Title: The moon that vanished
Author: Brackett, Leigh
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The moon that vanished" ***


                        The MOON that VANISHED

                             a novelet by
                            LEIGH BRACKETT

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Thrilling Wonder Stories October 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]



                               CHAPTER I

                      _Down to the Darkling Sea_


The stranger was talking about him--the tall stranger who was a long
way from his native uplands, who wore plain leather and did not belong
in this swamp-coast village. He was asking questions, talking, watching.

David Heath knew that, in the same detached way in which he realized
that he was in Kalruna's dingy Palace of All Possible Delights, that
he was very drunk but not nearly drunk enough, that he would never be
drunk enough and that presently, when he passed out, he would be tossed
over the back railing into the mud, where he might drown or sleep it
off as he pleased.

Heath did not care. The dead and the mad do not care. He lay without
moving on the native hide-frame cot, the leather mask covering the
lower part of his face, and breathed the warm golden vapour that
bubbled in a narghil-like bowl beside him. Breathed, and tried to
sleep, and could not. He did not close his eyes. Only when he became
unconscious would he do that.

There would be a moment he could not avoid, just before his drugged
brain slipped over the edge into oblivion, when he would no longer be
able to see anything but the haunted darkness of his own mind, and that
moment would seem like all eternity. But afterward, for a few hours, he
would find peace.

Until then he would watch, from his dark corner, the life that went on
in the Palace of All Possible Delights.

Heath rolled his head slightly. By his shoulder, clinging with its
hooked claws to the cot frame, a little bright-scaled dragon crouched
and met his glance with jewel-red eyes in which there were peculiar
sympathy and intelligence. Heath smiled and settled back. A nervous
spasm shook him but the drug had relaxed him so that it was not severe
and passed off quickly.

No one came near him except the emerald-skinned girl from the deep
swamps who replenished his bowl. She was not human and therefore did
not mind that he was David Heath. It was as though there were a wall
around him beyond which no man stepped or looked.

Except, of course, the stranger.

Heath let his gaze wander. Past the long low bar where the common
seamen lay on cushions of moss and skins, drinking the cheap fiery
_thul_. Past the tables, where the captains and the mates sat,
playing their endless and complicated dice games. Past the Nahali girl
who danced naked in the torchlight, her body glimmering with tiny
scales and as sinuous and silent in motion as the body of a snake.

The single huge room was open on three sides to the steaming night. It
was there that Heath's gaze went at last. Outside, to the darkness and
the sea, because they had been his life and he loved them.

Darkness on Venus is not like the darkness of Earth or Mars. The planet
is hungry for light and will not let it go. The face of Venus never
sees the sun but even at night the hope and the memory of it are there,
trapped in the eternal clouds.

The air is the colour of indigo and it carries its own pale glow. Heath
lay watching how the slow hot wind made drifts of light among the
_liha_-trees, touched the muddy harbour beaches with a wavering
gleam and blended into the restless phosphorescence of the Sea of
Morning Opals. Half a mile south the river Omaz flowed silently down,
still tainted with the reek of the Deep Swamps.

Sea and sky--the life of David Heath and his destruction.

The heavy vapor swirled in Heath's brain. His breathing slowed and
deepened. His lids grew heavy.

Heath closed his eyes.

An expression of excitement, of yearning, crossed his face, mingled
with a vague unease. His muscles tensed. He began to whimper, very
softly, the sound muffled by the leather mask.

The little dragon cocked its head and watched, still as a carven image.

       *       *       *       *       *

Heath's body, half naked in a native kilt, began to twitch, then to
move in spasmodic jerks. The expression of unease deepened, changed
gradually to one of pure horror. The cords in his throat stood out like
wires as he tried to cry out and could not. Sweat gathered in great
beads on his skin.

Suddenly the little dragon raised its wings and voiced a hissing scream.

Heath's nightmare world rocked around him, riven with loud sounds. He
was mad with fear, he was dying, vast striding shapes thronged toward
him out of a shining mist. His body was shaken, cracking, frail bones
bursting into powder, his heart tearing out of him, his brain a part of
the mist, shining burning. He tore the mask from his face and cried out
a name, _Ethne!_, and sat up--and his eyes were wide open, blind
and deep.

Somewhere, far off, he heard thunder. The thunder spoke. It called his
name. A new face pushed in past the phantoms of his dream. It swelled
and blotted out the others. The face of the stranger from the High
Plateaus. He saw every line of it, painted in fire upon his brain.

The square jaw, hard mouth, nose curved like a falcon's beak, the
scars wealed white against white skin, eyes like moonstones, only hot,
bright--the long silver hair piled high in the intricate tribal knot
and secured with a warrior's golden chains.

Hands shook him, slapped his face. The little dragon went on screaming
and flapping, tethered by a short thong to the head of Heath's cot so
that it could not tear out the eyes of the stranger.

Heath caught his breath in a long shuddering sob and sprang.

He would have killed the man who had robbed him of his little time of
peace. He tried, in deadly silence, while the seamen and the masters
and the mates and the dancing girls watched, not moving, sidelong out
of their frightened, hateful eyes. But the Uplander was a big man,
bigger than Heath in his best days had even been. And presently Heath
lay panting on the cot, a sick man, a man who was slowly dying and had
no strength left.

The stranger spoke. "It is said that you found the Moonfire."

Heath stared at him with his dazed, drugged eyes and did not answer.

"It is said that you are David Heath the Earthman, captain of the
_Ethne_."

Still Heath did not answer. The rusty torchlight flickered over him,
painting highlight and shadow. He had always been a lean, wiry man. Now
he was emaciated, the bones of his face showing terribly ridged and
curved under the drawn skin. His black hair and unkempt beard were shot
through with white.

The Uplander studied Heath deliberately, contemptuously. He said, "I
think they lie."

Heath laughed. It was not a nice laugh.

"Few men have ever reached the Moonfire," the Venusian said. "They were
the strong ones, the men without fear."

After a long while Heath whispered, "They were fools."

He was not speaking to the Uplander. He had forgotten him. His dark mad
gaze was fixed on something only he could see.

"Their ships are rotting in the weed-beds of the Upper Seas. The little
dragons have picked their bones." Heath's voice was slow, harsh and
toneless, wandering. "Beyond the Sea of Morning Opals, beyond the weeds
and the Guardians, through the Dragon's Throat and still beyond--I've
seen it, rising out of the mists, out of the Ocean-That-Is-Not-Water."

A tremor shook him, twisting the gaunt bones of his body. He lifted
his head, like a man straining to breathe, and the running torchlight
brought his face clear of the shadows. In all the huge room there was
not a sound, not a rustle, except for a small sharp gasp that ran
through every mouth and then was silent.

"The gods know where they are now, the strong brave men who went
through the Moonfire. The gods know what they are now. Not human if
they live at all."

He stopped. A deep slow shudder went through him. He dropped his head.
"I was only in the fringe of it. Only a little way."

In the utter quiet the Uplander laughed. He said, "I think you lie."

Heath did not raise his head nor move. The Venusian leaned over him,
speaking loudly, so that even across the distance of drugs and madness
the Earthman should hear.

"You're like the others, the few who have come back. But they never
lived a season out. They died or killed themselves. How long have you
lived?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Presently he grasped the Earthman's shoulder and shook it roughly.
"How long have you lived?" he shouted and the little dragon screamed,
struggling against its thong.

Heath moaned. "Through all hell," he whispered. "Forever."

"Three seasons," said the Venusian. "Three seasons, and part of a
fourth." He took his hand away from Heath and stepped back. "You never
saw the Moonfire. You knew the custom, how the men who break the tabu
must be treated until the punishment of the gods is finished."

He kicked the bowl, breaking it, and the bubbling golden fluid spilled
out across the floor in a pool of heady fragrance. "You wanted
_that_, and you knew how to get it, for the rest of your sodden
life."

A low growl of anger rose in the Palace of All Possible Delights.

Heath's blurred vision made out the squat fat bulk of Kalruna
approaching. Even in the depths of his agony he laughed, weakly. For
more than three seasons Kalruna had obeyed the traditional law. He
had fed and made drunk the pariah who was sacred to the anger of the
gods--the gods who guarded so jealously the secret of the Moonfire. Now
Kalruna was full of doubt and very angry.

Heath began to laugh aloud. The effects of his uncompleted jag were
making him reckless and hysterical. He sat up on the cot and laughed in
their faces.

"I was only in the fringe," he said. "I'm not a god. I'm not even a man
any more. But I can show you if you want to be shown."

He pulled himself to his feet, and as he did so, in a motion as
automatic as breathing, he loosed the little dragon and set it on his
naked shoulder. He stood swaying a moment and then began to walk out
across the room, slowly, uncertainly, but with his head stubbornly
erect. The crowd drew apart to make a path for him and he walked along
it in the silence, clothed in his few sad rags of dignity, until he
came to the railing and stopped.

"Put out the torches," he said. "All but one."

Kalruna said hesitantly, "There's no need. I believe you."

There was fear in the place now--fear, and fascination. Every man
glanced side-ways, looking for escape, but no one went away.

Heath said again, "Put out the torches."

The tall stranger reached out and doused the nearest one in its bucket,
and presently in all that vast room there was darkness, except for one
torch far in the back.

Heath stood braced against the rail, staring out into the hot indigo
night.

The mists rose thick from the Sea of Morning Opals. They crept up out
of the mud, and breathed in clouds from the swamps. The slow wind
pushed them in long rolling drifts, blue-white and glimmering against
the darker night.

Heath looked hungrily into the mists. His head was thrown back, his
whole body strained upward and presently he raised his arms in a
gesture of terrible longing.

[Illustration: Heath looked hungrily into the mists and presently he
raised his arms.]

"Ethne," he whispered. "Ethne."

Almost imperceptibly, a change came over him. The weakness, the look of
the sodden wreck, left him. He stood firm and straight, and the muscles
rose coiled and beautiful on the long lean frame of his bones, alive
with the tension of strength.

