts were exposed. Her sorb was black and sad -- rather contemplative.

Without once glancing up at Oceaxe and Maskull, she quietly glided straight toward Crimtyphon's corpse. When she arrived within a few feet of it, she stopped and looked down, with arms folded.

Oceaxe drew Maskull a little away, and whispered, "It's Crimtyphon's other wife, who lives under Disscourn. She's a most dangerous woman. Be careful what you say. If she asks you to do anything, refuse it outright."

"The poor soul looks harmless enough."

"Yes, she does -- but the poor soul is quite capable of swallowing up Krag himself.... Now, play the man."

The murmur of their voices seemed to attract Tydomin's notice, for she now slowly turned her eyes toward them.

"Who killed him?" she demanded.

Her voice was so soft, low, and refined, that Maskull hardly was able to catch the words. The sounds, however, lingered in his ears, and curiously enough seemed to grow stronger, instead of fainter.

Oceaxe whispered, "Don't say a word, leave it all to me." Then she swung her body around to face Tydomin squarely, and said aloud, "I killed him."

Tydomin's words by this time were ringing in Maskull's head like an actual physical sound. There was no question of being able to ignore them; he had to make an open confession of his act, whatever the consequences might be. Quietly taking Oceaxe by the shoulder and putting her behind him, he said in a low, but perfectly distinct voice, "It was I that killed Crimtyphon."

Oceaxe looked both haughty and frightened. "Maskull says that so as to shield me, as he thinks. I require no shield, Maskull. I killed him, Tydomin."

"I believe you, Oceaxe. You did murder him. Not with your own strength, for you brought this man along for the purpose."

Maskull took a couple of steps toward Tydomin. "It's of little consequence who killed him, for he's better dead than alive, in my opinion. Still, I did it. Oceaxe had no hand in the affair."

Tydomin appeared not to hear him -- she looked beyond him at Oceaxe musingly. "When you murdered him, didn't it occur to you that I would come here, to find out?"

"I never once thought of you," replied Oceaxe, with an angry laugh. "Do you really imagine that I carry your image with me wherever I go?"

"If someone were to murder your lover here, what would you do?"

"Lying hypocrite!" Oceaxe spat out. "You never were in love with Crimtyphon. You always hated me, and now you think it an excellent opportunity to make it good... now that Crimtyphon's gone.... For we both know he would have made a footstool of you, if I had asked him. He worshiped me, but he laughed at you. He thought you ugly."

Tydomin flashed a quick, gentle smile at Maskull. "Is it necessary for you to listen to all this?"

Without question, and feeling it the right thing to do, he walked away out of earshot.

Tydomin approached Oceaxe. "Perhaps because my beauty fades and I'm no longer young, I needed him all the more."

Oceaxe gave a kind of snarl. "Well, he's dead, and that's the end of it. What are you going to do now, Tydomin?"

The other woman smiled faintly and rather pathetically. "There's nothing left to do, except mourn the dead. You won't grudge me that last office?"

"Do you want to stay here?" demanded Oceaxe suspiciously.

"Yes, Oceaxe dear, I wish to be alone."

"Then what is to become of us?"

"I thought that you and your lover -- what is his name?"

"Maskull."

"I thought that perhaps you two would go to Disscourn, and spend Blodsombre at my home."

Oceaxe called out aloud to Maskull, "Will you come with me now to Disscourn?"

"If you wish," returned Maskull.

"Go first, Oceaxe. I must question your friend about Crimtyphon's death. I won't keep him."

"Why don't you question me, rather?" demanded Oceaxe, looking up sharply.

Tydomin gave the shadow of a smile. "We know each other too well."

"Play no tricks!" said Oceaxe, and she turned to go.

"Surely you must be dreaming," said Tydomin. "That's the way -- unless you want to walk over the cliffside."

The path Oceaxe had chosen led across the isthmus. The direction which Tydomin proposed for her was over the edge of the precipice, into empty space.

"Shaping! I must be mad," cried Oceaxe, with a laugh. And she obediently followed the other's finger.

She walked straight on toward the edge of the abyss, twenty paces away. Maskull pulled his beard around, and wondered what she was doing. Tydomin remained standing with outstretched finger, watching her. Without hesitation, without slackening her step once, Oceaxe strolled on -- and when she had reached the extreme end of the land she still took one more step.

Maskull saw her limbs wrench as she stumbled over the edge. Her body disappeared, and as it did so an awful shriek sounded.

Disillusionment had come to her an instant too late. He tore himself out of his stupor, rushed to the edge of the cliff, threw himself on the ground recklessly, and looked over.... Oceaxe had vanished.

He continued staring wildly down for several minutes, and then began to sob. Tydomin came up to him, and he got to his feet.

The blood kept rushing to his face and leaving it again. It was some time before he could speak at all. Then he brought out the words with difficulty. "You shall pay for this, Tydomin. But first I want to hear why you did it."

"Hadn't I cause?" she asked, standing with downcast eyes.

"Was it pure fiendishness?"

"It was for Crimtyphon's sake."

"She had nothing to do with that death. I told you so."

"You are loyal to her, and I'm loyal to him."

"Loyal? You've made a terrible blunder. She wasn't my mistress. I killed Crimtyphon for quite another reason. She had absolutely no part in it."

"Wasn't she your lover?" asked Tydomin slowly.

"You've made a terrible mistake," repeated Maskull. "I killed him because he was a wild beast. She was as innocent of his death as you are."

Tydomin's face took on a hard look. "So you are guilty of two deaths."

There was a dreadful silence.

"Why couldn't you believe me?" asked Maskull, who was pale and sweating painfully.

"Who gave you the right to kill him?" demanded Tydomin sternly.

He said nothing, and perhaps did not hear her question.

She sighed two or three times and began to stir restlessly. "Since you murdered him, you must help me bury him."

"What's to be done? This is a most fearful crime."

"You art a most fearful man. Why did you come here, to do all this? What are we to you?"

"Unfortunately you are right."

Another pause ensued.

"It's no use standing here," said Tydomin. "Nothing can be done. You must come with me."

"Come with you? Where to?"

"To Disscourn. There's a burning lake on the far side of it. He always wished to be cast there after death. We can do that after Blodsombre -- in the meantime we must take him home."

"You're a callous, heartless woman. Why should he be buried when that poor girl must remain unburied?"

"You know that's out of the question," replied Tydomin quietly.

Maskull's eyes roamed about agitatedly, apparently seeing nothing.

"We must do something," she continued. "I shall go. You can't wish to stay here alone?"

"No, I couldn't stay here -- and why should I want to? You want me to carry the corpse?"

"He can't carry himself, and you murdered him. Perhaps it will ease your mind to carry it."

"Ease my mind?" said Maskull, rather stupidly.

"There's only one relief for remorse, and that's voluntary pain."

"And have you no remorse?" he asked, fixing her with a heavy eye.

"These crimes are yours, Maskull," she said in a low but incisive voice.

They walked over to Crimtyphon's body, and Maskull hoisted it on to his shoulders. It weighed heavier than he had thought. Tydomin did not offer to assist him to adjust the ghastly burden.

She crossed the isthmus, followed by Maskull. Their path lay through sunshine and shadow. Branchspell was blazing in a cloudless sky, the heat was insufferable -- streams of sweat coursed down his face, and the corpse seemed to grow heavier and heavier. Tydomin always walked in front of him. His eyes were fastened in an unseeing stare on her white, womanish calves; he looked neither to right nor left. His features grew sullen. At the end of ten minutes he suddenly allowed his burden to slip off his shoulders on to the ground, where it lay sprawled every which way. He called out to Tydomin.

She quickly looked around.

"Come here. It has just occurred to me" -- he laughed -- "why should I be carrying this corpse -- and why should I be following you at all? What surprises me is, why this has never struck me before."

She at once came back to him. "I suppose you're tired, Maskull. Let us sit down. Perhaps you have come a long way this morning?"

"Oh, it's not tiredness, but a sudden gleam of sense. Do you know of any reason why I should be acting as your porter?" He laughed again, but nevertheless sat down on the ground beside her.

Tydomin neither looked at him nor answered. Her head was half bent, so as to face the northern sky, where the Alppain light was still glowing. Maskull followed her gaze, and also watched the glow for a moment or two in silence.

"Why don't you speak?" he asked at last.

"What does that light suggest to you, Maskull?"

"I'm not speaking of that light."

"Doesn't it suggest anything at all?"

"Perhaps it doesn't. What does it matter?"

"Not sacrifice?"

Maskull grew sullen again. "Sacrifice of what? What do you mean?"

"Hasn't it entered your head yet," said Tydomin, looking straight in front of her, and speaking in her delicate, hard manner, "that this adventure of yours will scarcely come to an end until you have made some sort of sacrifice?"

He returned no answer, and she said nothing more. In a few minutes' time Maskull got up of his own accord, and irreverently, and almost angrily, threw Crimtyphon's corpse over his shoulder again.

"How far do we have to go?" he asked in a surly tone.

"An hour's walk."

"Lead on."

"Still, this isn't the sacrifice I mean," said Tydomin quietly, as she went on in front.

Almost immediately they reached more difficult ground. They had to pass from peak to peak, as from island to island. In some cases they were able to stride or jump across, but in others they had to make use of rude bridges of fallen timber. It appeared to be a frequented path. Underneath were the black, impenetrable abysses -- on the surface were the glaring sunshine, the gay, painted rocks, the chaotic tangle of strange plants. There were countless reptiles and insects. The latter were thicker built than those of Earth -- consequently still more disgusting, and some of them were of enormous size. One monstrous insect, as large as a horse, stood right in the centre of their path without budging. It was armour-plated, had jaws like scimitars, and underneath its body was a forest of legs. Tydomin gave one malignant look at it, and sent it crashing into the gulf.

"What have I to offer, except my life?" Maskull suddenly broke out. "And what good is that? It won't bring that poor girl back into the world."

"Sacrifice is not for utility. It's a penalty which we pay."

"I know that."

"The point is whether you can go on enjoying life, after what has happened."

She waited for Maskull to come even with her.

"Perhaps you imagine I'm not man enough -- you imagine that because I allowed poor Oceaxe to die for me -- "

"She did die for you," said Tydomin, in a quiet, emphatic voice.

"That would be a second blunder of yours," returned Maskull, just as firmly. "I was not in love with Oceaxe, and I'm not in love with life."

"Your life is not required."

"Then I don't understand what you want, or what you are speaking about."

"It's not for me to ask a sacrifice from you, Maskull. That would be compliance on your part, but not sacrifice. You must wait until you feel there's nothing else for you to do."

"It's all very mysterious."

The conversation was abruptly cut short by a prolonged and frightful crashing, roaring sound, coming from a short distance ahead. It was accompanied by a violent oscillation of the ground on which they stood. They looked up, startled, just in time to witness the final disappearance of a huge mass of forest land, not two hundred yards in front of them. Several acres of trees, plants, rocks, and soil, with all its teeming animal life, vanished before their eyes, like a magic story. The new chasm was cut, as if by a knife. Beyond its farther edge the Alppain glow burned blue just over the horizon.

"Now we shall have to make a detour," said Tydomin, halting.

Maskull caught hold of her with his third hand. "Listen to me, while I try to describe what I'm feeling. When I saw that landslip, everything I have heard about the last destruction of the world came into my mind. It seemed to me as if I were actually witnessing it, and that the world were really falling to pieces. Then, where the land was, we now have this empty, awful gulf -- that's to say, nothing -- and it seems to me as if our life will come to the same condition, where there was something there will be nothing. But that terrible blue glare on the opposite side is exactly like the eye of fate. It accuses us, and demands what we have made of our life, which is no more. At the same time, it is grand and joyful. The joy consists in this -- that it is in our power to give freely what will later on be taken from us by force."

Tydomin watched him attentively. "Then your feeling is that your life is worthless, and you make a present of it to the first one who asks?"

"No, it goes beyond that. I feel that the only thing worth living for is to be so magnanimous that fate itself will be astonished at us. Understand me. It isn't cynicism, or bitterness, or despair, but heroism.... It's hard to explain."

"Now you shall hear what sacrifice I offer you, Maskull. It's a heavy one, but that's what you seem to wish."

"That is so. In my present mood it can't be too heavy."

"Then, if you are in earnest, resign your body to me. Now that Crimtyphon's dead, I'm tired of being a woman."

"I fail to comprehend."

"Listen, then. I wish to start a new existence in your body. I wish to be a male. I see it isn't worth while being a woman. I mean to dedicate my own body to Crimtyphon. I shall tie his body and mine together, and give them a common funeral in the burning lake. That's the sacrifice I offer you. As I said, it's a hard one."

"So you do ask me to die. Though how you can make use of my body is difficult to understand."

"No, I don't ask you to die. You will go on living."

"How is it possible without a body?"

Tydomin gazed at him earnestly. "There are many such beings, even in your world. There you call them spirits, apparitions, phantoms. They are in reality living wills, deprived of material bodies, always longing to act and enjoy, but quite unable to do so. Are you noble- minded enough to accept such a state, do you think?"

"If it's possible, I accept it," replied Maskull quietly. "Not in spite of its heaviness, but because of it. But how is it possible?"

"Undoubtedly there are very many things possible in our world of which you have no conception. Now let us wait till we get home. I don't hold you to your word, for unless it's a free sacrifice I will have nothing to do with it."

"I am not a man who speaks lightly. If you can perform this miracle, you have my consent, once for all."

"Then we'll leave it like that for the present," said Tydomin sadly.

They proceeded on their way. Owing to the subsidence, Tydomin seemed rather doubtful at first as to the right road, but by making a long divergence they eventually got around to the other side of the newly formed chasm. A little later on, in a narrow copse crowning a miniature, insulated peak, they fell in with a man. He was resting himself against a tree, and looked tired, overheated, and despondent. He was young. His beardless expression bore an expression of unusual sincerity, and in other respects he seemed a hardy, hardworking youth, of an intellectual type. His hair was thick, short, and flaxen. He possessed neither a sorb nor a third arm -- so presumably he was not a native of Ifdawn. His forehead, however, was disfigured by what looked like a haphazard assortment of eyes, eight in number, of different sizes and shapes. They went in pairs, and whenever two were in use, it was indicated by a peculiar shining -- the rest remained dull, until their turn came. In addition to the upper eyes he had the two lower ones, but they were vacant and lifeless. This extraordinary battery of eyes, alternatively alive and dead, gave the young man an appearance of almost alarming mental activity. He was wearing nothing but a sort of skin kilt. Maskull seemed somehow to recognise the face, though he had certainly never set eyes on it before.

Tydomin suggested to him to set down the corpse, and both sat down to rest in the shade.

"Question him, Maskull," she said, rather carelessly, jerking her head toward the stranger.

Maskull sighed and asked aloud, from his seat on the ground, "What's your name, and where do you come from?"

The man studied him for a few moments, first with one pair of eyes, then with another, then with a third. He next turned his attention to Tydomin, who occupied him a still longer time. He replied at last, in a dry, manly, nervous voice. "I am Digrung. I have arrived here from Matterplay." His colour kept changing, and Maskull suddenly realised of whom he reminded him. It was of Joiwind.

"Perhaps you're going to Poolingdred, Digrung?" he inquired, interested.

"As a matter of fact I am -- if I can find my way out of this accursed country."

"Possibly you are acquainted with Joiwind there?"

"She's my sister. I'm on my way to see her now. Why, do you know her?"

"I met her yesterday."

"What is your name, then?"

"Maskull."

"I shall tell her I met you. This will be our first meeting for four years. Is she well, and happy?"

"Both, as far as I could judge. You know Panawe?"

"Her husband -- yes. But where do you come from? I've seen nothing like you before."

"From another world. Where is Matterplay?"

"It's the first country one comes to beyond the Sinking Sea."

"What is it like there -- how do you amuse yourselves? The same old murders and sudden deaths?"

"Are you ill?" asked Digrung. "Who is this woman, why are you following at her heels like a slave? She looks insane to me. What's that corpse -- why are you dragging it around the country with you?"

Tydomin smiled. "I've already heard it said about Matterplay, that if one sows an answer there, a rich crop of questions immediately springs up. But why do you make this unprovoked attack on me, Digrung?"

"I don't attack you, woman, but I know you. I see into you, and I see insanity. That wouldn't matter, but I don't like to see a man of intelligence like Maskull caught in your filthy meshes."

"I suppose even you clever Matterplay people sometimes misjudge character. However, I don't mind. Your opinion's nothing to me, Digrung. You'd better answer his questions, Maskull. Not for his own sake -- but your feminine friend is sure to be curious about your having been seen carrying a dead man."

Maskull's underlip shot out. "Tell your sister nothing, Digrung. Don't mention my name at all. I don't want her to know about this meeting of ours."

"Why not?"

"I don't wish it -- isn't that enough?"

Digrung looked impassive.

"Thoughts and words," he said, "which don't correspond with the real events of the world are considered most shameful in Matterplay."

"I'm not asking you to lie, only to keep silent."

"To hide the truth is a special branch of lying. I can't accede to your wish. I must tell Joiwind everything, as far as I know it."

Maskull got up, and Tydomin followed his example.

She touched Digrung on the arm and gave him a strange look. "The dead man is my husband, and Maskull murdered him. Now you'll understand why he wishes you to hold your tongue."

"I guessed there was some foul play," said Digrung. "It doesn't matter -- I can't falsify facts. Joiwind must know."

"You refuse to consider her feelings?" said Maskull, turning pale.

"Feelings which flourish on illusions, and sicken and die on realities, aren't worth considering. But Joiwind's are not of that kind."

"If you decline to do what I ask, at least return home without seeing her; your sister will get very little pleasure out of the meeting when she hears your news."

"What are these strange relations between you?" demanded Digrung, eying him with suddenly aroused suspicion.

Maskull stared back in a sort of bewilderment. "Good God! You don't doubt your own sister. That pure angel!"

Tydomin caught hold of him delicately. "I don't know Joiwind, but, whoever she is and whatever she's like, I know this -- she's more fortunate in her friend than in her brother. Now, if you really value her happiness, Maskull, you will have to take some firm step or other."

"I mean to. Digrung, I shall stop your journey."

"If you intend a second murder, no doubt you are big enough."

Maskull turned around to Tydomin and laughed. "I seem to be leaving a wake of corpses behind me on this journey."

"Why a corpse? There's no need to kill him."

"Thanks for that!" said Digrung dryly. "All the same, some crime is about to burst. I feel it."

"What must I do, then?" asked Maskull.

"It is not my business, and to tell the truth I am not very interested.... If I were in your place, Maskull, I would not hesitate long. Don't you understand how to absorb these creatures, who set their feeble, obstinate wills against yours?"

"That is a worse crime," said Maskull.

"Who knows? He will live, but he will tell no tales."

Digrung laughed, but changed colour. "I was right then. The monster has sprung into the light of day."

Maskull laid a hand on his shoulder. "You have the choice, and we are not joking. Do as I ask."

"You have fallen low, Maskull. But you are walking in a dream, and I can't talk to you. As for you, woman -- sin must be like a pleasant bath to you...."

"There are strange ties between Maskull and myself; but you are a passer-by, a foreigner. I care nothing for you."

"Nevertheless, I shall not be frightened out of my plans, which are legitimate and right."

"Do as you please," said Tydomin. "If you come to grief, your thoughts will hardly have corresponded with the real events of the world, which is what you boast about. It is no affair of mine."

"I shall go on, and not back!" exclaimed Digrung, with angry emphasis.

Tydomin threw a swift, evil smile at Maskull. "Bear witness that I have tried to persuade this young man. Now you must come to a quick decision in your own mind as to which is of the greatest importance, Digrung's happiness or Joiwind's. Digrung won't allow you to preserve them both."

"It won't take me long to decide. Digrung, I gave you a last chance to change your mind."

"As long as it's in my power I shall go on, and warn my sister against her criminal friends."

Maskull again clutched at him, but this time with violence. Instructed in his actions by some new and horrible instinct, he pressed the young man tightly to his body with all three arms. A feeling of wild, sweet delight immediately passed through him. Then for the first time he comprehended the triumphant joys of "absorbing." It satisfied the hunger of the will, exactly as food satisfies the hunger of the body. Digrung proved feeble -- he made little opposition. His personality passed slowly and evenly into Maskull's. The latter became strong and gorged. The victim gradually became paler and limper, until Maskull held a corpse in his arms. He dropped the body, and stood trembling. He had committed his second crime. He felt no immediate difference in his soul, but...

Tydomin shed a sad smile on him, like winter sunshine. He half expected her to speak, but she said nothing. Instead, she made a sign to him to pick up Crimtyphon's corpse. As he obeyed, he wondered why Digrung's dead face did not wear the frightful Crystalman mask.

"Why hasn't he altered?" he muttered to himself.

Tydomin heard him. She kicked Digrung lightly with her little foot. "He isn't dead -- that's why. The expression you mean is waiting for your death."

"Then is that my real character?"

She laughed softly. "You came here to carve a strange world, and now it appears you are carved yourself. Oh, there's no doubt about it, Maskull. You needn't stand there gaping. You belong to Shaping, like the rest of us. You are not a king, or a god."

"Since when have I belonged to him?"

"What does that matter? Perhaps since you first breathed the air of Tormance, or perhaps since five minutes ago."

Without waiting for his response, she set off through the copse, and strode on to the next island. Maskull followed, physically distressed and looking very grave.

The journey continued for half an hour longer, without incident. The character of the scenery slowly changed. The mountaintops became loftier and more widely separated from one another. The gaps were filled with rolling, white clouds, which bathed the shores of the peaks like a mysterious sea. To pass from island to island was hard work, the intervening spaces were so wide -- Tydomin, however, knew the way. The intense light, the violet-blue sky, the patches of vivid landscape, emerging from the white vapour-ocean, made a profound impression on Maskull's mind. The glow of Alppain was hidden by the huge mass of Disscourn, which loomed up straight in front of them.

The green snow on the top of the gigantic pyramid had by now completely melted away. The black, gold, and crimson of its mighty cliffs stood out with terrific brilliance. They were directly beneath the bulk of the mountain, which was not a mile away. It did not appear dangerous to climb, but he was unaware on which side of it their destination lay.

It was split from top to bottom by numerous straight fissures. A few pale-green waterfalls descended here and there, like narrow, motionless threads. The face of the mountain was rugged and bare. It was strewn with detached boulders, and great, jagged rocks projected everywhere like iron teeth. Tydomin pointed to a small black hole near the base, which might be a cave. "That is where I live."

"You live here alone?"

"Yes."

"It's an odd choice for a woman -- and you are not unbeautiful, either."

"A woman's life is over at twenty-five," she replied, sighing. "And I am far older than that. Ten years ago it would have been I who lived yonder, and not Oceaxe. Then all this wouldn't have happened."

A quarter of an hour later they stood within the mouth of the cave. It was ten feet high, and its interior was impenetrably black.

"Put down the body in the entrance, out of the sun," directed Tydomin. He did so.

She cast a keenly scrutinising glance at him. "Does your resolution still hold, Maskull?"

"Why shouldn't it hold? My brains are not feathers."

"Follow me, then."

They both stepped into the cave. At that very moment a sickening crash, like heavy thunder just over their heads, set Maskull's weakened heart thumping violently. An avalanche of boulders, stones, and dust, swept past the cave entrance from above. If their going in had been delayed by a single minute, they would have been killed.

Tydomin did not even look up. She took his hand in hers, and started walking with him into the darkness. The temperature became as cold as ice. At the first bend the light from the outer world disappeared, leaving them in absolute blackness. Maskull kept stumbling over the uneven ground, but she kept tight hold of him, and hurried him along.

The tunnel seemed of interminable length. Presently, however, the atmosphere changed -- or such was his impression. He was somehow led to imagine that they had come to a larger chamber. Here Tydomin stopped, and then forced him down with quiet pressure. His groping hand encountered stone and, by feeling it all over, he discovered that it was a sort of stone slab, or couch, raised a foot or eighteen inches from the ground. She told him to lie down.

"Has the time come?" asked Maskull.

"Yes."

He lay there waiting in the darkness, ignorant of what was going to happen. He felt her hand clasping his. Without perceiving any gradation, he lost all consciousness of his body; he was no longer able to feel his limbs or internal organs. His mind remained active and alert. Nothing particular appeared to be taking place.

Then the chamber began to grow light, like very early morning. He could see nothing, but the retina of his eyes was affected. He fancied that he heard music, but while he was listening for it, it stopped. The light grew stronger, the air grew warmer; he heard the confused sound of distant voices.

Suddenly Tydomin gave his hand a powerful squeeze. He heard someone scream faintly, and then the light leaped up, and he saw everything clearly.

He was lying on a wooden couch, in a strangely decorated room, lighted by electricity. His hand was being squeezed, not by Tydomin, but by a man dressed in the garments of civilisation, with whose face he was certainly familiar, but under what circumstances he could not recall. Other people stood in the background -- they too were vaguely known to him. He sat up and began to smile, without any especial reason; and then stood upright.

Everybody seemed to be watching him with anxiety and emotion -- he wondered why. Yet he felt that they were all acquaintances. Two in particular he knew -- the man at the farther end of the room, who paced restlessly backward and forward, his face transfigured by stern, holy grandeur; and that other big, bearded man -- who was himself. Yes -- he was looking at his own double. But it was just as if a crime-riddled man of middle age were suddenly confronted with his own photograph as an earnest, idealistic youth.

His other self spoke to him. He heard the sounds, but did not comprehend the sense. Then the door was abruptly flung open, and a short, brutish-looking individual leaped in. He began to behave in an extraordinary manner to everyone around him; and after that came straight up to him -- Maskull. He spoke some words, but they were incomprehensible. A terrible expression came over the newcomer's face, and he grasped his neck with a pair of hairy hands. Maskull felt his bones bending and breaking, excruciating pains passed through all the nerves of his body, and he experienced a sense of impending death. He cried out, and sank helplessly on the floor, in a heap. The chamber and the company vanished -- the light went out.

Once more he found himself in the blackness of the cave. He was this time lying on the ground, but Tydomin was still with him, holding his hand. He was in horrible bodily agony, but this was only a setting for the despairing anguish that filled his mind.

Tydomin addressed him in tones of gentle reproach. "Why are you back so soon? I've not had time yet. You must return."

He caught hold of her, and pulled himself up to his feet. She gave a low scream, as though in pain. "What does this mean -- what are you doing, Maskull?"

"Krag -- " began Maskull, but the effort to produce his words choked him, so that he was obliged to stop.

"Krag -- what of Krag? Tell me quickly what has happened. Free my arm."

He gripped her arm tighter.

"Yes, I've seen Krag. I'm awake."

"Oh! You are awake, awake."

"And you must die," said Maskull, in an awful voice.

"But why? What has happened?..."

"You must die, and I must kill you. Because I am awake, and for no other reason. You blood-stained dancing mistress!"

Tydomin breathed hard for a little time. Then she seemed suddenly to regain her self-possession.

