The Andre Norton MEGAPACK ®. Andre Norton
Читать онлайн книгу.
but Trar was manifestly unhappy.
“It must come after council, the Daughter willing,” the Lord of the Folk said.
Dandtan strode toward the door. “Thrala is not to know. Assemble the Council tonight. Meanwhile, see that he,” he jerked his thumb toward Garin, “does not leave this room.”
Thus Garin became a prisoner under the guard of the Folk, unable to discover of what Dandtan accused him, or how he had aroused the hatred of the Cavern ruler. Unless Dandtan’s jealousy had been aroused and he was determined to rid himself of a rival.
Believing this, the flyer went willingly to the chamber where the judges waited. Dandtan sat at the head of a long table, Trar at his right hand and lesser nobles of the Folk beyond.
“You know the charge,” Dandtan’s words were tipped with venom as Garin came to stand before him. “Out of his own mouth has this outlander condemned himself. Therefore I ask that you decree for him the fate of that outlander of the second calling who rebelled against the summoning.”
“The outlander has admitted his fault?” questioned one of the Folk.
Trar inclined his head sadly. “He did.”
As Garin opened his mouth to demand a stating of the charge against him, Dandtan spoke again:
“What say you, Lords?”
For a long moment they sat in silence and then they bobbed their lizard heads in assent. “Do as you desire, Dweller in the Light.”
Dandtan smiled without mirth. “Look, outlander.” He passed his hand over the glass of the seeing mirror set in the table top. “This is the fate of him who rebels—”
In the shining surface Garin saw pictured a break in Tav’s wall. At its foot stood a group of men of the Ancient Ones, and in their midst struggled a prisoner. They were forcing him to climb the crater wall. Garin watched him reach the lip and crawl over, to stagger across the steaming rock, dodging the scalding vapor of hot springs, until he pitched face down in the slimy mud.
“Such was his ending, and so will you end—”
The calm brutality of that statement aroused Garin’s anger. “Rather would I die that way than linger in this den,” he cried hotly. “You, who owe your life to me, would send me to such a death without even telling me of what I am accused. Little is there to choose between you and Kepta, after all—except that he was an open enemy!”
Dandtan sprang to his feet, but Trar caught his arm.
“He speaks fairly. Ask him why he will not fufill the summoning.”
While Dandtan hesitated, Garin leaned across the table, flinging his words, weapon-like, straight into that cold face.
“I’ll admit that I love Thrala—have loved her since that moment when I saw her on the steps of the morgel pit in the caves. Since when has it become a crime to love that which may not be yours—if you do not try to take it?”
Trar released Dandtan, his golden eyes gleaming.
“If you love her, claim her. It is your right.”
“Do I not know,” Garin turned to him, “that she is Dandtan’s. Thran had no idea of Dandtan’s survival when he laid his will upon her. Shall I stoop to holding her to an unwelcome bargain? Let her go to the one she loves.…”
Dandtan’s face was livid, and his hands, resting on the table, trembled. One by one the lords of the Folk slipped away, leaving the two face to face.
“And I thought to order you to your death.” Dandtan’s whisper was husky as it emerged between dry lips. “Garin, we thought you knew—and, knowing, had refused her.
“Knew what?”
“That I am Thran’s son—and Thrala’s brother.”
The floor swung beneath Garin’s unsteady feet. Dandtan’s hands were warm on his shoulders.
“I am a fool,” said the American slowly.
Dandtan smiled. “A very honorable fool! Now get you to Thrala, who deserves to hear the full of this tangle.”
So it was that, with Dandtan by his side, Garin walked for the second time down that hallway, to pass the golden curtains and stand in the presence of the Daughter. She came straight from her cushions into his arms when she read what was in his face. They needed no words.
And in that hour began Garin’s life in Tav.
THE GIFTS OF ASTI (1948)
Even here, on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Klem hunted to their prolonged death. Indeed it was time to leave—
Varta, last of the virgin Maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and wattled creature who crouched beside her thigh turned his reptilian head so that golden eyes met the aquamarine ones set slantingly at a faintly provocative angle in her smooth ivory face.
“We go—?”
She nodded in answer to that unvoiced question Lur had sent into her brain, and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti’s last dwelling place. Once, more than a thousand years before when the walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti found no place. So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow knee at Asti’s shrine and raise her voice in the dawn hymn—for Lur, as were all his race, was mute.
Even the loot of Memphir would not sate the shaggy headed warriors who had stormed her gates this day. The stairway to Asti’s Temple was plain enough to see and there would be those to essay the steep climb hoping to find a treasure which did not exist. For Asti was an austere God, delighting in plain walls and bare altars. His last priest had lain in the grave niches these three years, there would be none to hold that gate against intruders.
Varta passed between tall, uncarved pillars, Lur padding beside her, his spine mane erect, the talons on his forefeet clicking on the stone in steady rhythm. So they came into the innermost shrine of Asti and there Varta made graceful obeisance to the great cowled and robed figure which sat enthroned, its hidden eyes focused upon its own outstretched hand.
And above the flattened palm of that wide hand hung suspended in space the round orange-red sun ball which was twin to the sun that lighted Erb. Around the miniature sun swung in their orbits the four worlds of the system, each obeying the laws of space, even as did the planets they represented.
“Memphir has fallen,” Varta’s voice sounded rusty in her own ears. She had spoken so seldom during the last lonely months. “Evil has risen to overwhelm our world, even as it was prophesied in Your Revelations, O, Ruler of Worlds and Maker of Destiny. Therefore, obeying the order given of old, I would depart from this, Thy house. Suffer me now to fulfill the Law—”
Three times she prostrated her slim body on the stones at the foot of Asti’s judgment chair. Then she arose and, with the confidence of a child in its father, she laid her hand palm upward upon the outstretched hand of Asti. Beneath her flesh the stone was not cold and hard, but seemed to have an inner heat, even as might a human hand. For a long moment she stood so and then she raised her hand slowly, carefully, as if within its slight hollow she cupped something precious.
And, as she drew her hand away from the grasp of Asti, the tiny sun and its planets followed, spinning now above her palm as they had above the statue’s. But out of the cowled figure some virtue had departed with the going of the miniature solar system; it was now but a carving of stone. And Varta did not look at it again as she passed behind its bulk to seek a certain place in the temple wall, known to her from much reading of the old records.
Having found the stone she sought, she moved her hand in a certain