Chapter 7
chapter seven of black amazon of mars by lee douglas brackett this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by thomas copeland chapter seven it was past noon he had climbed high toward the saddle of the pass couchotte lay small below him and he could see now the pattern of the gorges cut ages deep in the living rock that carried the spring torrents of the watershed around the mighty ledge on which the city was built the pass itself was channeled but only by its own snows and melting ice it was too high for a water-course nevertheless stark thought a man might find it hard to stay alive if he were caught there by the thaw he had seen nothing of balin the gods knew how many hours start he had stark imagined him scrambling wild-eyed over the rocks driven by the same madness that had sent thanis up into the castle to call down destruction on chara's head the sun was brilliant but without warmth stark shivered and the icy wind blew strong the cliffs hung over him vast and sheer and crushing and the narrow mouth of the pass was before him he would go no farther he would turn back now but he did not he began to walk forward into the gates of death
the light was dim and strange at the bottom of that cleft little veils of mist crept and clung between the ice and the rock thickened became more dense as he went farther and farther into the pass he could not see and the wind spoke with many tongues piping in the crevices of the cliffs the steps of the earthman slowed and faltered he had known fear in his life before but now he was carrying the burden of two men's terrors van kruach's and his own he stopped enveloped in the clinging mist he tried to reason with himself that van kruach's fears had died a million years ago that otar had come this way and lived and balin had come also but the thin veneer of civilisation sloughed away and left him with the naked bones of truth his nostrils twitched to the smell of evil the subtle unclean taint that only a beast or one as close to it as he can sense and know every nerve was a point of pain raw with apprehension an overpowering recognition of danger hidden somewhere mocking at him made his very body change draw in upon itself and flatten forward
so that when at last he went on again he was more like a four-footed thing than a man walking upright infinitely wary silent moving surely over the ice and the tumbled rock he followed he had ceased to think he was going now on sheer instinct the pass led on and on it grew darker and in the dim uncanny twilight there were looming shapes that menaced him and ghostly wings that brushed him and a terrible stillness that was not broken by the eerie voices of the wind rock and mist and ice nothing that moved or lived and yet the sense of danger deepened and when he paused the beating of his heart was like thunder in his ears once far away he thought he heard the echoes of a mans voice crying but he had no sight of balan the pass began to drop and the twilight deepened into a kind of sickly night on and down more slowly now crouching slinking heavily oppressed tempted to snarl at boulders and tear at wraiths of fog
he had no idea of the miles he had travelled but the ice was thicker now the cold intense the rock walls broke off sharply the mist thinned the pallid darkness lifted to a clear twilight he came to the end of the gates of death stark stopped ahead of him almost blocking the end of the pass something dark and high and massive loomed in the thinning mists it was a great cairn and upon it sat a figure facing outward from the gates of death as though it kept watch over whatever country lay beyond the figure of a man in antique martian armour after a moment stark crept toward the cairn he was still almost all savage torn between fear and fascination he was forced to scramble over the lower rocks of the cairn itself quite suddenly he felt a hard shock and a flashing sensation of warmth that was somehow inside his own flesh and not in any tempering of the frozen air
he gave a startled leap forward and whirled looking up into the face of the mailed figure with the confused idea that it had reached down and struck him it had not moved of course and stark knew with no need of any one to tell him that he looked into the face of ban it was a face made for battles and for ruling the bony ridges harsh and strong the hollows under them worn deep with years those eyes dark shadows under the rusty helm had dreamed high dreams and neither age nor death had conquered them and even in death ban cruach was not unarmed clad as for battle in his ancient mail he held upright between his hands a mighty sword the pummel was a ball of crystal large as a mans fist that held within it a spark of intense brilliance the little blinding flame throbbed with its own force and the sword-blade blazed with a white cruel radiance bon cruach dead but frozen to eternal changelessness by the bitter cold sitting here upon his cairn for a million years
and warding for ever the inner end of the gates of death as his ancient city of kushat warded the outer stark took two cautious steps closer to van kruach and felt again the shock and the flaring heat in his blood he recoiled satisfied the strange force in the blazing sword made an invisible barrier across the mouth of the pass protected van kurac himself a barrier of short waves he thought of the type used in deep therapy having no heat in themselves but increasing the heat in body cells by increasing their vibration but these waves were stronger than any he had known before a barrier a wall of force closing the inner end of the gates of death a barrier that was not designed against man stark shivered he turned from the sombre brooding former ban cruach and his eyes followed the gaze of the dead king out beyond the cairn he looked across this forbidden land within the gates of death at his back was the mountain barrier before him a handful of miles to the north the terminus of the polar cap rose like a cliff of bluish crystal soaring up to touch the early stars