"You won't offer me violence, surely, in this black cave?"

"No, the sun shall look on, for it is not a murder. But rest assured that you must die -- you must expiate your fearful crimes."

"You have already said so, and I see you have the power. You have escaped me. It is very curious. Well, then, Maskull, let us come outside. I am not afraid. But kill me courteously, for I have also been courteous to you. I make no other supplication."

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Chapter 11: ON DISSCOURN

BY THE TIME that they regained the mouth of the cavern, Blodsombre was at its height. In front of them the scenery sloped downward -- a long succession of mountain islands in a sea of clouds. Behind them the bright, stupendous crags of Disscourn loomed up for a thousand feet or more. Maskull's eyes were red, and his face looked stupid; he was still holding the woman by the arm. She made no attempt to speak, or to get away. She seemed perfectly gentle and composed.

After gazing at the country for along time in silence, he turned toward her. "Whereabouts is the fiery lake you spoke of?"

"It lies on the other side of the mountain. But why do you ask?"

"It is just as well if we have some way to walk. I shall grow calmer, and that's what I want. I wish you to understand that what is going to happen is not a murder, but an execution."

"It will taste the same," said Tydomin.

"When I have gone out of this country, I don't wish to feel that I have left a demon behind me, wandering at large. That would not be fair to others. So we will go to the lake, which promises an easy death for you."

She shrugged her shoulders. "We must wait till Blodsombre is over."

"Is this a time for luxurious feelings? However hot it is now, we will both be cool by evening. We must start at once."

"Without doubt, you are the master, Maskull.... May I not carry Crimtyphon?"

Maskull looked at her strangely.

"I grudge no man his funeral."

She painfully hoisted the body on her narrow shoulders, and they stepped out into the sunlight. The heat struck them like a blow on the head. Maskull moved aside, to allow her to precede him, but no compassion entered his heart. He brooded over the wrongs the woman had done him.

The way went along the south side of the great pyramid, near its base. It was a rough road, clogged with boulders and crossed by cracks and water gullies; they could see the water, but could not get at it. There was no shade. Blisters formed on their skin, while all the water in their blood seemed to dry up.

Maskull forgot his own tortures in his devil's delight at Tydomin's. "Sing me a song!" he called out presently. "A characteristic one."

She turned her head and gave him a long, peculiar look; then, without any sort of expostulation, started singing. Her voice was low and weird. The song was so extraordinary that he had to rub his eyes to ascertain whether he was awake or dreaming. The slow surprises of the grotesque melody began to agitate him in a horrible fashion; the words were pure nonsense -- or else their significance was too deep for him.

"Where, in the name of all unholy things, did you acquire that stuff, woman?"

Tydomin shed a sickly smile, while the corpse swayed about with ghastly jerks over her left shoulder. She held it in position with her two left arms. "It's a pity we could not have met as friends, Maskull. I could have shown you a side of Tormance which now perhaps you will never see. The wild, mad, side. But now it's too late, and it doesn't matter."

They turned the angle of the mountain, and started to traverse the western base.

"Which is the quickest way out of this miserable land?" asked Maskull.

"It is easiest to go to Sant."

"Will we see it from anywhere?"

"Yes, though it is a long way off."

"Have you been there?"

"I am a woman, and interdicted."

"True. I have heard something of the sort."

"But don't ask me any more questions," said Tydomin, who was becoming faint.

Maskull stopped at a little spring. He himself drank, and then made a cup of his hand for the woman, so that she might not have to lay down her burden. The gnawl water acted like magic -- it seemed to replenish all the cells of his body as though they had been thirsty sponge pores, sucking up liquid. Tydomin recovered her self- possession.

About three-quarters of an hour later they worked around the second corner, and entered into full view of the north aspect of Disscourn.

A hundred yards lower down the slope on which they were walking, the mountain ended abruptly in a chasm. The air above it was filled with a sort of green haze, which trembled violently like the atmosphere immediately over a furnace.

"The lake is underneath," said Tydomin.

Maskull looked curiously about him. Beyond the crater the country sloped away in a continuous descent to the skyline. Behind them, a narrow path channelled its way up through the rocks toward the towering summit of the pyramid. Miles away, in the north-east quarter, a long, flat-topped plateau raised its head far above all the surrounding country. It was Sant -- and there and then he made up his mind that that should be his destination that day.

Tydomin meanwhile had walked straight to the gulf, and set down Crimtyphon's body on the edge. In a minute or two, Maskull joined her; arrived at the brink, he immediately flung himself at full length on his chest, to see what could be seen of the lake of fire. A gust of hot, asphyxiating air smote his face and set him coughing, but he did not get up until he had stared his fill at the huge sea of green, molten lava, tossing and swirling at no great distance below, like a living will.

A faint sound of drumming came up. He listened intently, and as he did so his heart quickened and the black cares rolled away from his soul. All the world and its accidents seemed at that moment false, and without meaning....

He climbed abstractedly to his feet. Tydomin was talking to her dead husband. She was peering into the hideous face of ivory, and fondling his violet hair. When she perceived Maskull, she hastily kissed the withered lips, and got up from her knees. Lifting the corpse with all three arms, she staggered with it to the extreme edge of the gulf and, after an instant's hesitation, allowed it to drop into the lava. It disappeared immediately without sound; a metallic splash came up. That was Crimtyphon's funeral.

"Now I am ready, Maskull."

He did not answer, but stared past her. Another figure was standing, erect and mournful, not far behind her. It was Joiwind. Her face was wan, and there was an accusing look in her eyes. Maskull knew that it was a phantasm, and that the real Joiwind was miles away, at Poolingdred.

"Turn around, Tydomin," he said oddly, "and tell me what you see behind you."

"I don't see anything," she answered, looking around.

"But I see Joiwind."

Just as he was speaking, the apparition vanished.

"Now I present you with your life, Tydomin. She wishes it."

The woman fingered her chin thoughtfully.

"I little expected I should ever be beholden for my life to one of my own sex -- but so be it. What really happened to you in my cavern?"

"I really saw Krag."

"Yes, some miracle must have taken place." She suddenly shivered. "Come, let us leave this horrible spot. I shall never come here again."

"Yes," said Maskull, "it stinks of death and dying. But where are we to go -- what are we to do? Take me to Sant. I must get away from this hellish land."

Tydomin remained standing, dull and hollow-eyed. Then she gave an abrupt, bitter little laugh. "We make our journey together in singular stages. Rather than be alone, I'll come with you -- but you know that if I set foot in Sant they will kill me."

"At least set me on the way. I wish to get there before night. Is it possible?"

"If you are willing to take risks with nature. And why should you not take risks today? Your luck holds. But someday or other it won't hold -- your luck."

"Let us start," said Maskull. "The luck I've had so far is nothing to brag about."

Blodsombre was over when they set off; it was early afternoon, but the heat seemed more stifling than ever. They made no more pretence at conversation; both were buried in their own painful thoughts. The land fell away from Disscourn in all other directions, but toward Sant there was a gentle, persistent rise. Its dark, distant plateau continued to dominate the landscape, and after walking for an hour they seemed none the nearer to it. The air was stale and stagnant.

By and by, an upright object, apparently the work of man, attracted Maskull's notice. It was a slender tree stem, with the bark still on, imbedded in the stony ground. From the upper end three branches sprang out, pointing aloft at a sharp angle. They were stripped to twigs and leaves and, getting closer, he saw that they had been artificially fastened on, at equal distances from each other.

As he stared at the object, a strange, sudden flush of confident vanity and self-sufficiency seemed to pass through him, but it was so momentary that he could be sure of nothing.

"What may that be, Tydomin?"

"It is Hator's Trifork."

"And what is its purpose?"

"It's a guide to Sant."

"But who or what is Hator?"

"Hator was the founder of Sant -- many thousands of years ago. He laid down the principles they all live by, and that trifork is his symbol. When I was a little child my father told me the legends, but I've forgotten most of them."

Maskull regarded it attentively.

"Does it affect you in any way?"

"And why should it do that?" she said, dropping her lip scornfully. "I am only a woman, and these are masculine mysteries."

"A sort of gladness came over me," said Maskull, "but perhaps I am mistaken."

They passed on. The scenery gradually changed in character. The solid parts of the land grew more continuous, the fissures became narrower and more infrequent. There were now no more subsidences or upheavals. The peculiar nature of the Ifdawn Marest appeared to be giving place to a different order of things.

Later on, they encountered a flock of pale blue jellies floating in the air. They were miniature animals. Tydomin caught one in her hand and began to eat it, just as one eats a luscious pear plucked from a tree. Maskull, who had fasted since early morning, was not slow in following her example. A sort of electric vigour at once entered his limbs and body, his muscles regained their elasticity, his heart began to beat with hard, slow, strong throbs.

"Food and body seem to agree well in this world," he remarked smiling.

She glanced toward him. "Perhaps the explanation is not in the food, but in your body."

"I brought my body with me."

"You brought your soul with you, but that's altering fast, too."

In a copse they came across a short, wide tree, without leaves, but possessing a multitude of thin, flexible branches, like the tentacles of a cuttlefish. Some of these branches were moving rapidly. A furry animal, somewhat resembling a wildcat, leaped about among them in the most extraordinary way. But the next minute Maskull was shocked to realise that the beast was not leaping at all, but was being thrown from branch to branch by the volition of the tree, exactly as an imprisoned mouse is thrown by a cat from paw to paw.

He watched the spectacle a while with morbid interest.

"That's a gruesome reversal of roles, Tydomin."

"One can see you're disgusted," she replied, stifling a yawn. "But that is because you are a slave to words. If you called that plant an animal, you would find its occupation perfectly natural and pleasing. And why should you not call it an animal?"

"I am quite aware that, as long as I remain in the Ifdawn Marest, I shall go on listening to this sort of language."

They trudged along for an hour or more without talking. The day became overcast. A thin mist began to shroud the landscape, and the sun changed into an immense ruddy disk which could be stared at without flinching. A chill, damp wind blew against them. Presently it grew still darker, the sun disappeared and, glancing first at his companion and then at himself, Maskull noticed that their skin and clothing were coated by a kind of green hoarfrost.

The land was now completely solid. About half a mile, in front of them, against a background of dark fog, a moving forest of tall waterspouts gyrated slowly and gracefully hither and thither. They were green and self-luminous, and looked terrifying. Tydomin explained that they were not waterspouts at all, but mobile columns of lightning.

"Then they are dangerous?"

"So we think," she answered, watching them closely.

"Someone is wandering there who appears to have a different opinion."

Among the spouts, and entirely encompassed by them, a man was walking with a slow, calm, composed gait, his back turned toward Maskull and Tydomin. There was something unusual in his appearance -- his form looked extraordinarily distinct, solid, and real.

"If there's danger, he ought to be warned," said Maskull.

"He who is always anxious to teach will learn nothing," returned the woman coolly. She restrained Maskull by a pressure of the arm, and continued to watch.

The base of one of the columns touched the man. He remained unharmed, but turned sharply around, as if for the first time made aware of the proximity of these deadly waltzers. Then he raised himself to his full height, and stretched both arms aloft above his head, like a diver. He seemed to be addressing the columns.

While they looked on, the electric spouts discharged themselves, with a series of loud explosions. The stranger stood alone, uninjured. He dropped his arms. The next moment he caught sight of the two, and stood still, waiting for them to come up. The pictorial clarity of his person grew more and more noticeable as they approached; his body seemed to be composed of some substance heavier and denser than solid matter.

Tydomin looked perplexed.

"He must be a Sant man. I have seen no one quite like him before. This is a day of days for me."

"He must be an individual of great importance," murmured Maskull.

They now came up to him. He was tall, strong, and bearded, and was clothed in a shirt and breeches of skin. Since turning his back to the wind, the green deposit on his face and limbs had changed to streaming moisture, through which his natural colour was visible; it was that of pale iron. There was no third arm. His face was harsh and frowning, and a projecting chin pushed the beard forward. On his forehead there were two flat membranes, like rudimentary eyes, but no sorb. These membranes were expressionless, but in some strange way seemed to add vigour to the stem eyes underneath. When his glance rested on Maskull, the latter felt as though his brain were being thoroughly travelled through. The man was middle-aged.

His physical distinctness transcended nature. By contrast with him, every object in the neighbourhood looked vague and blurred. Tydomin's person suddenly appeared faint, sketch-like, without significance, and Maskull realised that it was no better with himself. A queer, quickening fire began running through his veins.

He turned to the woman. "If this man is going to Sant, I shall bear him company. We can now part. No doubt you will think it high time."

"Let Tydomin come too."

The words were delivered in a rough, foreign tongue, but were as intelligible to Maskull as if spoken in English.

"You who know my name, also know my sex," said Tydomin quietly. "It is death for me to enter Sant."

"That is the old law. I am the bearer of the new law."

"Is it so -- and will it be accepted?"

"The old skin is cracking, the new skin has been silently forming underneath, the moment of sloughing has arrived."

The storm gathered. The green snow drove against them, as they stood talking, and it grew intensely cold. None noticed it.

"What is your name?" asked Maskull, with a beating heart.

"My name, Maskull, is Spadevil. You, a voyager across the dark ocean of space, shall be my first witness and follower. You, Tydomin, a daughter of the despised sex, shall be my second."

"The new law? But what is it?"

"Until eye sees, of what use it is for ear to hear? .... Come, both of you, to me!"

Tydomin went to him unhesitatingly. Spadevil pressed his hand on her sorb and kept it there for a few minutes, while he closed his own eyes. When he removed it, Maskull observed that the sorb was transformed into twin membranes like Spadevil's own.

Tydomin looked dazed. She glanced quietly about for a little while, apparently testing her new faculty. Then the tears started to her eyes and, snatching up Spadevil's hand, she bent over and kissed it hurriedly many times.

"My past has been bad," she said. "Numbers have received harm from me, and none good. I have killed and worse. But now I can throw all that away, and laugh. Nothing can now injure me. Oh, Maskull, you and I have been fools together!"

"Don't you repent your crimes?" asked Maskull.

"Leave the past alone," said Spadevil, "it cannot be reshaped. The future alone is ours. It starts fresh and clean from this very minute. Why do you hesitate, Maskull? Are you afraid?"

"What is the name of, those organs, and what is their function?"

"They are probes, and they are the gates opening into a new world."

Maskull lingered no longer, but permitted Spadevil to cover his sorb.

While the iron hand was still pressing his forehead, the new law quietly flowed into his consciousness, like a smooth-running stream of clean water which had hitherto been dammed by his obstructive will. The law was duty.

[admin]

Chapter 12: SPADEVIL

Maskull found that his new organs had no independent function of their own, but only intensified and altered his other senses. When he used his eyes, ears, or nostrils, the same objects presented themselves to him, but his judgment concerning them was different. Previously all external things had existed for him; now he existed for them. According to whether they served his purpose or were in harmony with his nature, or otherwise, they had been pleasant or painful. Now these words "pleasure" and "pain" simply had no meaning.

The other two watched him, while he was making himself acquainted with his new mental outlook. He smiled at them.

"You were quite right, Tydomin," he said, in a bold, cheerful voice. "We have been fools. So near the light all the time, and we never guessed it. Always buried in the past or future -- systematically ignoring the present -- and now it turns out that apart from the present we have no life at all."

"Thank Spadevil for it," she answered, more loudly than usual.

Maskull looked at the man's dark, concrete form. "Spadevil, now I mean to follow you to the end. I can do nothing less."

The severe face showed no sign of gratification -- not a muscle relaxed.

"Watch that you don't lose your gift," he said gruffly.

Tydomin spoke. "You promised that I should enter Sant with you."

"Attach yourself to the truth, not to me. For I may die before you, but the truth will accompany you to your death. However, now let us journey together, all three of us."

The words had not left his mouth before he put his face against the fine, driving snow, and pressed onward toward his destination. He walked with a long stride; Tydomin was obliged to half run in order to keep up with him. The three travelled abreast; Spadevil in the middle. The fog was so dense that it was impossible to see a hundred yards ahead. The ground was covered by the green snow. The wind blew in gusts from the Sant highlands and was piercingly cold.

"Spadevil, are you a man, or more than a man?" asked Maskull.

"He that is not more than a man is nothing."

"Where have you now come from?"

"From brooding, Maskull. Out of no other mother can truth be born. I have brooded, and rejected; and I have brooded again. Now, after many months' absence from Sant, the truth at last shines forth for me in its simple splendour, like an upturned diamond."

"I see its shining," said Maskull. "But how much does it owe to ancient Hator?"

"Knowledge has its seasons. The blossom was to Hator, the fruit is to me. Hator also was a brooder -- but now his followers do not brood. In Sant all is icy selfishness, a living death. They hate pleasure, and this hatred is the greatest pleasure to them."

But in what way have they fallen off from Hator's doctrines?"

"For him, in his sullen purity of nature, all the world was a snare, a limed twig. Knowing that pleasure was everywhere, a fierce, mocking enemy, crouching and waiting at every corner of the road of life, in order to kill with its sweet sting the naked grandeur of the soul, he shielded himself behind pain. This also his followers do, but they do not do it for the sake of the soul, but for the sake of vanity and pride."

"What is the Trifork?"

"The stem, Maskull, is hatred of pleasure. The first fork is disentanglement from the sweetness of the world. The second fork is power over those who still writhe in the nets of illusion. The third fork is the healthy glow of one who steps into ice-cold water."

"From what land did Hator come?"

"It is not said. He lived in Ifdawn for a while. There are many legends told of him while there."

"We have a long way to go," said Tydomin. "Relate some of these legends, Spadevil."

The snow had ceased, the day brightened, Branchspell reappeared like a phantom sun, but bitter blasts of wind still swept over the plain.

"In those days," said Spadevil, "there existed in Ifdawn a mountain island separated by wide spaces from the land around it. A handsome girl, who knew sorcery, caused a bridge to be constructed across which men and women might pass to it. Having by a false tale drawn Hator on to this rock, she pushed at the bridge with her foot until it tumbled into the depths below. 'You and I, Hator, are now together, and there is no means of separating. I wish to see how long the famous frost man can withstand the breath, smiles and perfume of a girl.' Hator said no word, either then or all that day. He stood till sunset like a tree trunk, and thought of other things. Then the girl grew passionate, and shook her curls. She rose from where she was sitting she looked at him, and touched his arm; but he did not see her. She looked at him, so that all the soul was in her eyes; and then she fell down dead. Hator awoke from his thoughts, and saw her lying, still warm, at his feet, a corpse. He passed to the mainland; but how, it is not related."

Tydomin shuddered. "You too have met your wicked woman, Spadevil; but your method is a nobler one."

"Don't pity other women," said Spadevil, "but love the right. Hator also once conversed with Shaping."

"With the Maker of the World?" said Maskull thoughtfully.

"With the Maker of Pleasure. It is told how Shaping defended his world, and tried to force Hator to acknowledge loveliness and joy. But Hator, answering all his marvellous speeches in a few concise, iron words, showed how this joy and beauty was but another name for the bestiality of souls wallowing in luxury and sloth. Shaping smiled, and said, 'How comes it that your wisdom is greater than that of the Master of wisdom?' Hator said, 'My wisdom does not come from you, nor from your world, but from that other world, which you, Shaping, have vainly tried to imitate.' Shaping replied, 'What, then, do you do in my world?' Hator said, 'I am here falsely, and therefore I am subject to your false pleasures. But I wrap myself in pain -- not because it is good, but because I wish to keep myself as far from you as possible. For pain is not yours, neither does it belong to the other world, but it is the shadow cast by your false pleasures.' Shaping then said, 'What is this faraway other world of which you say "This is so -- this is not so?" How happens it that you alone of all my creatures have knowledge of it?' But Hator spat at his feet, and said, 'You lie, Shaping. All have knowledge of it. You, with your pretty toys, alone obscure it from our view.' Shaping asked, 'What, then, am I?' Hator answered, 'You are the dreamer of impossible dreams.' And then the story goes that Shaping departed, ill pleased with what had been said."

"What other world did Hator refer to?" asked Maskull.

"One where grandeur reigns, Maskull, just as pleasure reigns here."

"Whether grandeur or pleasure, it makes no difference," said Maskull. "The individual spirit that lives and wishes to live is mean and corrupt-natured."

"Guard you your pride!" returned Spadevil. "Do not make law for the universe and for all time, but for yourself and for this small, false life of yours."

"In what shape did death come to that hard, unconquerable man?" asked Tydomin.

"He lived to be old, but went upright and free-limbed to his last hour. When he saw that death could not be staved off longer he determined to destroy himself. He gathered his friends around him; not from vanity, but that they might see to what lengths the human soul can go in its perpetual warfare with the voluptuous body. Standing erect, without support, he died by withholding his breath."

A silence followed, which lasted for perhaps an hour. Their minds refused to acknowledge the icy winds, but the current of their thoughts became frozen.

When Branchspell, however, shone out again, though with subdued power, Maskull's curiosity rose once more. "Your fellow countrymen, then, Spadevil, are sick with self-love?"

"The men of other countries," said Spadevil, "are the slaves of pleasure and desire, knowing it. But the men of my country are the slaves of pleasure and desire, not knowing it."

"And yet that proud pleasure, which rejoices in self-torture, has something noble in it."

"He who studies himself at all is ignoble. Only by despising soul as well as body can a man enter into true life."

"On what grounds do they reject women?"

"Inasmuch as a woman has ideal love, and cannot live for herself. Love for another is pleasure for the loved one, and therefore injurious to him."

"A forest of false ideas is waiting for your axe," said Maskull. "But will they allow it?"

"Spadevil knows, Maskull," said Tydomin, "that be it today or be it tomorrow, love can't be kept out of a land, even by the disciples of Hator."

"Beware of love -- beware of emotion!" exclaimed Spadevil. "Love is but pleasure once removed. Think not of pleasing others, but of serving them."

"Forgive me, Spadevil, if I am still feminine."

"Right has no sex. So long, Tydomin, as you remember that you are a woman, so long you will not enter into divine apathy of soul."

"But where there are no women, there are no children," said Maskull. "How came there to be all these generations of Hator men?"

"Life breeds passion, passion breeds suffering, suffering breeds the yearning for relief from suffering. Men throng to Sant from all parts, in order to have the scars of their souls healed."

"In place of hatred of pleasure, which all can understand, what simple formula do you offer?"

"Iron obedience to duty," answered Spadevil.

"And if they ask 'How far is this consistent with hatred of pleasure?' what will your pronouncement be?"

"I do not answer them, but I answer you, Maskull, who ask the question. Hatred is passion, and all passion springs from the dark fires of self. Do not hate pleasure at all, but pass it by on one side, calm and undisturbed."

"What is the criterion of pleasure? How can we always recognise it, in order to avoid it?"

"Rigidly follow duty, and such questions will not arise."

Later in the afternoon, Tydomin timidly placed her fingers on Spadevil's arm.

"Fearful doubts are in my mind," she said. "This expedition to Sant may turn out badly. I have seen a vision of you, Spadevil, and myself lying dead and covered in blood, but Maskull was not there."

"We may drop the torch, but it will not be extinguished, and others will raise it."

"Show me a sign that you are not as other men -- so that I may know that our blood will not be wasted."

Spadevil regarded her sternly. "I am not a magician. I don't persuade the senses, but the soul. Does your duty call you to Sant, Tydomin? Then go there. Does it not call you to Sant? Then go no farther. Is not this simple? What signs are necessary?"

"Did I not see you dispel those spouts of lightning? No common man could have done that."

"Who knows what any man can do? This man can do one thing, that man can do another. But what all men can do is their duty; and to open their eyes to this, I must go to Sant, and if necessary lay down my life. Will you not still accompany me?"

"Yes," said Tydomin, "I will follow you to the end. It is all the more essential, because I keep on displeasing you with my remarks, and that means I have not yet learned my lesson properly."

"Do not be humble, for humility is only self-judgment, and while we are thinking of self, we must be neglecting some action we could be planning or shaping in our mind."

Tydomin continued to be uneasy and preoccupied.

"Why was Maskull not in the picture?" she asked.

"You dwell on this foreboding because you imagine it is tragical. There is nothing tragical in death, Tydomin, nor in life. There is only right and wrong. What arises from right or wrong action does not matter. We are not gods, constructing a world, but simple men and women, doing our immediate duty. We may die in Sant -- so you have seen it; but the truth will go on living."

"Spadevil, why do you choose Sant to start your work in?" asked Maskull. "These men with fixed ideas seem to me the least likely of any to follow a new light."

"Where a bad tree thrives, a good tree will flourish. But where no tree at all can be found, nothing will grow."

"I understand you," said Maskull. "Here perhaps we are going to martyrdom, but elsewhere we should resemble men preaching to cattle."

Shortly before sunset they arrived at the extremity of the upland plain, above which towered the black cliffs of the Sant Levels. A dizzy, artificially constructed staircase, of more than a thousand steps of varying depth, twisting and forking in order to conform to the angles of the precipices, led to the world overhead. In the place where they stood they were sheltered from the cutting winds. Branchspell, radiantly shining at last, but on the point of sinking, filled the cloudy sky with violent, lurid colors, some of the combinations of which were new to Maskull. The circle of the horizon was so gigantic, that had he been suddenly carried back to Earth, he would by comparison have fancied himself to be moving beneath the dome of some little, closed-in cathedral. He realised that he was on a foreign planet. But he was not stirred or uplifted by the knowledge; he was conscious only of moral ideas. Looking backward, he saw the plain, which for several miles past had been without vegetation, stretching back away to Disscourn. So regular had been the ascent, and so great was the distance, that the huge pyramid looked nothing more than a slight swelling on the face of the earth.

Spadevil stopped, and gazed over the landscape in silence. In the evening sunlight his form looked more dense, dark, and real than ever before. His features were set hard in grimness.

He turned around to his companions. "What is the greatest wonder, in all this wonderful scene?" he demanded.

"Acquaint us," said Maskull.

"All that you see is born from pleasure, and moves on, from pleasure to pleasure. Nowhere is right to be found. It is Shaping's world."

"There is another wonder," said Tydomin, and she pointed her finger toward the sky overhead.

A small cloud, so low down that it was perhaps not more than five hundred feet above them, was sailing along in front of the dark wall of cliff. It was in the exact shape of an open human hand, with downward-pointing fingers. It was stained crimson by the sun; and one or two tiny cloudlets beneath the fingers looked like falling drops of blood.

"Who can doubt now that our death is close at hand?" said Tydomin. "I have been close to death twice today. The first time I was ready, but now I am more ready, for I shall die side by side with the man who has given me my first happiness."

"Do not think of death, but of right persistence," replied Spadevil. "I am not here to tremble before Shaping's portents; but to snatch men from him."

He at once proceeded to lead the way up the staircase. Tydomin gazed upward after him for a moment, with an odd, worshiping light in her eyes. Then she followed him, the second of the party. Maskull limbed last. He was travel stained, unkempt, and very tired; but his soul was at peace. As they steadily ascended the almost perpendicular stairs, the sun got higher in the sky. Its light dyed their bodies a ruddy gold.

