The Valley of Creation

river. Silent as shadows, they followed the winding forest ways into the city.

Night lay heavy on Anshan. The long forested avenues brooded, deserted and silent. Where for countless centuries the hoofed and padded feet of the Clans had walked, the dust and the dry leaves blew lonely on the wind and even the birds had gone.

The bubble-domes and the towers glistened cold as black ice under the rising moon and, where the buildings fronted on the forest ways, the empty doorways watched them pass and gaped in silent woe.

Where are they now, the children of the Brotherhood? Where have they gone, the tall hunters, and the Winged Ones, and the mothers with their cubs?

The trees made a sound of weeping in the night wind, and they were answered by the hollow voices of the eyrie-towers high above, where the nests of the eagles had fallen into dust.

Where the Humanites lived, in the midst of this desertion, torches burned inside the walls, so that here and there a building would burst upon the darkness in a blaze of sullen light. But there was no sound of revelry or excitement. The Humanites hovered on the edge of war. They were tensely ready but they were not gay.

No one saw the four beasts who went swiftly and quietly down the dark forest avenues toward the palace of Anshan. Near it, Nelson heard the stallion's angry snort. The wind had brought him scent of his mates, those enslaved ones penned in the Humanite stables.

'Silence!' snapped Tark. 'Do you want to rouse the city?'

'My Clan-brothers!' came Hatha's fierce thought. 'Slaves of the Humanites. Should I rejoice?' His hoof-beats quickened. 'By the Cavern, I'll free them!'

Tark sprang at his nose, his teeth clicking purposely just close enough to give the stallion pause.

'You'll ruin everything,' Tark said furiously. 'Our first task is to get Barin safely away. After that we'll see.'

'He is right, Hatha,' came Ei's thought.

Reluctantly, sullenly, Hatha consented.

'You and Ei must wait here,' Tark said. 'The outlander and I can move better inside. Keep watch and be ready if we meet trouble.'

The two waited, the eagle perched high in a tree-top, the stallion sulking in the darkness below. Nelson and Tark were two slinking wolf-shadows as they went through the darkness toward the palace. They avoided the big open doorway through which they could glimpse the great torchlit entrance hall.

Instead they circled the palace until they found a side entrance, inside which they could scent no guards. They slipped into the building and paused, sniffing. Then on through the dusty deserted corridors of the sleeping pile they went and came at last to the rooms where Nelson and his comrades had been quartered.

It is very strange, thought Nelson, that now I creep into these rooms on four feet and that, before I enter, I know that only Li Kin is here.

One dim lamp burned in the room. The little Chinese lay on his cot, his face relaxed in sleep-the face, Nelson thought, of an unhappy child, hollowed with a long hunger of the soul. He felt a warm surge of affection for Li Kin.

'Wait,' he told Tark. 'I will wake him.'

Tark waited, his nose wrinkling with disgust at the alien odors of the outlanders. Nelson padded over to the cot, wondering how to wake Li Kin without causing him to cry out in terror and bring the others running. He felt that he could talk to Li Kin alone of all these men he had fought and drunk with for so long.

He hesitated over the sleeping man and Li Kin stirred and moaned uneasily. Then Nelson saw the dull platinum circle of the thought-crown that lay with Li Kin's things beside the bed. He picked it up carefully in his jaws and laid it by Li Kin's head. At the touch of the cold metal the Chinese stirred again and sighed.

The thought-crown was not in place but Nelson hoped that the contact would enable him to get through a message to Li Kin's relaxed mind. He remembered how he had heard Nsharra and Tark all those centuries ago in Yen Shi.

'Li Kin,' he sent his urgent thought, 'Wake, Li Kin, and do not fear. It is I, Eric Nelson.'

Over and over, soothingly, and presently Li Kin opened his eyes and said aloud in a startled voice. 'Who calls?'

Then he saw the gray wolf standing over him and Tark's eyes burning green in the shadows and his mouth opened for a scream.

Nelson leaped. He smothered the cry and crushed Li Kin's slight body with his own weight until he stopped struggling. Then he lifted the thought-crown again in his teeth and offered it. Staring wildly, Li Kin took the thing in shaking hands and put it on.

'Li, it is I — Eric Nelson!' he thought swiftly.

'Nelson?' came Li Kin's numb thought. His eyes dilated in horror. 'It is a nightmare. I am dreaming.'

Nelson's thoughts raced, telling the other what happened. Li Kin shook his head.

'Sorcery. The power of those who were before man.' Then, heavily, 'We did evil, Eric Nelson, to come to L'Lan with our weapons. For that evil we shall die.'

'Very probably,' Nelson answered, 'but just now I need your hands to release Barin, so that I can get my own hands back. Will you help?'

Li Kin nodded. It was a dazed, queer sort of nod. Nelson knew what Li Kin was thinking. He was thinking that the heavy sword of Fate was weighing upon the woven strand of his years and would presently cut it through and that, in the woven strand, there were few bright strands, very few among the many that were strained and drab.

'Of course,' nodded Li Kin. 'I will help.' He fumbled for his spectacles, put them on and rose, pulling his jacket straight. Then he went out with the two wolves trotting like two silent shadows at his heels.

The corridors were empty, the moonlight falling through the vaulted glass in a strange dusky light such as is seen only in dreams.

Li Kin's thought informed them, 'The others hold council.'

'Why aren't you with them?' Nelson asked.

Li Kin shrugged. 'I can better spend my time in sleep. You know how much my word weighs with Sloan.'

They came to the prison wing. Here as before the torches flared but now there were no guards. Nelson and Tark, who had slipped back into the shadows, rejoined the little Chinese.

Li Kin's thought was puzzled. 'I can't understand it. Shan Kar keeps the boy under guard at all times.'

Something came drifting to Nelson on the sluggish air. A little red whisper that made his nerve-ends ripple. He saw the hackles ridge up along Tark's spine and then the two of them ran ahead of Li Kin, going low to the ground with a slinking gait, up to the door of Barin's cell.

Before Li Kin unbarred the door, they knew what they would see.

Barin lay on the floor. The smell of death was on him, and the smell of blood. He had died only a short time before and he had not died easily. The reek of Piet Van Voss was strong in the little room.

Tark's sorrow burst from him in one wailing cry that was quickly checked. Nelson caught the wild, raging thought of the Clan-leader.

'I will avenge!'

Chapter XIII THE FIGHT IN THE PALACE

For a long moment they stood, the three of them, without movement or speech. The dead boy lay looking quietly into eternity, and there was no sound save the hissing of the torches as they burned. Nothing stirred but the flames, their light running ragged and uncertain over the gleaming walls.

Over and over, above his horror at the brutality of this thing, the thought tolled like a bell in Nelson's mind: Barin is dead, and I shall never be a man again.

It was a thought he could not face.

'I knew nothing of this,' said Li Kin out of the depths of shame — shame that his own kind could have done such a thing. 'I swear it.'