Part 31 (2/2)
”Did I not see you dispel those spouts of lightning? No common man could have done that.”
”Who knows what any man can do? This man can do one thing, that man can do another. But what all men can do is their duty; and to open their eyes to this, I must go to Sant, and if necessary lay down my life. Will you not still accompany me?”
”Yes,” said Tydomin, ”I will follow you to the end. It is all the more essential, because I keep on displeasing you with my remarks, and that means I have not yet learned my lesson properly.”
”Do not be humble, for humility is only self-judgment, and while we are thinking of self, we must be neglecting some action we could be planning or shaping in our mind.”
Tydomin continued to be uneasy and preoccupied.
”Why was Maskull not in the picture?” she asked.
”You dwell on this foreboding because you imagine it is tragical. There is nothing tragical in death, Tydomin, nor in life. There is only right and wrong. What arises from right or wrong action does not matter. We are not G.o.ds, constructing a world, but simple men and women, doing our immediate duty. We may die in Sant--so you have seen it; but the truth will go on living.”
”Spadevil, why do you choose Sant to start your work in?” asked Maskull.
”These men with fixed ideas seem to me the least likely of any to follow a new light.”
”Where a bad tree thrives, a good tree will flourish. But where no tree at all can be found, nothing will grow.”
”I understand you,” said Maskull. ”Here perhaps we are going to martyrdom, but elsewhere we should resemble men preaching to cattle.”
Shortly before sunset they arrived at the extremity of the upland plain, above which towered the black cliffs of the Sant Levels. A dizzy, artificially constructed staircase, of more than a thousand steps of varying depth, twisting and forking in order to conform to the angles of the precipices, led to the world overhead. In the place where they stood they were sheltered from the cutting winds. Branchspell, radiantly s.h.i.+ning at last, but on the point of sinking, filled the cloudy sky with violent, lurid colors, some of the combinations of which were new to Maskull. The circle of the horizon was so gigantic, that had he been suddenly carried back to Earth, he would by comparison have fancied himself to be moving beneath the dome of some little, closed-in cathedral. He realised that he was on a foreign planet. But he was not stirred or uplifted by the knowledge; he was conscious only of moral ideas. Looking backward, he saw the plain, which for several miles past had been without vegetation, stretching back away to Disscourn.
So regular had been the ascent, and so great was the distance, that the huge pyramid looked nothing more than a slight swelling on the face of the earth.
Spadevil stopped, and gazed over the landscape in silence. In the evening sunlight his form looked more dense, dark, and real than ever before. His features were set hard in grimness.
He turned around to his companions. ”What is the greatest wonder, in all this wonderful scene?” he demanded.
”Acquaint us,” said Maskull.
”All that you see is born from pleasure, and moves on, from pleasure to pleasure. Nowhere is right to be found. It is Shaping's world.”
”There is another wonder,” said Tydomin, and she pointed her finger toward the sky overhead.
A small cloud, so low down that it was perhaps not more than five hundred feet above them, was sailing along in front of the dark wall of cliff. It was in the exact shape of an open human hand, with downward-pointing fingers. It was stained crimson by the sun; and one or two tiny cloudlets beneath the fingers looked like falling drops of blood.
”Who can doubt now that our death is close at hand?” said Tydomin. ”I have been close to death twice today. The first time I was ready, but now I am more ready, for I shall die side by side with the man who has given me my first happiness.”
”Do not think of death, but of right persistence,” replied Spadevil. ”I am not here to tremble before Shaping's portents; but to s.n.a.t.c.h men from him.”
He at once proceeded to lead the way up the staircase. Tydomin gazed upward after him for a moment, with an odd, wors.h.i.+ping light in her eyes. Then she followed him, the second of the party. Maskull climbed last. He was travel stained, unkempt, and very tired; but his soul was at peace. As they steadily ascended the almost perpendicular stairs, the sun got higher in the sky. Its light dyed their bodies a ruddy gold.
They gained the top. There they found rolling in front of them, as far as the eye could see, a barren desert of white sand, broken here and there by large, jagged ma.s.ses of black rock. Tracts of the sand were reddened by the sinking sun. The vast expanse of sky was filled by evil-shaped clouds and wild colors. The freezing wind, flurrying across the desert, drove the fine particles of sand painfully against their faces.
”Where now do you take us?” asked Maskull.
”He who guards the old wisdom of Sant must give up that wisdom to me, that I may change it. What he says, others will say. I go to find Maulger.”
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