His face had altered even more. There was a look of power on it. The
dark eyes burned with deep fires, glowing with a light that was more
than human, until it seemed that his whole head was crowned with a
strange nimbus.

For one short moment, the face of David Heath was the face of a god.

"Ethne," he said.

And she came.

Out of the blue darkness, out of the mist, drifting tenuous and lovely
toward the Earthman. Her body was made from the glowing air, the soft
drops of the mist, shaped and coloured by the force that was in Heath.
She was young, not more than nineteen, with the rosy tint of Earth's
sun still in her cheeks, her eyes wide and bright as a child's, her
body slim with the sweet angularity of youth.

_The first time I saw her, when she stepped down the loading ramp for
her first look at Venus and the wind took her hair and played with it
and she walked light and eager as a colt on a spring morning. Light and
merry always, even walking to her death._

The shadowy figure smiled and held out her arms. Her face was the face
of a woman who has found love and all the world along with it.

Closer and closer she drifted to Heath and the Earthman stretched out
his hands to touch her.

And in one swift instant, she was gone.

Heath fell forward against the rail. He stayed there a long time. There
was no god in him now, no strength. He was like a flame suddenly burned
out and dead, the ashes collapsing upon themselves. His eyes were
closed and tears ran out from under the lashes.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the steaming darkness of the room no one moved.

Heath spoke once. "I couldn't go far enough," he said, "into the
Moonfire."

He dragged himself upright after a while and went toward the steps,
supporting himself against the rail, feeling his way like a blind man.
He went down the four steps of hewn logs and the mud of the path rose
warm around his ankles. He passed between the rows of mud-and-wattle
huts, a broken scarecrow of a man plodding through the night of an
alien world.

He turned, down the side path that led to the anchorage. His feet
slipped into the deeper mud at the side and he fell, face down. He
tried once to get up, then lay still, already sinking into the black,
rich ooze. The little dragon rode on his shoulder, pecking at him,
screaming, but he did not hear.

He did not know it when the tall stranger from the High Plateaus picked
him out of the mud a few seconds later, dragon and all, and carried him
away, down to the darkling sea.



                              CHAPTER II

                          _The Emerald Sail_


A woman's voice said, "Give me the cup."

Heath felt his head being lifted, and then the black, stinging taste
of Venusian coffee slid like liquid fire down his throat. He made his
usual waking fight against fear and reality, gasped and opened his eyes.

He lay in his own bunk, in his own cabin, aboard the _Ethne_.
Across from him, crouched on a carven chest, the tall Venusian sat, his
head bowed under the low scarlet arch of the deck above. Beside Heath,
looking down at him, was a woman.

It was still night. The mud that clung to Heath's body was still wet.
They must have worked hard, he thought, to bring him to.

The little dragon flopped down to its perch on Heath's shoulder. He
stroked its scaly neck and lay watching his visitors.

The man said, "Can you talk now?"

Heath shrugged. His eyes were on the woman. She was tall but not too
tall, young but not too young. Her body was everything a woman's body
ought to be, of its type, which was wide-shouldered and leggy, and she
had a fine free way of moving it. She wore a short tunic of undyed
spider silk, which exactly matched the soft curling hair that fell down
her back--a bright, true silver with little peacock glints of colour in
it.

Her face was one that no man would forget in a hurry. It was a face
shaped warmly and generously for all the womanly things--passion and
laughter and tenderness. But something had happened to it. Something
had given it a bitter sulky look. There were resentment in it and
deep anger and hardness--and yet, with all that, it was somehow a
pathetically eager face with lost and frightened eyes.

Heath remembered vaguely a day when he would have liked to solve the
riddle of that contradictory face. A day long ago, before Ethne came.

He said, speaking to both of them, "Who are you and what do you want
with me?"

He looked now directly at the man and it was a look of sheer black
hatred. "Didn't you have enough fun with me at Kalruna's?"

"I had to be sure of you," the stranger said. "Sure that you had not
lied about the Moonfire."

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed and piercing. He did not sit
easily. His body was curved like a bent bow. In the light of the
hanging lantern his scarred, handsome face showed a ripple of little
muscles under the skin. A man in a hurry, Heath thought, a man with a
sharp goad pricking his flanks.

"And what was that to you?" said Heath.

It was a foolish question. Already Heath knew what was coming. His
whole being drew in upon itself, retreated.

The stranger did not answer directly. Instead he said. "You knew the
cult that calls itself guardian of the Mysteries of the Moon."

"The oldest cult on Venus and one of the strongest. One of the
strangest, too, on a moonless planet," Heath said slowly to no one in
particular. "The Moonfire is their symbol of godhead."

The woman laughed without mirth. "Although," she said, "they've never
seen it."

The stranger went on, "All Venus knows about you, David Heath. The word
travels. The priests know too--the Children of the Moon. They have a
special interest in you."

Heath waited. He did not speak.

"You belong to the gods for their own vengeance," the stranger said.
"But the vengeance hasn't come. Perhaps because you're an Earthman and
therefore less obedient to the gods of Venus. Anyway, the Children of
the Moon are tired of waiting. The longer you live the more men may be
tempted to blasphemy, the less faith there will be in the ability of
the gods to punish men for their sins." His voice had a biting edge of
sarcasm. "So," he finished, "the Children of the Moon are coming to see
to it that you die."

Heath smiled. "Do the priests tell you their secrets?"

The man turned his head and said, "Alor."

The woman stepped in front of Heath and loosed her tunic at the
shoulder. "There," she said furiously. "Look!"

Her anger was not with Heath. It was with what he saw. The tattoo
branded between her white breasts--the round rayed symbol of the Moon.

Heath caught his breath and let it out in a long sigh. "A handmaiden of
the temple," he said and looked again at her face. Her eyes met his,
silvery-cold, level, daring him to say more.

"We are sold out of our cradles," she said. "We have no choice. And our
families are very proud to have a daughter chosen for the temple."

Bitterness and pride and the smouldering anger of the slave.

She said, "Broca tells the truth."

       *       *       *       *       *

Heath's body seemed to tighten in upon itself. He glanced from one to
the other and back again, not saying anything, and his heart beat fast
and hard, knocking against his ribs.

Alor said, "They will kill you and it won't be easy dying. I know. I've
heard men screaming sometimes for many nights and their sin was less
than yours."

Heath said out of a dry mouth, "A runaway girl from the temple gardens
and a thrower of spears. Their sin is great too. They didn't come
halfway across Venus just to warn me. I think they lie. I think the
priests are after them."

"We're all three proscribed," said Broca, "but Alor and I could get
away. You they'll hunt down no matter where you go--except one place."

And Heath said, "Where is that?"

"The Moonfire."

After a long while Heath uttered a harsh grating sound that might have
been a laugh.

"Get out," he said. "Get away from me."

He got to his feet, shaking with weakness and fury. "You lie, both of
you--because I'm the only living man who has seen the Moonfire and
you want me to take you there. You believe the legends. You think the
Moonfire will change you into gods. You're mad, like all the other
fools, for the power and the glory you think you'll have. Well, I can
tell you this--the Moonfire will give you nothing but suffering and
death."

His voice rose. "Go lie to someone else. Frighten the Guardians of the
Upper Seas. Bribe the gods themselves to take you there. But get away
from me!"

The Venusian rose slowly. The cabin was small for him, the deck beams
riding his shoulders. He swept the little dragon aside. He took Heath
in his two hands and he said, "I will reach the Moonfire, and you will
take me there."

Heath struck him across the face.

Sheer astonishment held Broca still for a moment and Heath said,
"You're not a god yet."

The Venusian opened his mouth in a snarling grin. His hands shifted and
tightened.

The woman said sharply, "Broca!" She stepped in close, wrenching at
Broca's wrists. "Don't kill him, you fool!"

Broca let his breath out hard between his teeth. Gradually his hands
relaxed. Heath's face was suffused with dark blood. He would have
fallen if the woman had not caught him.

She said to Broca, "Strike him--but not too hard."

Broca raised his fist and struck Heath carefully on the point of the
jaw.

It could not have been more than two of the long Venusian hours before
Heath came to. He did that slowly as always--progressing from a vast
vague wretchedness to an acute awareness of everything that was the
matter with him. His head felt as though it had been cleft in two with
an axe from the jaw upward.

He could not understand why he should have wakened. The drug alone
should have been good for hours of heavy sleep. The sky beyond the
cabin port had changed. The night was almost over. He lay for a moment,
wondering whether or not he was going to be sick, and then suddenly he
realized what had wakened him in spite of everything.

The _Ethne_ was under way.

His anger choked him so that he could not even swear. He dragged
himself to his feet and crossed the cabin, feeling even then that she
was not going right, that the dawn wind was strong and she was rolling
to it, yawing.

He kicked open the door and came out on deck.

The great lateen sail of golden spider silk, ghostly in the blue air,
slatted and spilled wind, shaking against loose yards. Heath turned and
made for the raised poop, finding strength in his fear for the ship.
Broca was up there, braced against the loom of the stern sweep. The
wake lay white on the black water, twisting like a snake.

The woman Alor stood at the rail, staring at the low land that lay
behind them.

Broca made no protest as Heath knocked him aside and took the sweep.
Alor turned and watched but did not speak.

The _Ethne_ was small and the simple rig was such that one man
could handle it. Heath trimmed the sail and in a few seconds she was
stepping light and dainty as her namesake, her wake straight as a ruled
line.

When that was done Heath turned upon them and cursed them in a fury
greater than that of a woman whose child has been stolen.

Broca ignored him. He stood watching the land and the lightening sky.
When Heath was all through the woman said, "We had to go. It may
already be too late. And you weren't going to help."

Heath didn't say anything more. There weren't any words. He swung the
helm hard over.

       *       *       *       *       *

Broca was beside him in one step, his hand raised and then suddenly
Alor cried out, "_Wait!_"

Something in her voice brought both men around to look at her. She
stood at the rail, facing into the wind, her hair flying, the short
skirt of her tunic whipped back against her thighs. Her arms were
raised in a pointing gesture.