locked in between those two titanic walls was a great valley of ice white and glimmering that valley was and very still and very beautiful the ice shaped gracefully into curving domes and hollows and in the centre of it stood a dark tower of stone a cyclopean bulk that stark knew must go down an unguessable distance to its base in the bed-rock it was like the tower in which kamar had died but this one was not a broken ruin it loomed with alien arrogance and within its bulk pallid lights flickered eerily and it was crowned by a cloud of shimmering darkness it was like the tower of his dread vision the tower that he had seen not as eric john stark but as ban cruaj stark's gaze dropped slowly from the evil tower to the curving ice of the valley and the fear within him grew beyond all bounds he had seen that too in his vision the glimmering ice the domes and hollows of it he had looked down through it at the city that lay beneath and he had seen those who came and went in the buried streets stark hunkered down for a long while he did not stir
he did not want to go out there he did not want to go out from the grim warning figure of ban cruach with his blazing sword into that silent valley he was afraid afraid of what he might see if he went there and looked down through the ice afraid of the final dread fulfilment of his vision but he had come after balin and balin must be out there somewhere he did not want to go but he was himself and he must he went going very softly out toward the tower of stone and there was no sound in all that land the last of the twilight had faded the ice gleamed faintly luminous under the stars and there was light beneath it a soft radiance that filled all the valley with the glow of a buried moon stark tried to keep his eyes upon the tower he did not wish to look down at what lay under his stealthy feet inevitably he looked the temples and the palaces glittering in the ice level upon level going down wells of soft light spanned with soaring bridges slender spires rising
an endless variation of streets and crystal walls exquisitely patterned above and below and overlapping so that it was like looking down through a thousand giant snowflakes a metropolis of gossamer and frost fragile and lovely as a dream locked in the clear pure vault of the ice stark saw the people of the city passing along the bright streets their outlines blurred by the icy vault as things are half obscured by water the creatures of vision vaguely shining infinitely evil he shut his eyes and waited until the shock and the dizziness left him then he set his gaze resolutely on the tower and crept on over the glassy sky that covered those buried streets silence even the wind was hushed he had gone perhaps half the distance when the cry rang out he had burst upon the valley with a shocking violence stark stark the ice rang with it curving ridges picked up his name and flung it back and forth with eerie crystal voices and the echoes fled out whispering stark stark
until it seemed that the very mountain spoke star quirled about in the pallid gloom between the ice and the stars there was light enough to see the cairn behind him and the dim figure atop it with the shining sword light enough to see chara and the dark hot knot of riders who had followed her through the gates of death she cried his name again come back come back the ice of the valley answered mockingly come back come back and stark was gripped with a terror that held him motionless she should not have called him she should not have made a sound in that deathly place a man's hoarse scream rose above the flying echoes the riders turned and fled suddenly the squealing hissing beasts crowding each other floundering wildly on the rocks of the cairn stampeding back into the pass chara was left alone stark saw her fight the rearing beast she rode and then flung herself out of the saddle and let it go she came toward him running clad all in her black armor the great axe swinging high
behind you stark oh gods of mars he turned and saw them coming out from the tower of stone the pale shining creatures that move so swiftly across the ice so fleet and swift that no man living could outrun them he shouted to chara to turn back he drew his sword and over his shoulder he cursed her in a black fury because he could hear her mailed feet coming on behind him the gliding creatures sleek and slender reed-like bending delicate as wraiths their bodies shaped from northern rainbows of amethyst and robes if they should touch chara if their loathsome hand should touch her stark let out one raging catlike scream and rush'd them the opalescent bodies slipt away beyond his reach the creatures watch'd him they had no faces but they watch'd they were eyeless but not blind earless but not without hearing the inquisitive tendrils that formed their sensory organs stirred and shifted like the petals of ungodly flowers and the colour of them was the white frost fire that dances on the snow go back
that she would not go and he knew that they would not have let her she reached him and they set their backs together the shining ones ringed them round many feet away across the ice and watched the long sword and the great hungry axe and there was something in the lissom swaying of their bodies that suggested laughter you fool said stark you bloody fool and you answered oh yes i know about balin that mad girl screaming in the palace she told me and you were seen from the wall climbing to the gates of death they tried to catch you why she did not answer that they won't fight us stark do you think we could make it back to the cairn no but we can try guarding each other's backs they began to walk toward ban cruach and the pass if they could once reach the barrier they would be safe stark knew now what ban cruach's wall of force was built against and he began to guess the riddle of the gates of death the shining ones glided with them out of reach they did not try to bar the way
they formed a circle around the man and woman moving with them and around them at the same time an endless weaving chain of many bodies shining with soft jewel tones of colour they drew closer and closer to the cairn to the brooding figure of an cruach and his sword it crossed stark's mind that the creatures were playing with him and chara yet they had no weapons almost he began to hope From the tower, where the shimmering cloud of darkness clung, came a black crescent of force that swept across the ice field like a sickle and gathered the two humans in. Stark felt a shock of numbing cold that turned his nerves to ice. His sword dropped from his hand, and he heard Chara's axe go down. His body was without strength, without feeling. Dead. He fell, and the Shining Ones glided in toward him. End of chapter 7
Recording by Thomas Copeland
