The Conquest of the Moon Pool/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
THE WOOING OF LAKLA
I HAD slept soundly and dreamlessly. I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours—the facing of the weird Three.
"Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilized superstitions! Wake up, ye bogey-haunted man of scientific wisdom!"
Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a moment with quite real wrath. He lay back, roaring with laughter, and my anger was swept away.
"Doc," he said, very seriously, after this, "I know who the Three are!"
"Yes?" I queried with studied sarcasm.
"Yes," he mimicked. He paused under the menace of my look, grinned. "Yes, I know," he continued. "They're of the Tua-tha De, the old ones, the great people of Ireland; that's who they are!"
I shook my head.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked wearily.
"I think," I said cautiously, "that we face an evolution of highly intelligent beings from ancestral sources radically removed from those through which mankind ascended. These half-human, highly developed batracians they call the Akka, prove that evolution in these caverned spaces has certainly pursued one different path than on earth.
"What I think, since you have asked me, Larry O'Keefe," I went on, "is that the Three are of a race which came up from a lizard form.
"Finally, I think that the race to which the Three belong never appeared on earth's surface; that their development took place here unhindered through hundreds of thousands of years. During which, because of its chaotic condition, any higher intelligence could not have existed on the surface of our planet. If this is true, the structure of their brains, and therefore their reactions and potentialities must be different from ours. Hence their knowledge and command of energies unfamiliar to us—and hence, also, the grave question whether they may not have an entirely different sense of justice, of values—and that is rather terrifying!" I concluded.
"That last sort of knocks your argument, Doc," he said. "They had sense of justice enough to help me out. And certainly they know love. For I saw the way they looked at Lakla; and sorrow—for there was no mistaking that in their faces."
"I consider that a frivolous objection, Larry," I answered, a bit nonplused.
"You scientists are an inhuman lot, sometimes," he said. "That's why I like you to be superstitious now and then. It shows you're not fossilized!"
Just then the curtains parted, and in walked Rador.
"You have rested well," he smiled. "I can see. The handmaiden bade me call you. You are to eat with her in her garden."
O'Keefe was hustling into his clothes.
"Can you swim in that red stuff out there, Uncle?" he asked.
"Don't you ever try it, Larree." Rador was plainly appalled. "There's a pool here—I'll show it to you. In the meantime—" He spun out through the hangings, returning a moment later with two man frogs carrying basins filled with clear water. Into these we dipped our hands and faces.
Down long corridors we trod, then, and out upon a gardened terrace as beautiful as any of those of Yolara's city. Bowered, blossoming, fragrant, set high upon the cliffs beside the domed castle. A table, as of milky jade, was spread at one corner, but the Golden Girl was not there. A little path ran on and up, hemmed in by the mass of verdure. I looked at it longingly; Rador saw the glance; interpreted it and led me up the stepped, sharp slope into a rocky embrasure.
Here I was above the foliage, and everywhere the view was clear. Below me stretched the incredible bridge, with the frog people hurrying back and forth upon it.
I faced an immensity of crimson waters, unbroken, a true sea, if ever there was one. A little breeze blew—the first real wind I had encountered in the hidden places; under it the surface, that had been as molten lacquer, rippled and dimpled. Little waves broke with a spray of rose-pearls and rubies. The giant Medusae drifted—stately, luminous, kaleidoscopic elfin moons.
Far down, peeping around a jutting tower of the cliff, I saw dipping, with the motion of the waves, a floating garden. The flowers, too, were luminous, indeed sparkling. Gleaming brilliants of scarlet and vermilions lighter than the flood on which they lay. Mauves and odd shades of reddish-blue. They glimmered and shone, like a little lake of jewels.
A thought with me since our flight claimed utterance.
"Rador," I said, "if it is permissible to tell—how did Lakla, who is your sister's child, come to be handmaiden to the Three?"
"I can tell you that now, Goodwin," he answered. "I told you that of the Murians there are the black-haired, who are the ladala, and the soldiers from them; and the fair-haired, who are the rulers. From among the ladala, never from among the rulers, there is born once in two generations a girl baby whose eyes are golden; whose hair, even as a babe, is like that of Lakla's, and who is in other ways—different.
"Now, there are some who say that this child is of a strain that was among our people before we found this land and which strain was destroyed, for a certain reason, by the fair-haired. And there are others who say that the Silent Ones have something to do with it. Whatever the reason, by an ancient pact with the Three, this child, when it is but three months old, is carried here and given to the handmaiden who then serves. She it is who rears and instructs it, and when the child it fourteen laya old she takes the place of that handmaiden who has before her cared for it."
"And what becomes of the other one?" I asked.
"She—goes!" he answered. "She has the right, if she will, to chose a mate from the ladala. But none has done so. It is said that as reward—and perhaps because she is no more like the Murians than the Three—she is taken to that land of wonder beyond the black precipices of Doul. Or it may be that she goes where those who are the race of the Silent Ones dwell. I do not know."
