Shambleau and Others M Read online

  Nothing barred her way. In the dullness of her stupor she scarcely realized it, or expected any of the vague horrors that peopled the place to leap out upon her. Empty and unmenacing, the way stretched before her blindly stumbling feet. Only once did she hear the sound of another presence – the rasp of hoarse breathing and the scrape of a scaly hide against the stone – but it must have been outside the range of her own passage, for she encountered nothing.

  When she had come to the end and a cold wall rose up before her, it was scarcely more than automatic habit hat made her search along it with groping hand until she came to the mouth of the shaft. It sloped gently up into the dark. She crawled in, trailing her sword, until the rising incline and lowering roof forced her down upon her face. Then with toes and fingers she began to force herself up the spiral, slippery way.

  Before she had gone very far she was advancing without effort, scarcely realizing that it was against gravity she moved. The curious dizziness of the shaft had come over her, the strange feeling of change in the very substance of her body, and through the cloudy numbness of it she felt herself sliding round and round the spirals, without effort. Again, obscurely, she had the feeling that in the peculiar angles of this shaft was neither up nor down. And for a long while the dizzy circling went on.

  When the end came at last, and she felt her fingers gripping the edge of that upper opening which lay beneath the floor of Joiry’s lowest dungeons, she heaved herself up warily and lay for a while on the cold floor in the dark, while slowly the clouds of dizziness passed from her mind, leaving only that ominous weight within. When the darkness had ceased to circle about her, and the floor steadied, she got up dully and swung the cover back over the opening, her hands shuddering from the feel of the cold, smooth ring which had never seen daylight.

  When she turned from this task she was aware of the reason for the lessening in the gloom around her. A guttering light outlined the hole in the wall from which she had pulled the Stones – was it a century ago? The brilliance all but blinded her after her long sojourn through blackness, and she stood there awhile, swaying a little, one hand to her eyes, before she went out into the familiar torchlight she knew waited her beyond. Father Gervase, she was sure, anxiously waiting her return. But even he had not dared to follow her through the hole in the wall, down to the brink of the shaft.

  Somehow she felt that she should be giddy with relief at this safe homecoming, back to humanity again. But as she stumbled over the upward slope toward light and safety she was conscious of no more than the dullness of whatever unreleased horror it was which still lay so ominously upon her stunned soul.

  She came through the gaping hole in the masonry into the full glare of torches awaiting her, remembering with a wry inward smile how wide she had made the opening in anticipation of flight from something dreadful when she came back that way. Well, there was no flight from the horror she bore within her. It seemed to her that her heart was slowing, too, missing a beat now and then and staggering like a weary runner.

  She came out into the torchlight, stumbling with exhaustion, her mouth scarlet from the blood of her bitten lip and her bare greaved legs and bare sword-blade foul with the deaths of those little horrors that swarmed around the cave-mouth. From the tangle of red hair her eyes stared out with a bleak, frozen inward look, as of one who had seen nameless things. That keen, steel-bright beauty which had been hers was as dull and fouled as her sword-blade, and at the look in her eyes Father Gervase shuddered and crossed himself.

  5

  They were waiting for her in an uneasy group – the priest anxious and dark, Guillaume splendid in the trchlight, tall and arrogant, a handful of men-at-arms holding the guttering lights and shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. When she saw Guillaume the light that flared up in her eyes blotted out for a moment the bleak dreadfulness behind them, and her slowing heart leaped like a spurred horse, sending the blood riotously through her veins. Guillaume, magnificent in his armour, leaning upon his sword and staring down at her from his scornful height, the little black beard jutting. Guillaume, to whom Joiry had fallen. Guillaume.

  That which she carried at the core of her being was heavier than anything else in the world, so heavy she could scarcely keep her knees from bending, so heavy her heart laboured under its weight. Almost irresistibly she wanted to give way beneath it, to sink down and down under the crushing load, to lie prone and vanquished in the ice-grey, bleak place she was so dimly aware of through the clouds that were rising about her. But there was Guillaume, grim and grinning, and she hated him so very bitterly – she must make the effort. She must, at whatever cost, for she was coming to know that death lay in wait for her if she bore this burden long, that it was a two-edged weapon which could strike at its wielder if the blow were delayed too long. She knew this through the dim mists that were thickening in her brain, and she put all her strength into the immense effort it cost to cross the floor toward him. She stumbled a little, and made one faltering step and then another, and dropped her sword with a clang as she lifted her arms to him.

