The Valley of the Flame - Henry Kuttner (a book to read .TXT) 📗

to open that door!”

*

The elfin face smiled up at him maliciously.

“Lay your hand on the brightest spot of light. But you’d better wait here for my return, Brian. A door sometimes has more than one lock.”

They were on the balcony now, and Janissa swung a slim leg over the railing.

“You’ll be back?” Raft said.

“I promise.”

“Her mind is like the wind,” Darum had said. How much could Raft trust this cat-girl of an alien species?

He gripped her arms hard. He drew her toward him. That slim, strong body tensed in revolt, but Raft’s mouth came down hard and covered hers.

After a moment he let her go. There was a touch of mockery in his eyes now.

“At least, you may not find it so easy to forget now,” he said.

Janissa touched her lips with questioning fingers. She stared at him.

“No,” she said enigmatically. “I shall not forget—that.”

She slipped over the balustrade and was gone, writhing to avoid the keen blades, clinging precariously to the face of the stone. Raft watched her descent till her figure vanished around a turret. Then, still undecided, he returned to his luxurious prison.

He had solved nothing.

He had learned a great deal, but nothing that could be of immediate use. Except—he nodded—the key to the door. That might be of very real help. Unless he wanted to sit here quietly until Janissa or the king returned.

He found a heavy metal statuette, wrapped it in a silken scarf, and went to the door. He stared at the translucent panel, seeing now that glowing flecks of light moved slowly within the oval, like pallid moon-flames caught in a lazy current.

The brightest spot of light.

He found it and laid his palm over its glow. But nothing happened. The fleck slid from under his hand. He tried again, with no result.

A door has more than one lock. That was what she had meant, then. Smiling sourly, Raft tossed his weapon away and returned to the balcony.

Janissa had descended, but he could not follow her. He had no illusions on that score. Nor would any rope he might improvise reach to firm footing. He bent and tried to break off one of the swords. All he accomplished was the wounding of a finger.

Raft swore softly and savagely. After that he felt a little better. He dropped on a pile of cushions and tried to plan. It was difficult. What he wanted, obviously, was to get out of Paititi and take Craddock with him. The way to do that—what was the method?

He knew the road out. Once back in the Amazon jungle, he’d take his chance, even without a rifle. But escaping wouldn’t solve Raft’s problems now.

The amulets, Parror’s, and the one taken by the king. They, apparently, gave the possessor power to live outside Paititi, to slow down the metabolism to a speed normal to life beyond the valley’s cliffs. But the effects were variable. Back in the hospital, Parror had once moved too fast for human eyes to observe.

Suppose, then, Raft thought, he and Craddock managed to escape. They might reach the Jutahy. They might get a week’s start, or a month’s. But in a day pursuers from Paititi could overtake them. With the aid of the amulets, Parror or the king could flash through the jungle in pursuit, and kill or hypnotize with Janissa’s trick mirror. And back he and Craddock would go to Paititi.

So he was up against a dead end there.

It was difficult to judge time. The sun didn’t move appreciably, and the second-hand on his watch went so slowly he couldn’t see its progress. He was living at an abnormally increased rate of speed here, which meant that in Paititi he was on more nearly equal terms with the cat-people. Once outside, that slight advantage would be instantly lost, as his metabolism slowed to its former rate.

The psychology of a feline race—that might be the answer. …

Raft was lost in thought for a long time. He roused when the panel opened to admit not Vann, but a guard and a page, with a food-cart. After the meal he again fell into his reverie. It should be night now, but the days in this land would be as long as the nights, abnormally long.

Basically the people of Paititi were feline, as he was of simian stock. Monkeys are curious. The instinct of curiosity is strong in the human race. But cats lose interest quickly. They are not builders. They had taken possession of these castles, reared long ago by the mysterious First Race, and renovated. Cats were essentially hedonists. But the factor of intelligence was a strong influence, and one whose strength Raft could not estimate.

Could he base any plans on rules of logic, in a land where the human factor was so alien to his own experience? A race of cats might have unpredictable reaction….

Low, urgent, warning, a wordless murmur whispered softly from across the room.

CHAPTER IX. ASSASSIN’S PLOT

RAFT WAS ON HIS feet facing the doorway before those last echoes had died. The translucent oval was open now, the way of escape clear. But barring his path was a figure, veiled in soft grays, her face hidden, and both loveliness and horror breathed out from beneath the shrouding veils.

Her hands, slim, pale, were bare, and held an instrument unfamiliar to Raft, though he had heard it before. Again the white fingers moved across intricate strings and keys. Once more the music breathed out. More urgent now, summoning him.

“Yrann?” Raft said questioningly. The shrouded head bowed once. He stepped forward.

“The guard?”

Yrann beckoned. She turned toward that inviting portal, and Raft was at her heels, but warily. The corridor outside held no menance.

The guard was standing motionless. He did not turn his head. By the door, he stood frozen, his eyes wide, staring at a milky, glittering little sphere on the floor at his feet.