They gained the top. There they found rolling in front of them, as far as the eye could see, a barren desert of white sand, broken here and there by large, jagged masses of black rock. Tracts of the sand were reddened by the sinking sun. The vast expanse of sky was filled by evil-shaped clouds and wild colors. The freezing wind, flurrying cross the desert, drove the fine particles of sand painfully against their faces.

"Where now do you take us?" asked Maskull.

"He who guards the old wisdom of Sant must give up that wisdom to me, that I may change it. What he says, others will say. I go to find Maulger."

"And where will you seek him, in this bare country?"

Spadevil struck off toward the north unhesitatingly.

"It is not so far," he said. "It is his custom to be in that part where Sant overhangs the Wombflash Forest. Perhaps he will be there, but I cannot say."

Maskull glanced toward Tydomin. Her sunken cheeks, and the dark circles beneath her eyes told of her extreme weariness.

"The woman is tired, Spadevil," he said.

She smiled, "It's but another step into the land of death. I can manage it. Give me your arm, Maskull."

He put his arm around her waist, and supported her along that way.

"The sun is now sinking," said Maskull. "Will we get there before dark?"

"Fear nothing, Maskull and Tydomin; this pain is eating up the evil in your nature. The road you are walking cannot remain unwalked. We shall arrive before dark."

The sun then disappeared behind the far-distant ridges that formed the western boundary of the Ifdawn Marest. The sky blazed up into more vivid colors. The wind grew colder.

They passed some pools of colourless gnawl water, round the banks of which were planted fruit trees. Maskull ate some of the fruit. It was hard, bitter, and astringent; he could not get rid of the taste, but he felt braced and invigorated by the downward-flowing juices. No other trees or shrubs were to be seen anywhere. No animals appeared, no birds or insects. It was a desolate land.

A mile or two passed, when they again approached the edge of the plateau. Far down, beneath their feet, the great Wombflash Forest began. But daylight had vanished there; Maskull's eyes rested only on a vague darkness. He faintly heard what sounded like the distant sighing of innumerable treetops.

In the rapidly darkening twilight, they came abruptly on a man. He was standing in a pool, on one leg. A pile of boulders had hidden im from their view. The water came as far up as his calf. A trifork, similar to the one Maskull had seen on Disscourn, but smaller, had been stuck in the mud close by his hand.

They stopped by the side of the pond, and waited. Immediately he became aware of their presence, the man set down his other leg, and waded out of the water toward them, picking up his trifork in doing so.

"This is not Maulger, but Catice," said Spadevil.

"Maulger is dead," said Catice, speaking the same tongue as Spadevil, but with an even harsher accent, so that the tympanum of Maskull's ear was affected painfully.

The latter saw before him a bowed, powerful individual, advanced in years. He wore nothing but a scanty loincloth. His trunk was long and heavy, but his legs were rather short. His face was beardless, lemon-coloured, and anxious-looking. It was disfigured by a number of longitudinal ruts, a quarter of an inch deep, the cavities of which seemed clogged with ancient dirt. The hair of his head was black and sparse. Instead of the twin membranous organs of Spadevil, he possessed but one; and this was in the centre of his brow.

Spadevil's dark, solid person stood out from the rest like a reality among dreams.

"Has the trifork passed to you?" he demanded.

"Yes. Why have you brought this woman to Sant?"

"I have brought another thing to Sant. I have brought the new faith."

Catice stood motionless, and looked troubled. "State it."

"Shall I speak with many words, or few words?"

"If you wish to say what is not, many words will not suffice. If you wish to say what is, a few words will be enough."

Spadevil frowned.

"To hate pleasure brings pride with it. Pride is a pleasure. To kill pleasure, we must attach ourselves to duty. While the mind is planning right action, it has no time to think of pleasure."

"Is that the whole?" asked Catice.

"The truth is simple, even for the simplest man."

"Do you destroy Hator, and all his generations, with a single word?"

"I destroy nature, and set up law."

A long silence followed.

"My probe is double," said Spadevil. "Suffer me to double yours, and you will see as I see."

"Come you here, you big man!" said Catice to Maskull. Maskull advanced a step closer.

"Do you follow Spadevil in his new faith?"

"As far as death," exclaimed Maskull.

Catice picked up a flint. "With this stone I strike out one of your two probes. When you have but one, you will see with me, and you will recollect with Spadevil. Choose you then the superior faith, and I shall obey your choice."

"Endure this little pain, Maskull, for the sake of future men," said Spadevil.

"The pain is nothing," replied Maskull, "but I fear the result."

"Permit me, although I am only a woman, to take his place, Catice," said Tydomin, stretching out her hand.

He struck at it violently with the flint, and gashed it from wrist to thumb; the pale carmine blood spouted up. "What brings this kiss- lover to Sant?" he said. "How does she presume to make the rules of life for the sons of Hator?"

She bit her lip, and stepped back. "Well then, Maskull, accept! I certainly should not have played false to Spadevil; but you hardly can."

"If he bids me, I must do it," said Maskull. "But who knows what will come of it?"

Spadevil spoke. "Of all the descendants of Hator, Catice is the most wholehearted and sincere. He will trample my truth underfoot, thinking me a demon sent by Shaping, to destroy the work of this land. But a seed will escape, and my blood and yours, Tydomin, will wash it. Then men will know that my destroying evil is their greatest good. But none here will live to see that."

Maskull now went quite close to Catice, and offered his head. Catice raised his hand, and after holding the flint poised for a moment, brought it down with adroitness and force upon the left-hand probe. Maskull cried out with the pain. The blood streamed down, and the function of the organ was destroyed.

There was a pause, while he walked to and fro, trying to staunch the blood.

"What now do you feel, Maskull? What do you see?" inquired Tydomin anxiously.

He stopped, and stared hard at her. "I now see straight," he said slowly.

"What does that mean?"

He continued to wipe the blood from his forehead. He looked troubled. "Henceforward, as long as I live, I shall fight with my nature, and refuse to feel pleasure. And I advise you to do the same."

Spadevil gazed at him sternly. "Do you renounce my teaching?"

Maskull, however, returned the gaze without dismay. Spadevil's image-like clearness of form had departed for him; his frowning face he knew to be the deceptive portico of a weak and confused intellect.

"It is false."

"Is it false to sacrifice oneself for another?" demanded Tydomin.

"I can't argue as yet," said Maskull. "At this moment the world with its sweetness seems to me a sort of charnel house. I feel a loathing for everything in it, including myself. I know no more."

"Is there no duty?" asked Spadevil, in a harsh tone.

"It appears to me but a cloak under which we share the pleasure of other people."

Tydomin pulled at Spadevil's arm. "Maskull has betrayed you, as he has so many others. Let us go."

He stood fast. "You have changed quickly, Maskull."

Maskull, without answering him, turned to Catice. "Why do men go on living in this soft, shameful world, when they can kill themselves?"

"Pain is the native air of Surtur's children. To what other air do you wish to escape?"

"Surtur's children? Is not Surtur Shaping?"

"It is the greatest of lies. It is Shaping's masterpiece."

"Answer, Maskull!" said Spadevil. "Do you repudiate right action?"

"Leave me alone. Go back! I am not thinking of you, and your ideas. I wish you no harm."

The darkness came on fast. There was another prolonged silence.

Catice threw away the flint, and picked up his staff. "The woman must return home," he said.

"She was persuaded here, and did not come freely. You, Spadevil, must die -- backslider as you are!"

Tydomin said quietly, "He has no power to enforce this. Are you going to allow the truth to fall to the ground, Spadevil?"

"It will not perish by my death, but by my efforts to escape from death. Catice, I accept your judgment."

Tydomin smiled. "For my part, I am too tired to walk farther today, so I shall die with him."

Catice said to Maskull, "Prove your sincerity. Kill this man and his mistress, according to the laws of Hator."

"I can't do that. I have travelled in friendship with them."

"You denied duty; and now you must do your duty," said Spadevil, calmly stroking his beard. "Whatever law you accept, You must obey, without turning to right or left. Your law commands that we must be stoned; and it will soon be dark."

"Have you not even this amount of manhood?" exclaimed Tydomin.

Maskull moved heavily. "Be my witness, Catice, that the thing was forced on me."

"Hator is looking on, and approving," replied Catice.

Maskull then went apart to the pile of boulders scattered by the side of the pool. He glanced about him, and selected two large fragments of rock, the heaviest that he thought he could carry. With these in his arms, he staggered back.

He dropped them on the ground, and stood, recovering his breath. When he could speak again, he said, "I have a bad heart for the business. Is there no alternative? Sleep here tonight, Spadevil, and in the morning go back to where you have come from. No one shall harm you."

Spadevil's ironic smile was lost in the gloom.

"Shall I brood again, Maskull, for still another year, and after that come back to Sant with other truths? Come, waste no time, but choose the heavier stone for me, for I am stronger than Tydomin."

Maskull lifted one of the rocks, and stepped out four full paces. Spadevil confronted him, erect, and waited tranquilly.

The huge stone hurtled through the air. Its flight looked like a dark shadow. It struck Spadevil full in the face, crushing his features, and breaking his neck. He died instantaneously.

Tydomin looked away from the fallen man.

"Be very quick, Maskull, and don't let me keep him waiting."

He panted, and raised the second stone. She placed herself in front of Spadevil's body, and stood there, unsmiling and cold.

The blow caught her between breast and chin, and she fell. Maskull went to her, and, kneeling on the ground, half-raised her in his arms. There she breathed out her last sighs.

After that, he laid her down again, and rested heavily on his hands, while he peered into the dead face. The transition from its heroic, spiritual expression to the vulgar and grinning mask of Crystalman came like a flash; but he saw it.

He stood up in the darkness, and pulled Catice toward him.

"Is that the true likeness of Shaping?"

"It is Shaping stripped of illusion."

"How comes this horrible world to exist?"

Catice did not answer.

"Who is Surtur?"

"You will get nearer to him tomorrow; but not here."

"I am wading through too much blood," said Maskull. "Nothing good can come of it."

"Do not fear change and destruction; but laughter and joy."

Maskull meditated.

"Tell me, Catice. If I had elected to follow Spadevil, would you really have accepted his faith?"

"He was a great-souled man," replied Catice. "I see that the pride of our men is only another sprouting-out of pleasure. Tomorrow I too shall leave Sant, to reflect on all this."

Maskull shuddered. "Then these two deaths were not a necessity, but a crime!"

"His part was played and henceforward the woman would have dragged down his ideas, with her soft love and loyalty. Regret nothing, stranger, but go away at once out of the land."

"Tonight? Where shall I go?"

"To Wombflash, where you will meet the deepest minds. I will put you on the way."

He linked his arm in Maskull's, and they walked away into the night. For a mile or more they skirted the edge of the precipice. The wind was searching, and drove grit into their faces. Through the rifts of the clouds, stars, faint and brilliant, appeared. Maskull saw no familiar constellations. He wondered if the sun of earth was visible, and if so which one it was.

They came to the head of a rough staircase, leading down the cliffside. It resembled the one by which he had come up; but this descended to the Wombflash Forest.

"That is your path," said Catice, "and I shall not come any farther."

Maskull detained him. "Say just this, before we part company -- why does pleasure appear so shameful to us?"

"Because in feeling pleasure, we forget our home."

"And that is -- "

"Muspel," answered Catice.

Having made this reply, he disengaged himself, and, turning his back, disappeared into the darkness.

Maskull stumbled down the staircase as best he could. He was tired, but contemptuous of his pains. His uninjured probe began to discharge matter. He lowered himself from step to step during what seemed an interminable time. The rustling and sighing of the trees grew louder as he approached the bottom; the air became still and warm.

He at last reached level ground. Still attempting to proceed, he began to trip over roots, and to collide with tree trunks. After this had happened a few times, he determined to go no farther that night. He heaped together some dry leaves for a pillow, and immediately flung himself down to sleep. Deep and heavy unconsciousness seized him almost instantly.

[admin]

Chapter 13: THE WOMBFLASH FOREST

He awoke to his third day on Tormance. His limbs ached. He lay on his side, looking stupidly at his surroundings. The forest was like night, but that period of the night when the grey dawn is about to break and objects begin to be guessed at, rather than seen. Two or three amazing shadowy shapes, as broad as houses, loomed up out of the twilight. He did not realise that they were trees, until he turned over on his back and followed their course upward. Far overhead, so high up that he dared not calculate the height, he saw their tops glittering in the sunlight, against a tiny patch of blue sky.

Clouds of mist, rolling over the floor of the forest, kept interrupting his view. In their silent passage they were like phantoms flitting among the trees. The leaves underneath him were sodden, and heavy drops of moisture splashed onto his head from time to time.

He continued lying there, trying to reconstruct the events of the preceding day. His brain was lethargic and confused. Something terrible had happened, but what it was he could not for a long time recollect. Then suddenly there came before his eyes that ghastly closing scene at dusk on the Sant plateau -- Spadevil's crushed and bloody features and Tydomin's dying sighs.... He shuddered convulsively, and felt sick.

The peculiar moral outlook that had dictated these brutal murders had departed from him during the night, and now he recognised what he had done! During the whole of the previous day he seemed to have been labouring under a series of heavy enchantments. First Oceaxe had enslaved him, then Tydomin, then Spadevil, and lastly Catice. They had forced him to murder and violate; he had guessed nothing, but had imagined that he was travelling as a free and enlightened stranger. What was this nightmare journey for -- and would it continue, in the same way? ...

The silence of the forest was so intense that he heard no sound except the pumping of blood through his arteries.

Putting his hand to his face, he found that his remaining probe had disappeared and that he was in possession of three eyes. The third eye was on his forehead, where the old sorb had been. He could not guess its use. He still had his third arm, but it was nerveless.

Now he puzzled his head for a long time, trying unsuccessfully to call that name which had been the last word spoken by Catice.

He got up, with the intention of resuming his journey. He had no toilet to make, and no meal to prepare. The forest was tremendous. The nearest tree appeared to him to have a circumference of at least a hundred feet. Other dim boles looked equally large. But what gave the scene its aspect of immensity was the vast spaces separating tree from tree. It was like some gigantic, supernatural hall in a life after death. The lowest branches were fifty yards or more from the ground. There was no underbrush; the soil was carpeted only by the dead, wet leaves. He looked all around him, to find his direction, but the cliffs of Sant, which he had descended, were invisible -- every way was like every other way, he had no idea which quarter to attack. He grew frightened, and muttered to himself. Craning his neck back, he stared upward and tried to discover the points of the compass from the direction of the sunlight, but it was impossible.

While he was standing there, anxious and hesitating, he heard the drum taps. The rhythmical beats proceeded from some distance off. The unseen drummer seemed to be marching through the forest, away from him.

"Surtur!" he said, under his breath. The next moment he marvelled at himself for uttering the name. That mysterious being had not been in his thoughts, nor was there any ostensible connection between him and the drumming.

He began to reflect -- but in the meantime the sounds were travelling away. Automatically he started walking in the same direction. The drum beats had this peculiarity -- though odd and mystical, there was nothing awe-inspiring in them, but on the contrary they reminded him of some place and some life with which he was perfectly familiar. Once again they caused all his other sense impressions to appear false.

The sounds were intermittent. They would go on for a minute, or for five minutes, and then cease for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Maskull followed them as well as he could. He walked hard among the huge, indistinct trees, in the attempt to come up with the origin of the noise, but the same distance always seemed to separate them. The forest from now onward descended. The gradient was mostly gentle -- about one foot in ten -- but in some places it was much steeper, and in other parts again it was practically level ground for quite long stretches. There were great swampy marshes, through which Maskull was obliged to splash. It was a matter of indifference to him how wet he became -- if only he could catch sight of that individual with the drum. Mile after mile was covered, and still he was no nearer to doing so.

The gloom of the forest settled down upon his spirits. He felt despondent, tired, and savage. He had not heard the drum beats for some while, and was half inclined to discontinue the pursuit.

Passing around a great, columnar tree trunk, he almost stumbled against a man who was standing on the farther side. He was leaning against the trunk with one hand, in an attitude of repose. His other hand was resting on a staff. Maskull stopped short and started at him.

He was nearly naked, and of gigantic build. He over-topped Maskull by a head. His face and body were faintly phosphorescent. His eyes -- three in number -- were pale green and luminous, shining like lamps. His skin was hairless, but the hair of his head was piled up in thick, black coils, and fastened like a woman's. His features were absolutely tranquil, but a terrible, quiet energy seemed to lie just underneath the surface.

Maskull addressed him. "Did the drumming come from you?"

The man shook his head.

"What is your name?"

He replied in a strange, strained, twisted voice. Maskull gathered that the name he gave was "Dreamsinter."

"What is that drumming?"

"Surtur," said Dreamsinter.

"Is it advisable for me to follow it?"

"Why?"

"Perhaps he intends me to. He brought me here from Earth."

Dreamsinter caught hold of him, bent down, and peered into his face. "Not you, but Nightspore."

This was the first time that Maskull had heard Nightspore's name since his arrival on the planet. He was so astonished that he could frame no more questions.

"Eat this," said Dreamsinter. "Then we will chase the sound together." He picked something up from the ground and handed it to Maskull. He could not see distinctly, but it felt like a hard, round nut, of the size of a fist.

"I can't crack it."

Dreamsinter took it between his hands, and broke it into pieces. Maskull then ate some of the pulpy interior, which was intensely disagreeable.

"What am I doing in Tormance, then?" he asked.

"You came to steal Muspel-fire, to give a deeper life to men -- never doubting if your soul could endure that burning."

Maskull could hardly decipher the strangled words.

"Muspel.... That's the name I've been trying to remember ever since I awoke."

Dreamsinter suddenly turned his head sideways, and appeared to listen for something. He motioned with his hand to Maskull to keep quiet.

"Is it the drumming?"

"Hush! They come."

He was looking toward the upper forest. The now familiar drum rhythm was heard -- this time accompanied by the tramp of marching feet.

Maskull saw, marching through the trees and heading toward them, three men in single file separated from one another by only a yard or so. They were travelling down hill at a swift pace, and looked neither to left nor right. They were naked. Their figures were shining against the black background of the forest with a pale, supernatural light -- green and ghostly. When they were abreast of him, about twenty feet off, he perceived who they were. The first man was himself -- Maskull. The second was Krag. The third man was Nightspore. Their faces were grim and set.

The source of the drumming was out of sight. The sound appeared to come from some point in front of them. Maskull and Dreamsinter put themselves in motion, to keep up with the swiftly moving marchers. At the same time a low, faint music began.

Its rhythm stepped with the drum beats, but, unlike the latter, it did not seem to proceed from any particular quarter of the forest. It resembled the subjective music heard in dreams, which accompanies the dreamer everywhere, as a sort of natural atmosphere, rendering all his experiences emotional. It seemed to issue from an unearthly orchestra, and was strongly troubled, pathetic and tragic. Maskull marched, and listened; and as he listened, it grew louder and stormier. But the pulse of the drum interpenetrated all the other sounds, like the quiet beating of reality.

His emotion deepened. He could not have said if minutes or hours were passing. The spectral procession marched on, a little way ahead, on a path parallel with his own and Dreamsinter's. The music pulsated violently. Krag lifted his arm, and displayed a long, murderous-looking knife. He sprang forward and, raising it over the phantom Maskull's back, stabbed him twice, leaving the knife in the wound the second time. Maskull threw up his arms, and fell down dead. Krag leaped into the forest and vanished from sight. Nightspore marched on alone, stern and unmoved.

The music rose to crescendo. The whole dim, gigantic forest was roaring with sound. The tones came from all sides, from above, from the ground under their feet. It was so grandly passionate that Maskull felt his soul loosening from its bodily envelope.

He continued to follow Nightspore. A strange brightness began to glow in front of them. It was not daylight, but a radiance such as he had never seen before, and such as he could not have imagined to be possible. Nightspore moved straight toward it. Maskull felt his chest bursting. The light flashed higher. The awful harmonies of the music followed hard one upon another, like the waves of a wild, magic ocean.... His body was incapable of enduring such shocks, and all of a sudden he tumbled over in a faint that resembled death.

[admin]

Chapter 14: POLECRAB

The morning slowly passed. Maskull made some convulsive movements, and opened his eyes. He sat up, blinking. All was night-like and silent in the forest. The strange light had gone, the music had ceased, Dreamsinter had vanished. He fingered his beard, clotted with Tydomin's blood, and fell into a deep muse.

"According to Panawe and Catice, this forest contains wise men. Perhaps Dreamsinter was one. Perhaps that vision I have just seen was a specimen of his wisdom. It looked almost like an answer to my question.... I ought not to have asked about myself, but about Surtur. Then I would have got a different answer. I might have learned something... I might have seen him."

He remained quiet and apathetic for a bit.

"But I couldn't face that awful glare," he proceeded. "It was bursting my body. He warned me, too. And so Surtur does really exist, and my journey stands for something. But why am I here, and what can I do? Who is Surtur? Where is he to be found?"

Something wild came into his eyes.

"What did Dreamsinter mean by his 'Not you, but Nightspore'? Am I a secondary character -- is he regarded as important; and I as unimportant? Where is Nightspore, and what is he doing? Am I to wait for his time and pleasure -- can I originate nothing?"

He continued sitting up, with straight-extended legs.

"I must make up my mind that this is a strange journey, and that the strangest things will happen in it. It's no use making plans, for I can't see two steps ahead -- everything is unknown. But one thing's evident: nothing but the wildest audacity will carry me through, and I must sacrifice everything else to that. And therefore if Surtur shows himself again, I shall go forward to meet him, even if it means death."

Through the black, quiet aisles of the forest the drum beats came again. The sound was a long way off and very faint. It was like the last mutterings of thunder after a heavy storm. Maskull listened, without getting up. The drumming faded into silence, and did not return.

He smiled queerly, and said aloud, "Thanks, Surtur! I accept the omen."

When he was about to get up, he found that the shrivelled skin that had been his third arm was flapping disconcertingly with every movement of his body. He made perforations in it all around, as close to his chest as possible, with the fingernails of both hands; then he carefully twisted it off. In that world of rapid growth and ungrowth he judged that the stump would soon disappear. After that, he rose and peered into the darkness.

The forest at that point sloped rather steeply and, without thinking twice about it, he took the downhill direction, never doubting it would bring him somewhere. As soon as he started walking, his temper became gloomy and morose -- he was shaken, tired, dirty, and languid with hunger; moreover, he realised that the walk was not going to be a short one. Be that as it may, he determined to sit down no more until the whole dismal forest was at his back.

One after another the shadowy, houselike trees were observed, avoided, and passed. Far overhead the little patch of glowing sky was still always visible; otherwise he had no clue to the time of day. He continued tramping sullenly down the slope for many damp, slippery miles -- in some places through bogs. When, presently, the twilight seemed to thin, he guessed that the open world was not far away. The forest grew more palpable and grey, and now he saw its majesty better. The tree trunks were like round towers, and so wide were the intervals that they resembled natural amphitheatres. He could not make out the colour of the bark. Everything he saw amazed him, but his admiration was of the growling, grudging kind. The difference in light between the forest behind him and the forest ahead became so marked that he could no longer doubt that he was on the point of coming out.

Real light was in front of him; looking back, he found he had a shadow. The trunks acquired a reddish tint. He quickened his pace. As the minutes went by, the bright patch ahead grew luminous and vivid; it had a tinge of blue. He also imagined that he heard the sound of surf.

All that part of the forest toward which he was moving became rich with colour. The boles of the trees were of a deep, dark red; their leaves, high above his head, were ulfire-hued; the dead leaves on the ground were of a colour he could not name. At the same time he discovered the use of his third eye. By adding a third angle to his sight, every object he looked at stood out in greater relief. The world looked less flat -- more realistic and significant. He had a stronger attraction toward his surroundings; he seemed somehow to lose his egotism, and to become free and thoughtful.

Now through the last trees he saw full daylight. Less than half a mile separated him from the border of the forest, and, eager to discover what lay beyond, he broke into a run. He heard the surf louder. It was a peculiar hissing sound that could proceed only from water, yet was unlike the sea. Almost immediately he came within sight of an enormous horizon of dancing waves, which he knew must be the Sinking Sea. He fell back into a quick walk, continuing to stare hard. The wind that met him was hot, fresh and sweet.

When he arrived at the final fringe of forest, which joined the wide sands of the shore without any change of level, he leaned with his back to a great tree and gazed his fill, motionless, at what lay in front of him. The sands continued east and west in a straight line, broken only here and there by a few creeks. They were of a brilliant orange colour, but there were patches of violet. The forest appeared to stand sentinel over the shore for its entire length. Everything else was sea and sky -- he had never seen so much water. The semicircle of the skyline was so vast that he might have imagined himself on a flat world, with a range of vision determined only by the power of his eye. The sea was unlike any sea on Earth. It resembled an immense liquid opal. On a body colour of rich, magnificent emerald-green, flashes of red, yellow, and blue were everywhere shooting up and vanishing. The wave motion was extraordinary. Pinnacles of water were slowly formed until they attained a height of perhaps ten or twenty feet, when they would suddenly sink downward and outward, creating in their descent a series of concentric rings for long distances around them. Quickly moving currents, like rivers in the sea, could be seen, racing away from land; they were of a darker green and bore no pinnacles. Where the sea met the shore, the waves rushed over the sands far in, with almost sinister rapidity -- accompanied by a weird, hissing, spitting sound, which was what Maskull had heard. The green tongues rolled in without foam.

About twenty miles distant, as he judged, directly opposite him, a long, low island stood up from the sea, black and not distinguished in outline. It was Swaylone's Island. Maskull was less interested in that than in the blue sunset that glowed behind its back. Alppain had set, but the whole northern sky was plunged into the minor key by its afterlight. Branchspell in the zenith was white and overpowering, the day was cloudless and terrifically hot; but where the blue sun had sunk, a sombre shadow seemed to overhang the world. Maskull had a feeling of disintegration -- just as if two chemically distinct forces were simultaneously acting upon the cells of his body. Since the afterglow of Alppain affected him like this, he thought it more than likely that he would never be able to face that sun itself, and go on living. Still, some modification might happen to him that would make it possible.

The sea tempted him. He made up his mind to bathe, and at once walked toward the shore. The instant he stepped outside the shadow line of the forest trees, the blinding rays of the sun beat down on him so savagely that for a few minutes he felt sick and his head swam. He trod quickly across the sands. The orange-coloured parts were nearly hot enough to roast food, he judged, but the violet parts were like fire itself. He stepped on a patch in ignorance, and immediately jumped high into the air with a startled yell.

The sea was voluptuously warm. It would not bear his weight, so he determined to try swimming. First of all he stripped off his skin garment, washed it thoroughly with sand and water, and laid it in the sun to dry. Then he scrubbed himself as well as he could and washed out his beard and hair. After that, he waded in a long way, until the water reached his breast, and took to swimming -- avoiding the spouts as far as possible He found it no pastime. The water was everywhere of unequal density. In some places he could swim, in others he could barely save himself from drowning, in others again he could not force himself beneath the surface at all. There were no outward signs to show what the water ahead held in store for him. The whole business was most dangerous.

