Jack Vance - Gaean Reach 01 (17 page)

They looked after the erjin, who had paused to make urgent signals. Moffamides said uneasily: “It takes you the way your friends came.”

“Their trail leads down into the gorge.”

“The erjin gives me information. The way is difficult here, but easier ahead.”

Jemasze stood looking first one way, then the other. Elvo thought that he had never before seen Jemasze indecisive. Finally, without enthusiasm, Jemasze said: “Very well, we’ll see where he takes us.”

The erjin took them along a laborious route indeed: up a steep bank of crumbling conglomerate, across a tumble of boulders where small blue lizards basked and glided, up to a ridge and down the slope opposite. The erjin ran at an easy lope; the men strained and panted to maintain the pace. Sunlight glared from the rocks and shimmered in the air across the gorge; the erjin danced ahead like a fire demon.

The erjin halted as if in sudden doubt as to its destination; Jemasze spoke tersely over his shoulder to Moffamides: “Find out where it’s taking us.”

“Where the other Outker went,” said Moffamides hurriedly. “This way is easier than clambering down a cliff. You can see for yourself!” He indicated the terrain ahead, where the walls of the gorge relaxed and fell back. The erjin once more loped ahead, and led the way down to the floor of the valley, a place in dramatic contrast to the stark upper slopes. The air was cool and shadowed; a slow full stream welled quietly from pool to pool under copses of pink and purple fern-trees and dark Uaian cypress.

Kurgech studied the pale sand beside the stream and gave a grunt of grudging surprise: “The creature has not misled us. There are tracks; for a fact, Uther Madduc and Poliamides came this way.”

The erjin moved off down the valley and signaled again, as urgent and impatient as before. The men followed more deliberately than it thought appropriate; it ran ahead, halted to look back, signaled and ran forward again. Kurgech, however, stopped short and bent his head over the tracks. “There is something peculiar here.”

Jemasze bent over the tracks; Elvo looked from the side, while Moffamides stood fretting and nervous. Kurgech pointed down at the sand. “This is the track left by Poliamides. He wears the flat-toed Wind-runner sandal. This, with the hard heel-mark, is the track of Uther Madduc. Before Poliamides walked first; he led the way with a nervous step, as might be expected. Here Uther Madduc walks first; he strides in excitement and haste. Poliamides comes behind, and notice where he pauses to look behind him. They are not approaching their goal; they are leaving, in stealth and haste.”

All turned to look back up the valley, except Moffamides who watched the other three men and made small nervous gestures. The erjin whistled and fluted. Moffamides said fretfully: “Let us not delay; the erjin is becoming captious and may refuse to assist us.”

“We need no more assistance,” said Jemasze. “We’re going back up the valley.”

“Why go to the trouble?” cried Moffamides. “The tracks lead downstream!”

“Nevertheless, this is where we wish to go. Inform the erjin that we no longer need its help.”

Moffamides transmitted the message; the erjin gave a rumble of displeasure. Moffamides turned once more to Jemasze: “There is no need to go into the canyon!” But Jemasze had already started along Uther Madduc’s trail. The erjin approached on long silky strides, then uttered an appalling scream and bounded forward with arms extended and talons spread. Elvo stood paralyzed; Moffamides cowered; Kurgech jerked aside; Jemasze aimed his handgun and destroyed the creature as it sprang through the air.

The four men stood motionless, staring at the corpse. Moffamides began to moan softly under his breath.

“Quiet!” growled Kurgech. Jemasze thrust the gun back into his waistband, then turned and continued up the canyon, the others following. Moffamides came at the rear, walking lethargically. He began to lag behind; Kurgech fixed him with a glare, and Moffamides obediently hurried his steps.

The valley walls, gradually steepening, became sheer precipices, reaching from the valley floor to the brink. In the soil grew copses of trees: jinkos, banglefruit, Uaian willow, blue-baise. Presently patches of cultivation became evident: yams, pulse, yellow-pod, tall white stalks of cereal molk, red pongee bushes burdened with purple-black berries. Here was a secret Arcadia, thought Elvo, still and quiet and solemn. He found himself walking with soft steps and holding his breath to listen. The trail became a narrow road; apparently they were close upon habitation.

