第 34 页

"You are tired out, Sullenbode."

"What of it?" she replied, smiling faintly. "When one has a terrible lover, one must pay the price."

"We cannot get there tonight, so let us stop at the first shelter we come too."

"I leave it to you."

He paced up and down, while the others sat. "Do you regret anything?" he demanded suddenly.

"No, Maskull, nothing. I regret nothing."

"Your feelings are unchanged?"

"Love can't go back - it can only go on."

"Yes, eternally on. It is so."

"No, I don't mean that. There is a climax, but when the climax has been reached, love if it still wants to ascend must turn to sacrifice."

"That's a dreadful creed," he said in a low voice, turning pale beneath his coating of mud.

"Perhaps my nature is discordant.... I am tired. I don't know what I feel."

In a few minutes they were on their feet again, and the journey recommenced. Within half an hour they had reached the Mornstab Pass.

The ground here was drier; the broken land to the north served to drain off the moisture of the soil. Sullenbode led them to the northern edge of the ridge, to show them the nature of the country. The pass was nothing but a gigantic landslip on both sides of the ridge, where it was the lowest above the underlying land. A series of huge broken terraces of earth and rock descended toward Barey. They were overgrown with stunted vegetation. It was quite possible to get down to the lowlands that way, but rather difficult. On either side of the landslip, to cast and west, the ridge came down in a long line of sheer, terrific cliffs. A low haze concealed Barey from view. Complete stillness was in the air, broken only by the distant thundering of an invisible waterfall.

Maskull and Sullenbode sat down on a boulder, facing the open country. The moon was directly behind them, high up. It was almost as light as an Earth day.

"Tonight is like life," said Sullenbode.

"How so?"

"So lovely above and around us, so foul underfoot."

Maskull sighed. "Poor girl, you are unhappy."

"And you - are you happy?"

He thought a while, and then replied - "No. No, I'm not happy. Love is not happiness."

"What is it, Maskull?"

"Restlessness - unshed tears - thoughts too grand for our soul to think ..."

"Yes," said Sullenbode.

After a time she asked, "Why were we created, just to live for a few years and then disappear?"

"We are told that we shall live again."

"Yes, Maskull?"

"Perhaps in Muspel," he added thoughtfully.

'What kind of life will that be?"

"Surely we shall meet again. Love is too wonderful and mysterious a thing to remain uncompleted."

She gave a slight shiver, and turned away from him. "This dream is untrue. Love is completed here."

"How can that be, when sooner or later it is brutally interrupted by Fate?"

"It is completed by anguish.. .. Oh, why must it always be enjoyment for us? Can't we suffer - can't we go on suffering, forever and ever? Maskull, until love crushes our spirit, finally and without remedy, we don't begin to feel ourselves."

Maskull gazed at her with a troubled expression. "Can the memory of love be worth more than its presence. and reality?"

"You don't understand. Those pangs are more precious than all the rest beside." She caught at him. "Oh, if you could only see inside my mind, Maskull! You would see strange things.... I can't explain. It is all confused, even to myself.... This love is quite different from what I thought."

He sighed again. "Love is a strong drink. Perhaps it is too strong for human beings. And I think that it overtures our reason in different ways."

They remained sitting side by side, staring straight before them with unseeing eyes.

"It doesn't matter," said Sullenbode at last, with a smile, getting up. "Soon it will be ended, one way or another. Come, let us be off!"

Maskull too got up.

"Where's Corpang?" he asked listlessly.

They both looked across the ridge in the direction of Adage. At the point where they stood it was nearly a mile wide. It sloped perceptibly toward the southern edge, giving all the earth the appearance of a heavy list. Toward the west the ground continued level for a thousand yards, but then a high, sloping, grassy hill went right across the ridge from side to side, like a vast billow on the verge of breaking. It shut out all further view beyond. The whole crest of this hill, from one end to the other, was crowned by a long row of enormous stone posts, shining brightly in the moonlight against a background of dark sky. There were about thirty in all, and they were placed at such regular intervals that there was little doubt that they had been set there by human hands. Some were perpendicular, but others dipped so much that an aspect of extreme antiquity was given to the entire colonnade. Corpang was seen climbing the hill, not far from the top.

