Julhi Refed Read online

herself and turned again to plunge into the columns. This time she had wandered for no more than ten minutes before she found herself coming back once more into the clearing. She tried a third time, and it seemed had taken no more than a dozen steps before the way twisted under her feet and catapulted her back again into the room she had just left. Apra smiled as she flung herself upon one of the divans and regarded his palely from under knit brows.

  ''There is no escape,' he repeated. 'I think this place is built upon some different plan from any we know, with all its lines running in a circle whose center is this room. For only a circle has boundaries, yet no end, like this wilderness around us.'

  'Who is Julha?' asked Smith abruptly. 'What is he?'

  'He is-a god, perhaps. Or a devil from hell. Or both. And he comes from the place beyond the light-I can't explain it to you. It was I who opened the door for him, I think, and through me he looks back into the light that I must call up for his when he commands me. And I shall go mad-mad!'

  Desperation flamed from his eyes suddenly and faded again, leaving his face whiter than before. His hands rose in a small, futile gesture and dropped to his lap again. He shook his head.

  'No-not wholly mad. He would never permit me even that escape, for then I could not summon up the light and so open the window for his to look backward into that land from which he came. That land-'

  'Look!' broke in Smith. 'The light-'

  Apra glanced up and nodded almost indifferently.

  'Yes. It's darkening again. Julha will summon you now, I think.'

  Rapidly the illumination was failing all about them, and

  the columned forests melted into dimness, and dark veiled the long vistas, and presently everything clouded together and black night fell once more. This time they did not move, but Smith was aware, remotely, of a movement all about them, subtle and indescribable, as if the scenes were being shifted behind the curtain of the dark. The air quivered with motion and change. Even under her feet the floor was shifting, not tangibly but with an inner metamorphosis she could put no name to.

  And then the dark began to lift again. Light diffused slowly through it, paling the black, until she stood in a translucent twilight through whose veil she could see that the whole scene had changed about her. She saw Apra from the corner of her eye, heard his quickened breathing beside her, but she did not turn her head. Those columned vistas were gone. The limitless aisles down which she had wandered were closed now by great walls uplifting all around.

  Her eyes rose to seek the ceiling, and as the dusk lightened into day once more she became aware of a miraculous quality about those walls. A curious wavy pattern ran around them in broad bands, and as she stared she realized that the bands were not painted upon the surface, but were integrally part of the walls themselves, and that each successive band lessened in density. Those along the base of the walls were heavily dark, but the rising patterns paled and became less solid as they rose, until at halfway up the wall they were like layers. of patterned smoke, and farther up still bands of scarcely discernible substance more tenuous than mist. Around the heights they seemed to melt into pure light, to which she could not lift her eyes for the dazzling brilliance of it.

  In the center of the room rose a low black couch, and upon, it-Julha. She knew that instinctively the moment she saw him, and in that first moment she realized nothing but his beauty. She caught her breath at the sleek and shining loveliness of him, lying on his black couch and facing her with a level, unwinking stare. Then she realized his unhumanity, and a tiny prickling ran down her back-for he was one of that very ancient race of one-eyed beings about which whispers persist so unescapably in folklore and legend, though history has forgotten them for ages. One-eyed. A clear eye, uncolored, centered in the midst of a fair, broad forehead. His features were arranged in a diamond-shaped pattern instead of humanity 's triangle, for the slanting nostrils of his low-bridged nose were set so far apart that they might have been separate features, tilting and exquisitely modeled. His mouth was perhaps the queerest feature of his strange yet somehow lovely face. It was perfectly heartshaped, in an exaggerated cupid's-bow, but it was not a human mouth. It did not close, ever. It was a beautifully arched orifice, the red lip that rimmed it compellingly crimson, but fixed and moveless in an unhinged jaw. Behind the bowed opening she could see the red, fluted tissue of flesh within.

  Above that single, clear, deep-lashed eye something sprang backward from his brow in a splendid sweep, something remotely feather-like, yet no such feather as was ever fledged upon any bird alive. It was exquisitely iridescent, and its fronds shivered with blowing color at the slight motion of his breathing.