He came out, feeling clean and invigorated. For a time he walked up and down the sands, drying himself in the hot sunshine and looking around him. He was a naked stranger in a huge, foreign, mystical world, and whichever way he turned, unknown and threatening forces were glaring at him. The gigantic, white, withering Branchspell, the awful, body-changing Alppain, the beautiful, deadly, treacherous sea, the dark and eerie Swaylone's Island, the spirit-crushing forest out of which he had just escaped -- to all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller to oppose, from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to avoid being utterly destroyed? ... Then he smiled to himself. "I've already been here two days, and still I survive. I have luck- and with that one can balance the universe. But what is luck -- a verbal expression, or a thing?"

As he was putting on his skin, which was now dry, the answer came to him, and this time he was grave. "Surtur brought me here, and Surtur is watching over me. That is my 'luck.'... But what is Surtur in this world? ... How is he able to protect me against the blind and ungovernable forces of nature? Is he stronger than Nature? ..."

Hungry as he was for food, he was hungrier still for human society, for he wished to inquire about all these things. He asked himself which way he should turn his steps. There were only two ways; along the shore, either east or west. The nearest creek lay to the east, cutting the sands about a mile away. He walked toward it.

The forest face was forbidding and enormously high. It was so squarely turned to the sea that it looked as though it had been planed by tools. Maskull strode along in the shade of the trees, but kept his head constantly turned away from them, toward the sea -- there it was more cheerful. The creek, when he reached it, proved to be broad and flat-banked. It was not a river, but an arm of the sea. Its still, dark green water curved around a bend out of sight, into the forest. The trees on both banks overhung the water, so that it was completely in shadow.

He went as far as the bend, beyond which another short reach appeared. A man was sitting on a narrow shelf of bank, with his feet in the water. He was clothed in a coarse, rough hide, which left his limbs bare. He was short, thick, and sturdy, with short legs and a long, powerful arms, terminating in hands of an extraordinary size. He was oldish. His face was plain, slablike, and expressionless; it was full of wrinkles, and walnut-coloured. Both face and head were bald, and his skin was tough and leathery. He seemed to be some sort of peasant, or fisherman; there was no trace in his face of thought for others, or delicacy of feeling. He possessed three eyes, of different colors -- jade-green, blue, and ulfire.

In front of him, riding on the water, moored to the bank, was an elementary raft, consisting of the branches of trees, clumsily corded together.

Maskull addressed him. "Are you another of the wise men of the Wombflash Forest?"

The man answered him in a gruff, husky voice, looking up as he did so. "I'm a fisherman. I know nothing about wisdom."

"What name do you go by?"

"Polecrab. What's yours?"

"Maskull. If you're a fisherman, you ought to have fish. I'm famishing."

Polecrab grunted, and paused a minute before answering.

"There's fish enough. My dinner is cooking in the sands now. It's easy enough to get you some more."

Maskull found this a pleasant speech.

"But how long will it take?" he asked.

The man slid the palms of his hands together, producing a shrill, screeching noise. He lifted his feet from the water, and clambered onto the bank. In a minute or two a curious little beast came crawling up to his feet, turning its face and eyes up affectionately, like a dog. It was about two feet long, and somewhat resembled a small seal, but had six legs, ending in strong claws.

"Arg, go fish!" said Polecrab hoarsely.

The animal immediately tumbled off the bank into the water. It swam gracefully to the middle of the creek and made a pivotal dive beneath the surface, where it remained a great while.

"Simple fishing," remarked Maskull. "But what's the raft for?"

"To go to sea with. The best fish are out at sea. These are eatable."

"That arg seems a highly intelligent creature."

Polecrab grunted again. "I've trained close on a hundred of them. The bigheads learn best, but they're slow swimmers. The narrowheads swim like eels, but can't be taught. Now I've started interbreeding them -- he's one of them."

"Do you live here alone?"

"No, I've got a wife and three boys. My wife's sleeping somewhere, but where the lads are, Shaping knows."

Maskull began to feel very much at home with this unsophisticated being.

"The raft's all crazy," he remarked, staring at it. "If you go far out in that, you've got more pluck than I have."

"I've been to Matterplay on it," said Polecrab.

The arg reappeared and started swimming to shore, but this time clumsily, as if it were bearing a heavy weight under the surface. When it landed at its master's feet, they saw that each set of claws was clutching a fish -- six in all. Polecrab took them from it. He proceeded to cut off the heads and tails with a sharp-edged stone which he picked up; these he threw to the arg, which devoured them without any fuss.

Polecrab beckoned to Maskull to follow him and, carrying the fish, walked toward the open shore, by the same way that he had come. When they reached the sands, he sliced the fish, removed the entrails, and digging a shallow hole in a patch of violet sand, placed the remainder of the carcasses in it, and covered them over again. Then he dug up his own dinner. Maskull's nostrils quivered at the savoury smell, but he was not yet to dine.

Polecrab, turning to go with the cooked fish in his hands, said, "These are mine, not yours. When yours are done, you can come back and join me, supposing you want company."

"How soon will that be?"

"About twenty minutes," replied the fisherman, over his shoulder.

Maskull sheltered himself in the shadows of the forest, and waited. When the time had approximately elapsed, he disinterred his meal, scorching his fingers in the operation, although it was only the surface of the sand which was so intensely hot. Then he returned to Polecrab.

In the warm, still air and cheerful shade of the inlet, they munched in silence, looking from their food to the sluggish water, and back again. With every mouthful Maskull felt his strength returning. He finished before Polecrab, who ate like a man for whom time has no value. When he had done, he stood up.

"Come and drink," he said, in his husky voice.

Maskull looked at him inquiringly.

The man led him a little way into the forest, and walked straight up to a certain tree. At a convenient height in its trunk a hole had been tapped and plugged. Polecrab removed the plug and put his mouth to the aperture, sucking for quite a long time, like a child at its mother's breast. Maskull, watching him, imagined that he saw his eyes growing brighter.

When his own turn came to drink, he found the juice of the tree somewhat like coconut milk in flavour, but intoxicating. It was a new sort of intoxication, however, for neither his will not his emotions were excited, but only his intellect -- and that only in a certain way. His thoughts and images were not freed and loosened, but on the contrary kept labouring and swelling painfully, until they reached the full beauty of an aper?u, which would then flame up in his consciousness, burst, and vanish. After that, the whole process started over again. But there was never a moment when he was not perfectly cool, and master of his senses. When each had drunk twice, Polecrab replugged the hole, and they returned to their bank.

"Is it Blodsombre yet?" asked Maskull, sprawling on the ground, well content.

Polecrab resumed his old upright sitting posture, with his feet in the water. "Just beginning," was his hoarse response.

"Then I must stay here till it's over.... Shall we talk?"

"We can," said the other, without enthusiasm.

Maskull glanced at him through half-closed lids, wondering if he were exactly what he seemed to be. In his eyes he thought he detected a wise light.

"Have you travelled much, Polecrab?"

"Not what you would call travelling."

"You tell me you've been to Matterplay -- what kind of country is that?"

"I don't know. I went there to pick up flints."

"What countries lie beyond it?"

"Threal comes next, as you go north. They say it's a land of mystics... I don't know."

"Mystics?"

"So I'm told.... Still farther north there's Lichstorm."

"Now we're going far afield."

"There are mountains there -- and altogether it must be a very dangerous place, especially for a full-blooded man like you. Take care of yourself."

"This is rather premature, Polecrab. How do you know I'm going there?"

"As you've come from the south, I suppose you'll go north."

"Well, that's right enough," said Maskull, staring hard at him. "But how do you know I've come from the south?"

"Well, then, perhaps you haven't -- but there's a look of Ifdawn about you."

"What kind of look?"

"A tragical look," said Polecrab. He never even glanced at Maskull, but was gazing at a fixed spot on the water with unblinking eyes.

"What lies beyond Lichstorm?" asked Maskull, after a minute or two.

"Barey, where you have two suns instead of one -- but beyond that fact I know nothing about it.... Then comes the ocean."

"And what's on the other side of the ocean?"

"That you must find out for yourself, for I doubt if anybody has ever crossed it and come back."

Maskull was silent for a little while.

"How is it that your people are so unadventurous? I seem to be the only one travelling from curiosity."

"What do you mean by 'your people'?"

"True -- you don't know that I don't belong to your planet at all. I've come from another world, Polecrab."

"What to find?"

"I came here with Krag and Nightspore -- to follow Surtur. I must have fainted the moment I arrived. When I sat up, it was night and the others had -- vanished. Since then I've been travelling at random."

Polecrab scratched his nose. "You haven't found Surtur yet?"

"I've heard his drum taps frequently. In the forest this morning I came quite close to him. Then two days ago, in the Lusion Plain, I saw a vision -- a being in man's shape, who called himself Surtur."

"Well, maybe it was Surtur."

"No, that's impossible," replied Maskull reflectively. "It was Crystalman. And it isn't a question of my suspecting it -- I know it."

"How?"

"Because this is Crystalman's world, and Surtur's world is something quite different."

"That's queer, then," said Polecrab.

"Since I've come out of that forest," proceeded Maskull, talking half to himself, "a change has come over me, and I see things differently. Everything here looks much more solid and real in my eyes than in other places so much so that I can't entertain the least doubt of its existence. It not only looks real, it is real -- and on that I would stake my life.... But at the same time that it's real, it is false."

"Like a dream?"

"No -- not at all like a dream, and that's just what I want to explain. This world of yours -- and perhaps of mine too, for that matter -- doesn't give me the slightest impression of a dream, or an illusion, or anything of that sort. I know it's really here at this moment, and it's exactly as we're seeing it, you and I. Yet it's false. It's false in this sense, Polecrab. Side by side with it another world exists, and that other world is the true one, and this one is all false and deceitful, to the very core. And so it occurs to me that reality and falseness are two words for the same thing."

"Perhaps there is such another world," said Polecrab huskily. "But did that vision also seem real and false to you?"

"Very real, but not false then, for then I didn't understand all this. But just because it was real, it couldn't have been Surtur, who has no connection with reality."

"Didn't those drum taps sound real to you?"

"I had to hear them with my ears, and so they sounded real to me. Still, they were somehow different, and they certainly came from Surtur. If I didn't hear them correctly, that was my fault and not his."

Polecrab growled a little. "If Surtur chooses to speak to you in that fashion, it appears he's trying to say something."

"What else can I think? But, Polecrab, what's your opinion -- is he calling me to the life after death?"

The old man stirred uneasily. "I'm a fisherman," he said, after a minute or two. "I live by killing, and so does everybody. This life seems to me all wrong. So maybe life of any kind is wrong, and Surtur's world is not life at all, but something else."

"Yes, but will death lead me to it, whatever it is?"

"Ask the dead," said Polecrab, "and not a living man."

Maskull continued. "In the forest I heard music and saw a light, which could not have belonged to this world. They were too strong for my senses, and I must have fainted for a long time. There was a vision as well, in which I saw myself killed, while Nightspore walked on toward the light, alone."

Polecrab uttered his grunt. "You have enough to think over."

A short silence ensued, which was broken by Maskull.

"So strong is my sense of the untruth of this present life, that it may come to my putting an end to myself." The fisherman remained quiet and immobile.

Maskull lay on his stomach, propped his face on his hands, and stared at him. "What do you think, Polecrab? Is it possible for any man, while in the body, to gain a closer view of that other world than I have done?"

"I am an ignorant man, stranger, so I can't say. Perhaps there are many others like you who would gladly know."

"Where? I should like to meet them."

"Do you think you were made of one stuff, and the rest of mankind of another stuff?"

"I can't be so presumptuous. Possibly all men are reaching out toward Muspel, in most cases without being aware of it."

"In the wrong direction," said Polecrab.

Maskull gave him a strange look. "How so?"

"I don't speak from my own wisdom," said Polecrab, "for I have none; but I have just now recalled what Broodviol once told me, when I was a young man, and he was an old one. He said that Crystalman tries to turn all things into one, and that whichever way his shapes march, in order to escape from him, they find themselves again face to face with Crystalman, and are changed into new crystals. But that this marching of shapes (which we call 'forking') springs from the unconscious desire to find Surtur, but is in the opposite direction to the right one. For Surtur's world does not lie on this side of the one, which was the beginning of life, but on the other side; and to get to it we must repass through the one. But this can only be by renouncing our self-life, and reuniting ourselves to the whole of Crystalman's world. And when this has been done, it is only the first stage of the journey; though many good men imagine it to be the whole journey.... As far as I can remember, that is what Broodviol said, but perhaps, as I was then a young and ignorant man, I may have left out words which would explain his meaning better."

Maskull, who had listened attentively to all this, remained thoughtful at the end.

"It's plain enough," he said. "But what did he mean by our reuniting ourselves to Crystalman's world? If it is false, are we to make ourselves false as well?"

"I didn't ask him that question, and you are as well qualified to answer it as I am."

"He must have meant that, as it is, we are each of us living in a false, private world of our own, a world of dreams and appetites and distorted perceptions. By embracing the great world we certainly lose nothing in truth and reality."

Polecrab withdrew his feet from the water, stood up, yawned, and stretched his limbs.

"I have told you all I know," he said in a surly voice. "Now let me go to sleep."

Maskull kept his eyes fixed on him, but made no reply. The old man let himself down stiffly on to the ground, and prepared to rest.

While he was still arranging his position to his liking, a footfall sounded behind the two men, coming from the direction of the forest. Maskull twisted his neck, and saw a woman approaching them. He at once guessed that it was Polecrab's wife. He sat up, but the fisherman did not stir. The woman came and stood in front of them, looking down from what appeared a great height.

Her dress was similar to her husband's, but covered her limbs more. She was young, tall, slender, and strikingly erect. Her skin was lightly tanned, and she looked strong, but not at all peasantlike. Refinement was stamped all over her. Her face had too much energy of expression for a woman, and she was not beautiful. Her three great eyes kept flashing and glowing. She had great masses of fine, yellow hair, coiled up and fastened, but so carelessly that some of the strands were flowing down her back.

When she spoke, it was in a rather weak voice, but full of lights and shades, and somehow intense passionateness never seemed to be far away from it.

"Forgiveness is asked for listening to your conversation," she said, addressing Maskull. "I was resting behind the tree, and heard it all."

He got up slowly. "Are you Polecrab's wife?"

"She is my wife," said Polecrab, "and her name is Gleameil. Sit down again, stranger -- and you too, wife, since you are here."

They both obeyed. "I heard everything," repeated Gleameil. "But what I did not hear was where you are going to, Maskull, after you have left us."

"I know no more than you do."

"Listen, then. There's only one place for you to go to, and that is Swaylone's Island. I will ferry you across myself before sunset."

"What shall I find there?"

"He may go, wife," put in the old man hoarsely, "but I won't allow you to go. I will take him over myself."

"No, you have always put me off," said Gleameil, with some emotion. "This time I mean to go. When Teargeld shines at night, and I sit on the shore here, listening to Earthrid's music travelling faintly across the sea, I am tortured -- I can't endure it.... I have long since made up my mind to go to the island, and see what this music is. If it's bad, if it kills me -- well."

"What have I to do with the man and his music, Gleameil?" demanded Maskull.

"I think the music will answer all your questions better than Polecrab has done -- and possibly in a way that will surprise you."

"What kind of music can it be to travel all those miles across the sea?"

"A peculiar kind, so we are told. Not pleasant, but painful. And the man that can play the instrument of Earthrid would be able to conjure up the most astonishing forms, which are not phantasms, but realities."

"That may be so," growled Polecrab. "But I have been to the island by daylight, and what did I find there? Human bones, new and ancient. Those are Earthrid's victims. And you, wife, shall not go."

"But will that music play tonight?" asked Maskull.

"Yes," replied Gleameil, gazing at him intently. "When Teargeld rises, which is our moon."

"If Earthrid plays men to death, it appears to me that his own death is due. In any case I should like to hear those sounds for myself. But as for taking you with me, Gleameil -- women die too easily in Tormance. I have only just now washed myself clean of the death blood of another woman."

Gleameil laughed, but said nothing.

"Now go to sleep," said Polecrab. "When the time comes, I will take you across myself."

He lay down again, and closed his eyes. Maskull followed his example; but Gleameil remained sitting erect, with her legs under her.

"Who was that other woman, Maskull?" she asked presently.

He did not answer, but pretended to sleep.

[admin]

Chapter 15: SWALONE'S ISLAND

When he awoke, the day was not so bright, and he guessed it was late afternoon. Polecrab and his wife were both on their feet, and another meal of fish had been cooked and was waiting for him.

"Is it decided who is to go with me?" he asked, before sitting down.

"I go," said Gleameil.

"Do you agree, Polecrab?"

The fisherman growled a little in his throat and motioned to the others to take their seats. He took a mouthful before answering.

"Something strong is attracting her, and I can't hold her back. I don't think I shall see you again, wife, but the lads are now nearly old enough to fend for themselves."

"Don't take dejected views," replied Gleameil sternly. She was not eating. "I shall come back, and make amends to you. It's only for a night."

Maskull gazed from one to the other in perplexity. "Let me go alone. I would be sorry if anything happened."

Gleameil shook her head.

"Don't regard this as a woman's caprice," she said. "Even if you hadn't passed this way, I would have heard that music soon. I have a hunger for it."

"Haven't you any such feeling, Polecrab?"

"No. A woman is a noble and sensitive creature, and there are attractions in nature too subtle for males. Take her with you, since she is set on it. Maybe she's right. Perhaps Earthrid's music will answer your questions, and hers too."

"What are your questions, Gleameil?"

The woman shed a strange smile. "You may be sure that a question which requires music for an answer can't be put into words."

"If you are not back by the morning," remarked her husband, "I will know you are dead."

The meal was finished in a constrained silence. Polecrab wiped his mouth, and produced a seashell from a kind of pocket.

"Will you say goodbye to the boys? Shall I call them?" She considered a moment.

"Yes -- yes, I must see them."

He put the shell to his mouth, and blew; a loud, mournful noise passed through the air.

A few minutes later there was a sound of scurrying footsteps, and the boys were seen emerging from the forest. Maskull looked with curiosity at the first children he had seen on Tormance. The oldest boy was carrying the youngest on his back, while the third trotted some distance behind. The child was let down, and all the three formed a semicircle in front of Maskull, standing staring up at him with wide-open eyes. Polecrab looked on stolidly, but Gleameil glanced away from them, with proudly raised head and a baffling expression.

Maskull put the ages of the boys at about nine, seven, and five years, respectively; but he was calculating according to Earth time. The eldest was tall, slim, but strongly built. He, like his brothers, was naked, and his skin from top to toe was ulfire-colored. His facial muscles indicated a wild and daring nature, and his eyes were like green fires. The second showed promise of being a broad, powerful man. His head was large and heavy, and drooped. His face and skin were reddish. His eyes were almost too sombre and penetrating for a child's.

"That one," said Polecrab, pinching the boy's ear, "may perhaps grow up to be a second Broodviol."

"Who was that?" demanded the boy, bending his head forward to hear the answer.

"A big, old man, of marvellous wisdom. He became wise by making up his mind never to ask questions, but to find things out for himself."

"If I had not asked this question, I should not have known about him."

"That would not have mattered," replied the father.

The youngest child was paler and slighter than his brothers. His face was mostly tranquil and expressionless, but it had this peculiarity about it, that every few minutes, without any apparent cause, it would wrinkle up and look perplexed. At these times his eyes, which were of a tawny gold, seemed to contain secrets difficult to associate with one of his age.

"He puzzles me," said Polecrab. "He has a soul like sap, and he's interested in nothing. He may turn out to be the most remarkable of the bunch."

Maskull took the child in one hand, and lifted him as high as his head. He took a good look at him, and set him down again. The boy never changed countenance.

"What do you make of him?" asked the fisherman.

"It's on the tip of my tongue to say, but it just escapes me. Let me drink again, and then I shall have it."

"Go and drink, then."

Maskull strode over to the tree, drank, and returned. "In ages to come," he said, speaking deliberately, "he will be a grand and awful tradition. A seer possibly, or even a divinity. Watch over him well."

The eldest boy looked scornful. "I want to be none of those things. I would like to be like that big fellow." And he pointed his finger at Maskull.

He laughed, and showed his white teeth through his beard. "Thanks for the compliments old warrior!" he said.

"He's great and brawny" continued the boy, "and can hold his own with other men. Can you hold me up with one arm, as you did that child?"

Maskull complied.

"That is being a man!" exclaimed the boy. "Enough!" said Polecrab impatiently. "I called you lads here to say goodbye to your mother. She is going away with this man. I think she may not return, but we don't know."

The second boy's face became suddenly inflamed. "Is she going of her own choice?" he inquired.

"Yes," replied the father.

"Then she is bad." He brought the words out with such force and emphasis that they sounded like the crack of a whip.

The old man cuffed him twice. "Is it your mother you are speaking of?"

The boy stood his ground, without change of expression, but said nothing.

The youngest child spoke, for the first time. "My mother will not come back, but she will die dancing."

Polecrab and his wife looked at one another.

"Where are you going to, Mother?" asked the eldest lad.

Gleameil bent down, and kissed him. "To the Island."

"Well then, if you don't come back by tomorrow morning, I will go and look for you."

Maskull grew more and more uneasy in his mind. "This seems to me to be a man's journey," he said. "I think it would be better for you not to come, Gleameil."

"I am not to be dissuaded," she replied.

He stroked his beard in perplexity. "Is it time to start?"

"It wants four hours to sunset, and we shall need all that."

Maskull sighed. "I'll go to the mouth of the creek, and wait there for you and the raft. You will wish to make your farewells, Gleameil."

He then clasped Polecrab by the hand. "Adieu, fisherman!"

"You have repaid me well for my answers," said the old man gruffly. "But it's not your fault, and in Shaping's world the worst things happen."

The eldest boy came close to Maskull, and frowned at him. "Farewell, big man!" he said. "But guard my mother well, as well as you are well able to, or I shall follow you, and kill you."

Maskull walked slowly along the creek bank till he came to the bend. The glorious sunshine, and the sparkling, brilliant sea then met his eyes again; and all melancholy was swept out of his mind. He continued as far as the seashore, and issuing out of the shadows of the forest, strolled on to the sands, and sat down in the full sunlight. The radiance of Alppain had long since disappeared. He drank in the hot, invigorating wind, listened to the hissing waves, and stared over the coloured sea with its pinnacles and currents, at Swaylone's Island.

"What music can that be, which tears a wife and mother away from all she loves the most?" he meditated. "It sounds unholy. Will it tell me what I want to know? Can it?"

In a little while he became aware of a movement behind him, and, turning his head, he saw the raft floating along the creek, toward the open sea. Polecrab was standing upright, propelling it with a rude pole. He passed by Maskull, without looking at him. or making any salutation, and proceeded out to sea.

While he was wondering at this strange behaviour, Gleameil and the boys came in sight, walking along the bank of the inlet. The eldest- born was holding her hand, and talking; and the other two were behind. She was calm and smiling, but seemed abstracted.

"What is your husband doing with the raft?" asked Maskull.

"He's putting it in position and we shall wade out and join it," she answered, in her low-toned voice.

"But how shall we make the island, without oars or sails?"

"Don't you see that current running away from land? See, he is approaching it. That will take us straight there."

"But how can you get back?"

"There is a way; but we need not think of that today."

"Why shouldn't I come too?" demanded the eldest boy.

"Because the raft won't carry three. Maskull is a heavy man."

"It doesn't matter," said the boy. "I know where there is wood for another raft. As soon as you have gone, I shall set to work."

Polecrab had by this time manoeuvred his flimsy craft to the position he desired, within a few yards of the current, which at that point made a sharp bend from the east. He shouted out some words to his wife and Maskull. Gleameil kissed her children convulsively, and broke down a little. The eldest boy bit his lip till it bled, and tears glistened in his eyes; but the younger children stared wide-eyed, and displayed no emotion.

Gleameil now walked into the sea, followed by Maskull. The water covered first their ankles, then their knees, but when it came as high as their waists, they were close on the raft. Polecrab let himself down into the water, and assisted his wife to climb over the side. When she was up, she bent down and kissed him. No words were exchanged. Maskull scrambled up on to the front part of the raft. The woman sat cross-legged in the stem, and seized the pole.

Polecrab shoved them off toward the current, while she worked her pole until they had got within its power. The raft immediately began to travel swiftly away from land, with a smooth, swaying motion.

The boys waved from the shore. Gleameil responded; but Maskull turned his back squarely to land, and gazed ahead. Polecrab was wading back to the shore.

For upward of an hour Maskull did not change his position by an inch. No sound was heard but the splashing of the strange waves all around them, and the streamlike gurgle of the current, which threaded its way smoothly through the tossing, tumultuous sea. From their pathway of safety, the beautiful dangers surrounding them were an exhilarating experience. The air was fresh and clean, and the heat from Branchspell, now low in the west, was at last endurable. The riot of sea colors had long since banished all sadness and anxiety from his heart. Yet he felt such a grudge against the woman for selfishly forsaking those who should have been dear to her that he could not bring himself to begin a conversation.

But when, over the now enlarged shape of the dark island, he caught sight of a long chain of lofty, distant mountains, glowing salmon- pink in the evening sunlight, he felt constrained to break the silence by inquiring what they were.

"It is Lichstorm," said Gleameil.

Maskull asked no questions about it; but in turning to address her, his eyes had rested on the rapidly receding Wombflash Forest, and he continued to stare at that. They had travelled about eight miles, and now he could better estimate the enormous height of the trees. Overtopping them, far away, he saw Sant; and he fancied, but was not quite sure, that he could distinguish Disscourn as well.

"Now that we are alone in a strange place," said Gleameil, averting her head, and looking down over the side of the raft into the water, "tell me what you thought of Polecrab."

Maskull paused before answering. "He seemed to me like a mountain wrapped in cloud. You see the lower buttresses, and think that is all. But then, high up, far above the clouds, you suddenly catch sight of more mountain -- and even then it is not the top."

"You read character well, and have great perception," remarked Gleameil quietly. "Now say what I am."

"In place of a human heart, you have a wild harp, and that's all I know about you."

"What was that you said to my husband about two worlds?"

"You heard."

"Yes, I heard. And I also am conscious of two worlds. My husband and boys are real to me, and I love them fondly. But there is another world for me, as there is for you, Maskull, and it makes my real world appear all false and vulgar."

"Perhaps we are seeking the same thing. But can it be right to satisfy our self-nature at the expense of other people?"

"No, it's not right. It is wrong, and base. But in that other world these words have no meaning."

There was a silence.

"It's useless to discuss such topics," said Maskull. "The choice is now out of our hands, and we must go where we are taken. What I would rather speak about is what awaits us on the island."

"I am ignorant -- except that we shall find Earthrid there."