"He wishes to arrive," said Maskull, watching the energetic ascent with a rather cynical smile.

"The heavens won't open for Corpang," returned Sullenbode. "He need not be in such a hurry.... What do these pillars seem like to you?"

"They might be the entrance to some mighty temple. Who can have planted them there?"

She did not answer. They watched Corpang gain the summit of the hill, and disappear through the line of posts.

Maskull turned again to Sullenbode. "Now we two are alone in a lonely world."

She regarded him steadily. "Our last night on this earth must be a grand one. I am ready to go on."

"I don't think you are fit to go on. It will be better to go down the pass a little, and find shelter."

She half smiled. "We won't study our poor bodies tonight. I mean you to go to Adage, Maskull."

"Then at all events let us rest first, for it must be a long, terrible climb, and who knows what hardships we shall meet?"

She walked a step or two forward, half turned, and held out her hand to him. "Come, Maskull!"

When they had covered half the distance that separated them from the foot of the hill, Maskull heard the drum taps. They came from behind the hill, and were loud, sharp, almost explosive. He glanced at Sullenbode, but she appeared to hear nothing. A minute later the whole sky behind and above the long chain of stone posts on the crest of the hill began to be illuminated by a strange radiance. The moonlight in that quarter faded; the posts stood out black on a background of fire. It was the light of Muspel. As the moments passed, it grew more and more vivid, peculiar, and awful. It was of no colour, and resembled nothing - it was supernatural and indescribable. Maskull's spirit swelled. He stood fast, with expanded nostrils and terrible eyes.

Sullenbode touched him lightly.

"What do you see, Maskull?"

"Muspel-light."

"I see nothing."

The light shot up, until Maskull scarcely knew where he stood. It burned with a fiercer and stranger glare than ever before. He forgot the existence of Sullenbode. The drum beats grew deafeningly loud. Each beat was like a rip of startling thunder, crashing through the sky and making the air tremble. Presently the crashes coalesced, and one continuous roar of thunder rocked the world. But the rhythm persisted - the four beats, with the third accented, still came pulsing through the atmosphere, only now against a background of thunder, and not of silence.

Maskull's heart beat wildly. His body was like a prison. He longed to throw it off, to spring up and become incorporated with the sublime universe which was beginning to unveil itself.

Sullenbode suddenly enfolded him in her arms, and kissed him - passionately, again and again. He made no response; he was unaware of what she was doing. She unclasped him and, with bent head and streaming eyes, went noiselessly away. She started to go back toward the Mornstab Pass.

A few minutes afterward the radiance began to fade. The thunder died down. The moonlight reappeared, the stone posts and the hillside were again bright. In a short time the supernatural light had entirely vanished, but the drum taps still sounded faintly, a muffled rhythm, from behind the hill. Maskull started violently, and stared around him like a suddenly awakened sleeper.

He saw Sullenbode walking slowly away from him, a few hundred yards off. At that sight, death entered his heart. He ran after her, calling out.... She did not look around. When he had lessened the distance between them by a half, he saw her suddenly stumble and fall. She did not get up again, but lay motionless where she fell.

He flew toward her, and bent over her body. His worst fears were realised. Life had departed.

Beneath its coating of mud, her face bore the vulgar, ghastly Crystalman grin, but Maskull saw nothing of it. She had never appeared so beautiful to him as at that moment.

He remained beside her for a long time, on his knees. He wept - but, between his fits of weeping, he raised his head from time to time, and listened to the distant drum beats.

An hour passed - two hours. TeargeId was now in the south-west. Maskull lifted Sullenbode's dead body on to his shoulders, and started to walk toward the Pass. He cared no more for Muspel. He intended to look for water in which to wash the corpse of his beloved, and earth in which to bury her.

