第 33 页

"We are on the ridge," announced the woman, halting.

The others came up to her, and at the same instant the moon burst through the clouds, illuminating the whole scene.

Maskull uttered a cry. The wild, noble, lonely beauty of the view was quite unexpected. Teargeld was high in the sky to their left, shining down on them from behind. Straight in front, like an enormously wide, smoothly descending road, lay the great ridge which went on to Adage, though Adage itself was out of sight. It was never less than two hundred yards wide. It was covered with green snow, in some places entirely, but in other places the naked rocks showed through like black teeth. From where they stood they were unable to see the sides of the ridge, or what lay underneath. On the right hand, which was north, the landscape was blurred and indistinct. There were no peaks there; it was the distant, low-lying land of Barey. But on the left hand appeared a whole forest of mighty pinnacles, near and far, as far as the eye could see in moonlight. All glittered green, and all possessed the extraordinary hanging caps that characterised the Lichstorm range. These caps were of fantastic shapes, and each one was different. The valley directly opposite them was filled with rolling mist.

Sarclash was a mighty mountain mass in the shape of a horseshoe. Its two ends pointed west, and were separated from each other by a mile or more of empty space. The northern end became the ridge on which they stood. The southern end was the long line of cliffs on that part of the mountain where Haunte's cave was situated. The connecting curve was the steep slope they had just traversed. One peak of Sarclash was invisible.

In the south-west many mountains raised their heads. In addition, a few summits, which must have been of extraordinary height, appeared over the south side of the horseshoe.

Maskull turned round to put a question to Sullenbode, but when he saw her for the first time in moonlight the words he had framed died on his lips. The gashlike mouth no longer dominated her other features, and the face, pale as ivory and most femininely shaped, suddenly became almost beautiful. The lips were a long, womanish curve of rose-red. Her hair was a dark maroon. Maskull was greatly disturbed; he thought that she resembled a spirit, rather than a woman.

"What puzzles you?" she asked, smiling.

"Nothing. But I would like to see you by sunlight."

"Perhaps you never will."

"Your life must be most solitary."

She explored his features with her black, slow-gleaming eyes. "Why do you fear to speak your feelings, Maskull?"

"Things seem to open up before me like a sunrise, but what it means I can't say."

Sullenbode laughed outright. "It assuredly does not mean the approach of night."

Corpang, who had been staring steadily along the ridge, here abruptly broke in. "The road is plain now, Maskull. If you wish it, I'll go on alone."

"No, we'll go on together. Sullenbode will accompany us."

"A little way," said the woman, "but not to Adage, to pit my strength against unseen powers. That light is not for me. I know how to renounce love, but I will never be a traitor to it."

"Who knows what we shall find on Adage, or what will happen? Corpang is as ignorant as myself."

Corpang looked him full in the face. "Maskull, you are quite well aware that you never dare approach that awful fire in the society of a beautiful woman."

Maskull gave an uneasy laugh. "What Corpang doesn't tell you, Sullenbode, is that I am far better acquainted with Muspel-light than he, and that, but for a chance meeting with me, he would still be saying his prayers in Threal."

"Still, what he says must be true," she replied, looking from one to the other.

"And so I am not to be allowed to -"

"So long as I am with you, I shall urge you onward, and not backward, Maskull."

"We need not quarrel yet," he remarked, with a forced smile. "No doubt things will straighten themselves out."

Sullenbode began kicking the snow about with her foot. "I picked up another piece of wisdom in my sleep, Corpang."

"Tell it to me, then."

"Men who live by laws and rules are parasites. Others shed their strength to bring these laws out of nothing into the light of day, but the law-abiders live at their ease - they have conquered nothing for themselves."

"It is given to some to discover, and to others to preserve and perfect. You cannot condemn me for wishing Maskull well."

"No, but a child cannot lead a thunderstorm."

They started walking again along the centre of the ridge. All three were abreast, Sullenbode in the middle.