It was dawn now.

For a moment Heath lost all sense of time. The deck lifting lightly
under his feet, the low mist and dawn over the Sea of Morning Opals,
the dawn that gave the sea its name. It seemed that there had never
been a Moonfire, never been a past or a future, but only David Heath
and his ship and the light coming over the water.

It came slowly, sifting down like a rain of jewels through the miles of
pearl-grey cloud. Cool and slow at first, then warming and spreading,
turning the misty air to drops of rosy fire, opaline, glowing, low to
the water, so that the little ship seemed to be drifting through the
heart of a fire-opal as vast as the universe.

The sea turned colour, from black to indigo streaked with milky bands.
Flights of the small bright dragons rose flashing from the weed-beds
that lay scattered on the surface in careless patterns of purple and
ochre and cinnabar and the weed itself stirred with dim sentient life,
lifting its tendrils to the light.

For one short moment David Heath was completely happy.

Then he saw that Broca had caught up a bow from under the taffrail.
Heath realized that they must have fetched all their traps coolly
aboard while he was in Kalruna's. It was one of the great longbows of
the Upland barbarians and Broca bent its massive arc as though it had
been a twig and laid across it a bone-barbed shaft.

A ship was coming toward them, a slender shape of pearl flying through
the softly burning veils of mist. Her sail was emerald green. She was
a long way off but she had the wind behind her and she was coming down
with it like a swooping dragon.

"That's the _Lahal_," said Heath. "What does Johor think he's
doing?"

Then he saw, with a start of incredulous horror, that on the prow of
the oncoming ship the great spiked ram had been lowered into place.

During the moment when Heath's brain struggled to understand why Johor,
ordinary trading skipper of an ordinary ship, should wish to sink him,
Alor said five words.

"The Children of the Moon."

Now, on the _Lahal's_ foredeck, Heath could distinguish four tiny
figures dressed in black.

The long shining ram dipped and glittered in the dawn.

Heath flung himself against the stern sweep. The _Ethne's_ golden
sail cracked taut. She headed up into the wind. Heath measured his
distance grimly and settled down.

Broca turned on him furiously. "Are you mad? They'll run us down! Go
the other way."

Heath said, "There is no other way. They've got me pinned on a lee
shore." He was suddenly full of a blind rage against Johor and the four
black-clad priests.

There was nothing to do but wait--wait and sail the heart out of his
ship and hope that enough of David Heath still lived to get them
through. _And if not_, Heath thought, _I'll take the_ Lahal
_down with me!_

Broca and Alor stood by the rail together, watching the racing green
sail. They did not speak. There was nothing to say. Heath saw that now
and again the woman turned to study him.

The wakes of the two ships lay white on the water, two legs of a
triangle rushing toward their apex.

Heath could see Johor now, manning the sweep. He could see the crew
crouching in the waist, frightened sailors rounded up to do the bidding
of the priests. They were armed and standing by with grapnels.

Now, on the foredeck, he could see the Children of the Moon.

They were tall men. They wore tunics of black link mail with the rayed
symbol of the Moon blazed in jewels on their breasts. They rode the
pitching deck, their silver hair flying loose in the wind, and their
bodies were as the bodies of wolves that run down their prey and devour
it.

Heath fought the stern sweep, fought the straining ship, fought with
wind and distance to cheat them of their will.

And the woman Alor kept watching David Heath with her bitter
challenging eyes and Heath hated her as he did the priests, with a
deadly hatred, because he knew what he must took like with his beaked
bony face and wasted body, swaying and shivering over the loom of the
sweep.

       *       *       *       *       *

Closer and closer swept the emerald sail, rounded and gleaming like
a peacock's breast in the light. Pearl white and emerald, purple and
gold, on a dark blue sea, the spiked ram glittering--two bright dragons
racing toward marriage, toward death.

Close, very close. The rayed symbols blazed fire on the breasts of the
Children of the Moon.

The woman Alor lifted her head high into the wind and cried out--a long
harsh ringing cry like the scream of an eagle. It ended in a name, and
she spoke it like a curse.

"_Vakor!_"

One of the priests wore the jeweled fillet that marked him leader. He
flung up his arms, and the words of his malediction came hot and bitter
down the wind.

Broca's bowstring thrummed like a great harp. The shaft fell short and
Vakor laughed.

The priests went aft to be safe from buckling timbers and the faces of
the seamen were full of fear.

Heath cried out a warning. He saw Alor and Broca drop flat to the deck.
He saw their faces. They were the faces of a man and a woman who were
on the point of death and did not like it but were not afraid. Broca
reached out and braced the woman's body with his own.

Heath shoved _Ethne's_ nose fair into the wind and let her jibe.

The _Lahal_ went thundering by not three yards away, helpless to
do anything about it.

The kicking sweep had knocked Heath into the scuppers, half dazed. He
heard the booming sail slat over, felt the wrenching shudder that shook
the _Ethne_ down to her last spike and prayed that the mast would
stay in her. As he dragged himself back he saw that the priest Vakor
had leaped onto the _Lahal's_ high stern. He was close enough for
Heath to see his face.

They looked into each other's eyes and the eyes of Vakor were brilliant
and wild, the eyes of a fanatic. He was not old. His body was virile
and strong, his face cut in fine sweeping lines, the mouth full and
sensuous and proud. He was tense with cheated fury and his voice rang
against the wind like the howling of a beast.

"We will follow! We will follow, and the gods will slay!"

As the rush of the _Lahal_ carried him away, Heath heard the last
echo of his cry.

"_Alor!_"

With all the strength he had left Heath quieted his outraged ship and
let her fill away on the starboard tack. Broca and Alor got slowly to
their feet. Broca said, "I thought you'd wrecked her."

"They had the wind of me," Heath said. "I couldn't come about like a
Christian."

Alor walked to the stern and watched where the _Lahal_ wallowed
and staggered as she tried to stop her headlong rush. "Vakor!" she
whispered, and spat into the sea.

Broca said, "They will follow us. Alor told me--they have a chart, the
only one, that shows the way to the Moonfire."

Heath shrugged. He was too weary now to care. He pointed off to the
right.

"There's a strong ocean current runs there, like a river in the
sea. Most skippers are afraid of it but their ships aren't like the
_Ethne_. We'll ride it. After that we'll have to trust to luck."

Alor swung around sharply. "Then you will go to the Moonfire."

"I didn't say that. Broca, get me the bottle out of my cabin locker."

But it was the woman who fetched it to him and watched him drink, then
said, "Are you all right?"

"I'm dying, and she asks me that," said Heath.

She looked a moment steadily into his eyes and oddly enough there was
no mockery in her voice when she spoke, only respect.

"You won't die," she said and went away.

In a few moments the current took the _Ethne_ and swept her away
northward. The _Lahal_ vanished into the mists behind them. She
was cranky in close handling and Heath knew that Johor would not dare
the swirling current.

For nearly three hours he stayed at his post and took the ship through.
When the ocean stream curved east he rode out of it into still water.
Then he fell down on the deck and slept.

Once again the tall barbarian lifted him like a child and laid him in
his bunk.

All through the rest of that day and the long Venusian night, while
Broca steered, Heath lay in bitter sleep. Alor sat beside him, watching
the nightmare shadows that crossed his face, listening as he moaned and
talked, soothing his worst tremors.

He repeated the name of Ethne over and over again and a puzzled
strangely wistful look came in the eyes of Alor.

When it was dawn again Heath awoke and went on deck. Broca said with
barbarian bluntness, "Have you decided?"

Heath did not answer and Alor said, "Vakor will hunt you down. The word
has gone out all over Venus, wherever there are men. There'll be no
refuge for you--except one."

Heath smiled, a mirthless baring of the teeth. "And that's the
Moonfire. You make it all so simple."

And yet he knew she spoke the truth. The Children of the Moon would
never leave his track. He was a rat in a maze and every passage led to
death.

But there were different deaths. If he had to die it would not be as
Vakor willed but with Ethne--an Ethne more real than a shadow--in his
arms again.

He realized now that deep in his mind he had always known, all these
three seasons and more that he had clung to a life not worth the
living. He had known that someday he must go back again.

"We'll go to the Moonfire," he said, "and perhaps we shall all be gods."

Broca said, "You are weak, Earthman. You didn't have the courage."

Heath said one word.

"Wait."



                              CHAPTER III

                            _Over the Bar_


The days and the nights went by, and the _Ethne_ fled north across
the Sea of Morning Opals, north toward the equator. They were far out
of the trade lanes. All these vast upper reaches were wilderness.
There were not even fishing villages along the coast. The great cliffs
rose sheer from the water and nothing could find a foothold there. And
beyond, past the Dragon's Throat, lay only the barren death-trap of the
Upper Seas.

The _Ethne_ ran as sweetly as though she joyed to be free again,
free of the muddy harbour and the chains. And a change came over Heath.
He was a man again. He stood shaved and clean and erect on his own deck
and there was no decision to be made anymore, no doubt. The long dread,
the long delay, were over and he too, in his own bitter way, was happy.

They had seen nothing more of the _Lahal_ but Heath knew
quite well that she was there somewhere, following. She was not as
fleet as the _Ethne_ but she was sound and Johor was a good
sailor. Moreover, the priest Vakor was there and he would drive the
_Lahal_ over the Mountains of White Cloud if he had to--to catch
them.

He said once to Alor, "Vakor seems to have a special hatred for you."

Her face twisted with revulsion and remembered shame. "He is a beast,"
she said. "He is a serpent, a lizard that walks like a king." She
added, "We've made it easy for him, the three of us together like this."

From where he sat steering Heath looked at her with a remote curiosity.
She stood, long legged, bold-mouthed, looking back with sombre smoky
eyes at the white wake unrolling behind them.

He said, "You must have loved Broca to break your vows for him.
Considering what it means if they catch you."

Alor looked at him, then laughed, a brief sound that had no humor in it.