  He caught her strongly, in a hard, warm clasp, and she heard his laugh triumphant and hateful as he bent his head to take the kiss she was raising her mouth to offer. He must have seen, in that last moment before their lips met, the savage glare of victory in her eyes, and been startled. But he did not hesitate. His mouth was heavy upon hers.

  It was a long kiss. She felt him stiffen in her arms. She felt a coldness in the lips upon hers, and slowly the dark weight of what she bore lightened, lifted, cleared away from her cloudy mind. Strength flowed back through her richly. The whole world came alive to her once more. Presently she loosed his slack arms and stepped away, looking up into his face with a keen and dreadful triumph upon her own.

  She saw the ruddiness of him draining away, and the rigidity of stone coming over his scarred features. Only his eyes remained alive, and there was torment in them, and understanding. She was glad – she had wanted him to understand what it cost to take Joiry’s kiss unbidden. She smiled thinly into his tortured eyes, watching. And she saw something cold and alien seeping through him, permeating him slowly with some unnamable emotion which no man could ever have experienced before. She could not name it, but she saw it in his eyes – some dreadful emotion never made for flesh and blood to know, some iron despair such as only an unguessable being from the grey, formless void could have felt before – too hideously alien for any human creature to endure. Even she shuddered from the dreadful, cold bleakness looking out of his eyes, and knew as she watched that there must be many emotions and many fears and joys too far outside man’s comprehension for any being of flesh to undergo, and live. Greyly she saw it spreading through him, and the very substance of his body shuddered under that iron weight.

  And now came a visible, physical change. Watching, she was aghast to think that in her own body and upon her own soul she had borne the hif this dreadful flowering, and did not wonder that her heart had slowed under the unbearable weight of it. He was standing rigidly with arms half bent, just as he stood when she slid from his embrace. And now great shudders began to go over him, as if he were wavering in the torchlight, some grey-faced wraith in armour with torment in his eyes. She saw the sweat beading his forehead. She Saw a trickle of blood from his mouth, as if he had bitten through his lip in the agony of this new, incomprehensible emotion. Then a last shiver went over him violently, and he flung up his head, the little curling beard jutting ceilingward and the muscles of his strong throat corded, and from his lips broke a long, low cry of such utter, inhuman strangeness that Jirel felt coldness rippling through her veins and she put up her hands to her ears to shut it out. It meant something – it expressed some dreadful emotion that was neither sorrow nor despair nor anger, but infinitely alien and infinitely sad. Then his long legs buckled at the knees and he dropped with a clatter of mail and lay still on the stone floor.

  They knew he was dead. That was unmistakable in the way he lay. Jirel st
ood very still, looking down upon him, and strangely it seemed to her that all the lights in the world had gone out. A moment before he had been so big and vital, so magnificent in the torchlight – she could still feel his kiss upon her mouth, and the hard warmth of his arms …

  Suddenly and blindingly it came upon her what she had done. She knew now why such heady violence had flooded her whenever she thought of him – knew why the light-devil in her form had laughed so derisively – knew the price she must pay for taking a gift from a demon. She knew that there was no light anywhere in the world, now that Guillaume was gone.

  Father Gervase took her arm gently. She shook him off with an impatient shrug and dropped to one knee beside Guillaume’s body, bending her head so that the red hair fell forward to hide her tears.

