"I"m not sure I understand myself. Tarth is a primitive world. It is beyond our science. It is even beyond the science of Earth, I believe, and Earth is a millennium ahead of Tarth in its development. But Portox knew. Anyhow, someplace along the warp--in ordinary distances along the s.p.a.ce-time continuum perhaps a billion light years distant from either Earth or Tarth, is a third world. On the warp it is very close. The River of Ice leads to it. We call it the Place of the Dead."
"But the Golden Ape--?"
"--inhabits the so-called Place of the Dead. Their world was dying, but Portox saved them. I think ... the science is beyond me ... the entropy of their galaxy was running down ... their world perishing, freezing ... when somehow with his great science Portox claimed for their use the unavailable energy in their ... their thermodynamic system, and saved them."
"Why do you frown so?"
"Words. Words only. I don"t understand. I can only act."
"You can act," Ylia said, hugging herself tight against him. "For Tarth and the future."
"For Tarth and the future," Bram Forest said, but he hardly heard the words.
Ahead of them in the cold clear air a wall seemed to rise. It came up so suddenly, and, in fact, the air had cleared so suddenly from the accustomed murkiness, that Ylia was afraid. "It is in the legend," she whispered. "The Black Wall, Bram Forest. And beyond it--the Place of the Dead."
"More accurately, an edge-on view of the s.p.a.ce-warp, where it meets the normal world." But although he spoke the words of Portox, Bram Forest did not sound too confident.
"We"re coming closer to it, Bram. Hold me!"
He held her. There was nothing else he could do. The current swept the barge on inexorably. The Black Wall reared ahead of them, frowned down at them, seemed to block off all the rest of the universe and all reality whether of Earth or of Tarth....
The barge penetrated the wall. Black and solid-seeming, solid as stone, it yet offered no resistance. The barge disappeared within it.
Behind the barge, rope-trailing so close that its prow almost sc.r.a.ped the royal wood, was a skiff in which, shaking and afraid yet somehow triumphant because he had heard Bram Forest"s strange words, was Hultax the Abarian.
CHAPTER XV
_The Golden Ape_
Hultax the Abarian shook himself. He had lost consciousness as every nerve-ending in his body had screamed with pain. Did this have something to do with the warp--warping?--Bram Forest had mentioned.
Hultax the Abarian did not know. But he did know that he was alive, as alive as anyone could be or had a right to be in the Place of the Dead. And he did know, gratefully, that the intense cold of the River of Ice was gone.
He wondered how long he had been unconscious. He blinked his eyes. A balmy, pink-tinted sky. A pink sun, not on the horizon, when indeed the sun might be pink, but overhead. On the horizon--Hultax blinked again and thought he was mad--a second sun, smaller, paler, the ghost of green in color.
The royal barge was in ruins. It had piled up on some rocks. The bier of Jlomec, Prince of Nadia, had been thrown clear. He could see it on the bank, also in ruins. He stood up unsteadily, then waded through the shallow water in which he"d regained consciousness, over to the wreck of the royal barge. The fingers of his right hand were poised inches from the hilt of his whip-sword. Slay Bram Forest and the girl if the wreck hadn"t already killed them? He shook his head. Bram Forest knew more about this strange place, this world of the pink sun and the green sun, than he did.
He climbed over the wreckage, and finally came upon the two bodies. He went down on his knees beside them. They were covered with blood. They were broken--broken being the only word that could describe them. They had been crushed, perhaps by falling timber, perhaps by the bier of Jlomec as it hurtled over the side. There probably was not a bone in either of their bodies, at least a major bone, which had not been crushed.
They were dead.
With a craftiness which surprised even himself, Hultax remembered the dead Bram Forest"s words. It was the bracelet with the shining disc which gave Bram Forest the power to appear and disappear at will, as Retoc had described. Or, as Bram Forest had put it, to journey between the worlds. Carefully, Hultax took the bracelet--it was miraculously intact--from the crushed, broken arm of Bram Forest"s corpse. He circled his own arm with it and felt, or imagined he felt, an instantaneous source of power surge through his body. Without looking back at the broken bodies of the man and woman who had found love and, finding it, died in each other"s arms, he made his way from the river bank across a pleasant green meadow. Far in the distance he saw a dark blur which looked like a forest. It was many miles away, almost at the limit of vision.
Yet, incredibly, it seemed to rush up at him. It was not merely that Hultax the Abarian walked with a warrior"s long stride toward the forest. It was as if the forest rushed toward him. A different world.
He remembered Bram Forest"s words vaguely. A warped world? Something like that. Naturally, Hultax was afraid. This was the Place of the Dead, wasn"t it? But still, Bram Forest"s cool if little-understood scientific explanation quieted his fear. Besides, didn"t he have the bracelet-disc-amulet? What could happen to him now?
Byla.n.u.s the Golden Ape, only two-thousand seven hundred years old, quite young as Golden Apes went, saw the wreck of the barge from a great distance. He extended his vision through warp-s.p.a.ce and spotted the tiny figure of a man trudging away from the wreckage. Byla.n.u.s squinted, and shifted his b.u.t.tocks on the saddle. Byla.n.u.s was fifteen feet tall and weighed eight-hundred pounds. The steed he rode, about twice the size of an Earth elephant, looked like a blown-up cross between a Tarthian stad and an Earth horse.
Byla.n.u.s stared, then sat up very straight in his stirrups. Something gleamed on the man"s arm. Byla.n.u.s gaped.
It was the bracelet of Portox-saviour.
Byla.n.u.s used his will to psychokinesthize the man. The man, still apparently trudging along, sped toward him.
Byla.n.u.s climbed down from his stallion and prepared to bow, all fifteen feet and eight hundred pounds of him, before the man.
At first Hultax could think only of fleeing. Abruptly before him stood a monster-stad and a man. No, not a man. A man-like figure pelted with soft, smooth, l.u.s.terous, golden fur. The stad--the not-quite-stad--was five times bigger than a stad had a right to be. The man, even as he unexpectedly bent before Hultax, was almost three times Hultax"s height. Man? No, not a man. Hultax, rooted with fear to the spot, unable to run, opened his mouth to cry out. But his vocal chords were paralyzed.
This was no man. It was the Golden Ape of legend, the Golden Ape of the Place of the Dead....
"Portox-saviour," said the Golden Ape quite distinctly. Then he pointed a forefinger almost the size of Hultax" forearm at the bracelet Hultax wore.
Hultax took a deep breath and could feel the strength returning to his legs. Like all military officers, he was an opportunist. He had to be, for in battle one had to seize upon opportunity as soon as it appeared, if one were to win at all....
Hultax said, his voice surprisingly steady: "You may rise."
The Ape did so. The stallion pawed the ground, and great clods flew.
Hultax was trembling, but the Ape, speaking in Hultax" own language, in the language of all Tarth, said: "Are you really from Portox? It seems like only yesterday he was here although, of course, your people and mine measure time differently."
"I am from Portox," Hultax said. He wished he could keep his knees from trembling.
"Portox-saviour said that one day a man would come, to ask us for help even as Portox helped us in our time of troubles," the Ape proclaimed.
"Yes," Hultax muttered.
"What kind of help do you wish?"
Hultax stared, saying nothing. He did not know what to say. He lacked the imagination to make something up. Somehow, he knew it was terribly important. He knew without knowing how he knew that his life might depend on his answer.
"Well?" the Golden Ape asked gently.
"I ... that is...."
The Ape"s eyes narrowed as he looked down at Hultax. "You _are_ from Portox?"
"Yes, yes. Of course."
"I see you have the bracelet."