The Valley of Creation

Nick Sloan's face darkened and he started toward Shan Kar. Eric Nelson intervened hastily.,

'Sloan, wait! That platinum was real enough!'

Sloan stopped. 'So it was. And we're going to find its source. But we won't find it by listening to crazy talk of wild beasts plotting against men!'

'The beasts of the Brotherhood are not the brute beasts of your outer world!' flared Shan Kar. 'They are intelligent, as intelligent as men.'

He made a fierce gesture. 'I knew you would not believe! It was why I dared not tell you! But you at least should know I speak truth!' He pointed to Nelson.

Nelson felt a queer chill. He did have an uncanny conviction that Shan Kar was speaking the truth. But the impossible couldn't be true. A witch-girl and her pets, a crippled eagle, a queer native's fantastic talk-was he for these to throw away his firm footing on the everyday earth?

“L’Lan the golden where the ancient Brotherhood still lives'' whispered Li Kin, quoting. 'So that is what it means?'

Nick Sloan snapped the spell. 'This is all moonshine, but we can talk it out later! Right now I want to know what the danger is that you claim threatens us! How far are we now from L'Lan?'

Shan Kar pointed at the great wall of mountains that rose on the other side of the deep wooded gorge.

'The valley L'Lan lies on the other side of those mountains. We are that close! But getting into it will be perilous now.'

He hurried on. 'There is only one pass into the valley. It leads into it near the city Vruun which is the heart of the Brotherhood. Yet we must pass Vruun to reach Anshan, the city in the south which we Humanites hold.

'I hoped to creep through the pass and past Vruun without detection. But if the Brotherhood's scout gets word back of our coming they'll move to block us at the pass. That is why we must hurry!'

Nelson and Sloan and the other three grasped at least the urgency of the situation. They had, all of them, fought too many battles and made too many forced marches not to understand strategy.

Eric Nelson told Sloan, 'We'd better move as he says. We can get him to explain his queer statements later.'

Sloan nodded, frowning. 'He's either a liar or a superstitious fool. We'll find out later. Right now I smell trouble.'

The sun was setting. Darkness came with a swift rush as Shan Kar led their little caravan down into the wooded gorge.

The forest was a dark tangle of fir, scruboak and poplar. Beneath it, the brush was tindery and crackling from the long dry season. A mountain-stream brawled noisily along in the night somewhere nearby.

Shan Kar knew the trails. He turned southward and they moved after him, their ponies stumbling in the dark, Lefty Wister swearing in a monotonous whine each time his little steed staggered.

A cold wind whined down from the black mountains on their right. The trees stirred mournfully. Eric Nelson had a sudden strongly claustrophobic awareness of the huge ranges that shut them into this wild and forgotten pocket of the globe.

A wolf howled, a long swelling cry that came from somewhere up in the wooded slopes on the west side of the gorge.

Shan Kar turned in his saddle. 'Faster!' he rasped.

Nelson was drawn by some instinct to look up and, through the tracery of branches overhead, saw a dark, winged shape plane swiftly above the gorge. It was high, moving in searching loops and curves.

It screamed, an eagle cry echoing thinly down from the night. Almost at once the distant wolf-cry came again.

Shan Kar abruptly reined in his pony. 'They know we're coming! I must try to learn what faces us inside L'Lan!'

He had dismounted. Fumbling under his cloak, he brought out something that glinted oddly in the starlight.

Then Nelson glimpsed what it was — the hoop of platinum with the two quartz disks mounted on it, that odd ornament or instrument which had sparked the treasure-lure of their quest.

'What the—!' Sloan exploded harshly. 'If there's danger, we've no time to waste here!'

'Wait!' commanded Shan Kar. 'Wait and be silent! All depends on whether I can contact my friends!' He had put the platinum hoop upon his head like a crown. He crouched, his strange headgear glistening vaguely.

Nelson felt incredulous wonder. What was Shan Kar doing with the odd thing? What was it?

Chapter IV HIDDEN LAND

The moon was rising. As it gleamed above the mountains east of them, its lambent light poured down into the dark forest of the gorge like quicksilver trickling through a sieve.

Shan Kar remained crouched as a pool of the vague light widened around him. The little quartz disks on the headpiece of platinum he wore caught the light and shone brilliantly. The man's olive face was taut, his eyes stared, unseeing, into the darkness.

'What is it? What has happened now?' came Li Kin's anxious voice from the darkness.

Behind the little Chinese, Eric Nelson heard the rattle of the ponies' hoofs on stones and Lefty Wister cursing steadily.

'Cursed native mumbo-jumbo, that's all!' swore Nick Sloan. 'Are we going to stand here all night?'

Nelson laid a hand on the other's sleeve. 'Wait, Sloan. Shan Kar seems to know what he's doing.'

Again a wolf howled, this time a lonely wailing single cry, echoing away, infinitely pregnant with menace.

Shan Kar finally broke his taut immobility, leaping to his feet and jerking the platinum circlet from his head.

'I have talked with my people in Anshan. They warn that a force of the Brotherhood is on its way to cut us off inside the pass, and that their own warriors can't reach us in time to help!'

Talked? Talked how, Nelson wondered swiftly? Had mind somehow spoken to distant mind through the agency of the platinum crown? But how could a people who were desperate to obtain the ordinary weapons of the outer world possess such a super-scientific instrument as that implied?

Shan Kar was continuing urgently. 'We must get up through the pass and into L'Lan before they block us! All depends on that!'

Nelson shared the bafflement of the others. In this outlandish situation, they couldn't estimate the true magnitude of perils.

'How many men have the Brotherhood, your enemies, sent out to cut us off?' he demanded.

'Perhaps not many men' answered Shan Kar. 'But they have many who are not men. Too many for us.'

'More superstition,' spat Nick Sloan, disgustedly. 'He's trying to tell us there are intelligent beasts coming against us.'

Nelson hesitated. 'This Brotherhood may use trained beasts as fighters at that. Such a fight would be plenty messy. Especially in a narrow pass.'

Again, he was forced to make a quick decision based on information whose sources seemed too fantastic to be credited.

'Get the ponies moving!' he ordered. 'Whatever danger may be ahead, we'd be better off to meet it inside the valley than up in that pass.'

They started climbing out of the great gorge, Shan Kar leading them up a trail that twisted amid giant boulders and gaunt firs. Soon they glimpsed above them the crack of a pass that split the titanic moonlit wall of the range.

A pulse-quickening sense of expectation spurred Eric Nelson as he helped drag the ponies upward. What lay within that mighty wall of mountains, what guarded answer to the mysteries that seemed to deepen around them