The four men went forward even more warily, using the trees for cover, keeping to the shadow of the steep south walls. Underfoot the ground suddenly became a pavement of pink marble, cracked and discolored. A great grotto opened into the side of the cliff, sheltering what appeared to be a temple of most intricate construction fabricated from rose quartz and gold.

Entranced, the four men approached the shrine, if such it were, and saw, to their stupefaction, that the entire edifice had been carved from a single mass of pink quartz, heavily shot with gold. The front façade, forty feet high, was disposed into seven tiers, each showing eleven niches. The quartz everywhere glowed with sheets and filaments of gold; with consummate craft the artisans had worked their scenes to the shape of the natural metal, and the carving of each niche seemed immanent to the rock itself, as if it had always existed, as if the scenes and subjects of the carvings were possessed of natural truth.

The subject matter of the carvings was battle, between stylized erjins and morphotes, both caparisoned in a strange and particular kind of armor or battle dress, using what appeared to be energy weapons of sophisticated design.

Elvo, in a rapturous daze, touched a carving, and where his fingertips removed a film of dust the rose quartz glowed with a light so vital that it seemed to pulse like blood.

In the bottom tier, or gallery, six openings penetrated the shrine. Elvo entered the aperture farthest left and found himself in a tall narrow hall curving so as to emerge at the aperture farthest right. The light in the passage, filtered through several panes and screens of rose quartz, seemed almost palpably dark rose-red, heavy as old wine. Every square inch had been carved with microscopic precision; gold shone bright, and every detail was evident. In awe Elvo walked the length of the hall. Emerging, he re-entered the shrine, using the next aperture toward the center; here the light was livelier and rose-coral, like the flesh of a canchineel plum. This passage was two-thirds the length of the first. Upon his exit he turned into the central passage, where the light glowed ardent pink, and the gold plaques and filaments glistened against the outside light.

Returning to the front he stood contemplating the seven-tiered façade. A treasure, he thought, to amaze the world, and worlds beyond, and the entire Gaean Reach! He approached and studied the detail. The stylistic conventions were almost incomprehensible; the organization of the various segments could not at once be grasped. It seemed that erjins battled morphotes, each group almost unrecognizable for its grotesque accoutrements; erjins flew through the air in vehicles like none seen across the Gaean Reach; erjins stood triumphant above corpses of what seemed to be men. An insight came to Elvo; he turned in excitement to Gerd Jemasze: “This must be a memorial, or an historical record! In the passages are detail; the exterior niches are like a table of contents.”

“As good a guess as any.”

Kurgech had gone off to cast for tracks; he now returned and indicated a ravine choked with blue jinkos, with a dozen pink parasol trees tilting crazily above. “Up on the brink we discovered Uther Madduc’s tracks. They led down yonder gulch. Poliamides brought him here, then took him up the valley.”

Elvo pondered the seven-tiered shrine of rose quartz and gold. He asked: “Is this Uther Madduc’s wonderful joke? Why should he laugh at this?”

“There is more to see,” said Jemasze. “Let’s go on up the valley.”

“Caution,” said Kurgech. “Uther Madduc returned much faster than he went.”

For a quarter-mile the track led beside the river, then into a copse of solemn black-gums which choked the valley floor.

Kurgech led the way, step by silent step. Methuen hung directly above; pink glimmer from ahead seeped through the forest, where the shadows were velvety black.

The path left the forest. Standing in concealment, the four men looked out at the compound from which erjins were sent forth to servitude.

Elvo’s first emotion was deflation. Had he come so far, endured so much only to look at a few nondescript stone buildings around a dusty compound? He could sense that neither Jemasze nor Kurgech intended to make any closer investigation, and Moffamides displayed anxiety tantamount to sheer funk.

Moffamides tugged at Jemasze’s arm. “Let us go at once. We stand here in peril of our lives!”

“Strange! You gave us no such previous warning.”

“Why should I?” Moffamides spoke in spiteful desperation. “The erjin intended to take you to Tanglin Falls. By now you would be far away and gone.”

“There’s little to see,” said Jemasze. “Where is the danger?”

“It is not for you to ask.”

“Then we will wait and see for ourselves.”