The road descended by an easy gradient, and was for a long distance comparatively smooth. The freezing point seemed higher than on Earth, for the few inches of snow through which they trudged felt almost warm to their naked feet. Maskull's soles were by now like tough hides. The moonlit snow was green and dazzling. Their slanting, abbreviated shadows were sharply defined, and red-black in colour. Maskull, who walked on Sullenbode's right hand, looked constantly to the left, toward the galaxy of glorious distant peaks.

"You cannot belong to this world," said the woman. "Men of your stamp are not to be looked for here."

"No, I have come here from Earth."

"Is that larger than our world?"

"Smaller, I think. Small, and overcrowded with men and women. With all those people, confusion would result but for orderly laws, and therefore the laws are of iron. As adventure would be impossible without encroaching on these laws, there is no longer any spirit of adventure among the Earthmen. Everything is safe, vulgar, and completed."

"Do men hate women there, and women men?"

"No, the meeting of the sexes is sweet, though shameful. So poignant is the sweetness that the accompanying shame is ignored, with open eyes. There is no hatred, or only among a few eccentric persons."

"That shame surely must be the rudiment of our Lichstorm passion. But now say - why did you come here?"

"To meet with new experiences, perhaps. The old ones no longer interested me."

"How long have you been in this world?"

"This is the end of my fourth day."

"Then tell me what you have seen and done during those four days. You cannot have been inactive."

"Great misfortunes have happened to me."

He proceeded briefly to relate everything that had taken place from the moment of his first awakening in the scarlet desert. Sullenbode listened, with half-closed eyes, nodding her head from time to time. only twice did she interrupt him. After his description of Tydomin's death, she said, speaking in a low voice - "None of us women ought by right of nature to fall short of Tydomin in sacrifice. For that one act of hers, I almost love her, although she brought evil to your door." Again, speaking of Gleameil, she remarked, "That grand-souled girl I admire the most of all. She listened to her inner voice, and to nothing else besides. Which of us others is strong enough for that?"

When his tale was quite over, Sullenbode said, "Does it not strike you, Maskull, that these women you have met have been far nobler than the men?"

"I recognise that. We men often sacrifice ourselves, but only for a substantial cause. For you women almost any cause will serve. You love the sacrifice for its own sake, and that is because you are naturally noble."

Turning her head a little, she threw him a smile so proud, yet so sweet, that he was struck into silence.

They tramped on quietly for some distance, and then he said, "Now you understand the sort of man I am. Much brutality, more weakness, scant pity for anyone - Oh, it has been a bloody journey!"

She laid her hand on his arm. "I, for one, would not have it less rugged."

"Nothing good can be said of my crimes."

"To me you seem like a lonely giant, searching for you know not what.... The grandest that life holds.... You at least have no cause to look up to women."

"Thanks, Sullenbode!" he responded, with a troubled smile.

"When Maskull passes, let people watch. Everyone is thrown out of your road. You go on, looking neither to right nor left."

"Take care that you are not thrown as well," said Corpang gravely.

"Maskull shall do with me whatever he pleases, old skull! And for whatever he does, I will thank him... . In place of a heart you have a bag of loose dust. Someone has described love to you. You have had it described to you. You have heard that it is a small, fearful, selfish joy. It is not that - it is wild, and scornful, and sportive, and bloody.... How should you know."

"Selfishness has far too many disguises."

"If a woman wills to give up all, what can there be selfish in that?"

"Only do not deceive yourself. Act decisively, or fate will be too swift for you both."

Sullenbode studied him through her lashes. "Do you mean death - his death as well as mine?"

"You go too far, Corpang," said Maskull, turning a shade darker. "I don't accept you as the arbiter of our fortunes."

"If honest counsel is disagreeable to you, let me go on ahead."

The woman detained him with her slow, light fingers. "I wish you to stay with us."

"Why?"

"I think you may know what you are talking about. I don't wish to bring harm to Maskull. Presently I'll leave you."

"That will be best," said Corpang.