When he had reached the boulder overlooking the landslip, on which they had sat together, he lowered his burden, and, placing the dead girl on the stone, seated himself beside her for a time, gazing over toward Barey.

After that, he commenced his descent of the Mornstab Pass.

Chapter 20

BAREY

The day had already dawned, but it was not yet sunrise when Maskull awoke from his miserable sleep. He sat up and yawned feebly. The air was cool and sweet. Far away down the landslip a bird was singing; the song consisted of only two notes, but it was so plaintive and heartbreaking that he scarcely knew how to endure it.

The eastern sky was a delicate green, crossed by a long, thin band of chocolate-coloured cloud near the horizon. The atmosphere was blue - tinted, mysterious, and hazy. Neither Sarclash nor Adage was visible. The saddle of the Pass was five hundred feet above him; he had descended that distance overnight. The landslip continued downward, like a huge flying staircase, to the upper slopes of Barey, which lay perhaps fifteen hundred feet beneath. The surface of the Pass was rough, and the angle was excessively steep, though not precipitous. It was above a mile across. On each side of it, east and west, the dark walls of the ridge descended sheer. At the point where the pass sprang outward they were two thousand feet from top to bottom, but as the ridge went upward, on the one hand toward Adage, on the other toward Sarclash, they attained almost unbelievable heights. Despite the great breadth and solidity of the pass, Maskull felt as though he were suspended in midair.

The patch of broken, rich, brown soil observable not far away marked Sullenbode's grave. He had interred her by the light of the moon, with a long, flat stone for a spade. A little lower down, the white steam of a hot spring was curling about in the twilight. From where he sat he was unable to see the pool into which the spring ultimately flowed, but it was in that pool that he had last night washed first of all the dead girl's body, and then his own.

He got up, yawned again, stretched himself, and looked around him dully. For a long time he eyed the grave. The half-darkness changed by imperceptible degrees to full day; the sun was about to appear. The sky was nearly cloudless. The whole wonderful extent of the mighty ridge behind him began to emerge from the morning mist .. . there was a part of Sarclash, and the ice-green crest of gigantic Adage itself, which he could only take in by throwing his head right back.

He gazed at everything in weary apathy, like a lost soul. All his desires were gone forever; he wished to go nowhere, and to do nothing. He thought he would go to Barey.

He went to the warm pool, to wash the sleep out of his eyes. Sitting beside it, watching the bubbles, was Krag.

Maskull thought that he was dreaming. The man was clothed in a skin shirt and breeches. His face was stem, yellow, and ugly. He eyed Maskull without smiling or getting up.

"Where in the devil's name have you come from, Krag?"

"The great point is, I am here."

"Where's Nightspore?"

"Not far away."

"It seems a hundred years since I saw you. Why did you two leave me in such a damnable fashion?"

"You were strong enough to get through alone."

"So it turned out, but how were you to know? .... Anyway, you've timed it well. It seems I am to die today."

Krag scowled. "You will die this morning."

"If I am to, I shall. But where have you heard it from?"

"You are ripe for it. You have run through the gamut. What else is there to live for?"

"Nothing," said Maskull, uttering a short laugh. "I am quite ready. I have failed in everything. I only wondered how you knew.... So now you've come to rejoin me. Where are we going?"

"Through Barey."

"And what about Nightspore?"

Krag jumped to his feet with clumsy agility. "We won't wait for him. "He'll be there as soon as we shall."

"Where?"

"At our destination.... Come! The sun's rising."

As they started clambering down the pass side by side, Branchspell, huge and white, leaped fiercely into the sky. All the delicacy of the dawn vanished, and another vulgar day began. They passed some trees and plants, the leaves of which were all curled up, as if in sleep.

Maskull pointed them out to his companion.

"How is it the sunshine doesn't open them?"

"Branchspell is a second night to them. Their day is Alppain."

"How long will it be before that sun rises?"

"Some time yet."

"Shall I live to see it, do you think"'

"Do you want to?"

"At one time I did, but now I'm indifferent."

"Keep in that humour, and you'll do well. Once for all, there's nothing worth seeing on Tormance."