The Valley of the Flame, Henry Kuttner [ready player one ebook .TXT] 📗

to show Paititi. Raft could make nothing of the symbols, but he located Parror’s castle, and the great gulf into which the torrent poured.

Thoughtfully he traced the river back to its source, where a tiny ring of zircons surrounded a few cryptic markings. The Garden of Kharn, eh? Where Parror was heading, with his captive Craddock.

Another map showed the castle itself, and was made with a dozen thin metal sheets that lifted on hinges. Raft studied this closely. What he wanted was a way out. Unfortunately, he found orientation difficult, until he managed to identify his own prison apartment. After that, it was easier.

Finally he drew back, nodding. Yes, he thought he could find his way now.

Yrann’s music came urgently to his ears.

Raft whirled toward the door. Nothing. But the song kept on, warning, shrill.

He moved forward. The shape of a familiar object on a shelf caught his glance.

It was a revolver, a small, ornate weapon of mother-of-pearl and silver filigree. Beside it lay a heap of cartridges. Raft swept the cartridges into his pocket and lifted the gun, staring at the initials on the butt. TDF—Thomaz da Fonseca, the aviator who had crashed in Paititi. His revolver, then.

It was not Raft’s own heavy, powerful Colt, but it was far better than a dagger. He slipped his finger through the guard, saw that it was unloaded, and deftly thrust shells into the chamber. Then he stepped across the threshold and waited, his hand on the curtain before him.

Yrann’s music had changed. It was softer now, welcoming. But under it ran a counterpoint of menace, a soft susurrus of treachery and evil.

“Parror had escaped me, Yrann,” the king’s low voice said. “There was another man from outside in his castle, I found traces. But they are gone. We could find no tracks.”

The wordless song was questioning.

“They are still in Paititi. I had guards at the gate to the unseen road. Parror will not get at the Flame till I am willing. Nevertheless, I do not know where he is, now.”

Tenderness breathed across the strings—and hidden hatred.

Darum sighed.

“I was ready. I was ready for anything I might find. I even thought Parror might take the unseen road to outside, and I was ready to pursue him even there. But how can I find him when he has vanished with this other man?”

Raft rubbed his jaw reflectively. He knew where Parror had gone. If he told the king, would that help?

Yrann played lightly, and now slumber breathed out from the hollow crying of the pipes.

“Yes,” the king said. “Yes, there is always this, Yrann. The world does not come intoour chamber here.” He sighed. “There is nothing here but our love.”

Sleep, the music said. Sleep, my lover and my king. Only sleep—and wake no more.

But Darum sensed no menace. His breathing grew quieter. Drowsiness crept through the curtain, taking Raft in a warm embrace. Yrann’s music was magic.

Dark magic, Raft thought angrily. He shook his head savagely.

After a time Yrann’s arm crept through the soft barrier, touching Raft, pulling him forward. The glare of light from behind him struck full on Yrann’s face—or what should have been a face. With a wordless sound she pulled her veil in place. Raft felt her gaze go from him to the treasure chamber. But the harp was silent. It asked no question.

The curtain remained looped back, and the light struck out to the dais, where Darum lay asleep, his face relaxed and peaceful. He stirred uneasily. Yrann’s fingers rippled across the strings, and the king was silent once more.

Yrann touched the little revolver hesitantly. Then she pulled the dagger from Raft’s bent, where he had placed it, and thrust it into his hand. She pushed him forward, pointing to the dais.

Raft halted. The veiled face was lifted to his. He shook his head slowly and emphatically.

“No,” he said under his breath. “Even if that would save my life, I don’t think I could do it.”

Yrann’s hand poised over the harp-strings, somehow threateningly. The tableau held for a moment. Then she must have seen that he meant what he said. She made a dreadful snarling sound deep in her throat and snatched the dagger from Raft’s grip, whirling toward the sleeping king. Her draperies swirled as she bent and plucked at Darum’s shirt, tearing the thin silk open. Darum murmured and stirred in his music-drugged sleep. Yrann swung the dagger high, poised it.

Raft’s reaction was instinctive. He had begun his leap forward before he saw what gleamed upon the king’s bared chest, something square and shining, on a silver chain. Something that seemed to give out light that quivered like the pulse of life itself.

The amulet!

There was no time to examine it. There was no time to ask questions and be sure.

But Raft had an inner certainty which needed no confirmation. A man could not look upon that shaking gleam and not recognize it.

With one hand Raft snatched at the amulet. The chain snapped under his violent pull. With the other he seized Yrann’s as her knife began to plunge downward. She snarled again and bent like a bow against him, fighting hard for the weapon.

They swayed together beside the couch, battling in desperate silence. The harp crashed to the floor. A string broke with a ringing snap. On the couch Darum sat up dizzily, peering at the dimly seen figures reeling before him.

Then with a suddenness that made Raft stagger, Yrann released the knife. She sprang back, stooping to snatch up the harp. Her fingers swept across it, dragging a wild discord of alarm from the strings.