  For the rest-well, as the lines of a lap-dog travesty the clean, lean grace of a racing greyhound, so humanity's shape travestied the serpentine loveliness of his body. And it was definitely humanity that aped his form, not himself aping humanity. Somehow he was so right in every flowing, curving line, so unerringly fashioned toward some end she could not guess, yet to which instinctively she conceded his perfect fitness.

  There was a fluidity about him, a litheness that partook more of the serpent's rippling flow than of any warm-blooded creature's motion, but his body was not like any being, warm-blooded or cold, that she had ever seen before. From the waist up he was human, but below all resemblance ended. And yet he was so breath-takingly lovely. Any attempt to describe the alien beauty of his lower limbs would sound grotesque, and he was not grotesque even in his unnamable shape, even in the utter weirdness of his face.

  That clear, unwinking eye turned its gaze upon Smith. He lay there luxuriously upon his black couch, ivory-pale against the darkness of it, the indescribable strangeness of his body lolling with a serpent's grace upon the cushions. She felt the gaze of that eye go through her, searching out all the hidden places in her brain and-flickering casually over the lifetime that lay behind her. The feathery crest quivered very gently above his head.

  She met the gaze steadily. There was no expression upon that changeless face, for he could not smile, and the look in his single eye was meaningless to her. She had no way of guessing what emotions were stirring behind the alien mask. She had never realized before how essential is the mobility of the mouth in expressing moods, and his was fixed, immobile, for ever stretched into its heart-shaped arch-like a lyre-frame, she thought, but irrevocably dumb, surely, for such a mouth as his, in its immovable unhinged jaw, could never utter human speech.

  And then he spoke. The shock of it made her blink, and it was a moment before she realized just how he was accomplishing the impossible. The fluted tissue within the arched opening of his mouth had begun to vibrate like harp-strings, and the humming she had heard before went thrilling through the air. Beside her she was aware of Apra shuddering uncontrollably as the humming strengthened and swelled, but she was listening too closely to realize his save subconsciously; for there was in that humming something that- that, yes, it was rounding into the most queerly uttered phrases, in a sort of high, unutterably sweet singing note, like the sound of a violin. With his moveless lips he could not articulate, and his only enunciation came from the varied intensities of that musical tone. Many languages could not be spoken so, but the High Venusian's lilt is largely that of pitch, every word-sound bearing as many meanings as it has degrees of intensity, so that the exquisitely modulated notes

  which came rippling from his harp-like mouth bore as clear a meaning as if he were enunciating separate words.

  And it was more eloquent than speech. Somehow those singing phrases played upon other senses than the aural. From the first lilted note she recognized the danger of that voice. It vibrated, it thrilled, it caressed. It rippled up and down her answering nerves like fingers over harp-strings.

  'Who are you, Earthwoman?' that lazy, nerve-strumming voice demanded. She felt, as she answered, that he knew not only her name but much more about her than she herself knew. Knowledge was in his eye, serene and all-inclusive.

  'Norawest Smith
,' she said, a little sullenly.' Why have you brought me here?'

  'A dangerous woman.' There was an undernote of mockery in the music. 'You were brought to feed the dwellers of Vonng with human blood, but I think-yes, I think I shall keep you for myself. You have known much of emotions that are alien to me, and I would share them fully, as one with your own strong, hot-blooded body, Norawest Smith. Aie-e-e'-the humming wailed along an ecstatic upward note that sent shivers down the woman's spine-'and how sweet and hot your blood will be, my Earthwoman! You shall share my ecstasy as I drink it! You shall-but wait. First you must understand. Listen, Earthwoman.'

  The humming swelled to an inarticulate roaring in her ears, and somehow her mind relaxed under that sound, smoothed out, pliantly as wax for the recording of his voice. In that queer, submissive mood she heard his singing,

  'Life dwells in so many overlapping planes, my Earthwoman, that even I can comprehend but a fraction of them. My plane is very closely akin to your own, and at some places they overlap in so intimate a way that it takes little effort to break through, if one can find a weak spot. This city of Vonng is one of the spots, a place which exists simultaneously in both planes. Can you