  SHAMBLEAU

  MAN has conquered space before. You may be sure of that. Somewhere beyond the Egyptians, in that dimness out of which come echoes of half-mythical names – Atlantis, Mu – somewhere back of history’s first beginnings there must have been an age when mankind, like us today, built cities of steel to house its star-roving ships, and knew the names of the planets in their own native tongues – heard Venus’ people call their wet world ‘Shaardol’ in that soft, sweet slurring speech and mimicked Mars’ guttural ‘Lakkdiz’ from the harsh tongues of Mars’ dryland dwellers. You may be sure of it. Man has conquered Space before, and out of that conquest faint, faint echoes run still through a world that has forgotten the very fact of civilization which must have been as mighty as our own. There have been too many myths and legends for us to doubt it. The myth of the Medusa, for instance, can never have had its roots in the soil of Earth. That tale of the snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turned the gazer to stone never originated about any creature that Earth nourished. And those ancient Greeks who told the story must have remembered, dimly and half believing, a tale of antiquity about some strange being from one of the outlying planets their remotest ancestors once trod.

  ‘Shambleau! Ha … Shambleau!’ The wild hysteria of the mob rocketed from w to wall of Lakkdarol’s narrow streets and the storming of heavy boots over the slag-red pavement made an ominous undernote to that swelling bay, ‘Shambleau! Shambleau!’

  Northwest Smith heard it coming and stepped into the nearest doorway, laying a wary hand on his heat-gun’s grip, and his colourless eyes narrowed. Strange sounds were common enough in the streets of Earth’s latest colony on Mars – a raw, red little town where anything might happen, and very often did. But Northwest Smith, whose name is known and respected in every dive and wild outpost on a dozen wild planets, was a cautious man, despite his reputation. He set back against the wall and gripped his pistol, and heard the rising shout come nearer and nearer.

  Then into his range of vision flashed a red running figure, dodging like a hunted hare from shelter to shelter in the narrow street. It was a girl – a berry-brown girl in a single tattered garment whose scarlet burnt the eyes with its brilliance. She ran wearily, and he could hear her gasping breath from where he stood. As she came into view he saw her hesitate and lean one hand against the wall for support, and glance wildly around for shelter. She must not have seen him in the depths of the doorway, for as the bay of the mob grew louder and the pounding of feet sounded almost at the corner she gave a despairing little moan and dodged into the recess at his very side.

  When she saw him standing there, tall and leather-brown, hand on his heat-gun, she sobbed once, inarticulately, and collapsed at his feet, a huddle of burning scarlet and bare, brown limbs.

  Smith had not seen her face, but she was a girl, and sweetly made and in danger; and though he had not the reputation of a chivalrous man, something in her hopeless huddle at his feet touched that chord of sympathy for the underdog that stirs in every Earthman, and he pushed her gently into the corner behind him and jerked out his gun, just as the first of the running mob rounded the corner.

  It was a motley crowd, Earthmen and Martians and a sprinkling of Venusian swampmen and strange, nameless denizens of unnamed planets – a typical Lakkdarol mob. When the first of them turned the corner and saw the empty street before them there was a faltering in the rush, and the foremost spread out and began to search the doorways on both sides of the street.

  ‘Looking for something?’ Smith’s sardonic call sounded clear above the clamour of the mob.

  They turned. The shouting died for a moment as they took in the scene before them—tall Earthman in the space-explorer’s leathern garb, all one colour from the burning of savage suns save for the sinister pallor of his no-coloured eyes in a scarred and resolute face, gun in his steady hand and the scarlet girl crouched behind him, panting.

  The foremost of the crowd – a burly Earthman in tattered leather from which the Patrol insignia had been ripped away – stared for a moment with a strange expression of incredulity on his face overspreading the savage exultation of the chase. Then he let loose a deep-throated bellow, ‘Shambleau!’ and lunged forward. Behind him the mob took up the cry again, ‘Shambleau! Shambleau!’ and surged after.

  Smith, lounging negligently against the wall, arms folded and gun-hand draped over his left forearm, looked incapable of swift motion, but at the leader’s first forward step the pistol swept in a practised half-circle and the dazzle of blue-white heat leaping from its muzzle seared an arc in the slag pavement at his feet. It was an old gesture, and not a man in the crowd but understood it. The foremost recoiled swiftly against the surge of those in the rear, and for a moment there was confusion as the tides met and struggled. Smith’s mouth curled into a grim curve as he watched. The man in the mutilated Patrol uniform lifted threatening fist and stepped to the very edge of the deadline, while the crowd rocked to and fro behind him.