"Who is Earthrid, and why is it called Swaylone's Island?"

"They say Earthrid came from Threal, but I know nothing else about him. As for Swaylone, if you like I will tell you his legend."

"If you please," said Maskull.

"In a far-back age," began Gleameil, "when the seas were hot, and clouds hung heavily over the earth, and life was rich with transformations, Swaylone came to this island, on which men had never before set foot, and began to play his music -- the first music in Tormance. Nightly, when the moon shone, people used to gather on this shore behind us, and listen to the faint, sweet strains floating from over the sea. One night, Shaping (whom you call Crystalman) was passing this way in company with Krag. They listened a while to the music, and Shaping said 'Have you heard more beautiful sounds? This is my world and my music.' Krag stamped with his foot, and laughed. 'You must do better than that, if I am to admire it. Let us pass over, and see this bungler at work.' Shaping consented, and they passed over to the island. Swaylone was not able to see their presence. Shaping stood behind him, and breathed thoughts into his soul, so that his music became ten times lovelier, and people listening on that shore went mad with sick delight. 'Can any strains be nobler?' demanded Shaping. Krag grinned and said, 'You are naturally effeminate. Now let me try.' Then he stood behind Swaylone, and shot ugly discords fast into his head. His instrument was so cracked, that never since has it played right. From that time forth Swaylone could utter only distorted music; yet it called to folk more than the other sort. Many men crossed over to the island during his lifetime, to listen to the amazing tones, but none could endure them; all died. After Swaylone's death, another musician took up the tale; and so the light has passed down from torch to torch, till now Earthrid bears it."

"An interesting legend," commented Maskull. "But who is Krag?"

"They say that when the world was born, Krag was born with it -- a spirit compounded of those vestiges of Muspel which Shaping did not know how to transform. Thereafter nothing has gone right with the world, for he dogs Shaping's footsteps everywhere, and whatever the latter does, he undoes. To love he joins death; to sex, shame; to intellect, madness; to virtue, cruelty; and to fair exteriors, bloody entrails. These are Krag's actions, so the lovers of the world call him 'devil.' They don't understand, Maskull, that without him the world would lose its beauty."

"Krag and beauty!" exclaimed he, with a cynical smile.

"Even so. That same beauty which you and I are now voyaging to discover. That beauty for whose sake I am renouncing husband, children, and happiness.... Did you imagine beauty to be pleasant?"

"Surely."

"That pleasant beauty is an insipid compound of Shaping. To see beauty in its terrible purity, you must tear away the pleasure from it."

"Do you say I am going to seek beauty, Gleameil? Such an idea is far from my mind."

She did not respond to his remark. After waiting for a few minutes, to hear if she would speak again, he turned his back on her once more. There was no more talk until they reached the island.

The air had grown chill and damp by the time they approached its shores. Branchspell was on the point of touching the sea. The Island appeared to be some three or four miles in length. There were first of all broad sands, then low, dark cliffs, and behind these a wilderness of insignificant, swelling hills, entirely devoid of vegetation. The current bore them to within a hundred yards of the coast, when it made a sharp angle, and proceeded to skirt the length of the land.

Gleameil jumped overboard, and began swimming to shore. Maskull followed her example, and the raft, abandoned, was rapidly borne away by the current. They soon touched ground, and were able to wade the rest of the way. By the time they reached dry land, the sun had set.

Gleameil made straight for the hills; and Maskull, after casting a single glance at the low, dim outline of the Wombflash Forest, followed her. The cliffs were soon scrambled up. Then the ascent was gentle and easy, while the rich, dry, brown mould was good to walk upon.

A little way off, on their left, something white was shining.

"You need not go to it," said the woman. "It can be nothing else than one of those skeletons Polecrab talked about. And look -- there is another one over there!"

"This brings it home!" remarked Maskull, smiling.

"There is nothing comical in having died for beauty," said Gleameil, bending her brows at him.

And when in the course of their walk he saw the innumerable human bones, from gleaming white to dirty yellow, lying scattered about, as if it were a naked graveyard among the hills, he agreed with her, and fell into a sombre mood.

It was still light when they reached the highest point, and could set eyes on the other side. The sea to the north of the island was in no way different from that which they had crossed, but its lively colors were fast becoming invisible.

"That is Matterplay," said the woman, pointing her finger toward some low land on the horizon, which seemed to be even farther off than Wombflash.

"I wonder how Digrung passed over," meditated Maskull.

Not far away, in a hollow enclosed by a circle of little hills, they saw a small, circular lake, not more than half a mile in diameter. The sunset colors of the sky were reflected in its waters.

"That must be Irontick," remarked Gleameil.

"What is that?"

"I have heard that it's the instrument Earthrid plays on."

"We are getting close," responded he. "Let us go and investigate."

When they drew nearer, they observed that a man was reclining on the farther side, in an attitude of sleep.

"If that's not the man himself, who can it be?" said Maskull. "Let's get across the water, if it will bear us; it will save time."

He now assumed the lead, and took running strides down the slope which bounded the lake on that side. Gleameil followed him with greater dignity, keeping her eyes fixed on the recumbent man as if fascinated. When Maskull reached the water's edge, he tried it with one foot, to discover if it would carry his weight. Something unusual in its appearance led him to have doubts. It was a tranquil, dark, and beautifully reflecting sheet of water; it resembled a mirror of liquid metal. Finding that it would bear him, and that nothing happened, he placed his second foot on its surface. Instantly he sustained a violent shock throughout his body, as from a powerful electric current; and he was hurled in a tumbled heap back on to the bank.

He picked himself up, brushed the dirt off his person, and started walking around the lake. Gleameil joined him, and they completed the half circuit together. They came to the man, and Maskull prodded him with his foot. He woke up, and blinked at them.

His face was pale, weak, and vacant-looking, and had a disagreeable expression. There were thin sprouts of black hair on his chin and head. On his forehead, in place of a third eye, he possessed a perfectly circular organ, with elaborate convolutions, like an ear. He had an unpleasant smell. He appeared to be of young middle age.

"Wake up, man," said Maskull sharply, "and tell us if you are Earthrid."

"What time is it?" counterquestioned the man. "Does it want long to moonrise?"

Without appearing to care about an answer, he sat up, and turning away from them, began to scoop up the loose soil with his hand, and to eat it halfheartedly.

"Now, how can you eat that filth?" demanded Maskull, in disgust.

"Don't be angry, Maskull," said Gleameil, laying hold of his arm, and flushing a little. "It is Earthrid -- the man who is to help us."

"He has not said so."

"I am Earthrid," said the other, in his weak and muffled voice, which, however, suddenly struck Maskull as being autocratic. "What do you want here? Or rather, you had better get away as quickly as you can, for it will be too late when Teargeld rises."

"You need not explain," exclaimed Maskull. "We know your reputation, and we have come to hear your music. But what's that organ for on your forehead?"

Earthrid glared, and smiled, and glared again.

"That is for rhythm, which is what changes noise into music. Don't stand and argue, but go away. It is no pleasure to me to people the island with corpses. They corrupt the air, and do nothing else."

Darkness now crept swiftly on over the landscape.

"You are rather bigmouthed," said Maskull coolly. "But after we have heard you play, perhaps I shall adventure a tune myself."

"You? Are you a musician, then? Do you even know what music is?"

A flame danced in Gleameil's eyes.

"Maskull thinks music reposes in the instrument," she said in her intense way. "But it is in the soul of the Master."

"Yes," said Earthrid, "but that is not all. I will tell you what it is. In Threal, where I was born and brought up, we learn the mystery of the Three in nature. This world, which lies extended before us, has three directions. Length is the line which shuts off what is, from what is not. Breadth is the surface which shows us in what manner one thing of what-is, lives with another thing. Depth is the path which leads from what-is, to our own body. In music it is not otherwise. Tone is existence, without which nothing at all can be. Symmetry and Numbers are the manner in which tones exist, one with another. Emotion is the movement of our soul toward the wonderful world that is being created. Now, men when they make music are accustomed to build beautiful tones, because of the delight they cause. Therefore their music world is based on pleasure; its symmetry is regular and charming, its emotion is sweet and lovely.... But my music is founded on painful tones; and thus its symmetry is wild, and difficult to discover; its emotion is bitter and terrible."

"If I had not anticipated its being original, I would not have come here," said Maskull. "Still, explain -- why can't harsh tones have simple symmetry of form? And why must they necessarily cause more profound emotions in us who listen?"

"Pleasures may harmonise. Pains must clash; and in the order of their clashing lies the symmetry. The emotions follow the music, which is rough and earnest."

"You may call it music," remarked Maskull thoughtfully, "but to me it bears a closer resemblance to actual life."

"If Shaping's plans had gone straight, life would have been like that other sort of music. He who seeks can find traces of that intention in the world of nature. But as it has turned out, real life resembles my music and mine is the true music."

"Shall we see living shapes?"

"I don't know what my mood will be," returned Earthrid. "But when I have finished, you shall adventure your tune, and produce whatever shapes you please -- unless, indeed, the tune is out of your own big body."

"The shocks you are preparing may kill us," said Gleameil, in a low, taut voice, "but we shall die, seeing beauty."

Earthrid looked at her with a dignified expression.

"Neither you, nor any other person, can endure the thoughts which I put into my music. Still, you must have it your own way. It needed a woman to call it 'beauty.' But if this is beauty, what is ugliness?"

"That I can tell you, Master," replied Gleameil, smiling at him. "Ugliness is old, stale life, while yours every night issues fresh from the womb of nature."

Earthrid stared at her, without response. "Teargeld is rising," he said at last. "And now you shall see -- though not for long."

As the words left his mouth, the full moon peeped over the hills in the dark eastern sky. They watched it in silence, and soon it was wholly up. It was larger than the moon of Earth, and seemed nearer. Its shadowy parts stood out in just as strong relief, but somehow it did not give Maskull the impression of being a dead world. Branchspell shone on the whole of it, but Alppain only on a part. The broad crescent that reflected Branchspell's rays alone was white and brilliant; but the part that was illuminated by both suns shone with a greenish radiance that had almost solar power, and yet was cold and cheerless. On gazing at that combined light, he felt the same sense of disintegration that the afterglow of Alppain had always caused in him; but now the feeling was not physical, but merely aesthetic. The moon did not appear romantic to him, but disturbing and mystical.

Earthrid rose, and stood quietly for a minute. In the bright moonlight, his face seemed to have undergone a change. It lost its loose, weak, disagreeable look, and acquired a sort of crafty grandeur. He clapped his hands together meditatively two or three times, and walked up and down. The others stood together, watching him.

Then he sat down by the side of the lake, and, leaning on his side, placed his right hand, open palm downward, on the ground, at the same time stretching out his right leg, so that the foot was in contact with the water.

While Maskull was in the act of staring at him and at the lake, he felt a stabbing sensation right through his heart, as though he had been pierced by a rapier. He barely recovered himself from falling, and as he did so he saw that a spout had formed on the water, and was now subsiding again. The next moment he was knocked down by a violent blow in the mouth, delivered by an invisible hand. He picked himself up; and observed that a second spout had formed. No sooner was he on his legs, than a hideous pain hammered away inside his brain, as if caused by a malignant tumour. In his agony, he stumbled and fell again; this time on the arm Krag had wounded. All his other mishaps were forgotten in this one, which half stunned him. It lasted only a moment, and then sudden relief came, and he found that Earthrid's rough music had lost its power over him.

He saw him still stretched in the same position. Spouts were coming thick and fast on the lake, which was full of lively motion. But Gleameil was not on her legs. She was lying on the ground, in a heap, without moving. Her attitude was ugly, and he guessed she was dead. When he reached her, he discovered that she was dead. In what state of mind she had died, he did not know, for her face wore the vulgar Crystalman grin. The whole tragedy had not lasted five minutes.

He went over to Earthrid and dragged him forcibly away from his playing.

"You have been as good as your word, musician," he said. "Gleameil is dead."

Earthrid tried to collect his scattered senses.

"I warned her," he replied, sitting up. "Did I not beg her to go away? But she died very easily. She did not wait for the beauty she spoke about. She heard nothing of the passion, nor even of the rhythm. Neither have you."

Maskull looked down at him in indignation, but said nothing.

"You should not have interrupted me," went on Earthrid. "When I am playing, nothing else is of importance. I might have lost the thread of my ideas. Fortunately, I never forget. I shall start over again."

"If music is to continue, in the presence of the dead, I play next."

The man glanced up quickly.

"That can't be."

"It must be," said Maskull decisively. "I prefer playing to listening. Another reason is that you will have every night, but I have only tonight."

Earthrid clenched and unclenched his fist, and began to turn pale. "With your recklessness, you are likely to kill us both. Irontick belongs to me, and until you have learned how to play, you would only break the instrument."

"Well, then, I will break it; but I am going to try."

The musician jumped to his feet and confronted him. "Do you intend to take it from me by violence?"

"Keep calm! You will have the same choice that you offered us. I shall give you time to go away somewhere."

"How will that serve me, if you spoil my lake? You don't understand what you are doing."

"Go, or stay!" responded Maskull. "I give you till the water gets smooth again. After that, I begin playing."

Earthrid kept swallowing. He glanced at the lake and back to Maskull.

"Do you swear it?"

"How long that will take, you know better than I; but till then you are safe."

Earthrid cast him a look of malice, hesitated for an instant, and then moved away, and started to climb the nearest hill. Halfway up he glanced over his shoulder apprehensively, as if to see what was happening. In another minute or so, he had disappeared over the crest, travelling in the direction of the shore that faced Matterplay.

Later, when the water was once more tranquil. Maskull sat down by its edge, in imitation of Earthrid's attitude. He knew neither how to set about producing his music, nor what would come of it. But audacious projects entered his brain and he willed to create physical shapes -- and, above all, one shape, that of Surtur.

Before putting his foot to the water, he turned things over a little in his mind.

He said, "What themes are in common music, shapes are in this music. The composer does not find his theme by picking out single notes; but the whole theme flashes into his mind by inspiration. So it must be with shapes. When I start playing, if I am worth anything, the undivided ideas will pass from my unconscious mind to this lake, and then, reflected back in the dimensions of reality, I shall be for the first time made acquainted with them. So it must be."

The instant his foot touched the water, he felt his thoughts flowing from him. He did not know what they were, but the mere act of flowing created a sensation of joyful mastery. With this was curiosity to learn what they would prove to be. Spouts formed on the lake in increasing numbers, but he experienced no pain. His thoughts, which he knew to be music, did not issue from him in a steady, unbroken stream, but in great, rough gushes, succeeding intervals of quiescence. When these gushes came, the whole lake broke out in an eruption of spouts.

He realised that the ideas passing from him did not arise in his intellect, but had their source in the fathomless depths of his will. He could not decide what character they should have, but he was able to force them out, or retard them, by the exercise of his volition.

At first nothing changed around him. Then the moon grew dimmer, and a strange, new radiance began to illuminate the landscape. It increased so imperceptibly that it was some time before he recognised it as the Muspel-light which he had seen in the Wombflash Forest. He could not give it a colour, or a name, but it filled him with a sort of stern and sacred awe. He called up the resources of his powerful will. The spouts thickened like a forest, and many of them were twenty feet high. Teargeld looked faint and pale; the radiance became intense; but it cast no shadows. The wind got up, but where Maskull was sitting, it was calm. Shortly afterward it began to shriek and whistle, like a full gale. He saw no shapes, and redoubled his efforts.

His ideas were now rushing out onto the lake so furiously that his whole soul was possessed by exhilaration and defiance. But still he did not know their nature. A huge spout shot up and at the same moment the hills began to crack and break. Great masses of loose soil were erupted from their bowels, and in the next period of quietness, he saw that the landscape had altered. Still the mysterious light intensified. The moon disappeared entirely. The noise of the unseen tempest was terrifying, but Maskull played heroically on, trying to urge out ideas which would take shape. The hillsides were cleft with chasms. The water escaping from the tops of the spouts, swamped the land; but where he was, it was dry.

The radiance grew terrible. It was everywhere, but Maskull fancied that it was far brighter in one particular quarter. He thought that it was becoming localised, preparatory to contracting into a solid form. He strained and strained....

Immediately afterward the bottom of the lake subsided. Its waters fell through, and his instrument was broken.

The Muspel-light vanished. The moon shone out again, but Maskull could not see it. After that unearthly shining, he seemed to himself to be in total blackness. The screaming wind ceased; there was a dead silence. His thoughts finished flowing toward the lake, and his foot no longer touched water, but hung in space.

He was too stunned by the suddenness of the change to either think or feel. While he was still lying dazed, a vast explosion occurred in the newly opened depths beneath the lakebed. The water in its descent had met fire. Maskull was lifted bodily in the air, many yards high, and came down heavily. He lost consciousness....

***

When he came to his senses again, he saw everything. Teargeld was gleaming brilliantly. He was lying by the side of the old lake, but it was now a crater, to the bottom of which his eyes could not penetrate. The hills encircling it were torn, as if by heavy gunfire. A few thunderclouds were floating in the air at no great height, from which branched lightning descended to the earth incessantly, accompanied by alarming and singular crashes.

He got on his legs, and tested his actions. Finding that he was uninjured, he first of all viewed the crater at closer quarters, and then started to walk painfully toward the northern shore.

When he had attained the crest above the lake, the landscape sloped gently down for two miles to the sea. Everywhere he passed through traces of his rough work. The country was carved into scarps, grooves, channels, and craters. He arrived at the line of low cliffs overlooking the beach, and found that these also were partly broken down by landslips. He got down onto the sand and stood looking over the moonlit, agitated sea, wondering how he could contrive to escape from this island of failure.

Then he saw Earthrid's body, lying quite close to him. It was on its back. Both legs had been violently torn off and he could not see them anywhere. Earthrid's teeth were buried in the flesh of his right forearm, indicating that the man had died in unreasoning physical agony. The skin gleamed green in the moonlight, but it was stained by darker discolourations, which were wounds. The sand about him was dyed by the pool of blood which had long since filtered through.

Maskull left the corpse in dismay, and walked a long way along the sweet-smelling shore. Sitting down on a rock, he waited for daybreak.

[admin]

Chapter 16: LEEHALLFAE

At midnight, when Teargeld was in the south, throwing his shadow straight toward the sea and making everything nearly as bright as day, he saw a great tree floating in the water, not far out. It was thirty feet out of the water, upright, and alive, and its roots must have been enormously deep and wide. It was drifting along the coast, through the heavy seas. Maskull eyed it incuriously for a few minutes. Then it dawned on him that it might be a good thing to investigate its nature. Without stopping to weigh the danger, he immediately swam out, caught hold of the lowest branch, and swung himself up.

He looked aloft and saw that the main stem was thick to the very top, terminating in a knob that somewhat resembled a human head. He made his way toward this knob, through the multitude of boughs, which were covered with tough, slippery, marine leaves, like seaweed. Arriving at the crown, he found that it actually was a sort of head, for there were membranes like rudimentary eyes all the way around it, denoting some form of low intelligence.

At that moment the tree touched bottom, though some way from the shore, and began to bump heavily. To steady himself, Maskull put his hand out, and, in doing so, accidentally covered some of the membranes. The tree sheered off the land, as if by an act of will. When it was steady again, Maskull removed his hand; they at once drifted back to shore. He thought a bit, and then started experimenting with the eyelike membranes. It was as he had guessed -- these eyes were stimulated by the light of the moon, and whichever way the light came from, the tree would travel.

A rather defiant smile crossed Maskull's face as it struck him that it might be possible to navigate this huge plant-animal as far as Matterplay. He lost no time in putting the conception into execution. Tearing off some of the long, tough leaves, he bound up all the membranes except the ones that faced the north. The tree instantly left the island, and definitely put out to sea. It travelled due north. It was not moving at more than a mile an hour, however, while Matterplay was possibly forty miles distant.

The great spout waves fell against the trunk with mighty thuds; the breaking seas hissed through the lower branches -- Maskull rested high and dry, but was more than a little apprehensive about their slow rate of progress. Presently he sighted a current racing along toward the north-west, and that put another idea into his head. He began to juggle with the membranes again, and before long had succeeded in piloting his tree into the fast-running stream. As soon as they were fairly in its rapids, he blinded the crown entirely, and thenceforward the current acted in the double capacity of road and steed.

Maskull made himself secure among the branches and slept for the remainder of the night.

When his eyes opened again, the island was out of sight. Teargeld was setting in the western sea. The sky in the east was bright with the colours of the approaching day. The air was cool and fresh; the light over the sea was beautiful, gleaming, and mysterious. Land -- probably Matterplay -- lay ahead, a long, dark line of low cliffs, perhaps a mile away. The current no longer ran toward the shore, but began to skirt the coast without drawing any closer to it. As soon as Maskull realised the fact, he manoeuvred the tree out of its channel and started drifting it inshore. The eastern sky blazed up suddenly with violent dyes, and the outer rim of Branchspell lifted itself above the sea. The moon had already sunk.

The shore loomed nearer and nearer. In physical character it was like Swaylone's Island -- the same wide sands, small cliffs, and rounded, insignificant hills inland, without vegetation. In the early-morning sunlight, however, it looked romantic. Maskull, hollow-eyed and morose, cared nothing for all that, but the moment the tree grounded, clambered swiftly down through the branches and dropped into the sea. By the time he had swam ashore, the white, stupendous sun was high above the horizon.

He walked along the sands toward the east for a considerable distance, without having any special intention in his mind. He thought he would go on until he came to some creek or valley, and then turn up it. The sun's rays were cheering, and began to relieve him of his oppressive night weight. After strolling along the beach for about a mile, he was stopped by a broad stream that flowed into the sea out of a kind of natural gateway in the line of cliffs. Its water was of a beautiful, limpid green, all filled with bubbles. So ice-cold, aerated, and enticing did it look that he flung himself face downward on the ground and took a prolonged draught. When he got up again his eyes started to play pranks -- they became alternately blurted and clear.... It may have been pure imagination, but he fancied that Digrung was moving inside him.

He followed the bank of the stream through the gap in the cliffs, and then for the first time saw the real Matterplay. A valley appeared, like a jewel enveloped by naked rock. All the hill country was bare and lifeless, but this valley lying in the heart of it was extremely fertile; he had never seen such fertility. It wound up among the hills, and all that he was looking at was its broad lower end. The floor of the valley was about half a mile wide; the stream that ran down its middle was nearly a hundred feet across, but was exceedingly shallow -- in most places not more than a few inches deep. The sides of the valley were about seventy feet high, but very sloping; they were clothed from top to bottom with little, bright-leaved trees -- not of varied tints of one colour, like Earth trees, but of widely diverse colours, most of which were brilliant and positive.

The floor itself was like a magician's garden. Densely interwoven trees, shrubs, and parasitical climbers fought everywhere for possession of it. The forms were strange and grotesque, and each one seemed different; the colours of leaf, flower, sexual organs, and stem were equally peculiar -- all the different combinations of the five primary colours of Tormance seemed to be represented, and the result, for Maskull was a sort of eye chaos. So rank was the vegetation that he could not fight his way through it; he was obliged to take to the riverbed. The contact of the water created an odd tingling sensation throughout his body, like a mild electric shock. There were no birds, but a few extraordinary-looking winged reptiles of small size kept crossing the valley from hill to hill. Swarms of flying insects clustered around him, threatening mischief, but in the end it turned out that his blood was disagreeable to them. for he was not bitten once. Repulsive crawling creatures resembling centipedes, scorpions, snakes, and so forth were in myriads on the banks of the stream, but they also made no attempt to use their weapons on his bare legs and feet, as he passed through them into the water.... Presently however, he was confronted in midstream by a hideous monster, of the size of a pony, but resembling in shape -- if it resembled anything -- a sea crustacean; and then he came to a halt. They stared at one another, the beast with wicked eyes, Maskull with cool and wary ones. While he was staring, a singular thing happened to him.

His eyes blurred again. But when in a minute or two this blurring passed away and he saw clearly once more, his vision had changed in character. He was looking right through the animal's body and could distinguish all its interior parts. The outer crust, however, and all the hard tissues were misty and semi-transparent; through them a luminous network of blood-red veins and arteries stood out in startling distinctness. The hard parts faded away to nothingness, and the blood system alone was left. Not even the fleshy ducts remained. The naked blood alone was visible, flowing this way and that like a fiery, liquid skeleton, in the shape of the monster. Then this blood began to change too. Instead of a continuous liquid stream, Maskull perceived that it was composed of a million individual points. The red colour had been an illusion caused by the rapid motion of the points; he now saw clearly that they resembled minute suns in their scintillating brightness. They seemed like a double drift of stars, streaming through space. One drift was travelling toward a fixed point in the centre, while the other was moving away from it. He recognised the former as the veins of the beast, the latter as the arteries, and the fixed point as the heart.

While he was still looking, lost in amazement, the starry network went out suddenly like an extinguished flame. Where the crustacean had stood, there was nothing. Yet through this "nothing" he could not see the landscape. Something was standing there that intercepted the light, though it possessed neither shape, colour, nor substance. And now the object, which could no longer be perceived by vision, began to be felt by emotion. A delightful, springlike sense of rising sap, of quickening pulses of love, adventure, mystery, beauty, femininity -- took possession of his being, and, strangely enough, he identified it with the monster. Why that invisible brute should cause him to feel young, sexual, and audacious, he did not ask himself, for he was fully occupied with the effect. But it was as if flesh, bones, and blood had been discarded, and he were face to face with naked Life itself, which slowly passed into his own body.

The sensations died away. There was a brief interval, and then the streaming, starlike skeleton rose up again out of space. It changed to the red-blood system. The hard parts of the body reappeared, with more and more distinctness, and at the same time the network of blood grew fainter. Presently the interior parts were entirely concealed by the crust -- the creature stood opposite Maskull in its old formidable ugliness, hard, painted, and concrete.

Disliking something about him, the crustacean turned aside and stumbled awkwardly away on its six legs, with laborious and repulsive movements, toward the other bank of the stream.

Maskull's apathy left him after this adventure. He became uneasy and thoughtful. He imagined that he was beginning to see things through Digrung's eyes, and that there were strange troubles immediately ahead. The next time his eyes started to blur, he fought it down with his will, and nothing happened.

The valley ascended with many windings toward the hills. It narrowed considerably, and the wooded slopes on either side grew steeper and higher. The stream shrunk to about twenty feet across, but it was deeper -- it was alive with motion, music, and bubbles. The electric sensations caused by its water became more pronounced, almost disagreeably so; but there was nowhere else to walk. With its deafening confusion of sounds from the multitude of living creatures, the little valley resembled a vast conversation hall of Nature. The life was still more prolific than before; every square foot of space was a tangle of struggling wills, both animal and vegetable. For a naturalist it would have been paradise, for no two shapes were alike, and all were fantastic, with individual character.

It looked as if life forms were being coined so fast by Nature that there was not physical room for all. Nevertheless it was not as on Earth, where a hundred seeds are scattered in order that one may be sown. Here the young forms seemed to survive, while, to find accommodation for them, the old ones perished; everywhere he looked they were withering and dying, without any ostensible cause -- they were simply being killed by new life.

