Part 1 (2/2)
”We need a little rest out of the cold,” said Var. ”And food, if you can spare it. We're pursued.”
”Yes, yes. You shall have what I can give you. Make yourselves comfortable, and in one minute.... Pursued, eh? A pity. I see the world is as bad as it was when I was last in it.”
Hot food and drink were before them almost at once. The Watcher regarded them with compa.s.sion as their eyes brightened and some of the shadow of weariness lifted from them. ”You have stolen your enemy's daughter, no doubt, young man? Such things happened when I was young.”
Warming to the old man now, Var sketched his and Neena's history briefly. ”We should have been safe among my people by now. And before very long, I'm sure, I would have performed some deed which Groz would recognize as a worthy exploit, and would thus have healed the feud between our families. But our flight was found out too soon. They cut us off and forced us into the mountains, and now they are only a few hours behind us.”
”A pity, indeed. I would like to help you--but, you understand, I am the Mountain Watcher. I must be above feuds and families.”
Var nodded somberly, thinking that an old recluse would in any case be able to do little for them against Groz and his violent kinsfolk.
”And what will you do now?”
Var grinned mirthlessly. ”We haven't much choice, since they're overtaking us. I have only one idea left: we can go where Groz may fear to follow us.”
”To the mountain, you mean.”
”And into it, if need be.”
The Watcher was broodingly silent; his eyes s.h.i.+fted to Neena, where she nestled by Var's side. He asked, ”And you--are you willing to follow your lover in this?”
Neena returned his gaze without flinching; then she looked sidelong at Var, and her lips curled with a proud and tender mockery. ”Follow? Why, I will lead, if his courage should fail him.”
The old man said, ”It is no part of my duty to dissuade you from this thing. You are free persons. But I must be sure that you know what you are doing. That is the second part of the law the First Watcher made: to guard lest the unwary and the ignorant should bring harm on themselves and on all men.”
”We know the stories,” Var said brusquely. ”In the hollow heart of their mountain the Ryzgas sleep, as they chose to do when their world crumbled. But if they are wakened, the mountain will tremble, and the Ryzgas will come forth.”
”Do you believe that?”
”As one believes stories.”
”It is true,” said the Watcher heavily. ”In my youth I penetrated farther into the mountain than anyone before, farther even than did the First Watcher. I did not see the sleepers, nor will any man until they come again, but I met their sentries, the sentinel machines that guard them now as they have for two thousand years. When I had gone that far, the mountain began to shake, the force that is in the Earth rumbled below, and I returned in time.” Now for the first time Var sensed the power in the old man's look, the power of four hundred years' wisdom.
Var stared down at his hands.
”The Ryzgas also were men,” said the Watcher. ”But they were such a race as the world has not seen before or since. There were tyrannies before the Ryzgas, there was l.u.s.t for power, and atrocious cruelty; but such tyranny, power, and cruelty as theirs, had never been known. They ruled the Earth for four generations, and the Earth was too little for them.
They laid the world waste, stripped it of metals and fuels and bored to its heart for energy, poisoned its seas and its air with the fume of their works, wrung its peoples dry for their labor ... and in each of those four generations they launched a s.h.i.+p of s.p.a.ce. They were great and evil as no other people has been, because they wanted the stars.
”Because of them we must build with dreams instead of iron, and our only fire is that of the Sun, and even now, two thousand years later, the Earth is still slowly recovering from the pangs and poison of that age.
If you turn up the sod in the plain where the wild herds graze, you will find numberless fragments of rusted or corroded metal, bits of gla.s.s and strange plastic substances, debris of artifacts still showing the marks of their shaping--the scattered wreckage of the things they made. And we--we too are a remnant, the descendants of the few out of all humanity that survived when the Ryzgas' world went down in flame and thunder.
”In the last generation of their power the Ryzgas knew by their science that the race of man would endure them no longer. They made ready their weapons, they mined the cities and the factories for destruction, making sure that their works and their knowledge would perish with them.
Meanwhile they redoubled the yoke and the punishments, hastening the completion of the last of the stars.h.i.+ps.
”From the memories that the old Watchers have left here, and from the memories of dead men that still echo in the air, I have gathered a picture of that world's end. I will show it to you....”
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