"I'd have gone with any man strong enough to take me out of the
temple," she said. "And Broca is strong and he worships me."

Heath was genuinely astonished. "You don't love him?"

She shrugged. "He is good to look at. He is a chief of warriors and he
is a man and not a priest. But love--"

She asked suddenly, "What is it like--to love as you loved your Ethne?"

Heath started. "What do you know about Ethne?" he asked harshly.

"You have talked of her in sleep. And Broca told me how you called her
shadow in Kalruna's place. You dared the Moonfire to gain her back."

She glanced at the ivory figurehead on the high curving bow, the image
of a woman, young and slim and smiling.

"I think you are a fool," she said abruptly. "I think only a fool would
love a shadow."

She had left him and gone down into the cabin before he could gather
words, before he could take her white neck between his hands and break
it.

_Ethne--Ethne!_

He cursed the woman of the temple gardens.

He was still in a brooding fury when Broca came up out of the cabin to
relieve him at the sweep.

"I'll steer a while yet," Heath told him curtly. "I think the weather's
going to break."

Clouds were boiling up in the south as the night closed down. The sea
was running in long easy swells as it had done for all these days but
there was a difference, a pulse and a stir that quivered all through
the ship's keel.

Broca, stretching huge shoulders, looked away to the south and then
down at Heath.

"I think you talk too much to my woman," he said.

Before Heath could answer the other laid his hand lightly on the
Earthman's shoulder. A light grip but with strength enough behind it to
crack Heath's bones.

He said, "Do not talk so much to Alor."

"I haven't sought her out," Heath snapped savagely. "She's your
woman--you worry about her."

"I am not worried about her," Broca answered calmly. "Not about her and
you."

He was looking down at Heath as he spoke and Heath knew the contrast
they made--his own lean body and gaunt face against the big barbarian's
magnificent strength.

"But she is always with you on the deck, listening to your stories of
the sea," said Broca. "Do not talk to her so much," he repeated and
this time there was an edge to his voice.

"For heaven's sake!" said Heath jeeringly. "If I'm a fool what are you?
A man mad enough to look for power in the Moonfire and faithfulness in
a temple wench! And now you're jealous."

       *       *       *       *       *

He hated both Broca and Alor bitterly in this moment and out of his
hate he spoke.

"Wait until the Moonfire touches you. It will break your strength and
your pride. After that you won't care who your woman talks to or where."

Broca gave him a stare of unmoved contempt. Then he turned his back and
settled down to look out across the darkening sea.

After a while, the amusing side of the whole thing struck Heath, and he
began to laugh.

They were, all three of them, going to die. Somewhere out there to
the south, Vakor came like a black shepherd, driving them toward
death. Dreams of empire, dreams of glory and a voyage that tempted the
vengeance of the gods--and at such a time the barbarian chief could be
jealous.

With sudden shock he realized just how much time Alor had spent with
him. Out of habit and custom as old as the sea he had helped to while
away the long hard hours with a sailor's yarns. Looking back he could
see Alor's face, strangely young and eager as she listened, could
remember how she asked questions and wanted to learn the ways and the
working of the ship.

He could remember now how beautiful she looked with the wind in her
hair, her firm strong body holding the _Ethne_ steady in a
quartering sea.

The storm brewed over the hours and at last it broke.

Heath had known that the Sea of Morning Opals would not let him go
without a struggle. It had tried him with shallows, with shifting
reefs, with dead calms and booming solar tides and all the devices of
current, fog and drifting weed. He had beaten all of them. Now he was
almost within sight of the Dragon's Throat, the gateway to the Upper
Seas and it was a murderous moment for a storm out of the south.

The night had turned black. The sea burned with white phosphorescence,
a boiling cauldron of witch-fire. The wind was frightening. The
_Ethne_ plunged and staggered, driving under a bare pole, and
for once Heath was glad of Broca's strength as they fought the sweep
together.

He became aware that someone was beside him and knew that it was Alor.

"Go below!" he yelled and caught only the echo of her answer. She did
not go but threw her weight too against the sweep.

Lightning-bolts as broad as comet's tails came streaking down with a
rush and a fury as though they had started their run from another star
and gathered speed across half the galaxy. They lit the Sea of Morning
Opals with a purple glare until the thunder brought the darkness
crashing down again. Then the rain fell like a river rolling down the
belts of cloud.

Heath groaned inwardly. The wind and the following sea had taken the
little ship between them and were hurling her forward. At the speed she
was making now she would hit the Dragon's Throat at dawn. She would hit
it full tilt and helpless as a drifting chip.

The lightning showed him the barbarian's great straining body, gleaming
wet, his long hair torn loose from its knots and chains, streaming with
wind and water. It showed him Alor too. Their hands and their shoulders
touched, straining together.

It seemed that they struggled on that way for centuries and then,
abruptly, the rain stopped, the wind slackened, and there was a period
of eerie silence. Alor's voice sounded loud in Heath's ears, crying,
"Is it over?"

"No," he answered. "Listen!"

They heard a deep and steady booming, distant in the north--the boom of
surf.

The storm began again.

Dawn came, hardly lighter than the night. Through the flying wrack
Heath could see cliffs on either side where the mountain ranges
narrowed in, funneling the Sea of Morning Opals into the strait of the
Dragon's Throat. The driven sea ran high between them, bursting white
against the black rock.

The _Ethne_ was carried headlong, a leaf in a millrace.

The cliffs drew in and in until there was a gap of no more than a mile
between them. Black brooding titans and the space below a fury of white
water, torn and shredded by fang-like rocks.

The Dragon's Throat.

When he had made the passage before Heath had had fair weather and men
for the oars. Even then it had not been easy. Now he tried to remember
where the channel lay, tried to force the ship toward what seemed to be
an open lane among the rocks.

The _Ethne_ gathered speed and shot forward into the Dragon's
Throat.

She fled through a blind insanity of spray and wind and sound. Time and
again Heath saw the loom of a towering rock before him and wrenched
the ship aside or fought to keep away from death that was hidden just
under the boiling surface. Twice, three times, the _Ethne_ gave a
grating shudder and he thought she was gone.

Once, toward the last, when it seemed that there was no hope, he felt
Alor's hand close over his.

The high water saved them, catching them in its own rush down the
channel, carrying them over the rocks and finally over the bar at the
end of the gut. The _Ethne_ came staggering out into the relative
quiet of the Upper Seas, where the pounding waves seemed gentle and it
was all done so quickly, over so soon. For a long time the three of
them stood sagging over the sweep, not able to realize that it was over
and they still lived.

The storm spent itself. The wind settled to a steady blow. Heath got
a rag of sail up. Then he sat down by the tiller and bowed his head
over his knees and thought about how Alor had caught his hand when she
believed she was going to die.



                              CHAPTER IV

                           "_I Will Wait!_"


Even this early it was hot. The Upper Seas sprawled along the equator,
shallow landlocked waters choked with weed and fouled with shifting
reefs of mud, cut into a maze of lakes and blind channels by the
jutting headlands of the mountains.

The wind dropped to a flat calm. They left the open water behind them,
where it was swept clean by the tides from the Sea of Morning Opals.
The floating weed thickened around them, a blotched ochre plain that
stirred with its own dim mindless life. The air smelled rotten.

Under Heath's direction they swung the weed-knife into place, the great
braced blade that fitted over the prow. Then, using the heavy sweep
as a sculling oar, they began to push the _Ethne_ forward by the
strength of their sweating backs.

Clouds of the little bright-scaled dragons rose with hissing screams,
disturbed by the ship. This was their breeding ground. They fought and
nested in the weed and the steaming air was full of the sound of their
wings. They perched on the rail and in the rigging, watching with their
red eyes. The creature that rode Heath's shoulder emitted harsh cries
of excitement. Heath tossed him into the air and he flew away to join
his mates.

There was life under the weed, spawning in the hot stagnant waters,
multiform and formless, swarming, endlessly hungry. Small reptilian
creatures flopped and slithered through the weed, eating the dragon's
eggs, and here and there a flat dark head would break through with a
snap and a crunch, and it would watch the _Ethne_ with incurious
eyes while it chewed and swallowed.

Constantly Heath kept watch.

The sun rose high above the eternal clouds. The heat seeped down and
gathered. The scull moved back and forth, the knife bit, the weed
dragged against the hull and behind them the cut closed slowly as the
stuff wrapped and coiled upon itself.

Heath's eyes kept turning to Alor.

He did not want to look at her. He did not wish to remember the touch
of her hand on his. He wished only to remember Ethne, to remember the
agony of the Moonfire and to think of the reward that lay beyond it if
he could endure. What could a temple wench mean to him beside that?

But he kept looking at her covertly. Her white limbs glistened with
sweat and her red mouth was sullen with weariness and even so there was
a strange wild beauty about her. Time and again her gaze would meet
his, a quick hungry glance from under her lashes, and her eyes were not
the eyes of a temple wench. Heath cursed Broca in his heart for making
him think of Alor and he cursed himself because now he could not stop
thinking of her.

They toiled until they could not stand. Then they sprawled on the deck
in the breathless heat to rest. Broca pulled Alor to him.

"Soon this will all be over," he said. "Soon we will reach the
Moonfire. You will like that, Alor--to be mated to a god!"

She lay unresponsive in the circle of his arm, her head turned away.
She did not answer.

Broca laughed. "God and goddess. Two of a kind as we are now. We'll
build our thrones so high the sun can see them." He rolled her head
on his shoulder, looking down intently into her face. "Power, Alor.
Strength. We will have them together." He covered her mouth with his,
and his free hand caressed her, deliberate, possessive.

She thrust him away. "Don't," she said angrily. "It's too hot and I'm
too tired." She got up and walked to the side, standing with her back
to Broca.

Broca looked at her. Then he turned and looked at Heath. A dark flush
reddened his skin. He said slowly, "Too hot and too tired--and besides,
the Earthman is watching."

He sprang up and caught Alor and swung her around, one huge hand
tangled in her hair, holding her. As soon as he touched her Heath also
sprang up and said harshly, "Let her alone!"

