第 12 页

"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.