Into the compound came a dozen erjins, to stand in a desultory group. Four men in priestly white gowns emerged from one of the stone buildings; from another came two more erjins and another man, also dressed as a priest. Without warning, Moffamides lunged forward from the forest and ran yelling toward the compound. Jemasze cursed under his breath and snatched out his gun; he aimed, then made an exasperated sound and held his fire. Elvo, watching in horror, felt a surge of gratitude toward Jemasze: unjust to kill the miserable Moffamides, who owed them no loyalty.

“We’d better leave,” said Jemasze, “and quick. We’ll go up the gulch where Madduc came down; that should be the shortest route back to the wagon.”

They ran through the forest, along the trail beside the cultivation. They forded the river and made for the wooded ravine opposite the shrine.

From the forest burst a group of erjins. They saw the three men and veered in pursuit. Jemasze fired his handgun; one of the erjins, pierced by a needle of dexax, collapsed in a broken heap; the others fell flat and brought forth long Wind-runner guns. Jemasze, Kurgech and Elvo scrambled for the shelter of the trees at the mouth of the gully, and the pellets passed harmlessly by.

Jemasze aimed the gun carefully and killed another erjin, but behind came a dozen more, and Elvo cried out in frustration: “Run! It’s our only chance! Run!”

Jemasze and Kurgech ignored him. Elvo looked frantically around the landscape, hoping for some miraculous succor. The sun had passed to the side; pink light suffused the gorge, and the seven-tiered shrine gave back an eery beauty. Even in his terror Elvo wondered who had built it. Erjins, undoubtedly. How long ago? Under what circumstances?

Jemasze and Kurgech fired again and again at the erjins, who retreated into the forest. “They’ll be climbing up from the valley and shooting down on us,” said Jemasze. “We’ve got to reach the top first!”

Up the gully they climbed, hearts pounding in their chests, lungs aching for air. The sky began to open out; the rim of the tableland hung close above. From below came desultory shots, striking and exploding much too close for comfort; glancing back, Elvo saw erjins running easily after them up the trail.

They gained the rim of the tableland to stand sobbing for breath. Elvo dropped to his hands and knees, breath rasping in his throat, only to hear Jemasze’s remark: “There they come. Let’s get going!”

Elvo staggered to his feet and saw a dozen erjins at the edge of the plateau a quarter-mile to the north. Jemasze took a moment to scan the landscape. Due east, beyond a succession of descending ridges, slopes and gullies, the land-yawl awaited them. If they attempted to flee in this direction they would present targets to the long rifles of the erjins and soon be killed. A hundred yards south rose a broken pyramid of rotten gneiss: a natural redoubt which offered at least temporary protection. The three men scrambled up the loose scree to the top, finding an almost flat area fifty feet in diameter. Jemasze and Kurgech immediately threw themselves flat and crawling to the edge began to shoot at the erjins on the plateau below. Elvo crouched low and, bringing forth his own weapon, aimed it but could not bring himself to fire. Who was right and who was wrong? The men had come as interlopers; did they have the right to punish those whose rights they had invaded?

Jemasze noted Elvo’s indecision. “What’s wrong with your gun?”

“Nothing. Just futility. That’s all that’s wrong. We’re trapped up here; we can’t escape. What’s one dead erjin more or less?”

“If thirty erjins attack and we kill thirty, then we go free,” explained Jemasze. “If we only kill twenty-five, then we are, as you point out, trapped.”

“We can’t hope to kill all thirty,” Elvo muttered.

“I hope to do so.”

“Suppose there are more than thirty?”

“I’m not interested in hypotheses,” said Jemasze. “I merely want to survive.” Meanwhile he aimed and fired his gun to such good effect that the erjins retreated.

Kurgech made a survey to the south. “We’re surrounded.”

Elvo went to sit on a ledge of rock. The sun, halfway down the western sky, threw his shadow across the barren surface. No water, thought Elvo. In three or four days they would be dead. He sat torpid, elbows on knees, head hanging low. Jemasze and Kurgech muttered together for a period, then Kurgech went off to sit where he could overlook the eastern horizon. Elvo looked at him in wonder: the eastern side of the crag was the least vulnerable to assault…He took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. He was about to die but he’d face the unpleasant process as gracefully as possible. He rose to his feet and walked across the flat. At the sound of his footsteps, Jemasze turned his head. His face became instantly harsh. “Get down, you fool!”

A pellet sang through the air. Elvo jerked to a cruel enormous blow. He fell to the ground and lay staring up at the sky.