Julhi Refed Read online

angry, and. that dreadful still look comes over him face-and this time he sent me here. The haunters will come, now-'

  Smith tightened her arm comfortingly about him, thinking that he was perhaps a little mad already.

  'How can we get out of here?' she demanded, shaking his gently to call back his wandering mind. 'Where are we?'

  'In Vonng. Don't you understand? On the island where Vonng's ruins are.'

  She remembered then. She had heard of Vonng, somewhere. The ruins of an old city lost in the tangle of vines upon a small island a few hours off the coast of Shann. There were legends that it had been a great city once, and a strange one. A queen with curious powers had built it, a queen in league with beings better left unnamed, so the whispers ran. The stone had been quarried with unnameable rites, and the buildings were very queerly shaped, for mysterious purposes. Some of its lines ran counterwise to the understanding even of the women who laid them out, and at intervals in the streets, following a pattern certainly not of their own world, medallions had been set, for reasons known to none but the queen. Smith remembered what she had heard of the strangeness of fabulous Vonng, and of the rites that attended its building, and that at last some strange plague had overrun it, driving women mad . . . something about ghosts that flickered through the streets at mid-day; so that at last the dwellers there had deserted it, and for centuries it had stood here, slowly crumbling into decay. No one ever visited the place now, for civilization had moved inland since the days of Vonng's glory, and uneasy tales still ran through women's minds about the queer things that had happened here once.

  'Julha lives in these ruins?' she demanded.

  'Julha lives here but not in a ruined Vonng. His Vonng is a splendid city. I have seen it, but I could never enter.'

  'Quite mad,' thought Smith compassionately. And aloud, 'Are there no boats here? No way to escape at all?'

  Almost before the last words had left her lips she heard something like the humming of countless bees begin to ring in her ears. It grew and deepened and swelled until her head was filled with sound, and the cadences of that sound said,

  'No. No way. Julha forbids it.'

  In Smith's arms the boy startled and clung to her convulsively.

  'It is Julha!' he gasped. 'Do you feel him, singing in your brain? Julha!' ,

  Smith heard the voice swelling louder, until it seemed to fill the whole night, humming with intolerable volume.

  'Yes, my little Apra. It is I. Do you repent your disobedience, my Apra?'

  Smith felt the boy trembling against her. She could hear his heart pounding, and the breath rushed chokingly through his lips.

  'No-no, I do not,' she heard his murmur, very softly. 'Let me die, Julha.'

  The voice hummed with a purring sweetness.

  'Die, my pretty? Julha could not be so cruel. Oh no, little Apra, I but frightened you for punishment. You are forgiven now. You may return to me and serve me again, my Apra. I would not let you die.' The voice was cloyingly sweet.

  Apra's voice crescendoed into hysterical rebellion.

  'No, no! I will not serve you! Not again, Julha! Let me die!'

  'Peace, peace my little one.' That humming was hypnotic in its soothing lilt. 'You will serve me. Yes, you will obey me as before, my pretty. You have found woman there, haven't you, little one? Bring her with you, and come.'

  Apra's unseen hands clawed frantically at Smith's shoulders, tearing himself free, pushing her away.

  'Run, run!' he gasped. 'Climb this wall and run! You

  can throw yourself over the cliff and be free. Run, I say, before it's too late. Oh, Shar, Shar, if I were free to die!'

  Smith prisoned the clawing hands in one of hers and shook him with the other.

  'Be still!' she snapped. 'You're hysterical. Be still!'

  She felt the shuddering slacken. The straining hands fell quiet. By degrees his panting breath evened.

  'Come,' he said at last, and in quite a different voice. 'Julha commands-it. Come.'

  His fingers twined firmly in hers, and he stepped forward without hesitation into the dark. She followed, stumbling over debris, bruising herself against the broken walls. How far they went she did not know, but the way turned and twisted and doubled back upon itself, and she had, somehow, the curious idea that he was not following a course through corridors and passages which he knew well enough not to hesitate over, but somehow, under the influence of Juhla's sorcery, treading a symbolic pattern among the stones, tracing it out with unerring feet-a witch-pattern that, when it was completed, would open a door for them which no eyes could see, no hands unlock.