  ‘Are you crossing that line?’ queried Smith in an ominously gentle voice.

  ‘We want that girl!’

  ‘Come and get her!’ Recklessly Smith grinned into his face. He saw danger there, but his defiance was not the foolhardy gesture it seemed. An expert psychologist of mobs from long experience, he sensed no murder here. Not a gun had appeared in any hand in the crowd. They desired the girl with an inexplicable bloodthirstiness he was at a loss to understand, but towards himself he sensed no such fury. A mauling he might expect, but his life was in no danger. Guns would have appeared before now if they were coming out at all. So he grinned in the man’s angry face and leaned lazily against the wall.

  Behind their self-appointed leader the crowd milled impatiently, and threatening voices began to rise again. Smith heard the girl moan at his feet.

  ‘What do you want with her?’ he demanded.

  ‘She’s Shambleau! Shambleau, you fool! Kick her out of there – we’ll take care of her!’

  ‘I’m taking care of her,’ drawled Smith.

  ‘She’s Shambleau, I tell you! Damn your hide, man, we never let those things live! Kick her out here!’

  The repeated name had no meaning to him, but Smith’s innate stubborness rose defiantly as the crowd surged forward to the very edge of the arc, their clamour growing louder. ‘Shambleau! Kick her out here! Give us Shambleau! Shambleau!’

  Smith dropped his indolent pose like a cloak and planted both feet wide, swinging up his gun threateningly. ‘Keep back!’ he yelled. ‘She’s mine! Keep back!’

  He had no intention of using that heat-beam. He knew by now that they would not kill him unless he started the gun-play himself, and he did not mean to give up his life for any girl alive. But a severe mauling he expected, and he braced himself instinctively as the mob heaved within itself.

  To his astonishment a thing happened then that he had never known to happen before. At his shouted defiance the foremost of the mob – those who had heard him clearly – drew back a little, not in alarm but evidently surprised. The ex-Patrolman said, ‘Yours! She’s yours?’ in a voice from which puzzlement crowded out the anger.

  Smith spread his booted legs wide before the crouching figure and flourished his gun.


  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I’m keeping her! Stand back there!’

  The man stared at him wordlessly, and horror and disgust and incredulity mingled on his weather-beaten face. The incredulity triumphed for a moment and he said again:

  ‘Yours!’

  Smith nodded defiance.

  The man stepped back suddenly, unutterable contempt in his very pose. He waved an arm to the crowd and said loudly, ‘It’s – his!’ and the press melted away, gone silent, too, and the look of contempt spread from face to face.

  The ex-Patrolman spat on the slag-paved street and turned his back indifferently. ‘Keep her, then,’ he advised briefly over one shoulder. ‘But don’t let her out again in this town!’

  Smith stared in perplexity almost open-mouthed as the suddenly scornful mob began to break up. His mind was in a whirl. That such bloodthirsty animosity should vanish in a breath he could not believe. And the curious mingling of contempt and disgust on the faces he saw baffled him even more. Lakkdarol was anything but a puritan town – it did not enter his head for a moment that his claiming the brown girl as his own had caused that strangely shocked revulsion to spread through the crowd. No, it was something deeper-rooted than that. Instinctive, instant disgust had been in the faces he saw – they would have looked less so if he had admitted cannibalism or Pharol-worship.

  And they were leaving his vicinity as swiftly as if whatever unknowing sin he had committed were contagious. The street was emptying as rapidly as it had filled. He saw a sleek Venusian glance back over his shoulder as he turned the corner and sneer, ‘Shambleau!’ and the word awoke a new line of speculation in Smith’s mind. Shambleau! Vaguely of French origin, it must be. And strange enough to hear it from the lips of Venusians and Martian drylanders, but it was their use of it that puzzled him more. ‘We never let those things live,’ the ex-Patrolman had said. It reminded him dimly of something … an ancient line from some writing in his own tongue … ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ He smiled to himself at the similarity, and simultaneously was aware of the girl at his, elbow.