Broca said, "She is my mate but I may not touch her." He glared down
into Alor's blazing eyes and said, "She is my mate--or isn't she?"

He flung her away. He turned his head from side to side, half blind
with rage.

"Do you think I didn't see you?" he asked thickly. "All day, looking at
each other."

Heath said, "You're crazy."

"Yes," answered Broca, "I am." He took two steps toward Heath and
added, "Crazy enough to kill you."

Alor said, "If you do you'll never reach the Moonfire."

Broca paused, trapped for one moment between his passion and his dream.
He was facing the stern. Something caused his gaze to waver from Heath
and then, gradually, his expression changed. Heath swung around and
Alor gave a smothered cry.

Far behind them, vague in the steaming air, was an emerald sail.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Lahal_ must have come through the Dragon's Throat as soon as
the storm was over. With men to man the rowing benches she had gained
on the _Ethne_ during the calm. Now she too was in the weed, and
the oars were useless but there were men to scull her. She would move
faster than the _Ethne_ and without pause.

There would be little rest for Heath and Broca and the woman.

They swayed at the sculling oar all the stifling afternoon and all
the breathless night, falling into the dull, half-hypnotized rhythm
of beasts who walk forever around a water-wheel. Two of them working
always, while the third slept, and Broca never took his eyes from Alor.
With his tremendous vitality it seemed that he never slept and during
the periods when Heath and Alor were alone at the oar together they
exchanged neither words nor glances.

At dawn they saw that the _Lahal_ was closer.

Broca crouched on the deck. He lifted his head and looked at the green
sail. Heath saw that his eyes were very bright and that he shivered in
spite of the brooding heat.

Heath's heart sank. The Upper Seas were rank with fever, and it looked
as though the big barbarian was in for a bad go of it. Heath himself
was pretty well immune to it but Broca was used to the clean air of the
High Plateaus and the poison was working in his blood.

He measured the speed of the two ships and said, "It's no use. We must
stand and fight."

Heath said savagely, "I thought you wanted to find the Moonfire.
I thought you were the strong man who could win through it where
everybody else has failed. I thought you were going to be a god."

Broca got to his feet. "With fever or without it I'm a better man than
you."

"Then work! If we can just keep ahead of them until we clear the weed--"

Broca said, "The Moonfire?"

"Yes."

"We will keep ahead."

He bent his back to the scull and the _Ethne_ crept forward
through the weed. Her golden sail hung from the yard with a terrible
stillness. The heat pressed down upon the Upper Seas as though the sun
itself were falling through the haze. Astern the _Lahal_ moved
steadily on.

Broca's fever mounted. He turned from time to time to curse Vakor,
shouting at the emerald sail.

"You'll never catch us, priest!" he would cry. "I am Broca of the tribe
of Sarn and I will beat you--and I will beat the Moonfire. You will lie
on your belly, priest, and lick my sandals before you die."

Then he would turn to Alor, his eyes shining. "You know the legends,
Alor! The man who can bathe in the heart of the Moonfire has the power
of the High Ones. He can build a world to suit himself, he can be king
and lord and master. He can give his woman-god a palace of diamonds
with a floor of gold. That is true, Alor. You have heard the priests
say it in the temple."

Alor answered, "It is true."

"A new world, Alor. A world of our own."

He made the great sweep swing in a frenzy of strength and once again
the mystery of the Moonfire swept over Heath. Why, since the priests
knew the way there, did they not themselves become gods. Why had no man
ever come out of it with godhead--only a few, a handful like himself,
who had not had the valor to go all the way in.

       *       *       *       *       *

And yet there was godhead there. He knew because within himself there
was the shadow of it.

The endless day wore on. The emerald sail came closer.

Toward mid-afternoon there was a sudden clattering flight of the little
dragons and all life stopped still in the weed. The reptilian creatures
lay motionless with dragon's eggs unbroken in their jaws. No head broke
the surface to feed. The dragons flew away in a hissing cloud. There
was utter silence.

Heath flung himself against the sweep and stopped it.

"Be quiet," he said. "Look. Out there."

They followed his gesture. Far away over the port bow, flowing toward
them, was a ripple in the weed. A ripple as though the very bed of the
Upper Seas was in motion.

"What is it?" whispered Alor, and saw Heath's face, and was silent.

Sluggishly, yet with frightened speed, the ripple came toward them.
Heath got a harpoon out of the stern locker. He watched the motion of
the weed, saw it gradually slow and stop in a puzzled way. Then he
threw the harpoon as far away from the ship as he could with all his
strength and more.

The ripple began again. It swerved and sped toward where the harpoon
had fallen.

"They'll attack anything that moves," said Heath. "It lost us because
we stopped. Watch."

The weed heaved and burst open, its meshes snapping across a scaled
and titanic back. There seemed to be no shape to the creature, no
distinguishable head. It was simply a vast and hungry blackness that
spread upward and outward and the luckless brutes that cowered near it
hissed and thrashed in their efforts to escape, and were engulfed and
vanished.

Again Alor whispered, "What is it?"

"One of the Guardians," Heath answered. "The Guardians of the Upper
Seas. They will crush a moving ship to splinters and eat the crew."

He glanced back at the _Lahal_. She, too, had come to a dead stop.
The canny Vakor had scented the danger also.

"We'll have to wait," said Heath, "until it goes away."

They waited. The huge shape of darkness sucked and floundered in the
weed and was in no hurry to go.

Broca sat staring at Heath. He was deep in fever and his eyes were not
sane. He began to mutter to himself, incoherent ramblings in which only
the name Alor and the word Moonfire were distinguishable.

Suddenly, with startling clarity, he said, "The Moonfire is nothing
without Alor."

He repeated "Nothing!" several times, beating his huge fists on his
knees each time he said it. Then he turned his head blindly from side
to side as though looking for something. "She's gone. Alor's gone.
She's gone to the Earthman."

Alor spoke to him, touched him, but he shook her off. In his fever-mad
brain there was only one truth. He rose and went toward David Heath.

Heath got up. "Broca!" he said. "Alor is there beside you. She hasn't
gone!"

Broca did not hear. He did not stop.

Alor cried out, "_Broca!_"

"No," said Broca. "You love him. You're not mine anymore. When you
look at me I am nothing. Your lips have no warmth in them." He reached
out toward David Heath and he was blind and deaf to everything but the
life that was in him to be torn out and trampled upon and destroyed.

In the cramped space of the afterdeck there was not much room to move.
Heath did not want to fight. He tried to dodge the sick giant but Broca
pinned him against the rail. Fever or no fever, Heath had to fight him
and it was not much use. Broca was beyond feeling pain.

His sheer weight crushed Heath against the rail, bent his spine almost
to breaking and his hands found Heath's throat. Heath struck and struck
again and wondered if he had come all this way to die in a senseless
quarrel over a woman.

Abruptly he realized that Broca was letting go, was sliding down
against him to the deck. Through a swimming haze he saw Alor standing
there with a belaying pin in her hand. He began to tremble, partly with
reaction but mostly with fury that he should have needed a woman's help
to save his life. Broca lay still, breathing heavily.

"Thanks," said Heath curtly. "Too bad you had to hit him. He didn't
know what he was doing."

Alor said levelly, "Didn't he?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Heath did not answer. He started to turn away and she caught him,
forcing him to look at her.

"Very likely I will die in the Moonfire," she said. "I haven't the
faith in my strength that Broca has. So I'm going to say this now--I
love you, David Heath. I don't care what you think or what you do about
it but I love you."

Her eyes searched his face, as though she wanted to remember every line
and plane of it. Then she kissed him and her mouth was tender and very
sweet.

She stepped back and said quietly, "I think the Guardian has gone. The
_Lahal_ is under way again."

Heath followed her without a word to the sweep. Her kiss burned in him
like sweet fire. He was shaken and utterly confused.

They toiled together while Broca slept. They dared not pause. Heath
could distinguish the men now aboard the _Lahal_, little bent
figures sculling, sculling, and there were always fresh ones. He could
see the black tunics of the Children of the Moon who stood upon the
foredeck and waited.

The _Ethne_ moved more and more slowly as the hours passed and the
gap between the two ships grew steadily smaller. Night came and through
the darkness they could hear the voice of Vakor howling after them.

Toward midnight Broca roused. The fever had left him but he was morose
and silent. He thrust Alor roughly aside and took the sweep and the
_Ethne_ gathered speed.

"How much farther?" he asked. And Heath panted, "Not far now."

Dawn came and still they were not clear of the weed. The _Lahal_
was so near them now that Heath could see the jeweled fillet on Vakor's
brow. He stood alone, high on the upper brace of the weed-knife, and he
watched them, laughing.

"Work!" he shouted at them. "Toil and sweat! You, Alor--woman of the
gardens! This is better than the Temple. Broca--thief and breaker of
the Law--strain your muscles there! And you, Earthman. For the second
time you defy the gods!" He leaned out over the weed as though he would
reach ahead and grasp the _Ethne_ in his bare hands and drag her
back.

"Sweat and strain, you dogs! You can't escape!"

And they did sweat and strain and fresh relays of men worked at the
sweep of the _Lahal_, breaking their hearts to go faster and ever
faster. Vakor laughed from his high perch and it seemed futile for the
_Ethne_ to go on any longer with this lost race.

But Heath looked ahead with burning sunken eyes. He saw how the mists
rose and gathered to the north, how the color of the weed changed, and
he urged the others on. There was a fury in him now. It blazed brighter
and harder than Broca's, this iron fury that would not, by the gods
themselves, be balked of the Moonfire.

They kept ahead--so little ahead that the _Lahal_ was almost
within arrow-shot of them. Then the weed thinned and the _Ethne_
began to gain a little and suddenly, before they realized it, they were
in open water.

Like mad creatures they worked the scull and Heath steered the
_Ethne_ where he remembered the northern current ran, drawn by
The-Ocean-That-Is-Not-Water. After the terrible labour of the weed it
seemed that they were flying. But as the mists began to wreath about
them the _Lahal_ too had freed herself and was racing toward them
with every man on the rowing benches.