"And where is that?" I asked. He shook his head.
"Lakla comes!" he said. "Let us go down."
It was a shy Lakla who came slowly around the end of the path and, blushing furiously, held her hands out to Larry. And the Irishman took them, placed them over his heart, kissed them with a tenderness that had been lacking in the half-mocking, half-fierce caresses he had given the priestess. She blushed deeper, holding out the tapering fingers—then pressed them to her own heart.
"I like the touch of your lips, Larry," She whispered. "They warm me here." She pressed her heart again. "And they send little sparkles of light through me." Her brows tilted perplexedly, accenting the nuance of diablerie, delicate and fascinating, that they cast upon the flower face.
"Do you?" whispered the O'Keefe fervently. "Do you, Lakla?" He bent toward her. She caught the amused glance of Rador, drew herself aside half-haughtily.
"Rador," she said, "is it not time that you and the strong one, Olaf, were setting forth?"
"Truly it is, handmaiden," he answered respectfully enough, yet with a current of laughter under his words. "But as you know the strong one, Olaf, wished to see his friends here before we were gone. And he comes even now," he added, glancing down the pathway along which came striding the Norseman.
As he faced us I saw that a transformation had been wrought in him. Gone was the pitiful seeking, and gone, too, the hope. About him was implacable resolution, stony determination of one who knows the worst and has consecrated body and soul to meet and destroy it. The set lines softened as he looked at the Golden Girl and bowed low to her. He thrust a hand to O'Keefe and to me.
"There is to be battle," he said. "I go with Rador to call the armies of these frog people. As for me—Lakla has spoken. There is no hope for—for mine Helma in life, but there is hope that we destroy the Shining Devil and give mine Helma peace. And with that I am well content, ja! Well content!" He gripped our hands again. "We will fight!" he muttered. "Ja! And I will have vengeance!" The sternness returned; and with a salute Rador and he were gone.
Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.
"Not even the Shining One can heal those the Shining One has taken," she said. "He asked me, and it was better that I tell. It is part of the Three's—punishment—but of that you will soon learn," she went on hurriedly. "Ask me no questions now of the Silent Ones. I thought it better for Olaf to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mind other than sorrow upon which to feed."
UP THE path came five of the frog women, bearing platters and ewers. Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were tinkling; their middles covered with short kirtles of woven cloth studded with the sparkling ornaments.
And here let me say that if I have given the impression that the Akka are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Frog-like they are, and hence my phrase for them. But they are as unlike the frog, as we know it, as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from the stegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batracians followed a different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as man did from the four-footed folk.
The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were froglike, but the highly developed brain had set upon the head and shape of it vital differences. The forehead, for instance, was not low, flat, and retreating—its frontal arch was well defined. The head was, in a sense, well shaped, and with the females the great horny carapace that stood over it like a fantastic helmet was much modified, as were the spurs that were so formidable in the male; coloration was different also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them their crouching gait—but I wander from my subject.
They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.
"You surely have those things well trained, Lakla," he said.
"Things!" The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing. "You call my Akka things!"
"Well," said Larry, a bit taken aback, "what do you call them?"
"My Akka are a people," she retorted. "As much a people as your race or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, and they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think them beautiful, Larry, beautiful!" She stamped her foot. "And you call them things!"
Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque fashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they were not strange at all. Why shouldn't she think them beautiful? The same thought must have struck O'Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.
"I think them beautiful, too, Lakla," he said remorsefully. "It's my not knowing your tongue too well that traps me. Truly, I think them beautiful. I'd tell them so, if I knew their talk."
Lakla dimpled, laughed, spoke to the attendants in that strange speech that was unquestionably a language. They bridled, looked at O'Keefe with fantastic coquetry, clacked and boomed softly among themselves.
"They say they like you better than any of the men of Muria," laughed Lakla.
"Did I ever think I'd be swapping compliments with lady frogs!" he murmured to me. "Buck up, Larry. Keep your eye on the captive Irish princess!" he muttered to himself.
"Rador goes to meet one of the ladala who is slipping through with news," said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food. "Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the Akka, for there will be battle, and we must prepare. Nak," she added, "is he who went before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry." She stole a swift, mischievous glance at him. "He is headman of all the Akka."
"How comes the messenger through?" I asked. "Can he open the Portal?"
"No, but there are other ways," she answered, "although perilous, like that you took."
"I should think with what's brewing outside they would be guarded," said Larry.
"No," replied Lakla, almost indifferently. "Not many would dare take them; not many could pass over them unscathed. And there are always the guards at the gateway of the bridge there that none may pass. To come in force to be feared, they must go through the Portal, and it will give us warning. Besides, it will take all of four tals for them to plan and prepare, and during that time we will also have prepared."
"Just what force can we muster against them when they come, darlin'?" said Larry.