Maskull looked angry. "I shall decide - Sullenbode, whether you go on, or back, I stay with you. My mind is made up."

An expression of joyousness overspread her face, in spite of her efforts to conceal it. "Why do you scowl at me, Maskull?"

He returned no answer, but continued walking onward with puckered brows. After a dozen paces or so, he halted abruptly. "Wait, Sullenbode!"

The others came to a standstill. Corpang looked puzzled, but the woman smiled. Maskull, without a word, bent over and kissed her lips. Then he relinquished her body, and turned around to Corpang.

"How do you, in your great wisdom, interpret that kiss?"

"It requires no great wisdom to interpret kisses, Maskull."

"Hereafter, never dare to come between us. Sullenbode belongs to me."

"Then I say no more; but you are a fated man."

From that time forward he spoke not another word to either of the others.

A heavy gleam appeared in the woman's eyes. "Now things are changed, Maskull. Where are you taking me?"

"Choose, you."

"The man I love must complete his journey. I won't have it otherwise. You shall not stand lower than Corpang."

"Where you go, I will go."

"And I - as long as your love endures, I will accompany you even to Adage."

"Do you doubt its lasting?"

"I wish not to.... Now I will tell you what I refused to tell you before. The term of your love is the term of my life. When you love me no longer, I must die."

"And why?" asked Maskull slowly.

"Yes, that's the responsibility you incurred when you kissed me for the first time. I never meant to tell you."

"Do you mean that if I had gone on alone, you would have died?"

"I have no other life but what you give me."

He gazed at her mournfully, without attempting to reply, and then slowly placed his arms around her body. During this embrace he turned very pale, but Sullenbode grew as white as chalk.

A few minutes later the journey toward Adage was resumed.

They had been walking for two hours. Teargeld was higher in the sky and nearer the south. They had descended many hundred feet, and the character of the ridge began to alter for the worse. The thin snow disappeared, and gave way to moist, boggy ground. It was all little grassy hillocks and marshes. They began to slip about and become draggled with mud. Conversation ceased; Sullenbode led the way, and the men followed in her tracks. The southern half of the landscape grew grander. The greenish light of the brilliant moon, shining on the multitude of snow-green peaks, caused it to appear like a spectral world. Their nearest neighbour towered high above them on the other side of the valley, due south, some five miles distant. It was a slender, inaccessible, dizzy spire of black rock, the angles of which were too steep to retain snow. A great upward - curving horn of rock sprang out from its topmost pinnacle. For a long time it constituted their clues landmark.

The whole ridge gradually became saturated with moisture. The surface soil was spongy, and rested on impermeable rock; it breathed in the damp mists by night, and breathed them out again by day, under Branchspell's rays. The walking grew first unpleasant, then difficult, and finally dangerous. None of the party could distinguish firm ground from bog. Sullenbode sank up to her waist in a pit of slime; Maskull rescued her, but after this incident took the lead himself. Corpang was the next to meet with trouble. Exploring a new path for himself, he tumbled into liquid mud up to his shoulders, and narrowly escaped a filthy death. After Maskull had got him out, at great personal risk, they proceeded once more; but now the scramble changed from bad to worse. Each step had to be thoroughly tested before weight was put upon it, and even so the test frequently failed. All of them went in so often, that in the end they no longer resembled human beings, but walking pillars plastered from top to toe with black filth. The hardest work fell to Maskull. He not only had the exhausting task of beating the way, but was continually called upon to help his companions out of their difficulties. Without him they could not have got through.

After a peculiarly evil patch, they paused to recruit their strength. Corpang's breathing was difficult, Sullenbode was quiet, listless, and depressed.

Maskull gazed at them doubtfully. "Does this continue?" he inquired.

"No. I think," replied the woman, "we can't be far from the Mornstab Pass. After that we shall begin to climb again, and then the road will improve perhaps."

"Can you have been here before?"

"Once I have been to the Pass, but it was not so bad then."