The mists thickened around them. The black water began to have a rare
occasional hint of gold, like shooting sparks beneath the surface.
There began to be islands, low and small, rank with queer vegetation.
The flying dragons did not come here nor the Guardians nor the little
reptiles. It was very hot and very still.

Through the stillness the voice of Vakor rose in a harsh wild screaming
as he cursed the rowers on.

The current grew more swift and the dancing flecks of gold brightened
in the water. Heath's face bore a strange unhuman look. The oars of the
_Lahal_ beat and churned and bowmen stood now on the foredeck,
ready to shoot when they came within range.

Then, incredibly, Vakor gave one long high scream and flung up his
hand and the oars stopped. Vakor stretched both arms above his head,
his fists clenched, and he hurled after them one terrible word of
malediction.

"I will wait, blasphemers! If so be you live I will be here--waiting!"

The emerald sail dwindled in the _Ethne's_ wake, faded and was
lost in the mist.

Broca said, "They had us. Why did they stop?"

Heath pointed. Up ahead the whole misty north was touched with a breath
of burning gold.

"The Moonfire!"



                               CHAPTER V

                          _Into the Moonfire_


This was the dream that had driven Heath to madness, the nightmare that
had haunted him, the memory that had drawn him back in spite of terror
and the certainty of destruction. Now it was reality and he could not
separate it from the dream.

Once again he watched the sea change until the _Ethne_ drifted not
on water but on a golden liquid that lapped her hull with soft rippling
fire. Once again the mist enwrapped him, shining, glowing.

The first faint tingling thrill moved in his blood and he knew how
it would be--the lying pleasure that mounted through ecstasy to
unendurable pain. He saw the dim islands, low and black, a maze through
which a ship might wander forever without finding the source that
poured out this wonder of living light.

He saw the bones of ships that had died searching. They lay on the
island beaches and the mist made them a bright shroud. There were
not many of them. Some were so old that the race that built them had
vanished out of the memory of Venus.

The hushed unearthly beauty wrenched Heath's heart and he was afraid
unto dying and yet filled with lust, with a terrible hunger.

Broca drew the air deep into his lungs as though he would suck the
power out of the Moonfire.

"Can you find it again?" he asked. "The heart of it."

"I can find it."

Alor stood silent and unmoving. She was all silver in this light,
dusted with golden motes.

Heath said, "Are you afraid, breaking the tabu?"

"Habit is hard to break." She turned to him and asked, "What is the
Moonfire?"

"Haven't the priests told you?"

"They say that Venus once had a moon. It rode in the clouds like a disc
of fire and the god who dwelt within it was supreme over all the other
gods. He watched the surface of the planet and all that was done upon
it. But the lesser gods were jealous, and one day they were able to
destroy the palace of the Moon-god.

"All the sky of Venus was lighted by that destruction. Mountains fell
and seas poured out of their beds and whole nations died. The Moon-god
was slain and his shining body fell like a meteor through the clouds.

"But a god cannot really die. He only sleeps and waits. The golden
mist is the cloud of his breathing, and the shining of his body is the
Moonfire. A man may gain divinity from the heart of the sleeping god
but all the gods of Venus will curse him if he tries because man has no
right to steal their powers."

"And you don't believe that story," said Heath.

Alor shrugged. "You have seen the Moonfire. The priests have not."

"I didn't get to the heart of it," Heath said. "I only saw the edge of
the crater and the light that comes up out of it, the lovely hellish
light."

He stopped, shuddering, and brooded as he had so many times before on
the truth behind the mystery of the Moonfire. Presently he said slowly,
"There was a moon, of course, or there could be no conception of one in
folklore. I believe it was radioactive, some element that hasn't been
found yet or doesn't exist at all on Earth or Mars."

"I don't understand," said Alor. "What is 'radioactive'?" She used the
Terran word, as Heath had, because there was no term for it in Venusian.

"It's a strange sort of fire that burns in certain elements. It eats
them away, feeding on its own atoms, and the radiation from this fire
is very powerful." He was silent for a moment, his eyes half closed.
"Can't you feel it?" he asked. "The first little fire that burns in
your own blood?"

"Yes," Alor whispered. "I feel it."

And Broca said, "It is like wine."

Heath went on, putting the old, old thoughts into words. "The moon was
destroyed. Not by jealous gods but by collision with another body,
perhaps an asteroid. Or maybe it was burst apart by its own blazing
energy. I think that a fragment of it survived and fell here and that
its radiation permeated and changed the sea and the air around it.

"It changes men in the same way. It seems to alter the whole electrical
set-up of the brain, to amplify its power far beyond anything human.
It gives the mind a force of will strong enough to control the free
electrons in the air--to create...."

He paused, then finished quietly, "In my case, only shadows. And when
that mutation occurs a man doesn't need the gods of Venus to curse him.
I got only a little of it but that was enough."

       *       *       *       *       *

Broca said, "It is worth bearing pain to become a god. You had no
strength."

Heath smiled crookedly. "How many gods have come out of the Moonfire?"

Broca answered, "There will be one soon." Then he caught Alor by the
shoulders and pulled her to him, looking down into her face. "No," he
said. "Not one. Two."

"Perhaps," said Heath, "there will be three."

Broca turned and gave him a chill and level look. "I do not think," he
said, "that your strength is any greater now."

After that, for a long while, they did not speak. The _Ethne_
drifted on, gliding on the slow currents that moved between the
islands. Sometimes they sculled, the great blade of the sweep hidden in
a froth of flame. The golden glow brightened and grew and with it grew
the singing fire in their blood.

Heath stood erect and strong at the helm, the old Heath who had sailed
the Straits of Lhiva in the teeth of a summer gale and laughed about
it. All weariness, all pain, all weakness, were swept away. It was the
same with the others. Alor's head was high and Broca leaped up beside
the figurehead and gave a great ringing shout, a challenge to all the
gods there were to stop him.

Heath found himself looking into Alor's eyes. She smiled, an aching
thing of tears and tenderness and farewell.

"I think none of us will live," she whispered. "May you find your
shadow, David, before you die."

Then Broca had turned toward them once more and the moment was gone.

Within the veil of the Moonfire there was no day nor night nor time.
Heath had no idea how long the _Ethne's_ purple hull rode the
golden current. The tingling force spread through his whole body and
pulsed and strengthened until he was drunk with the pleasure of it and
the islands slipped by, and there was no sound or movement but their
own in all that solemn sea.

And at last he saw ahead of him the supernal brightness that poured
from the heart of the Moonfire, the living core of all the brightness
of the mist. He saw the land, lifting dark and vague, drowned in the
burning haze, and he steered toward it along the remembered way. There
was no fear in him now. He was beyond fear.

Broca cried out suddenly, "A ship!"

Heath nodded. "It was there before. It will be there when the next man
finds his way here."

Two long arms of the island reached out to form a ragged bay. The
_Ethne_ entered it. They passed the derelict, floating patiently,
untouched here by wind or tide or ocean rot. Her blue sail was furled,
her rigging all neat and ready. She waited to begin the voyage home.
She would wait a long, long time.

As they neared the land they sighted other ships. They had not moved
nor changed since Heath had seen them last, three years ago.

A scant few they were, that had lived to find the Dragon's Throat and
pass it, that had survived the Upper Seas and the island maze of the
Moonfire and had found their goal at last. Some of them floated still
where their crews had left them, their sad sails drooping from the
yards.

Others lay on their sides on the beach, as though in sleep. There were
strange old keels that had not been seen on the seas of Venus for a
thousand years. The golden mist preserved them and they waited like a
pack of faithful dogs for their masters to return.

Heath brought the _Ethne_ into shore at the same spot where he had
beached her before. She grounded gently and he led the way over the
side. He remembered the queer crumbling texture of the dark earth under
his feet. He was shaken with the force that throbbed in his flesh. As
before it hovered now on the edge of pain.

He led the way inland and no one spoke.

The mist thickened around them, filled with dancing sparks of light.
The bay was lost behind its wreathing curtain. They walked forward and
the ground began to rise under their feet slowly. They moved as in a
dream and the light and the silence crushed them with a great awe.

They came upon a dead man.

He lay upon his face, his arms stretched out toward the mystery that
lay beyond, his hands still yearning toward the glory he had never
reached. They did not disturb him.

Mist, heavier, the glow brightening, the golden motes whirling and
flickering in a madder dance. Heath listened to the voice of pain that
spoke within him, rising with every step he took toward a soundless
scream.

_I remember, I remember! The bones, the flesh, the brain, each atom
of them a separate flame, bursting, tearing to be free. I cannot go
on, I cannot bear it! Soon I shall waken, safe in the mud behind
Kalruna's._

But he did not wake and the ground rose steadily under his feet and
there was a madness on him, a passion and a suffering that were beyond
man's strength to endure. Yet he endured.

The swirling motes began to shape themselves into vague figures,
formless giants that towered and strode around them. Heath heard
Alor's moan of terror and forced himself to say, "They're nothing.
Shadows out of our own minds. The beginning of the power."

Farther they went and farther still, and then at last Heath stopped and
flung up his arm to point, looking at Broca.

"Your godhead lies there. Go and take it!"

The eyes of the barbarian were dazed and wild, fixed on the dark dim
line of the crater that showed in the distance, fixed on the incredible
glory that shone there.

"It beats," he whispered, "like the beating of a heart."

Alor drew back, away from him, staring at the light. "I am afraid," she
said. "I will not go." Heath saw that her face was agonized, her body
shaken like his own. Her voice rose in a wail. "I can't go! I can't
stand it. I'm dying!" Suddenly she caught Heath's hands. "David, take
me back. _Take me back!_"

Before he could think or speak Broca had torn Alor away from him and
struck him a great swinging blow. Heath fell to the ground and the last
thing he heard was Alor's voice crying his name.



