Chapter 17: Yuruk

“Yuruk,” I whispered, “you love us as the wheat field loves the hail; we are as welcome to you as the death cord to the condemned. Lo, a door opened into a land of unpleasant dreams you thought sealed, and we came through. Answer my questions truthfully and it may be that we shall return through that door.”

Interest welled up in the depths of the black eyes.

“There is a way from here,” he muttered. “Nor does it pass through--Them. I can show it to you.”

I had not been blind to the flash of malice, of cunning, that had shot across the wrinkled face.

“Where does that way lead?” I asked. “There were those who sought us; men clad in armor with javelins and arrows. Does your way lead to them, Yuruk?”

For a time he hesitated, the lashless lids half closed.

“Yes,” he said sullenly. “The way leads to them; to their place. But will it not be safer for you there--among your kind?”

“I don’t know that it will,” I answered promptly. “Those who are unlike us smote those who are like us and drove them back when they would have taken and slain us. Why is it not better to remain with them than to go to our kind who would destroy us?”

“They would not,” he said “If you gave them--her.” He thrust a long thumb backward toward sleeping Ruth. “Cherkis would forgive much for her. And why should you not? She is only a woman.”

He spat--in a way that made me want to kill him.

“Besides,” he ended, “have you no arts to amuse him?”

“Cherkis?” I asked.

“Cherkis,” he whined. “Is Yuruk a fool not to know that in the world without, new things have arisen since long ago we fled from Iskander into the secret valley? What have you to beguile Cherkis beyond this woman flesh? Much, I think. Go then to him--unafraid.”

Cherkis? There was a familiar sound to that. Cherkis? Of course--it was the name of Xerxes, the Persian Conqueror, corrupted by time into this--Cherkis. And Iskander? Equally, of course--Alexander. Ventnor had been right.

“Yuruk,” I demanded directly, “is she whom you call goddess--Norhala--of the people of Cherkis?”

“Long ago,” he answered; “long, long ago there was trouble in their city, even in the great dwelling place of Cherkis. I fled with her who was the mother of the goddess. There were twenty of us; and we fled here--by the way which I will show you--”

He leered cunningly; I gave no sign of interest.

“She who was the mother of the goddess found favor in the sight of the ruler here,” he went on. “But after a time she grew old and ugly and withered. So he slew her--like a little mound of dust she danced and blew away after he had slain her; and also he slew others who had grown displeasing to him. He blasted me--as he was blasted--” He pointed to Ventnor.

“Then it was that, recovering, I found my crooked shoulder. The goddess was born here. She is kin to Him Who Rules! How else could she shed the lightnings? Was not the father of Iskander the god Zeus Ammon, who came to Iskander’s mother in the form of a great snake? Well? At any rate the goddess was born--shedder of the lightnings even from her birth. And she is as you see her.

“Cleave to your kind! Cleave to your kind!” Suddenly he shrilled. “Better is it to be whipped by your brother than to be eaten by the tiger. Cleave to your kind. Look--I will show you the way to them.”

He sprang to his feet, clasped my wrist in one of his long hands, led me through the curtained oval into the cylindrical hall, parted the curtainings of Norhala’s bedroom and pushed me within. Over the floor he slid, still holding fast to me, and pressed against the farther wall.

An ovoid slice of the gemlike material slid aside, revealing a doorway. I glimpsed a path, a trail, leading into a forest pallid green beneath the wan light. This way thrust itself like a black tongue into the boskage and vanished in the depths.

“Follow it.” He pointed. “Take those who came with you and follow it.”