Other creatures sported so wildly, in front of his very eyes, that they became of different "kingdoms" altogether. For example, a fruit was lying on the ground, of the size and shape of a lemon, but with a tougher skin. He picked it up, intending to eat the contained pulp; but inside it was a fully formed young tree, just on the point of bursting its shell. Maskull threw it away upstream. It floated back toward him; by the time he was even with it, its downward motion had stopped and it was swimming against the current. He fished it out and discovered that it had sprouted six rudimentary legs.

Maskull sang no paeans of praise in honour of the gloriously overcrowded valley. On the contrary, he felt deeply cynical and depressed. He thought that the unseen power -- whether it was called Nature, Life, Will, or God -- that was so frantic to rush forward and occupy this small, vulgar, contemptible world, could not possess very high aims and was not worth much. How this sordid struggle for an hour or two of physical existence could ever be regarded as a deeply earnest and important business was beyond his comprehension The atmosphere choked him, he longed for air and space. Thrusting his way through to the side of the ravine, he began to climb the overhanging cliff, swinging his way up from tree to tree.

When he arrived at the top, Branchspell beat down on him with such brutal, white intensity that he saw that there was no staying there. He looked around, to ascertain what part of the country he had come to. He had travelled about ten miles from the sea, as the crow flies. The bare, undulating wolds sloped straight down toward it; the water glittered in the distance; and on the horizon he was just able to make out Swaylone's Island. Looking north, the land continued sloping upward as far as he could see. Over the crest -- that is to say, some miles away -- a line of black, fantastic-shaped rocks of quite another character showed themselves; this was probably Threal. Behind these again, against the sky, perhaps fifty or even a hundred miles off, were the peaks of Lichstorm, most of them covered with greenish snow that glittered in the sunlight.

They were stupendously high and of weird contours. Most of them were conical to the top, but from the top, great masses of mountain balanced themselves at what looked like impossible angles -- overhanging without apparent support. A land like that promised something new, he thought: extraordinary inhabitants. The idea took shape in his mind to go there, and to travel as swiftly as possible, it might even be feasible to get there before sunset. It was less the mountains themselves that attracted him than the country which lay beyond -- the prospect of setting eyes on the blue sun, which he judged to be the wonder of wonders in Tormance.

The direct route was over the hills, but that was out of the question, because of the killing heat and the absence of shade. He guessed, however, that the valley would not take him far out of his way, and decided to keep to that for the time being, much as he hated and feared it. Into the hotbed of life, therefore, he once more swung himself.

Once down, he continued to follow the windings of the valley for several miles through sunlight and shadow. The path became increasingly difficult. The cliffs closed in on either side until they were less than a hundred yards apart, while the bed of the ravine was blocked by boulders, great and small, so that the little stream, which was now diminished to the proportions of a brook, had to come down where and how it could. The forms of life grew stranger. Pure plants and pure animals disappeared by degrees, and their place was filled by singular creatures that seemed to partake of both characters. They had limbs, faces, will, and intelligence, but they remained for the greater part of their time rooted in the ground by preference, and they fed only on soil and air. Maskull saw no sexual organs and failed to understand how the young came into existence.

Then he witnessed an astonishing sight. A large and fully developed plant-animal appeared suddenly in front of him, out of empty space. He could not believe his eyes, but stared at the creature for a long time in amazement. It went on calmly moving and burrowing before him, as thought it had been there all its life. Giving up the puzzle, Maskull resumed his striding from rock to rock up the gorge, and then, quietly and without warning, the same phenomenon occurred again. No longer could he doubt than he was seeing miracles -- that Nature was precipitating its shapes into the world without making use of the medium of parentage.... No solution of the problem presented itself.

The brook too had altered in character. A trembling radiance came up from its green water, like some imprisoned force escaping into the air. He had not walked in it for some time; now he did so, to test its quality. He felt new life entering his body, from his feet upward; it resembled a slowly moving cordial, rather than mere heat. The sensation was quite new in his experience, yet he knew by instinct what it was. The energy emitted by the brook was ascending his body neither as friend nor foe but simply because it happened to be the direct road to its objective elsewhere. But, although it had no hostile intentions, it was likely to prove a rough traveller -- he was clearly conscious that its passage through his body threatened to bring about some physical transformation, unless he could do something to prevent it. Leaping quickly out of the water, he leaned against a rock, tightened his muscles, and braced himself against the impending charge. At that very moment the blurring again attacked his sight, and, while he was guarding against that, his forehead sprouted out into a galaxy of new eyes. He put his hand up and counted six, in addition to his old ones.

The danger was past and Maskull laughed, congratulating himself on having got off so easily. Then he wondered what the new organs were for -- whether they were a good or a bad thing. He had not taken a dozen steps up the ravine before he found out. Just as he was in the act of jumping down from the top of a boulder, his vision altered and he came to an automatic standstill. He was perceiving two worlds simultaneously. With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with its rocks, brook, plant-animals, sunshine, and shadows. But with his acquired eyes he saw differently. All the details of the valley were visible, but the light seemed turned down, and everything appeared faint, hard, and uncoloured. The sun was obscured by masses of cloud which filled the whole sky. This vapour was in violent and almost living motion. It was thick in extension, but thin in texture; some parts, however, were far denser than others, as the particles were crushed together or swept apart by the motion. The green sparks from the brook, when closely watched, could be distinguished individually, each one wavering up toward the clouds, but the moment they got within them a fearful struggle seemed to begin. The spark endeavoured to escape through to the upper air, while the clouds concentrated around it whichever way it darted, trying to create so dense a prison that further movement would be impossible. As far as Maskull could detect, most of the sparks succeeded eventually in finding their way out after frantic efforts; but one that he was looking at was caught, and what happened was this. A complete ring of cloud surrounded it, and, in spite of its furious leaps and flashes in all directions -- as if it were a live, savage creature caught in a net -- nowhere could it find an opening, but it dragged the enveloping cloud stuff with it, wherever it went. The vapours continued to thicken around it, until they resembled the black, heavy, compressed sky masses seen before a bad thunderstorm. Then the green spark, which was still visible in the interior, ceased its efforts, and remained for a time quite quiescent. The cloud shape went on consolidating itself, and became nearly spherical; as it grew heavier and stiller, it started slowly to descend toward the valley floor. When it was directly opposite Maskull, with its lower end only a few feet off the ground, its motion stopped altogether and there was a complete pause for at least two minutes. Suddenly, like a stab of forked lightning, the great cloud shot together, became small, indented, and coloured, and as a plant-animal started walking around on legs and rooting up the ground in search of food. The concluding stage of the phenomenon he witnessed with his normal eyesight. It showed him the creature's appearing miraculously out of nowhere.

Maskull was shaken. His cynicism dropped from him and gave place to curiosity and awe. "That was exactly like the birth of a thought," he said to himself, "but who was the thinker? Some great Living Mind is at work in this spot. He has intelligence, for all his shapes are different, and he has character, for all belong to the same general type.... If I'm not wrong, and if it's the force called Shaping or Crystalman, I've seen enough to make me want to find out something more about him.... It would be ridiculous to go on to other riddles before I have solved these."

A voice called out to him from behind, and, turning around, he saw a human figure hastening toward him from some distance down the ravine. It looked more like a man than a woman. He was rather tall, but nimble, and was clothed in a dark, frocklike garment that reached from the neck to below the knees. Around his head was rolled a turban. Maskull waited for him, and when he was nearer went a little way to meet him.

Then he experienced another surprise, for this person, although clearly a human being, was neither man nor woman, nor anything between the two, but was unmistakably of a third positive sex, which was remarkable to behold and difficult to understand. In order to translate into words the sexual impression produced in Maskull's mind by the stranger's physical aspect, it is necessary to coin a new pronoun, for none in earthly use would be applicable. Instead of "he," "she," or "it," therefore "ae" will be used.

He found himself incapable of grasping at first why the bodily peculiarities of this being should strike him as springing from sex, and not from race, and yet there was no doubt about the fact itself. Body, face, and eyes were absolutely neither male nor female, but something quite different. Just as one can distinguish a man from a woman at the first glance by some indefinable difference of expression and atmospheres altogether apart from the contour of the figure, so the stranger was separated in appearance from both. As with men and women, the whole person expressed a latent sensuality, which gave body and face alike their peculiar character.... Maskull decided that it was love -- but what love -- love for whom? it was neither the shame-carrying passion of a male, nor the deep-rooted instinct of a female to obey her destiny. It was as real and irresistible as these, but quite different.

As he continued staring into those strange, archaic eyes, he had an intuitive feeling that aer lover was no other than Shaping himself. It came to him that the design of this love was not the continuance of the race but the immortality on earth of the individual. No children were produced by the act; the lover aerself was the eternal child. Further, ae sought like a man, but received like a woman. All these things were dimly and confusedly expressed by this extraordinary being, who seemed to have dropped out of another age, when creation was different.

Of all the weird personalities Maskull had so far met in Tormance, this one struck him as infinitely the most foreign -- that is, the farthest removed from him in spiritual structure. If they were to live together for a hundred years, they could never be companions.

Maskull pulled himself out of his trancelike meditations and, viewing the newcomer in greater detail, tried with his understanding to account for the marvellous things told him by his intuitions. Ae possessed broad shoulders and big bones, and was without female breasts, and so far ae resembled a man. But the bones were so flat and angular that aer flesh presented something of the character of a crystal, having plane surfaces in place of curves. The body looked as if it had not been ground down by the sea of ages into smooth and rounded regularity but had sprung together in angles and facets as the result of a single, sudden idea. The face too was broken and irregular. With his racial prejudices, Maskull found little beauty in it, yet beauty there was, though neither of a masculine nor of a feminine type, for it had the three essentials of beauty: character, intelligence, and repose. The skin was copper-coloured and strangely luminous, as if lighted from within. The face was beardless, but the hair of the head was as long as a woman's, and, dressed in a single plait, fell down behind as far as the ankles. Ae possessed only two eyes. That part of the turban which went across the forehead protruded so far in front that it evidently concealed some organ.

Maskull found it impossible to compute aer age. The frame appeared active, vigorous, and healthy, the skin was clear and glowing; the eyes were powerful and alert -- ae might well be in early youth. Nevertheless, the longer Maskull gazed, the more an impression of unbelievable ancientness came upon him -- aer real youth seemed as far away as the view observed through a reversed telescope.

At last he addressed the stranger, though it was just as if he were conversing with a dream. "To what sex do you belong?" he asked.

The voice in which the reply came was neither manly nor womanly, but was oddly suggestive of a mystical forest horn, heard from a great distance.

"Nowadays there are men and women, but in the olden times the world was peopled by 'phaens.' I think I am the only survivor of all those beings who were then passing through Faceny's mind."

"Faceny?"

"Who is now miscalled Shaping or Crystalman. The superficial names invented by a race of superficial creatures."

"What's your own name?"

"Leehallfae."

"What?"

"Leehallfae. And yours is Maskull. I read in your mind that you have just come through some wonderful adventures. You seem to possess extraordinary luck. If it lasts long enough, perhaps I can make use of it."

"Do you think that my luck exists for your benefit? ... But never mind that now. It is your sex that interests me. How do you satisfy your desires?"

Leehallfae pointed to the concealed organ on aer brow. "With that I gather life from the streams that flow in all the hundred Matterplay valleys. The streams spring direct from Faceny. My whole life has been spent trying to find Faceny himself. I've hunted so long that if I were to state the number of years you would believe I lied."

Maskull looked at the phaen slowly. "In Ifdawn I met someone else from Matterplay -- a young man called Digrung. I absorbed him."

"You can't be telling me this out of vanity."

"It was a fearful crime. What will come of it?"

Leehallfae gave a curious, wrinkled smile. "In Matterplay he will stir inside you, for he smells the air. Already you have his eyes.... I knew him.... Take care of yourself, or something more startling may happen. Keep out of the water."

"This seems to me a terrible valley, in which anything may happen."

"Don't torment yourself about Digrung. The valleys belong by right to the phaens -- the men here are interlopers. It is a good work to remove them."

Maskull continued thoughtful. "I say no more, but I see I will have to be cautious. What did you mean about my helping you with my luck?"

"Your luck is fast weakening, but it may still be strong enough to serve me. Together we will search for Threal."

"Search for Threal -- why, is it so hard to find?"

"I have told you that my whole life has been spent in the quest."

"You said Faceny, Leehallfae."

The phaen gazed at him with queer, ancient eyes, and smiled again. "This stream, Maskull, like every other life stream in Matterplay, has its source in Faceny. But as all these streams issue out from Threal, it is in Threal that we must look for Faceny."

"But what's to prevent your finding Threal? Surely it's a well-known country?"

"It lies underground. Its communications with the upper world are few, and where they are, no one that I have ever spoken to knows. I have scoured the valleys and the hills. I have been to the very gates of Lichstorm. I am old, so that your aged men would appear newborn infants beside me, but I am as far from Threal as when I was a green youth, dwelling among a throng of fellow phaens."

"Then, if my luck is good, yours is very bad.... But when you have found Faceny, what do you gain?"

Leehallfae looked at him in silence. The smile faded from aer face, and its place was taken by such a look of unearthly pain and sorrow that Maskull had no need to press his question. Ae was consumed by the grief and yearning of a lover eternally separated from the loved one, the scents and traces of whose person were always present. This passion stamped her features at that moment with a wild, stern, spiritual beauty, far transcending any beauty of woman or man.

But the expression vanished suddenly, and then the abrupt contrast showed Maskull the real Leehallfae. Aer sensuality was solitary, but vulgar -- it was like the heroism of a lonely nature, pursuing animal aims with untiring persistence.

He looked at the phaen askance, and drummed his fingers against his thigh. "Well, we will go together. We may find something, and in any case I shan't be sorry to converse with such a singular individual as yourself."

"But I should warn you, Maskull. You and I are of different creations. A phaen's body contains the whole of life, a man's body contains only the half of life -- the other half is in woman. Faceny may be too strong a draught for your body to endure.... Do you not feel this?"

"I am dull with my different feelings. I must take what precautions I can, and chance the rest." He bent down, and, taking hold of the phaen's thin and ragged robe, tore off a broad strip, which he proceeded to swathe in folds around his forehead. "I'm not forgetting your advice, Leehallfae. I would not like to start the walk as Maskull and finish it as Digrung."

The phaen gave a twisted grin, and they began to move upstream. The road was difficult. They had to stride from boulder to boulder, and found it warm work. Occasionally a worse obstacle presented itself, which they could surmount only by climbing. There was no more conversation for a long time. Maskull, as far as possible, adopted his companion's counsel to avoid the water, but here and there he was forced to set foot in it. The second or third time he did so, he felt a sudden agony in his arm, where it had been wounded by Krag. His eyes grew joyful; his fears vanished; and he began deliberately to tread the stream.

Leehallfae stroked aer chin and watched him with screwed-up eyes, trying to comprehend what had happened. "Is your luck speaking to you, Maskull, or what is the matter?"

"Listen. You are a being of antique experience, and ought to know, if anyone does. What is Muspel?"

The phaen's face was blank. "I don't know the name."

"It is another world of some sort."

"That cannot be. There is only this one world -- Faceny's."

Maskull came up to aer, linked arms, and began to talk. "I'm glad I fell in with you, Leehallfae, for this valley and everything connected with it need a lot of explaining. For example, in this spot there are hardly any organic forms left -- why have they all disappeared? You call this brook a 'life stream,' yet the nearer its source we get, the less life it produces. A mile or two lower down we had those spontaneous plant-animals appearing out of nowhere, while right down by the sea, plants and animals were tumbling over one another. Now, if all this is connected in some mysterious way or other with your Faceny, it seems to me he must have a most paradoxical nature. His essence doesn't start creating shapes until it has become thoroughly weakened and watered.... But perhaps both of us are talking nonsense."

Leehallfae shook aer head. "Everything hangs together. The stream is life, and it is throwing off sparks of life all the time. When these sparks are caught and imprisoned by matter, they become living shapes. The nearer the stream is to its source, the more terrible and vigorous is its life. You'll see for yourself when we reach the head of the valley that there are no living shapes there at all. That means that there is no kind of matter tough enough to capture and hold the terrible sparks that are to be found there. Lower down the stream, most of the sparks are vigorous enough to escape to the upper air, but some are held when they are a little way up, and these burst suddenly into shapes. I myself am of this nature. Lower down still, toward the sea, the stream has lost a great part of its vital power and the sparks are lazy and sluggish. They spread out, rather than rise into the air. There is hardly any kind of matter, however delicate, that is incapable of capturing these feeble sparks, and they are captured in multitudes -- that accounts for the innumerable living shapes you see there. But not only that -- the sparks are passed from one body to another by way of generation, and can never hope to cease being so until they are worn out by decay. Lowest of all, you have the Sinking Sea itself. There the degenerate and enfeebled life of the Matterplay streams has for its body the whole sea. So weak is it's power that it can't succeed in creating any shapes at all but you can see its ceaseless, futile attempts to do so, in those spouts."

"So the slow development of men and women is due to the feebleness of the life germ in their case?"

"Exactly. It can't attain all its desires at once. And now you can see how immeasurably superior are the phaens, who spring spontaneously from the more electric and vigorous sparks."

"But where does the matter come from that imprisons these sparks?"

"When life dies, it becomes matter. Matter itself dies, but its place is constantly taken by new matter."

"But if life comes from Faceny, how can it die at all?"

"Life is the thoughts of Faceny, and once these thoughts have left his brain they are nothing -- mere dying embers."

"This is a cheerless philosophy," said Maskull. "But who is Faceny himself, then, and why does he think at all?"

Leehallfae gave another wrinkled smile. "That I'll explain too. Faceny is of this nature. He faces Nothingness in all directions. He has no back and no sides, but is all face; and this face is his shape. It must necessarily be so, for nothing else can exist between him and Nothingness. His face is all eyes, for he eternally contemplates Nothingness. He draws his inspirations from it; in no other way could he feel himself. For the same reason, phaens and even men love to be in empty places and vast solitudes, for each one is a little Faceny."

"That rings true," said Maskull.

"Thoughts flow perpetually from Faceny's face backward. Since his face is on all sides, however, they flow into his interior. A draught of thought thus continuously flows from Nothingness to the inside of Faceny, which is the world. The thoughts become shapes, and people the world. This outer world, therefore, which is lying all around us, is not outside at all, as it happens, but inside. The visible universe is like a gigantic stomach, and the real outside of the world we shall never see."

Maskull pondered deeply for a while.

"Leehallfae, I fail to see what you personally have to hope for, since you are nothing more than a discarded, dying thought."

"Have you never loved a woman?" asked the phaen, regarding him fixedly.

"Perhaps I have."

"When you loved, did you have no high moments?"

"That's asking the same question in other words."

"In those moments you were approaching Faceny. If you could have drawn nearer still, would you not have done so?"

"I would, regardless of the consequences."

"Even if you personally had nothing to hope for?"

"But I would have that to hope for."

Leehallfae walked on in silence.

"A man is the half of Life," ae broke out suddenly. "A woman is the other half of life, but a phaen is the whole of life. Moreover, when life becomes split into halves, something else has dropped out of it -- something that belongs only to the whole. Between your love and mine there is no comparison. If even your sluggish blood is drawn to Faceny, without stopping to ask what will come of it, how do you suppose it is with me?"

"I don't question the genuineness of your passion," replied Maskull, "but it's a pity you can't see your way to carry it forward into the next world."

Leehallfae gave a distorted grin, expressing heaven knows what emotion. "Men think what they like, but phaens are so made that they can see the world only as it really is."

That ended the conversation.

The sun was high in the sky, and they appeared to be approaching the head of the ravine. Its walls had still further closed in and, except at those moments when Branchspell was directly behind them, they strode along all the time in deep shade; but still it was disagreeably hot and relaxing. All life had ceased. A beautiful, fantastic spectacle was presented by the cliff faces, the rocky ground, and the boulders that choked the entire width of the gorge. They were a snow-white crystalline limestone, heavily scored by veins of bright, gleaming blue. The rivulet was no longer green, but a clear, transparent crystal. Its noise was musical, and altogether it looked most romantic and charming, but Leehallfae seemed to find something else in it -- her features grew more and more set and tortured.

About half an hour after all the other life forms had vanished, another plant-animal was precipitated out of space, in front of their eyes. It was as tall as Maskull himself, and had a brilliant and vigorous appearance, as befitted a creature just out of Nature's mint. It started to walk about; but hardly had it done so when it burst silently asunder. Nothing remained of it -- the whole body disappeared instantaneously into the same invisible mist from which it had sprung.

"That bears out what you said," commented Maskull, turning rather pale.

"Yes," answered Leehallfae, "we have now come to the region of terrible life."

"Then, since you're right in this, I must believe all that you've been telling me."

As he uttered the words, they were just turning a bend of the ravine. There now loomed up straight ahead a perpendicular cliff about three hundred feet in height, composed of white, marbled rock. It was the head of the valley, and beyond it they could not proceed.

"In return for my wisdom," said the phaen, "you will now lend me your luck."

They walked up to the base of the cliff, and Maskull looked at it reflectively. It was possible to climb it, but the ascent would be difficult. The now tiny brook issued from a hole in the rock only a few feet up. Apart from its musical running, not a sound was to be beard. The floor of the gorge was in shadow, but about halfway up the precipice the sun was shining.

"What do you want me to do?" demanded Maskull. "Everything is now in your hands, and I have no suggestions to make. Now it's your luck that must help us."

Maskull continued gazing up a little while longer. "We had better wait till the afternoon, Leehallfae. I'll probably have to climb to the top, but it's too hot at present -- and besides, I'm tired. I'll snatch a few hours' sleep. After that, we'll see."

Leehallfae seemed annoyed, but raised no opposition.

[admin]

Chapter 17: CORPANG

Maskull did not awaken till long after Blodsombre. Leehallfae was standing by his side, looking down at him. It was doubtful whether ae had slept at all.

"What time is it?" Maskull asked, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.

"The day is passing," was the vague reply.

Maskull got on to his feet, and gazed up at the cliff. "Now I'm going to climb that. No need for both of us to risk our necks, so you wait here, and if I find anything on top I'll call you."

Ale phaen glanced at him strangely. "There's nothing up there except a bare hillside. I've been there often. Have you anything special in mind?"

"Heights often bring me inspiration. Sit down, and wait."

Refreshed by his sleep, Maskull immediately attacked the face of the cliff, and took the first twenty feet at a single rush. Then it grew precipitous, and the ascent demanded greater circumspection and intelligence. There were few hand- or footholds: he had to reflect before every step. On the other hand, it was sound rock, and he was no novice at the sport. Branchspell glared full on the wall, so that it half blinded him with its glittering whiteness.

After many doubts and pauses he drew near the top. He was hot, sweating copiously, and rather dizzy. To reach a ledge he caught hold of two projecting rocks, one with each hand, at the same time scrambling upward, his legs between the rocks. The left-hand rock, which was the larger of the two, became dislodged by his weight, and, flying like a huge, dark shadow past his head, crashed down with a terrifying sound to the foot of the precipice, followed by an avalanche of smaller stones. Maskull steadied himself as well as he could, but it was some moments before he dared to look down behind him.

At first he could not distinguish Leehallfae. Then he caught sight of legs and hindquarters a few feet up the cliff from the bottom. He perceived that the phaen had aer head in a cavity and was scrutinising something, and waited for aer to reappear.

Ae emerged, looked up to Maskull, and called out in aer hornlike voice, "The entrance is here!"

"I'm coming down!" roared Maskull. "Wait for me!"

He descended swiftly -- without taking too much care, for he thought he recognised his "luck" in this discovery -- and within twenty minutes was standing beside the phaen.

"What happened?"

"The rock you dislodged struck this other rock just above the spring. It tore it out of its bed. See -- now there's room for us to get in!"

"Don't get excited!" said Maskull. "It's a remarkable accident, but we have plenty of time. Let me look."

He peered into the hole, which was large enough to admit a big man without stooping. Contrasted with the daylight outside it was dark, yet a peculiar glow pervaded the place, and he could see well enough. A rock tunnel went straight forward into the bowels of the hill, out of sight. The valley brook did not flow along the floor of this tunnel, as he had expected, but came up as a spring just inside the entrance.

"Well Leehallfae, not much need to deliberate, eh? Still, observe that your stream parts company with us here."

As he turned around for an answer he noticed that his companion was trembling from head to foot.

"Why, what's the matter?"

Leehallfae pressed a hand to aer heart. "The stream leaves us, but what makes the stream what it is continues with us. Faceny is there."

"But surely you don't expect to see him in person? Why are you shaking?"

"Perhaps it will be too much for me after all."

"Why? How is it affecting you?"

The phaen took him by the shoulder and held him at arm's length, endeavouring to study him with aer unsteady eyes. "Faceny's thoughts are obscure. I am his lover, you are a lover of women, yet he grants to you what he denies to me."

"What does he grant to me?"

"To see him, and go on living. I shall die. But it's immaterial. Tomorrow both of us will be dead."

Maskull impatiently shook himself free. "Your sensations may be reliable in your own case, but how do you know I shall die?"

"Life is flaming up inside you," replied Leehallfae, shaking aer head. "But after it has reached its climax -- perhaps tonight -- it will sink rapidly and you'll die tomorrow. As for me, if I enter Threal I shan't come out again. A smell of death is being wafted to me out of this hole."

"You talk like a frightened man. I smell nothing."

"I am not frightened," said Leehallfae quietly -- ae had been gradually recovering aer tranquillity -- "but when one has lived as long as I have, it is a serious matter to die. Every year one puts out new roots."

"Decide what you're going to do," said Maskull with a touch of contempt, "for I'm going in at once."

The phaen gave an odd, meditative stare down the ravine, and after that walked into the cavern without another word. Maskull, scratching his head, followed close at aer heels.

The moment they stepped across the bubbling spring, the atmosphere altered. Without becoming stale or unpleasant, it grew cold, clear and refined, and somehow suggested austere and tomblike thoughts. The daylight disappeared at the first bend in the tunnel. After that, Maskull could not say where the light came from. The air itself must have been luminous, for though it was as light as full moon on Earth, neither he nor Leehallfae cast a shadow. Another peculiarity of the light was that both the walls of the tunnel and their own bodies appeared colourless. Everything was black and white, like a lunar landscape. This intensified the solemn, funereal feelings created by the atmosphere.

After they had proceeded for about ten minutes, the tunnel began to widen out. The roof was high above their heads, and six men could have walked side by side. Leehallfae was visibly weakening. Ae dragged aerself along slowly and painfully, with sunken head.

Maskull caught hold of aer. "You can't go on like that. Better let me take you back."

The phaen smiled, and staggered. "I'm dying."

"Don't talk like that. It's only a passing indisposition. Let me take you back to the daylight."

"No, help me forward. I wish to see Faceny."