                              CHAPTER VI

                          _End of the Dream_


Heath was not unconscious long, for when he lifted his head again he
could still see the others in the distance. Broca was running like a
madman up the slope of the crater, carrying Alor in his arms. Ghostly
and indistinct, he stood for an instant on the edge. Then he leaped
over and was gone.

[Illustration: Ghostly and indistinct, Broca stood with Alor in his
arms.]

Heath was alone.

He lay still, fighting to keep his mind steady, struggling against the
torture of his flesh.

"Ethne, Ethne," he whispered. "This is the end of the dream."

He began to crawl, inch by bitter inch, toward the heart of the
Moonfire.

He was closer to it now than he had been before. The strange rough
earth cut his hands and his bare knees. The blood ran but the pain of
it was less than a pinprick against the cosmic agony of the Moonfire.
Broca must have suffered too, yet he had gone running to his fate.
Perhaps his nervous system was duller, more resistant to shock. Or
perhaps it was simply that his lust for power carried him on.

Heath had no wish for power. He did not wish to be a god. He wished
only to die and he knew that he was going to very soon. But before he
died he would do what he had failed to do before. He would bring Ethne
back. He would hear her voice again and look into her eyes and they
would wait together for the final dark.

Her image would vanish with his death, for then mind and memory would
be gone. But he would not see the life go out of her as he had all
those years ago by the Sea of Morning Opals. She would be with him
until the end, sweet and loving and merry, as she had always been.

He said her name over and over again as he crawled. He tried to think
of nothing else, so that he might forget the terrible unhuman things
that were happening within him.

"Ethne, Ethne," he whispered. His hands clawed the earth and his knees
scraped it and the brilliance of the Moonfire wrapped him in golden
banners of mist. Yet he would not stop, though the soul was shaken out
of him.

He reached the edge of the crater and looked down upon the heart of the
Moonfire.

The whole vast crater was a sea of glowing vapor, so dense that it
moved in little rippling waves, tipped with a sparkling froth. There
was an island in that sea, a shape like a fallen mountain that burned
with a blinding intensity, so great that only the eyes of a god could
bear to look at it.

_It rode in the clouds like a disc of fire._

Heath knew that his guess was right. It did not matter. Body of a
sleeping god or scrap of a fallen moon--it would bring Ethne back to
him and for that was all he cared.

He dragged himself over the edge and let himself go, down the farther
slope. He screamed once when the vapor closed over him.

After that there was a period of utter strangeness.

It seemed that some force separated the atoms that composed the
organism called David Heath and reshuffled them into a different
pattern. There was a wrench, an agony beyond anything he had known
before and then, abruptly, the pain was gone. His body felt well and
whole, his mind was awake, alert and clear with a dawning awareness of
new power.

He looked down at himself, ran his hands over his face. He had not
changed. And yet he knew that he was different. He had taken the full
force of the radiation this time and apparently it had completed the
change begun three years ago. He was not the same David Heath, perhaps,
but he was no longer trapped in the no-man's-land between the old and
the new.

He no longer felt that he was going to die and he no longer wished to.
He was filled with a great strength and a great joy. He could bring
his Ethne back now and they could live on together here in the golden
garden of the Moonfire.

It would have to be here. He was sure of that. He had only been into
the fringe of the Moonfire before, but he did not believe that that was
the whole reason why he could create nothing but shadows. There was
not a sufficient concentration of the raw energy upon which the mind's
telekinetic power worked.

Probably, even in the outer mists of the Moonfire, there were not
enough free electrons. But here, close to the source, the air was
raging with them. Raw stuff of matter, to be shaped and formed.

David Heath rose to his feet. He lifted his head and his arms reached
out longingly. Straight and shining and strong he stood in the living
light and his dark face was the face of a happy god.

"Ethne," he whispered. "Ethne." This is not the end of the dream, but
the beginning!

And she came.

By the power, the exultant strength that was in him, Heath brought her
out of the Moonfire. Ethne, slim and smiling, indistinct at first, a
shadow in the mist, but growing clearer, coming toward him. He could
see her white limbs, the pale flame of her hair, her red mouth bold and
sweet, her wistful eyes.

Heath recoiled with a cry. It was not Ethne who stood before him. It
was Alor.

For a time he could not move but stared at what he had created. The
apparition smiled at him and her face was the face of a woman who has
found love and with it the whole world.

"No," he said. "It isn't you I want. It's Ethne!" He struck the
thought of Alor from his mind and the image faded and once again he
called Ethne to him.

       *       *       *       *       *

And when she came it was not Ethne but Alor.

He destroyed the vision. Rage and disappointment almost too great to
bear drove him to wander in the fog. Alor, Alor! Why did that wench of
the temple gardens haunt him now?

He hated her, yet her name sang in his heart and would not be silenced.
He could not forget how she had kissed him and how her eyes had looked
then and how her last desperate cry had been for him.

He could not forget that his own heart had shaped her image while only
his mind, his conscious mind, had said the name of Ethne.

He sat down and bent his head over his knees and wept, because he
knew now that this was the end of the dream. He had lost the old love
forever without knowing it. It was a cruel thing, but it was true. He
had to make his peace with it.

And already Alor might be dead.

That thought cut short his grieving for what was gone. He leaped up,
filled with dread. He stood for a moment, looking wildly about, and the
vapor was like golden water so that he could see only a few feet away.
Then he began to run, shouting her name.

For what might have been centuries in that timeless place he ran,
searching for her. There was no answer to his cries. Sometimes he would
see a dim figure crouching in the mist, and he would think that he had
found her but each time it was the body of a man, dead for God knew
how long. They were all alike. They were emaciated, as though they had
died of starvation and they were all smiling. There seemed to be lost
visions still in their open eyes.

These were the gods of the Moonfire--the handful of men through all the
ages who had fought their way through to the ultimate goal.

Heath saw the cruelty of the jest. A man could find godhead in the
golden lake. He could create his own world within it. But he could
never leave it unless he were willing to leave also the world in which
he was king. They would have learned that, these men, as they started
back toward the harbor, away from the source.

Or perhaps there was more to it. Perhaps they never tried to leave.

Heath went on through the beautiful unchanging mist, calling Alor's
name, and there was no answer. He realized that it was becoming more
difficult for him to keep his mind on his quest. Half-formed images
flickered vaguely around him. He grew excited and there was an urgency
in him to stop and bring the visions clear, to build and create.

He fought off the temptation but there came a time when he had to stop
because he was too tired to go on. He sank down and the hopelessness of
his search came over him. Alor was gone and he could never find her.
In utter dejection he crouched there, his face buried in his hands,
thinking of her, and all at once he heard her voice speaking his name.
He started up and she was there, holding out her hands to him.

He caught her to him and stroked her hair and kissed her, half sobbing
with joy at having found her. Then a sudden thought came to him. He
drew back and said, "Are you really Alor or only the shadow of my mind?"

She did not answer but only held up her mouth to be kissed again.

Heath turned away, too weary and hopeless even to destroy the vision.
And then he thought, "Why should I destroy it? If the woman is lost to
me why shouldn't I keep the dream?"

He looked at her again and she was Alor, clothed in warm flesh,
eager-eyed.

The temptation swept over him again and this time he did not fight it.
He was a god, whether he wished it or not. He would create.

He threw the whole force of his mind against the golden mist, and the
intoxication of sheer power made him drunk and mad with joy.

The glowing cloud drew back to become a horizon and a sky. Under
Heath's feet an island grew, warm sweet earth, rich with grass
and rioting with flowers, a paradise lost in a dreaming sea.
Wavelets whispered on the wide beaches, the drooping fronds of the
_liha_-trees stirred lazily in the wind and bright birds darted,
singing. Snug in the little cove a ship floated, a lovely thing that
angels might have built.

Perfection, the unattainable wish of the soul. And Alor was with him to
share it.

He knew now why no one had ever come out of the Moonfire.

He took the vision of Alor by the hand. He wandered with it along the
beaches and presently he was aware of something missing. He smiled,
and once again the little dragon rode his shoulder and he stroked it
and there was no least flaw in this Elysium. David Heath had found his
godhead.

But some stubborn corner of his heart betrayed him. It said, _This is
all a lie and Alor waits for you. If you tarry you and she will be as
those others, who are dead and smiling in the Moonfire._

He did not want to listen. He was happy. But something made him listen
and he knew that as long as the real Alor lived he could not really be
content with a dream. He knew that he must destroy this paradise before
it destroyed him. He knew that the Moonfire was a deadly thing and that
men could not be given the power of gods and continue sane.

And yet he could not destroy the island. He could not!

Horror overcame him that he had so far succumbed, that he could no
longer control his own will. And he destroyed the island and the sea
and the lovely ship and it was harder than if he had torn his own flesh
from the bones.

And he destroyed the vision of Alor.

He knew that if he wished to escape the madness and the death of the
Moonfire he must not again create so much as a blade of grass. Nothing.
Because he would never again have the strength to resist the unholy joy
of creation.



                              CHAPTER VII

                           _To Walk Divine_


Once more he ran shouting through the golden fog. And it might have
been a year or only a moment later that he heard Alor's voice very
faintly in the distance, calling his name.

He followed the sound, crying out more loudly, but he did not hear her
again. Then, looming in shadowy grandeur through the mist, he saw a
castle. It was a typical Upland stronghold but it was larger than the
castle of any barbarian king and it was built out of one huge crimson
jewel of the sort called Dragon's Blood.

Heath knew that he was seeing part of Broca's dream.

Steps of beaten gold led up to a greater door. Two tall warriors,
harness blazing with gems, stood guard. Heath went between them and
they caught and held him fast. Broca's hatred for the Earthman was
implicit in the beings his mind created.

Heath tried to tear himself free but their strength was more than
human. They took him down fantastic corridors, over floors of pearl and
crystal and precious metals. The walls were lined with open chests,
full of every sort of treasure the barbarian mind could conceive.
Slaves went silent-footed on their errands and the air was heavy with
perfume and spices. Heath thought how strange it was to walk through
the halls of another man's dream.