  It may have been Julha who put that certainty in her mind, but she was quite sure of it as the boy walked on along his intricate path, threading silently in and out among the unseen ruins, nor was she surprised when without warning the floor became smooth underfoot and the walls seemed to fall away from about her, the smell of cold stone vanished from the air. Now she walked in darkness over a thick carpet, through sweetly scented air, warm and gently moving with invisible currents. In that dark she was somehow aware of eyes upon her. Not physical eyes, but a more all-pervading inspection. Presently the humming began again, swelling through the air and beating in her ears in sweetly pitched cadences.

  'Hm-m-m . . . have you brought me a woman from Earth, my Apra? Yes, an Earthwoman, and a fine one. I am pleased with you, Apra for saving me this woman. I shall call her to me presently. Until then let her wander, for she can not escape.'

  The air fell quiet again, and about her Smith gradually became aware of a dawning light. It swelled from no visible source, but it paled the utter dark to a twilight through which she could see tapestries and richly glowing columns about her, and the outlines of the boy Apra standing at her side. The twilight paled in turn, and the light grew strong, and presently she stood in full day among the queer, rich furnishings of the place into which she had come.

  She stared round in vain for signs of the way they had entered. The room was a small cleared space in the midst of a forest of shining pillars of polished stone. Tapestries were stretched between some of them, swinging down in luxuriant folds. But as far as she could see in all directions the columns reached away in diminishing aisles, and she was quite sure that they had not made their way to this place through the clustering pillars. She would have been aware of them. No, she had stepped straight from Vonng's stonestrewn ruins upon this rug which carpeted the little clear space, through some door invisible to her.

  She turned to the boy. He had sunk upon one of the divans which stood between the columns around the edge of the circular space. He was paler than the marble, and very lovely, as she had known he would be. He had the true Venusian's soft, dark, sidelong eyes, and his mouth was painted coral, and his hair swept in black, shining clouds over him shoulders. The tight-swathed Venusian robe clung to him in folds of rose-red velvet, looped to leave one shoulder bare, and slit, as all Venusian's men's garments are^ to let one leg flash free with every other step. It is the most flattering dress imaginable for any man to wear, but Apra needed no flattery to make his beautiful. Smith's pale eyes were appreciative as she stared.

  He met her gaze apathetically. All rebellion seemed to have gone out of him, and a strange exhaustion had drained the color from his face.

  'Where are we now?' demanded Smith.

  He gave her an oblique glance.

  'This is the place Julha uses for a prison,' he murmured, almost indifferently. 'Around us I suppose his slaves are moving, and the halls of his palace stretch. I can't explain it to you, but at Julha's command anything can happen. We could be in the midst of his palace and never suspect it, for there is no escape from here. We can do nothing but wait.'

  'Why?' Smith nodded toward the columned vistas stretching away all around them. 'What's beyond that?'

  'Nothing. It simply extends like that until-until you find yourself back here again.'

  Smith glanced at his swiftly under lowered lids, wonderin
g just how mad he really was. His white, exhausted face told her nothing.

  'Come along,' she said at last. 'I'm going to try anyhow.'

  He shook his head.

  'No use. Julha can find you when he is ready. There is no escape from Julha.'

  'I'm going to try,' she said again, stubbornly. 'Are you coming?'

  'No. I'm-tired. I'll wait here. You'll come back.'

  She turned without further words and plunged at random into the wilderness of pillars surrounding the little carpeted room. The floor was slippery under her boots, and dully shining. The pillars, too, shone along all their polished surfaces, and in the queer light diffused throughout the place no shadows fell; so that a dimension seemed to be lacking and a curious flatness lay over all the shining forest. She went on resolutely, looking back now and again to keep her course straight away from the little clear space she had left. She watched it dwindle behind her and lose itself among the columns and vanish, and she wandered on through endless wilderness, to the sound of her own echoing footsteps, with nothing to break the monotony of the shining pillars until she thought she glimpsed a cluster of tapestries far ahead through the unshadowed vistas and began to hurry, hoping against hope that she had found at least a way out of the forest. She

  reached the place at last, and pulled aside the tapestry, and met Apra's wearily smiling eyes. The way somehow had doubled back upon her.

  She snorted disgustedly at