"The sick must have their way," said Maskull. Lifting aer bodily in his arms, he walked quickly along for another hundred yards or so. They then emerged from the tunnel and faced a world the parallel of which he had never set eyes upon before.

"Set me down!" directed Leehallfae feebly. "Here I'll die."

Maskull obeyed, and laid aer down at full length on the rocky ground. The phaen raised aerself with difficulty on one arm, and stared with fast-glazing eyes at the mystic landscape.

Maskull looked too, and what he saw was a vast, undulating plain, lighted as if by the moon -- but there was of course no moon, and there were no shadows. He made out running streams in the distance. Beside them were trees of a peculiar kind; they were rooted in the ground, but the branches also were aerial roots, and there were no leaves. No other plants could be seen. The soil was soft, porous rock, resembling pumice. Beyond a mile or two in any direction the light merged into obscurity. At their back a great rocky wall extended on either hand; but it was not square like a wall, but full of bays and promontories like an indented line of sea cliffs. The roof of this huge underworld was out of sight. Here and there a mighty shaft of naked rock, fantastically weathered, towered aloft into the gloom, doubtless serving to support the roof. There were no colours -- every detail of the landscape was black, white, or grey. The scene appeared so still, so solemn and religious, that all his feelings quieted down to absolute tranquillity.

Leehallfae fell back suddenly. Maskull dropped on his knees, and helplessly watched the last flickerings of aer spirit, going out like a candle in foul air. Death came.... He closed the eyes. The awful grin of Crystalman immediately fastened upon the phaen's dead features.

While Maskull was still kneeling, he became conscious of someone standing beside him. He looked up quickly and saw a man, but did not at once rise.

"Another phaen dead," said the newcomer in a grave, toneless, and intellectual voice.

Maskull got up.

The man was short and thickset but emaciated. His forehead was not disfigured by any organs. He was middle-aged. The features were energetic and rather coarse -- yet it seemed to Maskull as though a pure, hard life had done something toward refining them. His sanguine eyes carried a twisted, puzzled look; some unanswerable problem was apparently in the forefront of his brain. His face was hairless; the hair of his head was short and manly; his brow was wide. He was clothed in a black, sleeveless robe, and bore a long staff in his hand. There was an air of cleanness and austerity about the whole man that was attractive.

He went on speaking dispassionately to Maskull, and, while doing so, kept passing his hand reflectively over his cheeks and chin. "They all find their way here to die. They come from Matterplay. There they live to an incredible age. Partly on that account, and partly because of their spontaneous origin, they regard themselves as the favoured children of Faceny. But when they come here to find him, they die at once."

"I think this one is the last of the race. But whom do I speak to?"

"I am Corpang. Who are you, where do you come from, and what are you doing here?"

"My name is Maskull. My home is on the other side of the universe. As for what I am doing here -- I accompanied Leehallfae, that phaen, from Matterplay."

"But a man doesn't accompany a phaen out of friendship. What do you want in Threal?"

"Then this is Threal?"

"Yes."

Maskull remained silent.

Corpang studied his face with rough, curious eyes. "Are you ignorant, or merely reticent, Maskull?"

"I came here to ask questions, and not to answer them."

The stillness of the place was almost oppressive. Not a breeze stirred, and not a sound came through the air. Their voices had been lowered, as though they were in a cathedral.

"Then do you want my society, or not?" asked Corpang.

"Yes, if you can fit in with my mood, which is -- not to talk about myself."

"But you must at least tell me where you want to go to."

"I want to see what is to be seen here, and then go on to Lichstorm."

"I can guide you through, if that's all you want. Come, let us start."

"First let's do our duty and bury the dead, if possible."

"Turn around," directed Corpang.

Maskull looked around quickly. Leehallfae's body had disappeared.

"What does this mean -- what has happened?"

"The body has returned to whence it came. There was nowhere here for it to be, so it has vanished. No burial will be required."

"Was the phaen an illusion, then?"

"In no sense."

"Well, explain quickly, then, what has taken place. I seem to be going mad."

"There's nothing unintelligible in it, if you'll only listen calmly. The phaen belonged, body and soul, to the outside, visible world -- to Faceny. This underworld is not Faceny's world, but Thire's, and Faceny's creatures cannot breathe its atmosphere. As this applies not only to whole bodies, but even to the last particles of bodies, the phaen has dissolved into Nothingness."

"But don't you and I belong to the outside world too?"

"We belong to all three worlds."

"What three worlds -- what do you mean?"

"There are three worlds," said Corpang composedly. "The first is Faceny's, the second is Amfuse's, the third is Thire's. From him Threal gets it name."

"But this is mere nomenclature. In what sense are there three worlds?"

Corpang passed his hand over his forehead. "All this we can discuss as we go along. It's a torment to me to be standing still."

Maskull stared again at the spot where Leehallfae's body had lain, quite bewildered at the extraordinary disappearance. He could scarcely tear himself away from the place, so mysterious was it. Not until Corpang called to him a second time did he make up his mind to follow him.

They set off from the rock wall straight across the airlit plain, directing their course toward the nearest trees. The subdued light, the absence of shadows, the massive shafts, springing grey-white out of the jetlike ground, the fantastic trees, the absence of a sky, the deathly silence, the knowledge that he was underground -- the combination of all these things predisposed Maskull's mind to mysticism, and he prepared himself with some anxiety to hear Corpang's explanation of the land and its wonders. He already began to grasp that the reality of the outside world and the reality of this world were two quite different things.

"In what sense are there three worlds?" he demanded, repeating his former question.

Corpang smote the end of his staff on the ground. "First of all, Maskull, what is your motive for asking? If it's mere intellectual curiosity, tell me, for we mustn't play with awful matters."

"No, it isn't that," said Maskull slowly. "I'm not a student. My journey is no holiday tour."

"Isn't there blood on your soul?" asked Corpang, eying him intently.

The blood rose steadily to Maskull's face, but in that light it caused it to appear black.

"Unfortunately there is, and not a little."

The other's face was all wrinkles, but he made no comment.

"And so you see," went on Maskull, with a short laugh, "I'm in the very best condition for receiving your instruction."

Corpang still paused. "Underneath your crimes I see a man," he said, after a few minutes. "On that account, and because we are commanded to help one another, I won't leave you at present, though I little thought to be walking with a murderer.... Now to your question.... Whatever a man sees with his eyes, Maskull, he sees in three ways -- length, breadth, depth. Length is existence, breadth is relation, depth is feeling."

"Something of the sort was told me by Earthrid, the musician, who came from Threal."

"I don't know him. What else did he tell you?"

"He went on to apply it to music. Continue, and pardon the interruption."

"These three states of perception are the three worlds. Existence is Faceny's world, relation is Amfuse's world, feeling is Thire's world."

"Can't we come down to hard facts?" said Maskull, frowning. "I understand no more than I did before what you mean by three worlds."

"There are no harder facts than the ones I am giving you. The first world is visible, tangible Nature. It was created by Faceny out of nothingness, and therefore we call it Existence."

"That I understand."

"The second world is Love -- by which I don't mean lust. Without love, every individual would be entirely self-centred and unable deliberately to act on others. Without love, there would be no sympathy -- not even hatred, anger, or revenge would be possible. These are all imperfect and distorted forms of pure love. Interpenetrating Faceny's world of Nature, therefore, we have Amfuse's world of Love, or Relation."

"What grounds have you for assuming that this so-called second world is not contained in the first?"

"They are contradictory. A natural man lives for himself; a lover lives for others."

"It may be so. It's rather mystical. But go on -- who is Thire?"

"Length and breadth together without depth give flatness. Life and love without feeling produce shallow, superficial natures. Feeling is the need of men to stretch out toward their creator."

"You mean prayer and worship?"

"I mean intimacy with Thire. This feeling is not to be found in either the first or second world, therefore it is a third world. Just as depth is the line between object and subject, feeling is the line between Thire and man."

"But what is Thire himself?"

"Thire is the afterworld."

"I still don't understand," said Maskull. "Do you believe in three separate gods, or are these merely three ways of regarding one God?"

"There are three gods, for they are mutually antagonistic. Yet they are somehow united."

Maskull reflected a while. "How have you arrived at these conclusions?"

"None other are possible in Threal, Maskull."

"Why in Threal -- what is there peculiar here?"

"I will show you presently."

They walked on for above a mile in silence, while Maskull digested what had been said. When they came to the first trees, which grew along the banks of a small stream of transparent water, Corpang halted.

"That bandage around your forehead has long been unnecessary," he remarked.

Maskull removed it. He found that the line of his brow was smooth and uninterrupted, as it had never yet been since his arrival in Tormance.

"How has this come about -- and how did you know it?"

"They were Faceny's organs. They have vanished, just as the phaen's body vanished."

Maskull kept rubbing his forehead. "I feel more human without them. But why isn't the rest of my body affected?"

"Because its living will contains the element of Thire."

"Why are we stopping here?"

Corpang broke off the tip of one of the aerial roots of a tree, and proffered it to him. "Eat this, Maskull."

"For food, or something else?"

"Food for body and soul."

Maskull bit into the root. It was white and hard; its white sap was bleeding. It had no taste, but after eating it, he experienced a change of perception. The landscape, without alteration of light or outline, became several degrees more stern and sacred. When he looked at Corpang he was impressed by his aspect of Gothic awfulness, but the perplexed expression was still in his eyes.

"Do you spend all your time here, Corpang?"

"Occasionally I go above, but not often."

"What fastens you to this gloomy world?"

"The search for Thire."

"Then it's still a search?"

"Let us walk on."

As they resumed their journey across the dim, gradually rising plain, the conversation became even more earnest in character than before. "Although I was not born here," proceeded Corpang, "I've lived here for twenty-five years, and during all that time I have been drawing nearer to Thire, as I hope. But there is this peculiarity about it -- the first stages are richer in fruit and more promising than the later ones. The longer a man seeks Thire, the more he seems to absent himself. In the beginning he is felt and known, sometimes as a shape, sometimes as a voice, sometimes an overpowering emotion. Later on all is dry, dark, and harsh in the soul. Then you would think that Thire was a million miles off."

"How do you explain that?"

"When everything is darkest, he may be nearest, Maskull."

"But this is troubling you?"

"My days are spent in torture."

"You still persist, though? This day darkness can't be the ultimate state?"

"My questions will be answered."

A silence ensued.

"What do you propose to show me?" asked Maskull.

"The land is about to grow wilder. I am taking you to the Three Figures, which were carved and erected by an earlier race of men. There, we will pray."

"And what then?"

"If you are truehearted, you will see things you will not easily forget."

They had been walking slightly uphill in a sort of trough between two parallel, gently sloping downs. The trough now deepened, while the hills on either side grew steeper. They were in an ascending valley and, as it curved this way and that, the landscape was shut off from view. They came to a little spring, bubbling up from the ground. It formed a trickling brook, which was unlike all other brooks in that it was flowing up the valley instead of down. Before long it was joined by other miniature rivulets, so that in the end it became a fair-sized stream. Maskull kept looking at it, and puckering his forehead.

"Nature has other laws here, it seems?"

"Nothing can exist here that is not a compound of the three worlds."

"Yet the water is flowing somewhere."

"I can't explain it, but there are three wills in it."

"Is there no such thing as pure Thire-matter?"

"Thire cannot exist without Amfuse, and Amfuse cannot exist without Faceny."

Maskull thought this over for some minutes. "That must be so," he said at last. "Without life there can be no love, and without love there can be no religious feeling."

In the half light of the land, the tops of the hills containing the valley presently attained such a height that they could not be seen. The sides were steep and craggy, while the bed of the valley grew narrower at every step. Not a living organism was visible. All was unnatural and sepulchral.

Maskull said, "I feel as if I were dead, and walking in another world."

"I still do not know what you are doing here," answered Corpang.

"Why should I go on making a mystery of it? I came to find Surtur."

"That name I've heard -- but under what circumstances?"

"You forget?"

Corpang walked along, his eyes fixed on the ground, obviously troubled. "Who is Surtur?"

Maskull shook his head, and said nothing.

The valley shortly afterward narrowed, so that the two men, touching fingertips in the middle, could have placed their free hands on the rock walls on either side. It threatened to terminate in a cul-de- sac, but just when the road seemed least promising, and they were shut in by cliffs on all sides, a hitherto unperceived bend brought them suddenly into the open. They emerged through a mere crack in the line of precipices.

A sort of huge natural corridor was running along at right angles to the way they had come; both ends faded into obscurity after a few hundred yards. Right down the centre of this corridor ran a chasm with perpendicular sides; its width varied from thirty to a hundred feet, but its bottom could not be seen. On both sides of the chasm, facing one another, were platforms of rock, twenty feet or so in width; they too proceeded in both directions out of sight. Maskull and Corpang emerged onto one of these platforms. The shelf opposite was a few feet higher than that on which they stood. The platforms were backed by a double line of lofty and unclimbable cliffs, whose tops were invisible.

The stream, which had accompanied them through the gap, went straight forward, but, instead of descending the wall of the chasm as a waterfall, it crossed from side to side like a liquid bridge. It then disappeared through a cleft in the cliffs on the opposite side.

To Maskull's mind, however, even more wonderful than this unnatural phenomenon was the absence of shadows, which was more noticeable here than on the open plain. It made the place look like a hall of phantoms.

Corpang, without delay, led the way along the shelf to the left. When they had walked about a mile, the gulf widened to two hundred feet. Three large rocks loomed up on the ledge opposite; they resembled three upright giants, standing motionless side by side on the extreme edge of the chasm. Corpang and Maskull drew nearer, and then Maskull saw that they were statues. Each was about thirty feet high, and the workmanship was of the rudest. They represented naked men, but the limbs and trunks had been barely chipped into shape -- the faces alone had had care bestowed on them, and even these faces were merely generalised. It was obviously the work of primitive artists. The statues stood erect with knees closed and arms hanging straight down their sides. All three were exactly alike.

As soon as they were directly opposite, Corpang halted.

"Is this a representation of your three Beings?" asked Maskull, awed by the spectacle in spite of his constitutional audacity.

"Ask no questions, but kneel," replied Corpang. He dropped onto his own knees, but Maskull remained standing.

Corpang covered his eyes with one hand, and prayed silently. After a few minutes the light sensibly faded. Then Maskull knelt as well, but he continued looking.

It grew darker and darker, until all was like the blackest night. Sight and sound no longer existed; he was alone with his own spirit.

Then one of the three Colossi came slowly into sight again. But it had ceased to be a statue -- it was a living person. Out of the blackness of space a gigantic head and chest emerged, illuminated by a mystic, rosy glow, like a mountain peak bathed by the rising sun. As the light grew stronger Maskull saw that the flesh was translucent and that the glow came from within. The limbs of the apparition were wreathed in mist.

Before long the features of the face stood out distinctly. It was that of a beardless youth of twenty years. It possessed the beauty of a girl and the daring force of a man; it bore a mocking, cryptic smile. Maskull felt the fresh, mysterious thrill of mingled pain and rapture of one who awakes from a deep sleep in midwinter and sees the gleaming, dark, delicate colours of the half-dawn. The vision smiled, kept still, and looked beyond him. He began to shudder, with delight -- and many emotions. As he gazed, his poetic sensibility acquired such a nervous and indefinable character that he could endure it no more; he burst into tears.

When he looked up again the image had nearly disappeared, and in a few moments more he was plunged back into total darkness.

Shortly afterward a second statue reappeared. It too was transfigured into a living form, but Maskull was unable to see the details of its face and body, because of the brightness of the light that radiated from them. This light, which started as pale gold, ended as flaming golden fire. It illumined the whole underground landscape. The rock ledges, the cliffs, himself and Corpang on their knees, the two unlighted statues -- all appeared as if in sunlight, and the shadows were black and strongly defined. The light carried heat with it, but a singular heat. Maskull was unaware of any rise in temperature, but he felt his heart melting to womanish softness. His male arrogance and egotism faded imperceptibly away; his personality seemed to disappear. What was left behind was not freedom of spirit or lightheartedness, but a passionate and nearly savage mental state of pity and distress. He felt a tormenting desire to serve. All this came from the heat of the statue, and was without an object. He glanced anxiously around him, and fastened his eyes on Corpang. He put a hand on his shoulder and aroused him from his praying.

"You must know what I am feeling, Corpang."

Corpang smiled sweetly, but said nothing.

"I care nothing for my own affairs any more. How can I help you?"

"So much the better for you, Maskull, if you respond so quickly to the invisible worlds."

As soon as he had spoken, the figure began to vanish, and the light to die away from the landscape. Maskull's emotion slowly subsided, but it was not until he was once more in complete darkness that he became master of himself again. Then he felt ashamed of his boyish exhibition of enthusiasm, and thought ruefully that there must be something wanting in his character. He got up onto his feet.

The very moment that he arose, a man's voice sounded, not a yard from his ear. It was hardly raised above a whisper, but he could distinguish that it was not Corpang's. As he listened he was unable to prevent himself from physically trembling.

"Maskull, you are to die," said the unseen speaker.

"Who is speaking?"

"You have only a few hours of life left. Don't trifle the time away."

Maskull could bring nothing out.

"You have despised life," went on the low-toned voice. "Do you really imagine that this mighty world has no meaning, and that life is a joke?"

"What must I do?"

"Repent your murders, commit no fresh ones, pay honour to..."

The voice died away. Maskull waited in silence for it to speak again. All remained still, however, and the speaker appeared to have taken his departure. Supernatural horror seized him; he fell into a sort of catalepsy.

At that moment he saw one of the statues fading away, from a pale, white glow to darkness. He had not previously seen it shining.

In a few more minutes the normal light of the land returned. Corpang got up, and shook him out of his trance.

Maskull looked around, but saw no third person. "Whose statue was the last?" he demanded.

"Did you hear me speaking?"

"I heard your voice, but no one else's."

"I've just had my death foretold, so I suppose I have not long to live. Leehallfae prophesied the same thing."

Corpang shook his head. "What value do you set on life?" he asked.

"Very little. But it's a fearful thing all the same."

"Your death is?"

"No, but this warning."

They stopped talking. A profound silence reigned. Neither of the two men seemed to know what to do next, or where to go. Then both of them heard the sound of drumming. It was slow, emphatic, and impressive, a long way off and not loud, but against the background of quietness, very marked. It appeared to come from some point out of sight, to the left of where they were standing, but on the same rock shelf. Maskull's heart beat quickly.

"What can that sound be?" asked Corpang, peering into the obscurity.

"It is Surtur."

"Once again, who is Surtur?"

Maskull clutched his arm and pressed him to silence. A strange radiance was in the air, in the direction of the drumming. It increased in intensity and gradually occupied the whole scene. Things were no longer seen by Thire's light, but by this new light. It cast no shadows.

Corpang's nostrils swelled, and he held himself more proudly. "What fire is that?"

"It is Muspel-light."

They both glanced instinctively at the three statues. In the strange glow they had undergone a change. The face of each figure was clothed in the sordid and horrible Crystalman mask.

Corpang cried out and put his hand over his eyes. "What can this mean?" he asked a minute later.

"It must mean that life is wrong, and the creator of life too, whether he is one person or three."

Corpang looked again, like a man trying to accustom himself to a shocking sight. "Dare we believe this?"

"You must," replied Maskull. "You have always served the highest, and you must continue to do so. It has simply turned out that Thire is not the highest."

Corpang's face became swollen with a kind of coarse anger. "Life is clearly false -- I have been seeking Thire for a lifetime, and now I find -- this."

"You have nothing to reproach yourself with. Crystalman has had eternity to practice his cunning in, so it's no wonder if a man can't see straight, even with the best intentions. What have you decided to do?"

"The drumming seems to be moving away. Will you follow it, Maskull?"

"Yes."

"But where will it take us?"

"Perhaps out of Threal altogether."

"It sounds to me more real than reality," said Corpang. "Tell me, who is Surtur?"

"Surtur's world, or Muspel, we are told, is the original of which this world is a distorted copy. Crystalman is life, but Surtur is other than life."

"How do you know this?"

"It has sprung together somehow -- from inspiration, from experience, from conversation with the wise men of your planet. Every hour it grows truer for me and takes a more definite shape."

Corpang stood up squarely, facing the three Figures with a harsh, energetic countenance, stamped all over with resolution. "I believe you, Maskull. No better proof is required than that. Thire is not the highest; he is even in a certain sense the lowest. Nothing but the thoroughly false and base could stoop to such deceits.... I am coming with you -- but don't play the traitor. These signs may be for you, and not for me at all, and if you leave me -- "

"I make no promises. I don't ask you to come with me. If you prefer to stay in your little world, or if you have any doubts about it, you had better not come."

"Don't talk like that. I shall never forget your service to me... Let us make haste, or we shall lose the sound."

Corpang started off more eagerly than Maskull. They walked fast in the direction of the drumming. For upward of two miles the path went along the ledge without any change of level. The mysterious radiance gradually departed, and was replaced by the normal light of Threal. The rhythmical beats continued, but a very long way ahead -- neither was able to diminish the distance.

"What kind of man are you?" Corpang suddenly broke out.

"In what respect?"

"How do you come to be on such terms with the Invisible? How is it that I've never had this experience before I met you, in spite of my never-ending prayers and mortifications? In what way are you superior to me?"

"To hear voices perhaps can't be made a profession," replied Maskull. "I have a simple and unoccupied mind -- that may be why I sometimes hear things that up to the present you have not been able to."

Corpang darkened, and kept silent; and then Maskull saw through to his pride.

The ledge presently began to rise. They were high above the platform on the opposite side of the gulf. The road then curved sharply to the right, and they passed over the abyss and the other ledge as by a bridge, coming out upon the top of the opposite cliffs. A new line of precipices immediately confronted them. They followed the drumming along the base of these heights, but as they were passing the mouth of a large cave the sound came from its recesses, and they turned their steps inward.

"This leads to the outer world," remarked Corpang. "I've occasionally been there by this passage."

"Then that's where it is taking us, no doubt. I confess I shan't be sorry to see sunlight once more."

"Can you find time to think of sunlight?" asked Corpang with a rough smile.

"I love the sun, and perhaps I'm rather lacking in the spirit of a zealot."

"Yet, for all that, you may get there before me."

"Don't be bitter," said Maskull. "I'll tell you another thing. Muspel can't be willed, for the simple reason that Muspel does not concern the will. To will is a property of this world."

"Then what is your journey for?"

"It's one thing to walk to a destination, and to linger over the walk, and quite another to run there at top speed."

"Perhaps I'm not so easily deceived as you think," said Corpang with another smile.

The light persisted in the cave. The path narrowed and became a steep ascent. Then the angle became one of forty-five degrees, and they had to climb. The tunnel grew so confined that Maskull was reminded of the confined dreams of his childhood.

Not long afterward, daylight appeared. They hastened to complete the last stage. Maskull rushed out first into the world of colours and, all dirty and bleeding from numerous scratches, stood blinking on a hillside, bathed in the brilliant late-afternoon sunshine. Corpang followed closely at his heels, He was obliged to shield his eyes with his hands for a few minutes, so unaccustomed was he to Branchspell's blinding rays.

"The drum beats have stopped!" he exclaimed suddenly.

"You can't expect music all the time," answered Maskull dryly. "We mustn't be luxurious."

"But now we have no guide. We're no better off than before."

"Well, Tormance is a big place. But I have an infallible rule, Corpang. As I come from the south, I always go due north."

"That will take us to Lichstorm."

Maskull gazed at the fantastically piled rocks all around them. "I saw these rocks from Matterplay. The mountains look as far off now as they did them, and there's not much of the day left. How far is Lichstorm from here?"

Corpang looked away to the distant range. "I don't know, but unless a miracle happens we shan't get there tonight."

"I have a feeling," said Maskull, "that we shall not only get there tonight, but that tonight will be the most important in my life."

And he sat down passively to rest.

[admin]

Chapter 18: HAUNTE

While Maskull sat, Corpang walked restlessly to and fro, swinging his arms. He had lost his staff. His face was inflamed with suppressed impatience, which accentuated its natural coarseness. At last he stopped short in front of Maskull and looked down at him. "What do you intend to do?"

Maskull glanced up and idly waved his hand toward the distant mountains. "Since we can't walk, we must wait."

"For what?"

"I don't know... How's this, though? Those peaks have changed colour, from red to green."

"Yes, the lich wind is travelling this way."

"The lich wind?"

"It's the atmosphere of Lichstorm. It always clings to the mountains, but when the wind blows from the north it comes as far as Threal."

"It's a sort of fog, then?"

"A peculiar sort, for they say it excites the sexual passions."

"So we are to have lovemaking," said Maskull, laughing.

"Perhaps you won't find it so joyous," replied Corpang a little grimly.

"But tell me -- these peaks, how do they preserve their balance?"

Corpang gazed at the distant, overhanging summits, which were fast fading into obscurity.

"Passion keeps them from falling."

Maskull laughed again; he was feeling a strange disturbance of spirit. "What, the love of rock for rock?"

"It is comical, but true."

"We'll take a closer peep at them presently. Beyond the mountains is Barey, is it not?"

"Yes."

"And then the Ocean. But what is the name of that Ocean?"

"That is told only to those who die beside it."

"Is the secret so precious, Corpang?"

Branchspell was nearing the horizon in the west; there were more than two hours of daylight remaining. The air all around them became murky. It was a thin mist, neither damp nor cold. The Lichstorm Range now appeared only as a blur on the sky. The air was electric and tingling, and was exciting in its effect. Maskull felt a sort of emotional inflammation, as though a very slight external cause would serve to overturn his self-control. Corpang stood silent with a mouth like iron.

Maskull kept looking toward a high pile of rocks in the vicinity.

"That seems to me a good watchtower. Perhaps we shall see something from the top."

Without waiting for his companion's opinion, he began to scramble up the tower, and in a few minutes was standing on the summit. Corpang joined him.

From their viewpoint they saw the whole countryside sloping down to the sea, which appeared as a mere flash of far-off, glittering water. Leaving all that, however, Maskull's eyes immediately fastened themselves on a small, boat-shaped object, about two miles away, which was travelling rapidly toward them, suspended only a few feet in the air.

"What do you make of that?" he asked in a tone of astonishment.

Corpang shook his head and said nothing.

Within two minutes the flying object, whatever it was, had diminished the distance between them by one half. It resembled a boat more and more, but its flight was erratic, rather than smooth; its nose was continually jerking upward and downward, and from side to side. Maskull now made out a man sitting in the stern, and what looked like a large dead animal lying amidships. As the aerial craft drew nearer, he observed a thick, blue haze underneath it, and a similar haze behind, but the front, facing them, was clear.

"Here must be what we are waiting for, Corpang. But what on earth carries it?"

He stroked his beard contemplatively, and then, fearing that they had not been seen, stepped onto the highest rock, bellowed loudly, and made wild motions with his arm. The flying-boat, which was only a few hundred yards distant, slightly altered its course, now heading toward them in a way that left no doubt that the steersman had detected their presence.