Waken! Beware!

Loud with ringing urgency, the music crashed against the walls. The king struggled up, shaking his head, crying out confused questions. But he was caught in the shaft of light from the treasure room, and could see Raft as no more than a shadow—a shadow, and a glint of threatening steel.

The music screamed and wailed. There was a distant sound of running feet.

Cursing under his breath, Raft whirled and raced for the door by which he had entered, praying that it was open. He swept the drapery aside, saw an open passage before him, and plunged into it. Now he was tagged as an assassin. That meant he had to escape, and fast. The king might listen to explanations, but the probability was that he wouldn’t, especially since they involved Yrann.

The map he had seen burned in Raft’s mind. If he got off the track once, he knew he was lost. There should be another branching corridor here, at about this point.

He dodged into it, but did not slacken his pace. The sound of distant, aroused voices gave him warning. He gripped the revolver tighter. It would be more useful than the dagger. As for Yrann, he knew now what she had intended. If necessary, she would have killed Darum herself, and put the blame on Raft. Which was thoroughly human as well as feline.

Twice he hid behind curtains while guards raced past. Once he stopped, not breathing, before an oval door, wondering what lay beyond. It led to escape, he knew, but there might be soldiers behind it.

There were. Shadows showed against the panel. Raft turned silently and raced back, knowing he was lost now. Unless another way opened up before him, which wasn’t likely.

He turned into another passage, where windows stood open in one wall. Glancing out, he found himself staring, not into the Gulf of Doirada, but at the river, where it curved in and finally poured over the edge of an arched opening, beneath the castle.

Beyond the mossy plain loomed the enormous pillars of the forest, sanctuary if he could reach it. But the river lay far below, and was flowing too fast. It would sweep him into the abyss, if its rush gripped him.

Too fast?

Not in Paititi, where the metabolism of all living things was speeded up so enormously. For all its power, the waters below glided past so smoothly, so gently, he might have been watching the gentle boiling of a cloud-river.

Raft thrust the revolver into his pocket, closing over it a fastening. The contrivance sealed it tightly, which indicated the pocket might be waterproof. That would help. Raft gave a quick glance to left and right. He saw no one, though the sounds of pursuit were louder.

Then he climbed into the window-frame, two hundred feet above that molten silver cataract—and dived.

CHAPTER X. NIGHTMARE GARDEN

ONE THING RAFT had forgotten, and the fantastic thing was that he had time to remember it as he fell. The rate of speed of a freely falling body does not vary. Friction of air has some effect, but very little when an object weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, in the form of a man, drops free.

Raft’s metabolism had been tremendously accelerated by the radiation that pervaded Paititi. He was living far faster than in his own world. And he had seen immense boulders float down lightly as feathers from the towering cliffs.

To his own mind, he did not fall. He dropped gently as in an elevator, utterly stunned with surprise, so astonished was he that the truth did not strike him immediately. When it did, there was nothing he could do about it.

Gently he revolved as he drifted down. Beside him the wall of the castle slipped past. At any moment Someone might come out on a balcony and see him. A thrown spear would be dangerous. It could be thrown sufficiently fast to impale him, since the wielder could easily gauge the rate of Raft’s fall.

He had never felt so helpless and naked in his life. It was like hanging free and unsupported in interplanetary space. He had time for a hundred questions and fears to pass through his mind before, finally, with agonizing slowness, his body struck the waters of the torrent.

His mass was the same, and he sank, angling slowly in the direction of the current. But he was breathing perhaps a hundred times faster than normal, so there was a new danger. Under ordinary conditions he could have held his breath until he reached the surface. As it was he might not emerge above the water for five minutes!

Now the accelerated metabolism was helpful. Raft managed to turn and swim up, though it was like moving in glue, against that slow, inexorable thrust of driving waters. He was a fly drowning in syrup. But the fly reached the surface at last.

Under ordinary conditions he would have been swept over the brink into Doirada Gulf, but his stimulated time-sense fought the slow pressure of the water. He fought his way upstream. He dragged himself to a shallow pool and collapsed, gasping.

There was no time to rest yet, though. He was not yet out of range of pursuit. Nor did he think he could cross the clearing to where the forest began without being spotted.

Wildly he stared about him, searching for a hiding place.

Reeds grew thickly about the margin of the pool. The water itself was roiled with thick mud, and opaque. Raft found a hollow reed, tested it, and made use of an old trick. He simply lay down in the water, anchoring himself by gripping embedded rocks, and breathed through the improvised lifeline.

He could not see, but he could not be seen, either. The cat people might discover his hiding-place, of course. Yet the chance was worth taking, Raft thought, remembering the difference between feline and simian psychology.

The pursuers would expect him—as a descendant of simians—to depend on flight, and probably to head for the forest. They would themselves be too fastidious to hide in dirty water if any other way