"Darlin'?" The Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word. "What's that?"
"It's a little word that means Lakla," he answered. "It does, that is, when I say it. When you say it, it means Larry."
"I like that word," mused Lakla.
"You can even say Larry darlin'!" suggested O'Keefe.
"Larry darlin'!" said Lakla. "When they come we shall have first of all my Akka—"
"Can they fight, mavourneen?" interrupted Larry.
"Can they fight! My Akka!" Again her eyes flashed. "They will fight to the last of them with the spears that give the swift rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those Saddu there." She pointed through a rift in the foliage, across which on the surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes. And now I knew why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. "With spears and clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs. They are strong and brave people, Larry darlin', and though they hurl the Keth at them, it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they are passing into the nothingness!"
"And have we none of the Keth?" he asked.
"No." She shook her head. "None of their weapons have we here, although it was—it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them."
"But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?" I cried. "Surely they can tell."
"No," she said slowly. "No, there is something to be told you—and soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You, especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom."
THE raptness vanished, her eyes cleared.
"Then," said Larry, "we have the Akka; and we have the four men of us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges—an'—an' the power of the Three— But what about the Shining One. Fireworks—"
"I do not know." Again the indecision that had been in her eyes when Yolara had launched her defiance crept back. "The Shining One is strong, and he has his slaves!"
"Well, we'd better get busy good and quick!" the O'Keefe's voice rang. But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter no further. The trouble fled from her eyes. They danced.
"Larry darlin'!" she murmured. "I like the touch of your lips—"
"You do?" he whispered, all thought flying of anything but the beautiful, provocative face so close to his. "Then, acushla, you're goin' to get acquainted with 'em! Turn your head, Doc!" he said.
And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by an interested, soft outburst of gentle booming from the serving frog maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla's head lay on the Irishman's shoulder, the golden eyes misty sun-pools of love and adoration. And the O'Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon his clear-cut features, was looking down into them with that look which rises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true, all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself. The real music of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is stronger than death itself, immortal as the high gods and the true soul of all that mystery we call life.
Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry's head, kissed him between the eyes. She drew herself with a trembling little laugh very slowly from his embrace.
"My mate," she murmured, the golden voice throbbing.
"The future Mrs. Larry O'Keefe, Goodwin," said Larry to me a little unsteadily.
I took their hands—and Lakla kissed me!
"Soon," she said, "I must wait upon the Three. They have a message for you."
We turned to go, and around the corner of the path I caught another glimpse of what I have called the lake of jewels. I pointed to it.
"Those are lovely flowers, Lakla," I said. "I have never seen anything like them in the place from whence we come."
She followed my pointing finger, laughed.
"Come," she said, "let me show you them."
She ran down an intersecting way, we following; came out of it upon a little ledge close to the brink, three feet or more I suppose above it. The Golden Girl's voice rang out in a high-pitched, tremulous, throbbing call.
The lake of jewels stirred as though a breeze had passed over it; stirred, shook a shimmering torrent of shining flowers down upon us! She called again, the movement of the breeze became more rapid. The gem blooms streamed closer, closer, wavering, shifting, winding—at our very feet. Above them hovered a little radiant mist; a faint, oddly disturbing perfume wafted up, checking subtly the heart beat. The Golden Girl leaned over; called softly, and up from the sparkling mass shot a green vine whose heads were five flowers of flaming ruby. It shot up, flew into her hand and coiled about the white arm, its quintette of lambent blossoms—regarding us!
It was the thing Lakla had called the Yekta; that with which she had threatened the priestess; the thing that carried the dread of death. And the Golden Girl was handling it like a rose!
I gasped, Larry swore—I looked at it more closely. It was a hydroid, a development of that strange animal-vegetable that sometimes almost microscopic, waves in the sea depths like a cluster of flowers paralyzing its prey with the mysterious force that dwells in its blossom heads!
"Put it down, Lakla." The distress in O'Keefe's voice was deep. Lakla laughed mischievously, caught the real fear for her in his eyes; opened her hand, gave another faint call—and back it flew to its fellows.
"Why, it wouldn't hurt me, Larry!" she expostulated. "I feed them—the Yekta."
"I don't like it," he said hoarsely.
She sighed, gave another sweet, prolonged call. The lake of gems—rubies and amethysts, mauves and scarlet-tinged blues—wavered and shook even as it had before, and swept swiftly back to that place whence she had drawn them!
Then with Larry and Lakla walking ahead, white arm about his brown neck; the O'Keefe still expostulating, the handmaiden laughing merrily, we passed to the domed castle.
Glancing through a cleft I caught sight again of the far end of the bridge; noted among the clustered figures of the garrison a movement, a flashing of green fire like marsh-lights on spear tips; wondered idly what it was. And then, other thoughts crowding in, I followed along, head bent, behind the pair who had found in what was Olaf's hell, their true paradise.