He was brought into a vast room where many people feasted. There were
harpists and singers and dancing girls and throngs of slaves, men who
wrestled and men who fought and danced with swords. The men and women
at the long tables looked like chieftains and their wives but they wore
plain leather and tunics without decoration, so that Broca's guardsmen
and even his slaves were more resplendent than they.

Above the shouting and the revelry Broca sat, high on a throne-chair
that was made like a silver dragon with its jeweled wings spread wide.
He wore magnificent harness and a carved diamond that only a high king
may wear hung between his eyebrows. He drank wine out of a golden cup
and watched the feasting with eyes that had in them no smallest flicker
of humanity. God or demon, Broca was no longer a man.

Alor sat beside him. She wore the robes of a queen but her face was
hidden in her hands and her body was still as death.

Heath's cry carried across all the noise of the feast. Broca leaped to
his feet and an abrupt silence fell. Everyone, guards, chieftains and
slaves, turned to watch as Heath was led toward the throne--and they
all hated him as Broca hated.

Alor raised her head and looked into his eyes. And she asked, in his
own words, "Are you really David or only the shadow of my mind?"

"I am David," he told her and was glad he had destroyed his paradise.

Broca's mad gaze fixed on Heath. "I didn't think you had the strength,"
he said, and then he laughed. "But you're not a god! You stand there
captive and you have no power."

Heath knew that he could fight Broca on his own grounds but he did
not dare. One taste of that ecstasy had almost destroyed him. If he
tried it again he knew that he and the barbarian would hurl their
shadow-armies against each other as long as they lived and he would be
as mad as Broca.

He looked about him at the hostile creatures who were solid and real
enough to kill him at Broca's word. Then he said to Alor, "Do you wish
to stay here now?"

"I wish to go out of the Moonfire with you, David, if I can. If not I
wish to die."

The poison had not touched her yet. She had come without desire. Though
she had bathed in the Moonfire she was still sane.

Heath turned to Broca. "You see, she isn't worthy of you."

Broca's face was dark with fury. He took Alor between his great hands
and said, "You will stay with me. You're part of me. Listen, Alor.
There's nothing I can't give you. I'll build other castles, other
tribes, and I'll subdue them and put them in your lap. God and goddess
together, Alor! We'll reign in glory."

"I'm no goddess," Alor said. "Let me go."

And Broca said, "I'll kill you, first." His gaze lowered on Heath.
"I'll kill you both."

Heath said, "Do the high gods stoop to tread on ants and worms? We
don't deserve such honor, she and I. We're weak and even the Moonfire
can't give us strength."

He saw the flicker of thought in Broca's face and went on. "You're
all-powerful, there's nothing you can't do. Why burden yourself with
a mate too weak to worship you? Create another Alor, Broca! Create a
goddess worthy of you!"

After a moment Alor said, "Create a woman who can love you, Broca, and
let us go."

For a time there was silence in the place. The feasters and the dancers
and the slaves stood without moving and their eyes glittered in the
eerie light. And then Broca nodded.

"It is well," he said. "Stand up, Alor."

       *       *       *       *       *

She stood. The look of power came into the face of the tall barbarian,
the wild joy of molding heart's desire out of nothingness. Out of the
golden air he shaped another Alor. She was not a woman but a thing of
snow and flame and wonder, so that beside her the reality appeared drab
and beautiless. She mounted the throne and sat beside her creator and
put her hand in his and smiled.

Broca willed the guardsmen to let Heath free. He went to Alor and Broca
said contemptuously. "Get out of my sight."

They went together across the crowded place, toward the archway through
which Heath had entered. Still there was silence and no one moved.

As they reached the archway it vanished, becoming solid wall. Behind
them Broca laughed and suddenly the company burst also into wild
jeering laughter.

Heath caught Alor tighter by the hand and led her toward another door.
It, too, disappeared and the mocking laughter screamed and echoed from
the vault.

Broca shouted, "Did you think that I would let you go--you two who
betrayed me when I was a man? Even a god can remember!"

Heath saw that the guardsmen and the others were closing in, and he saw
how their eyes gleamed. He was filled with a black fear and he put Alor
behind him.

Broca cried. "Weakling! Even to save your life, you can't create!"

It was true. He dared not. The shadow-people drew in upon him with
their soulless eyes and their faces that were mirrors of the urge to
kill.

And then, suddenly, the answer came. Heath's answer rang back. "I will
not create--_but I will destroy!_"

Once again he threw the strength of his mind against the Moonfire but
this time there was no unhealthy lure to what he did. There was no
desire in him but his love for Alor and the need to keep her safe.

The hands of the shadow-people reached out and dragged him away from
Alor. He heard her scream and he knew that if he failed they would both
be torn to pieces. He summoned all the force that was in him, all the
love.

He saw the faces of the shadow-people grow distorted and blurred. He
felt their grip weaken and suddenly they were only shadows, a dim
multitude in a crumbling castle of dreams.

Broca's goddess faded with the dragon throne and Broca's kingly harness
was only a web of memories half-seen above the plain leather.

Broca leaped to his feet with a wild, hoarse cry.

Heath could feel how their two minds locked and swayed on that strange
battleground. And as Broca fought to hold his vision, willing the
particles of energy into the semblance of matter, so Heath fought to
tear them down, to disperse them. For a time the shadows held in that
half-world between existence and nothingness.

Then the walls of the castle wavered and ran like red water and were
gone. The goddess Alor, the dancers and the slaves and the chieftains,
all were gone, and there were only the golden fog and a tall barbarian,
stripped of his dreams, and the man Heath and the woman Alor.

Heath looked at Broca and said, "I am stronger than you, because I
threw away my godhead."

Broca panted, "I will build again!"

Heath said, "Build."

And he did, his eyes blazing, his massive body shaken with the force of
his will.

It was all there again, the castle and the multitude of feasters and
the jewels.

Broca screamed to his shadow-people. "_Kill!_"

But again, as their hands reached out to destroy, they began to weaken
and fade.

Heath cried, "If you want your kingdom, Broca, let us go!"

The castle was now no more than a ghostly outline. Broca's face was
beaded with sweat. His hands clawed the air. He swayed with his
terrible effort but Heath's dark eyes were bleak and stern. If he had
now the look of a god it was a god as ruthless and unshakeable as fate.

The vision crumbled and vanished.

Broca's head dropped. He would not look at them from the bitterness of
his defeat. "Get out," he whispered. "Go and let Vakor greet you."

Heath said, "It will be a cleaner death than this."

Alor took his hand and they walked away together through the golden
mist. They turned once to look back and already the castle walls were
built again, towering magnificent.

"He'll be happy," Heath said, "until he dies."

Alor shuddered. "Let us go."

They went together, away from the pulsing heart of the Moonfire, past
the slopes of the crater and down the long way to the harbor. Finally
they were aboard the _Ethne_ once again.

As they found their slow way out through the island maze Heath held
Alor in his arms. They did not speak. Their lips met often with the
poignancy of kisses that will not be for long. The golden mists thinned
and the fire faded in their blood and the heady sense of power was gone
but they did not know nor care.

They came at last out of the veil of the Moonfire and saw ahead the
green sail of the _Lahal_, where Vakor waited.

Alor whispered, "Good bye, my love, my David!" and left the bitterness
of her tears upon his mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

The two ships lay side by side in the still water. Vakor was waiting as
Heath and Alor came aboard with the other Children of the Moon beside
him. He motioned to the seamen who stood there also and said, "Seize
them."

But the men were afraid and would not touch them.

Heath saw their faces and wondered. Then, as he looked at Alor, he
realized that she was not as she had been before. There was something
clean and shining about her now, a new depth and a new calm strength,
and in her eyes a strange new beauty. He knew that he himself had
changed. They were no longer gods, he and Alor, but they had bathed in
the Moonfire and they would never again be quite the same.

He met Vakor's gaze and was not afraid.

The cruel, wolfish face of the priest lost some of its assurance. A
queer look of doubt crossed over it.

He said, "Where is Broca?"

"We left him there, building empires in the mist."

"At the heart of the Moonfire?"

"Yes."

"You lie!" cried Vakor. "You could not have come back yourselves, from
the heart of the sleeping god. No one ever has." But still the doubt
was there.

Heath shrugged. "It doesn't really matter," he said, "whether you
believe or not."

There was a long, strange silence. Then the four tall priests in their
black tunics said to Vakor, "We must believe. Look into their eyes."

With a solemn ritual gesture they stepped back and left Vakor alone.

Vakor whispered, "It can't be true. The law, the tabu is built on that
rock. Men will come out of the fringe as you did, Heath, wrecked and
cursed by their blasphemy. But not from the Moonfire itself. Never!
That is why the law was made, lest all of Venus die in dreams."

Alor said quietly, "All those others wanted power. We wanted only love.
We needed nothing else."

Again there was silence while Vakor stared at them and struggled with
himself. Then, very slowly, he said, "You are beyond my power. The
sleeping god received you and has chosen to let you go unscathed. I am
only a Child of the Moon. I may not judge."

He covered his face and turned away.

One of the lesser priests spoke to Johor. "Let them be given men for
their oars."

And Heath and Alor understood that they were free.

Weeks later, Heath and Alor stood at dawn on the shore of the Sea of
Morning Opals. The breeze was strong off the land. It filled the
golden sail of the _Ethne_, so that she strained at her mooring
lines, eager to be free.

Heath bent and cast them off.

They stood together silently and watched as the little ship gathered
speed, going lightly, sweetly and alone into the glory of the morning.
The ivory image that was her figurehead lifted its arms to the dawn and
smiled and Heath waited there until the last bright gleam of the sail
was lost and with it the last of his old life, his memories and his
dreams.

Alor touched him gently. He turned and took her in his arms, and they
walked away under the _liha_-trees, while the young day brightened
in the sky. And they thought how the light of the sun they never saw
was more beautiful and full of promise than all the naked wonder of the
Moonfire that they had held within their hands.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The moon that vanished" ***


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