Raft’s eyes were drawn to that globe. Colors were moving and coiling slowly beneath its surface. It was growing larger….

The soft, urgent strings roused him. Yrann moved forward, bending to lift the sphere and hide it in her veils. The spell snapped. But the guard, Raft saw, still was motionless.

He pointed to the man and raised his brows questioningly. The music sounded reassuring, somehow.

“The guard will not wake. Not for a while._ The spell holds him.“_

Raft noticed that the oval door had closed behind him. Yrann was beckoning again. Which meant exactly what? Treachery? Perhaps. The cat people were unpredictable. But, at least, it was better than sitting in his prison waiting, and Raft felt quite able to protect himself against a woman.

He followed her along the corridor.

She took a circuitous route, Raft thought. They met no one, with the exception of a page who came hurrying toward them from the distance. Instantly Yrann pressed Raft aside, into a shelter behind a velvet tapestry. The page passed unsuspiciously, bowing to Yrann as he went. Then, after a moment, the journey was resumed.

It ended before another hanging that Yrann thrust aside, urging Raft through and letting the drape fall again. Now that familiar dim light—or, rather, absence of it—made Raft close his eyes briefly. There was utter silence.

Through the stillness Yrann’s music sang. Her fingers dwelt on his arm.

She guided him forward, making no misstep even in this vague gloom. Swiftly they approached the silk-heaped dais where the king had sat.

The shrouded form beside him began sending out emanations which were curiously ominous.

“What is it, Yrann?” Raft said. “What do you want?”

The oboe murmured, the strings twanged, and there was something evil in the minor notes that sounded.

The music held malignance.

Yrann touched the cushions of the dais reflectively. Her hand lingered on the softness where Darum’s body had lain. Then again that cool, wordless song whispered evilly, with a conspiratoral secrecy about it. It was heavy with suggestion.

Yrann turned toward the back of the dais. Curtains hung there. She held one aside, beckoning till Raft came to her side. Gently she guided him to a little alcove in the wall.

She pressed something into his hand. And stepped back, letting the curtain drop.

Wait, the music said. Wait now.

He was in utter darkness. But he knew what it was that he held. His free hand investigated cautiously. And recoiled from vicious, razor-sharp metal.

He pulled at the curtain. Yrann’s harp-oboe shrilled sharp warning. The velvet fell back.

Then soft footsteps fading into stillness. A rustle. He sensed that Yrann had gone.

But he knew unmistakably now why she had brought him here.

Working his lips as though he tasted something unpleasant, Raft leaned back against the wall. Yrann had helped him, if only for her own purposes. Now the idea was to get out of the castle, somehow.

On the curtain before him a ghostly, pale movement was visible. His eyes had adjusted now, and he could make out a shadow, man-shaped, cast on the fabric—the shadow of a man whose hand held a long-bladed dagger.

His own shadow. He turned. Behind him was no wall, but one of the familiar oval doors. But its glow was dimmed, and the crawling flecks of light were very faint.

He located the brightest one and laid his hand upon it.

The oval panel lifted and was gone. Instantly a blaze of light dazzled him.

His weapon ready, Raft waited, blinking. But there was nothing alive in the room before him. Only a fantastic glitter of brightness and shining metals, a richness of flamboyant color that contrasted strangely with the gloom of the chamber behind him.

Struck by a new thought, he stepped back, through the curtain, and swung it into place. The material was opaque. No hint of light filtered through. If Yrann, or anyone else, entered, his hiding-place would not be betrayed by an oval glow on the dark hanging.

Satisfied on that scorn, Raft again entered what he saw to be Darum’s treasure-vault.

If he expected a hoard of gold and diamonds, he was disappointed. There were diamonds, highly polished and many-faceted, but they seemed to hold equal place with quartz crystals that were used for the same purpose of jewelry and decoration. There was metal here, curious alloys in which hints of rainbow colors rippled, like oil on water. And weapons, many weapons.

The blades were of good quality, which was to be expected, for manganese, beryllium, and chromium were found in Brazil. There must be deposits of the elements here in Paititi. Certainly there was silver, for delicately shaped and engraved vases of it, burnished and shining, were set in a row around the walls.

It was the loot of a strangely alien civilization. Some of the objects the cat people found beautiful were ugly to Raft’s eyes. One set of very plain, sleek metals reminded him of Brancusis. His gaze followed arcs and curves that were curiously satisfying and oddly suggestive, though he realized he could probably never completely understand the principles that underlay the art-forms of this race.

There were more utilitarian objects. Many of them were dueling-gloves, with their razor-keen triple talons curving out viciously from the fingers. Raft picked up one of these, jeweled and ornate, and drew it on his hand. The claws ran the full length of his fingers, he found, and instinctively his hand tensed and curved.

Encrusted as it was with gems, the glove could be used as a handy substitute for brass knuckles. Which would probably shock the cat people, Raft thought sardonically, as he slipped the gauntlet into a capacious pocket he had discovered in his garments.

There were a number of maps, engraved in metal, and jewel-framed, too heavy to be portable, but interesting. One seemed