“What about these savages?” Sawyer inquired, anxious to get every element laid before the listening Alper.
“They’re part of the punishment the Goddess must suffer for stealing the Firebird. The trouble will go on until the Firebird is replaced. I got it away from her. When I’m Goddess I’ll put it back and the troubles of my people will all be over.”
“You could give her back the Firebird,” Sawyer suggested. “Why did she do such a stupid thing, anyhow? She was Goddess to start with. Or was it she who stole it, Nethe?”
“Of course it was,” Nethe declared rapidly. “She wanted power, more power than the Well would give her. Why should I hand the Firebird back and let her keep the Mask and Robe? When I’m Goddess it’ll be time enough to restore the Firebird. Let her suffer her own punishment.”
Sawyer looked at her thoughtfully. It seemed perfectly clear to him who had really snatched the Firebird from the Well. He hoped Alper was listening. He wondered if the Goddess had questioned him yet, and how much Alper would see fit to pass on from this conversation, if it were possible to communicate at all.
“I still don’t understand what the real Firebirds are,” he said. “What do they do? What’s the connection between the real Firebirds and the—the little symbol?”
“I won’t tell you that,” Nethe said, with a flash of brilliant anger. “Go ahead and jump if you want to. I will tell you this much—they feed on the energy in the uranium at your world’s pole. They can drink energy from the Khom, too. They could drink from you. Perhaps, in time, they will.” She gave him a dangerous look.
“What would happen,” Sawyer inquired, “if the Goddess knew you had the Firebird?”
“Perhaps she does. But she doesn’t intend to let anyone else know the Firebird’s gone from the Well. The Well is her trust—her charge. Do you suppose she would want to advertise the fact that she allowed—that she stole the Firebird?”
Sawyer grinned. He felt quite sure now who had really stolen that strange talisman. Perhaps Nethe read his face, for she went on:
“Would you like to go to her with your story? The first thing the Goddess would force you to do is reveal where you’ve hidden the Firebird. She has powers I haven’t—yet. And the second thing she would do would be to seal your mouth forever, so you could never reveal that the Goddess had failed her trust. She wears the Double Mask, and she intends to keep on wearing it—by killing me, if she can, at the Unsealing. And if I die, the Goddess will make no bargains with a Khom like you. Why do you suppose I didn’t simply wait for you outside the Temple?”
“For Alper, you mean,” Sawyer said. “Well, why didn’t you? What were you afraid of?”
“The soldiers of the Goddess, of course,” Nethe said. “I’ve disobeyed the summons to the Unsealing. I intend to keep on disobeying it as long as I can hide, but where can I hide from the Goddess in Khom’ad? Nowhere, for long, without the Firebird to open a Gate past which even the Goddess can’t follow me.”
“The Gate to Earth?” Sawyer asked.
Nethe hestitated for an instant.
“Somewhere else, then?” Sawyer went on speculatively, watching her. “Back in the uranium mine, you intended to take Klai through the Gate to question her—but I don’t think it was to Khom’ad. Then we all were sucked through into that ice-hall, so…” Sawyer paused, nodded once, and continued briskly, “So perhaps that’s a necessary way-station to wherever you’d intended to take Klai. But you couldn’t finish the trip without the Firebird. The current in the ice-hall carried you away—carried all of us away except Alper, who had the Firebird then.”
“Never mind that,” Nethe said impatiently. “You understand now that I’m desperate. The city’s alive with soldiers searching for Khom sacrifices—during the Unsealing, the Well drinks up many lives. And outside the city, the Goddess has ways of finding me—so now I intend to get the Firebird, or you can jump.” She took a long, smooth forward step. “Make up your mind, animal. Is it yes or no?”
Sawyer glanced down again into the swimming abysses below, combed now by long, slanting shafts of reflection from the fire that glowed just beyond the hill. He had been watching considerable activity growing and changing down there, where the rising islands floated in the light of the false sunrise from above.
“Just a moment, Nethe,” he said. “One little matter you haven’t considered yet. I don’t know if you realize it, but your fire has become quite an attraction among the—Sselli, you called them? I think there’s going to be some excitement in Khom’ad very soon now. Climb that rock beside you and you can see. Not too near, though! Careful! I can always jump ”
She hissed at him scornfully, put her foot in a pocket of rock and climbed until she could see what he meant. Then she sucked her breath in with a sound of consternation.
In the ruddy glow of the fire reflecting downward from Khom’ad’s underside, the floating lands were alive with great hordes of climbing Sselli, clambering swiftly upward toward the glow, leaping from isle to rising isle, springing the dangling roots and swarming up them like creatures under a spell of hypnotized fascination. Their blank, lifted eyes reflected red and flat in the light which drew them on.
At this moment a violent shock made the ground jump like a spurred horse under Sawyer’s feet. Nethe swore in Isier and slid helpless down the rock to which she had been clinging. Only Swayer’s instinctive embrace of his tree saved him from pitching to destruction over the cliff. As it was, he struck his head painfully against the trunk and saw stars for a moment.
Then the island under him swung ponderously around in a full quarter-turn. Something brushed his face with a familiar network and he looked up in time to receive a moist smack in the cheek from a dripping tree-root. The island had risen until it all but touched the underhang of Khom’ad, and the roots which were dripping now with rain from the upper world brushed the tree-tops of the island.
Overhead, floating like the gates of heaven, loomed through darkness and rain the high iron doors and the granite wall of Khom’s gateway. The doors were opening. The bells rang wildly all through the city now.
Sawyer clasped his tree and watched.
IX
A waterfall of human figures was pouring over the lip of the upper world. The light of the reflecting fire caught on steel tubes and coils of the mysterious Khom weapons, flashed on long blades like bayonets. The dark torrent glittered as it leaped, and the island shook with the impact of the falling human torrent.
They were shouting as they came.
The deep booming cries of the savages answered like inhuman echoes. Reptilian heads sunk flatly between their shoulders, long arms swinging, knives flashing, they surged forward to meet the Khom.
Above the roar of the human battlecries and the deep bellows of the Sselli, a great, clear, belling shout rang like a golden gong, struck three times. A second cry, and then a third, joined in the ringing sound, three voices that overlapped like ripples in a pool. And over the brink of the human waterfall as it poured between the gates, three godlike figures came.
Three tall Isiers waded head and shoulders above the dark human tide. Above the heads of the Khom they swung three great whips of flame, crackling and snapping like leashed lightning. They were shouting, in the voices of angry angels, deep and golden and terrible.
Here at last, Sawyer thought, came something that might have a chance against the Sselli.
At the first sound of those golden shouts, Nethe writhed around anxiously, hissing with anger. She gave Sawyer a hot, baleful look, hesitated, took a step toward him. Very quickly he turned too, leaned perilously over the abyss, and said across his shoulder, “You haven’t got a chance. I’ll jump and you know it.”
In the way she lashed around in an agony of indecision to look again at the oncoming Isier, Sawyer was startled to see a curious likeness to the motion of the Sselli, the same strong, sinuous, violent ripple of El Greco distortions.