The boat slackened speed until it was travelling no faster than a walking man, but the irregularity of its movements continued. It was shaped rather queerly. About twenty feet long, its straight sides tapered off from a flat bow, four feet broad, to a sharp-angled stern. The flat bottom was not above ten feet from the ground. It was undecked, and carried only one living occupant; the other object they had distinguished was really the carcass of an animal, of about the size of a large sheep. The blue haze trailing behind the boat appeared to emanate from the glittering point of a short upright pole fastened in the stem. When the craft was within a few feet of them, and they were looking down at it in wonder from above, the man removed this pole and covered the brightly shining tip with a cap. The forward motion then ceased altogether, and the boat began to drift hither and thither, but still it remained suspended in the air, while the haze underneath persisted. Finally the broad side came gently up against the pile of rocks on which they were standing. The steersman jumped ashore and immediately clambered up to meet them.

Maskull offered him a hand, but he refused it disdainfully. He was a young man, of middle height. He wore a close-fitting fur garment. His limbs were quite ordinary, but his trunk was disproportionately long, and he had the biggest and deepest chest that Maskull had ever seen in a man. His hairless face was sharp, pointed, and ugly, with protruding teeth, and a spiteful, grinning expression. His eyes and brows sloped upward. On his forehead was an organ which looked as though it had been mutilated -- it was a mere disagreeable stump of flesh. His hair was short and thin. Maskull could not name the colour of his skin, but it seemed to stand in the same relation to jale as green to red.

Once up, the stranger stood for a minute or two, scrutinising the two companions through half-closed lids, all the time smiling insolently. Maskull was all eagerness to exchange words, but did not care to be the first to speak. Corpang stood moodily, a little in the background.

"What men are you?" demanded the aerial navigator at last. His voice was extremely loud, and possessed a most unpleasant timbre. It sounded to Maskull like a large volume of air trying to force its way through a narrow orifice.

"I am Maskull; my friend is Corpang. He comes from Threal, but where I come from, don't ask."

"I am Haunte, from Sarclash."

"Where may that be?"

"Half an hour ago I could have shown it to you, but now it has got too murky. It is a mountain in Lichstorm."

"Are you returning there now?"

"Yes."

"And how long will it take to get there in that boat?"

"Two -- three hours."

"Will it accommodate us too?"

"What, are you for Lichstorm as well? What can you want there?"

"To see the sights," responded Maskull with twinkling eyes. "But first of all, to dine. I can't remember having eaten all day. You seem to have been hunting to some purpose, so we won't lack for food."

Haunte eyed him quizzically. "You certainly don't lack impudence. However, I'm a man of that sort myself, and it is the sort I prefer. Your friend, now, would probably rather starve than ask a meal of a stranger. He looks to me just like a bewildered toad dragged up out of a dark hole."

Maskull took Corpang's arm, and constrained him to silence.

"Where have you been hunting, Haunte?"

"Matterplay. I had the worst luck -- I speared one wold horse, and there it lies."

"What is Lichstorm like?"

"There are men there, and there are women there, but there are no men-women, as with you."

"What do you call men-women?"

"Persons of mixed sex, like yourself. In Lichstorm the sexes are pure."

"I have always regarded myself as a man."

"Very likely you have; but the test is, do you hate and fear women?"

"Why, do you?"

Haunte grinned and showed his teeth. "Things are different in Lichstorm.... So you want to see the sights?"

"I confess I am curious to see your women, for example, after what you say."

"Then I'll introduce you to Sullenbode."

He paused a moment after making this remark, and then suddenly uttered a great, bass laugh, so that his chest shook.

"Let us share the joke," said Maskull.

"Oh, you'll understand it later."

"If you play pranks with me, I won't stand on ceremony with you."

Haunte laughed again. "I won't be the one to play pranks. Sullenbode will be deeply obliged to me. If I don't visit her myself as often as she would like, I'm always glad to serve her in other ways.... Well, you shall have your boat ride."

Maskull rubbed his nose doubtfully. "If the sexes hate one another in your land, is it because passion is weaker, or stronger?"

"In other parts of the world there is soft passion, but in Lichstorm there is hard passion."

"But what do you call hard passion?"

"Where men are called to women by pain, and not pleasure."

"I intend to understand, before I've finished."

"Yes," answered Haunte, with a taunting look, "it would be a pity to let the chance slip, since you're going to Lichstorm."

It was now Corpang's turn to take Maskull by the arm. "This journey will end badly."

"Why so?"

"Your goal was Muspel a short while ago; now it is women."

"Let me alone," said Maskull. "Give luck a slack rein. What brought this boat here?"

"What is this talk about Muspel?" demanded Haunte.

Corpang caught his shoulder roughly, and stared straight into his eyes. "What do you know?"

"Not much, but something, perhaps. Ask me at supper. Now it is high time to start. Navigating the mountains by night isn't child's play, let me tell you."

"I shall not forget," said Corpang.

Maskull gazed down at the boat. "Are we to get in?"

"Gently, my friend. It's only canework and skin."

"First of all, you might enlighten me as to how you have contrived to dispense with the laws of gravitation."

Haunte smiled sarcastically. "A secret in your ear, Maskull. All laws are female. A true male is an outlaw -- outside the law."

"I don't understand."

"The great body of the earth is continually giving out female particles, and the male parts of rocks and living bodies are equally continually trying to reach them. That's gravitation."

"Then how do you manage with your boat?"

"My two male stones do the work. The one underneath the boat prevents it from falling to the ground; the one in the stem shuts it off from solid objects in the rear. The only part of the boat attracted by any part of the earth is the bow, for that's the only part the light of the male stones does not fall on. So in that direction the boat travels."

"And what are these wondrous male stones?"

"They really are male stones. There is nothing female in them; they are showering out male sparks all the time. These sparks devour all the female particles rising from the earth. No female particles are left over to attract the male parts of the boat, and so they are not in the least attracted in that direction."

Maskull ruminated for a minute.

"With your hunting, and boatbuilding, and science, you seem a very handy, skilful fellow, Haunte.... But the sun's sinking, and we'd better start."

"Get down first, then, and shift that carcass farther forward. Then you and your gloomy friend can sit amidships."

Maskull immediately climbed down, and dropped himself into the boat; but then he received a surprise. The moment he stood on the frail bottom, still clinging to the rock, not only did his weight entirely disappear, as though he were floating in some heavy medium, like salt water, but the rock he held onto drew him, as by a mild current of electricity, and he was able to withdraw his hands only with difficulty.

After the first moment's shock, he quietly accepted the new order of things, and set about shifting the carcass. Since there was no weight in the boat this was effected without any great labour. Corpang then descended. The astonishing physical change had no power to disturb his settled composure, which was founded on moral ideas. Haunte came last; grasping the staff which held the upper male stone, he proceeded to erect it, after removing the cap. Maskull then obtained his first near view of the mysterious light, which, by counteracting the forces of Nature, acted indirectly not only as elevator but as motive force. In the last ruddy gleams of the great sun, its rays were obscured, and it looked little more impressive than an extremely brilliant, scintillating blue-white jewel, but its power could be gauged by the visible, coloured mist that it threw out for many yards around.

The steering was effected by means of a shutter attached by a cord to the top of the staff, which could be so manipulated that any segment of the male stone's rays, or all the rays, or none at all, could be shut off at will. No sooner was the staff raised than the aerial vessel quietly detached itself from the rock to which it had been drawn, and passed slowly forward in the direction of the mountains. Branchspell sank below the horizon. The gathering mist blotted out everything outside a radius of a few miles. The air grew cool and fresh.

Soon the rock masses ceased on the great, rising plain. Haunte withdrew the shutter entirely, and the boat gathered full speed.

"You say that navigation among the mountains is difficult at night," exclaimed Maskull. "I would have thought it impossible."

Haunte grunted. "You will have to take risks, and think yourself fortunate if you come off with nothing worse than a cracked skull. But one thing I can tell you -- if you go on disturbing me with your chitchat we shan't get as far as the mountains."

Thereafter Maskull was silent.

The twilight deepened; the murk grew denser. There was little to look at, but much to feel. The motion of the boat, which was due to the never-ending struggle between the male stones and the force of gravitation, resembled in an exaggerated fashion the violent tossing of a small craft on a choppy sea. The two passengers became unhappy. Haunte, from his seat in the stern, gazed at them sardonically with one eye. The darkness now came on rapidly.

About ninety minutes after the commencement of the voyage they arrived at the foothills of Lichstorm. They began to mount. There was no daylight left to see by. Beneath them, however, on both sides of them and in the rear, the landscape was lighted up for a considerable distance by the now vivid blue rays of the twin male stones. Ahead, where these rays did not shine, Haunte was guided by the self-luminous nature of the rocks, grass, and trees. These were faintly phosphorescent; the vegetation shone out more strongly than the soil.

The moon was not shining and there were no stars; Maskull therefore inferred that the upper atmosphere was dense with mist. Once or twice, from his sensations of choking, he thought that they were entering a fogbank, but it was a strange kind of fog, for it had the effect of doubling the intensity of every light in front of them. Whenever this happened, nightmare feelings attacked him; he experienced transitory, unreasoning fright and horror.

Now they passed high above the valley that separated the foothills from the mountains themselves. The boat began an ascent of many thousands of feet and, as the cliffs were near, Haunte had to manoeuvre carefully with the rear light in order to keep clear of them. Maskull watched the delicacy of his movements, not without admiration. A long time went by. It grew much colder; the air was damp and drafty. The fog began to deposit something like snow on their persons. Maskull kept sweating with terror, not because of the danger they were in, but because of the cloud banks that continued to envelop them.

They cleared the first line of precipices. Still mounting, but this time with a forward motion, as could be seen by the vapours illuminated by the male stones through which they passed, they were soon altogether out of sight of solid ground. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly the moon broke through. In the upper atmosphere thick masses of fog were seen crawling hither and thither, broken in many places by thin rifts of sky, through one of which Teargeld was shining. Below them, to their left, a gigantic peak, glittering with green ice, showed itself for a few seconds, and was then swallowed up again. All the rest of the world was hidden by the mist. The moon went in again. Maskull had seen quite enough to make him long for the aerial voyage to end.

The light from the male stones presently illuminated the face of a new cliff. It was grand, rugged, and perpendicular. Upward, downward, and on both sides, it faded imperceptibly into the night. After coasting it a little way, they observed a shelf of rock jutting out. It was square, measuring about a dozen feet each way. Green snow covered it to a depth of some inches. Immediately behind it was a dark slit in the rock, which promised to be the mouth of a cave.

Haunte skilfully landed the boat on this platform. Standing up, he raised the staff bearing the keel light and lowered the other; then removed both male stones, which he continued to hold in his hand. His face was thrown into strong relief by the vivid, sparkling blue- white rays. It looked rather surly.

"Do we get out?" inquired Maskull.

"Yes. I live here."

"Thanks for the successful end of a dangerous journey."

"Yes, it has been touch-and-go."

Corpang jumped onto the platform. He was smiling coarsely. "There has been no danger, for our destinies lie elsewhere. You are merely a ferryman, Haunte."

"Is that so?" returned Haunte, with a most unpleasant laugh. "I thought I was carrying men, not gods."

"Where are we?" asked Maskull. As he spoke, he got out, but Haunte remained standing a minute in the boat.

"This is Sarclash -- the second highest mountain in the land."

"Which is the highest, then?"

"Adage. Between Sarclash and Adage there is a long ridge -- very difficult in places. About halfway along the ridge, at the lowest point, lies the top of the Mornstab Pass, which goes through to Barey. Now you know the lay of the land."

"Does the woman Sullenbode live near here?"

"Near enough." Haunte grinned.

He leaped out of the boat and, pushing past the others without ceremony, walked straight into the cave.

Maskull followed, with Corpang at his heels. A few stone steps led to a doorway, curtained by the skin of some large beast. Their host pushed his way in, never offering to hold the skin aside for them. Maskull made no comment, but grabbed it with his fist and tugged it away from its fastenings to the ground. Haunte looked at the skin, and then stared hard at Maskull with his disagreeable smile, but neither said anything.

The place in which they found themselves was a large oblong cavern, with walls, floor, and ceiling of natural rock. There were two doorways: that by which they had entered, and another of smaller size directly opposite. The cave was cold and cheerless; a damp draft passed from door to door. Many skins of wild animals lay scattered on the ground. A number of lumps of sun-dried flesh were hanging on a string along the wall, and a few bulging liquor skins reposed in a corner. There were tusks, horns, and bones everywhere. Resting against the wall were two short hunting spears, having beautiful crystal heads.

Haunte set down the two male stones on the ground, near the farther door; their light illuminated the whole cave. He then walked over to the meat and, snatching a large piece, began to gnaw it ravenously.

"Are we invited to the feast?" asked Maskull.

Haunte pointed to the hanging flesh and to the liquor skins, but did not pause in his chewing.

"Where's a cup?" inquired Maskull, lifting one of the skins.

Haunte indicated a clay goblet lying on the floor. Maskull picked it up, undid the neck of the skin, and, resting it under his arm, filled the cup. Tasting the liquor, he discovered it to be raw spirit. He tossed off the draught, and then felt much better.

The second cupful he proffered to Corpang. The latter took a single sip, swallowed it, and then passed the cup back without a word. He refused to drink again, as long as they were in the cave. Maskull finished the cup, and began to throw off care.

Going to the meat line, he took down a large double handful, and sat down on a pile of skins to eat at his ease. The flesh was tough and coarse, but he had never tasted anything sweeter. He could not understand the flavour, which was not surprising in a world of strange animals. The meal proceeded in silence. Corpang ate sparingly, standing up, and afterward lay down on a bundle of furs. His bold eyes watched all the movements of the other two. Haunte had not drunk as yet.

At last Maskull concluded his meal. He emptied another cup, sighed pleasantly, and prepared to talk.

"Now explain further about your women, Haunte."

Haunte fetched another skin of liquor and a second cup. He tore off the string with his teeth, and poured out and drank cup after cup in quick succession. Then he sat down, crossed his legs, and turned to Maskull.

"Well?"

"So they are objectionable?"

"They are deadly."

"Deadly? In what way can they possibly be deadly?"

"You will learn. I was watching you in the boat, Maskull. You had some bad feelings, eh?"

"I don't conceal it. There were times when I felt as if I were struggling with a nightmare. What caused it?"

"The female atmosphere of Lichstorm. Sexual passion."

"I had no passion."

"That was passion -- the first stage. Nature tickles your people into marriage, but it tortures us. Wait till you get outside. You'll have a return of those sensations -- only ten times worse. The drink you've had will see to that.... How do you suppose it will all end?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking you questions."

Haunte laughed loudly. "Sullenbode."

"You mean it will end in my seeking Sullenbode?"

"But what will come of it, Maskull? What will she give you? Sweet, fainting, white-armed, feminine voluptuousness?"

Maskull coolly drank another cup. "And why should she give all that to a passerby?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, she hasn't it to give. No, what she will give you, and what you'll accept from her, because you can't help it, is -- anguish, insanity, possibly death."

"You may be talking sense, but it sounds like raving to me. Why should I accept insanity and death?"

"Because your passion will force you to."

"What about yourself?" Maskull asked, biting his nails.

"Oh, I have my male stones. I am immune."

"Is that all that prevents you from being like other men?"

"Yes, but don't attempt any tricks, Maskull."

Maskull went on drinking steadily, and said nothing for a time. "So men and women here are hostile to each other, and love is unknown?" he proceeded at last.

"That magic word.... Shall I tell you what love is, Maskull? Love between male and female is impossible. When Maskull loves a woman, it is Maskull's female ancestors who are loving her. But here in this land the men are pure males. They have drawn nothing from the female side."

"Where do the male stones come from?"

"Oh, they are not freaks. There must be whole beds of the stuff somewhere. It is all that prevents the world from being a pure female world. It would be one big mass of heavy sweetness, without individual shapes."

"Yet this same sweetness is torturing to men?"

"The life of an absolute male is fierce. An excess of life is dangerous to the body. How can it be anything else than torturing?"

Corpang now sat up suddenly, and addressed Haunte. "I remind you of your promise to tell about Muspel."

Haunte regarded him with a malevolent smile. "Ha! The underground man has come to life."

"Yes, tell us," put in Maskull carelessly.

Haunte drank, and laughed a little. "Well, the tale's short, and hardly worth telling, but since you're interested.... A stranger came here five years ago, inquiring after Muspel-light. His name was Lodd. He came from the east. He came up to me one bright morning in summer, outside this very cave. If you ask me to describe him -- I can't imagine a second man like him. He looked so proud, noble, superior, that I felt my own blood to be dirty by comparison. You can guess I don't have this feeling for everyone. Now that I am recalling him, he was not so much superior as different. I was so impressed that I rose and talked to him standing. He inquired the direction of the mountain Adage. He went on to say, 'They say Muspel-light is sometimes seen there. What do you know of such a thing?' I told him the truth -- that I knew nothing about it, and then he went on, 'Well, I am going to Adage. And tell those who come after me on the same errand that they had better do the same thing.' That was the whole conversation. He started on his way, and I've never seen him or heard of him since."

"So you didn't have the curiosity to follow him?"

"No, because the moment he had turned his back all my interest in the man somehow seemed to vanish."

"Probably because he was useless to you."

Corpang glanced at Maskull. "Our road is marked out for us."

"So it would appear," said Maskull indifferently.

The talk flagged for a time. Maskull felt the silence oppressive, and grew restless.

"What do you call the colour of your skin, Haunte, as I saw it in daylight? It struck me as strange."

"Dolm," said Haunte.

"A compound of ulfire and blue," explained Corpang.

"Now I know. These colours are puzzling for a stranger."

"What colours have you in your world?" asked Corpang.

"Only three primary ones, but here you seem to have five, though how it comes about I can't imagine."

"There are two sets of three primary colours here," said Corpang, "but as one of the colours -- blue -- is identical in both sets, altogether there are five primary colours."

"Why two sets?"

"Produced by the two suns. Branchspell produces blue, yellow, and red; Alppain, ulfire, blue, and jale."

"It's remarkable that explanation has never occurred to me before."

"So here you have another illustration of the necessary trinity of nature. Blue is existence. It is darkness seen through light; a contrasting of existence and nothingness. Yellow is relation. In yellow light we see the relation of objects in the clearest way. Red is feeling. When we see red, we are thrown back on our personal feelings.... As regards the Alppain colours, blue stands in the middle and is therefore not existence, but relation. Ulfire is existence; so it must be a different sort of existence."

Haunte yawned. "There are marvellous philosophers in your underground hole."

Maskull got up and looked about him.

"Where does that other door lead to?"

"Better explore," said Haunte.

Maskull took him at his word, and strolled across the cave, flinging the curtain aside and disappearing into the night. Haunte rose abruptly and hurried after him.

Corpang too got to his feet. He went over to the untouched spirit skins, untied the necks, and allowed the contents to gush out on to the floor. Next he took the hunting spears, and snapped off the points between his hands. Before he had time to resume his seat, Haunte and Maskull reappeared. The host's quick, shifty eyes at once took in what had happened. He smiled, and turned pale.

"You haven't been idle, friend."

Corpang fixed Haunte with his bold, heavy gaze. "I thought it well to draw your teeth."

Maskull burst out laughing. "The toad's come into the light to some purpose, Haunte. Who would have expected it?"

Haunte, after staring hard at Corpang for two or three minutes, suddenly uttered a strange cry, like an evil spirit, and flung himself upon him. The two men began to wrestle like wildcats. They were as often on the floor as on their legs, and Maskull could not see who was getting the better of it. He made no attempt to separate them. A thought came into his head and, snatching up the two male stones, he ran with them, laughing, through the upper doorway, into the open night air.

The door overlooked an abyss on another face of the mountain. A narrow ledge, sprinkled with green snow, wound along the cliff to the right; it was the only available path. He pitched the pebbles over the edge of the chasm. Although hard and heavy in his hand, they sank more like feathers than stones, and left a long trail of vapour behind. While Maskull was still watching them disappear, Haunte came rushing out of the cavern, followed by Corpang. He gripped Maskull's arm excitedly.

"What in Krag's name have you done?"

"Overboard they have gone," replied Maskull, renewing his laughter.

"You accursed madman!"

Haunte's luminous colour came and went, just as though his internal light were breathing. Then he grew suddenly calm, by a supreme exertion of his will.

"You know this kills me?"

"Haven't you been doing your best this last hour to make me ripe for Sullenbode? Well then, cheer up, and join the pleasure party!"

"You say it as a joke, but it is the miserable truth."

Haunte's jeering malevolence had completely vanished. He looked a sick man -- yet somehow his face had become nobler.

"I would be very sorry for you, Haunte, if it did not entail my being also very sorry for myself. We are now all three together on the same errand -- which doesn't appear to have struck you yet."

"But why this errand at all?" asked Corpang quietly. "Can't you men exercise self-control till you have arrived out of danger?"

Haunte fixed him with wild eyes. "No. The phantoms come trooping in on me already."

He sat down moodily, but the next minute was up again.

"And I cannot wait.... the game is started."

Soon afterward, by silent consent, they began to walk the ledge, Haunte in front. It was narrow, ascending, and slippery, so that extreme caution was demanded. The way was lighted by the self- luminous snow and rocks.

When they had covered about half a mile, Maskull, who went second of the party, staggered, caught the cliff, and finally sat down.

"The drink works. My old sensations are returning, but worse."

Haunte turned back. "Then you are a doomed man."

Maskull, though fully conscious of his companions and situation, imagined that he was being oppressed by a black, shapeless, supernatural being, who was trying to clasp him. He was filled with horror, trembled violently, yet could not move a limb. Sweat tumbled off his face in great drops. The waking nightmare lasted a long time, but during that space it kept coming and going. At one moment the vision seemed on the point of departing; the next it almost took shape -- which he knew would be his death. Suddenly it vanished altogether -- he was free. A fresh spring breeze fanned his face; he heard the slow, solitary singing of a sweet bird; and it seemed to him as if a poem had shot together in his soul. Such flashing, heartbreaking joy he had never experienced before in all his life! Almost immediately that too vanished.

Sitting up, he passed his hand across his eyes and swayed quietly, like one who has been visited by an angel.

"Your colour changed to white," said Corpang. "What happened?"

"I passed through torture to love," replied Maskull simply.

He stood up. Haunte gazed at him sombrely. "Will you not describe that passage?"

Maskull answered slowly and thoughtfully. "When I was in Matterplay, I saw heavy clouds discharge themselves and change to coloured, living animals. In the same way, my black, chaotic pangs just now seemed to consolidate themselves and spring together as a new sort of joy. The joy would not have been possible without the preliminary nightmare. It is not accidental; Nature intends it so. The truth has just flashed through my brain.... You men of Lichstorm don't go far enough. You stop at the pangs, Without realising that they are birth pangs."

"If this is true, you are a great pioneer," muttered Haunte.

"How does this sensation differ from common love?" interrogated Corpang.

"This was all that love is, multiplied by wildness."

Corpang fingered his chin awhile. "The Lichstorm men, however, will never reach this stage, for they are too masculine."

Haunte turned pale. "Why should we alone suffer?"

"Nature is freakish and cruel, and doesn't act according to justice.... Follow us, Haunte, and escape from it all."

"I'll see," muttered Haunte. "Perhaps I will."

"Have we far to go, to Sullenbode?" inquired Maskull.

"No, her home's under the hanging cap of Sarclash."

"What is to happen tonight?" Maskull spoke to himself, but Haunte answered him.

"Don't expect anything pleasant, in spite of what has just occurred. She is not a woman, but a mass of pure sex. Your passion will draw her out into human shape, but only for a moment. If the change were permanent, you would have endowed her with a soul."

"Perhaps the change might be made permanent."

"To do that, it is not enough to desire her; she must desire you as well. But why should she desire you?"

"Nothing turns out as one expects," said Maskull, shaking his head. "We had better get on again."

They resumed the journey. The ledge still rose, but, on turning a corner of the cliff, Haunte quitted it and began to climb a steep gully, which mounted directly to the upper heights. Here they were compelled to use both hands and feet. Maskull thought all the while of nothing but the overwhelming sweetness he had just experienced.

The flat ground on top was dry and springy. There was no more snow, and bright plants appeared. Haunte turned sharply to the left.

"This must be under the cap," said Maskull.

"It is; and within five minutes you will see Sullenbode."

When he spoke his words, Maskull's lips surprised him by their tender sensitiveness. Their action against each other sent thrills throughout his body.

The grass shone dimly. A huge tree, with glowing branches, came into sight. It bore a multitude of red fruit, like hanging lanterns, but no leaves. Underneath this tree Sullenbode was sitting. Her beautiful light -- a mingling of jale and white -- gleamed softly through the darkness. She sat erect, on crossed legs, asleep. She was clothed in a singular skin garment, which started as a cloak thrown over one shoulder, and ended as loose breeches terminating above the knees. Her forearms were lightly folded, and in one hand she held a half- eaten fruit.

Maskull stood over her and looked down, deeply interested. He thought he had never seen anything half so feminine. Her flesh was almost melting in its softness. So undeveloped were the facial organs that they looked scarcely human; only the lips were full, pouting, and expressive. In their richness, these lips seemed like a splash of vivid will on a background of slumbering protoplasm. Her hair was undressed. Its colour could not be distinguished. It was long and tangled, and had been tucked into her garment behind, for convenience.

Corpang looked calm and sullen, but both the others were visibly agitated. Maskull's heart was hammering away under his chest. Haunte pulled him, and said, "My head feels as if it were being torn from my shoulders."

"What can that mean?"

"Yet there's a horrible joy in it," added Haunte, with a sickly smile.

He put his hand on the woman's shoulder. She awoke softly, glanced up at them, smiled, and then resumed eating her fruit. Maskull did not imagine that she had intelligence enough to speak. Haunte suddenly dropped on his knees, and kissed her lips.

She did not repulse him. During the continuance of the kiss, Maskull noticed with a shock that her face was altering. The features emerged from their indistinctness and became human, and almost powerful. The smile faded, a scowl took its place. She thrust Haunte away, rose to her feet, and stared beneath bent brows at the three men, each one in turn. Maskull came last; his face she studied for quite a long time, but nothing indicated what she thought.

Meanwhile Haunte again approached her, staggering and grinning. She suffered him quietly; but the instant lips met lips the second time, he fell backward with a startled cry, as though he had come in contact with an electric wire. The back of his head struck the ground, and he lay there motionless.

Corpang sprang forward to his assistance. But, when he saw what had happened, he left him where he was.

"Maskull, come here quickly!"

The light was perceptibly fading from Haunte's skin, as Maskull bent over. The man was dead. His face was unrecognisable. The head had been split from the top downward into two halves, streaming with strange-coloured blood, as though it had received a terrible blow from an axe.

"This couldn't be from the fall," said Maskull.

"No, Sullenbode did it."

Maskull turned quickly to look at the woman. She had resumed her former attitude on the ground. The momentary intelligence had vanished from her face, and she was again smiling.