I was just wondering if I dared attempt to touch her telepathically, if that were at all possible, when suddenly, without looking at me, she said, “Why do you stare at me so?”
I was taken unawares. “Why—because—because you are a fascinating woman. You have strange powers,” I lamely answered.
“And is that all?” Still she stared straight ahead, but I sensed disappointment in her tone.
Encouraged, I told her, “No, that’s not all. You are very beautiful. In my world women are seldom so beautiful.”
“In your world,” she dreamily answered. “In the Motherworld. And are they also fascinating, these women of the Motherworld?”
“Not like you.”
“Northan would whip you for your boldness. He would have Kota’ na set his bears on you.” Her warning was offered in grave tones, but there was color in her cheeks.
“Is the fervor of Northan’s loyalty really so great, or does he lay claim to you as a woman, Armandra?” Having uttered these words I could have bitten my tongue clean through. Her eyebrows lifted and her smile disappeared in a twinkling. She half-lowered her arms and tossed her head angrily, setting her red tresses in motion. Most of her humanity was gone in as much time as it takes to tell. She was now the Woman of the Winds again, a chill priestess of powers unknown.
“Am I a spear or axe or piece of fine fur that a man shall claim me?” her voice cracked as sharply as had Northan’s whip. “Northan? He has hopes, the warlord, and he is a strong man and a brave warrior. But a claim? No man has any claim over Armandra—no man! What mere man could ever hope to hold me, when the winds themselves want me for their bride?”
Finally she turned to me, anger and frustration bubbling up from oceanic depths of eyes, flaming tresses alive upon her head. “I have promised my people that soon I will take a man, and it will be so. But no man claims Armandra. I will have a mate, yes; and bear his children as my duty to the plateau. But he will not be my lover on his terms, nor my ‘husband’ on any terms. His task may give him pleasure but it will only give me children. Children to walk the winds like their mother, and do mortal battle with their unutterable grandfather!”
Now she leaped up—or did she float?—nimbly to the rail of the prow, poising for a moment before diving headlong to breast the air, to spiral up, up to the skies, borne aloft in a cauldron of rushing wind that almost bowled me from my position. She disappeared over the rim of the now looming plateau.
As suddenly as she was gone Northan was at my side. He had plainly been close at hand, had seen the anger in Armandra’s face. His own face was not so dark now; blue eyes glittered slyly as he said, “Perhaps I should have warned you, man of the Motherworld. Men do not speak to Armandra as they do to other women. She is no pretty toy but a princess of the gods.”
He turned as if to leave me, then looked back. “One other thing: when Armandra takes a mate it will be Northan the Warlord. Others want her, true, and they may challenge my right if they dare. Make sure that you do not challenge it. You have yet to pay for shaming me today, in which you were exceedingly lucky, and though Armandra has forbidden it I would dearly love to crush you like a snowflake. Do not give me the opportunity.”
“If I loved a woman enough, then I might fight for her, Northan,” I told him. “But Armandra? She is like the great glacier whose chill wears away even the mountain. Can you warm her, Northan? I doubt it. And take heed; Armandra is no snowflake to be crushed in your hand, and neither am I.”
Now the wind that filled our sails quickly fell away and the twelve ships turned to run parallel with the base of the plateau in single file, gradually slowing upon their polished skis until they were all brought to a halt by use of a system of spiked brakes. Then the great bears were paraded down the gangplanks and chained up in teams fifty strong to haul the snow-ships to anchorage in entrances at the base of the plateau.
As the men and bears finished their various tasks and went off along tunnels that pointed directly into the heart of the vast, flat-topped outcropping, my small party and I began to feel more and more out of things. Ignored and feeling inconsequential, not knowing what else to do, we simply stood idle aboard the snow-ship watching as the members of her crew and their mounts gradually dispersed. Jimmy Franklin tried to catch Kota’na’s eye, but the Indian was busy organizing the bears into groups to be led away. Northan had long since gone off with a party of his men.
When it seemed that we were to be left to our own devices, as we descended the steep gangplank to the frozen floor of this rock-walled harbor, a young girl ran out from one of the cavelike entrances to approach us, bowing and curtsying as she came. She was an Indian, and spoke a very broken, pleasantly quaint English.
“She is a Blackfoot!” Jimmy excitedly, laughingly exclaimed. “A pureblood Blackfoot, not diluted like me through contact with you palefaces.” Then he delighted the girl by speaking in her native tongue. As they conversed, the rest of us kept a polite silence, taking note of how pretty the girl was and the pride of her bearing. She was dressed as richly as an Indian princess, the daughter of a chief, and this opulence was finally explained as Jimmy told us:
“Oontawa is handmaiden and companion to the Woman of the Winds. She has been sent to look after us until we go before the Council of Elders, the ‘government’ of the People of the Plateau. First, though, we are to be shown our quarters. Oontawa will stay with us while we eat. After sleeping, we will see the Council of Elders. They will decide what’s to be done with us. Also, there’s to be a guided tour of this place. Apparently the plateau is honeycombed with caves and corridors, a multi-level labyrinth like some super beehive!”
“Well, then,” Tracy answered him, “you’d better tell Oontawa to lead on. I don’t know about you boys, but I could do with a bite to eat.”
As we trooped along behind Jimmy Franklin and the Indian girl, with Whitey hobbling along with one arm about Tracy’s shoulders and the other around my neck, my sister added, “Oh, and Jimmy, if I’m going for an interview,” she sniffed disdainfully at the heavy parkas that wrapped her slim girl’s figure, “perhaps Oontawa has a spare fur or two for me? Do be a sweetheart and ask her for me, will you?”
III
In the Hall of the Elders
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
After a distance of some forty yards or so, the tunnel we followed into the basalt bowels of the plateau opened into a gallery from which many more tunnels led off. Each of these shafts had its own symbol carved into the rock above it, and Oontawa pointed out the symbol we were to follow to our quarters, a long, inverted heart or arrowhead shape. Once these many symbols were memorized it would not be difficult to find one’s way about the cave-system.
The shafts were lighted by flambeaux formed of stone bowls of oil supported upon wooden brackets fixed to the walls at intervals of about fifty feet. The smell of their burning was like a pungent but not overly unpleasant incense. As we went I dipped a finger into one of the bowls, sniffed at the greasy fuel and gingerly tasted it. Mineral oil, with some sweet, sticky additive. I was surprised. Animal fats would have been far more likely. Where would the plateau’s people get oil?
On our way we saw single members and groups of the plateau’s inhabitants going about their various businesses. They all paid us what passed for compliments as they met us in the corridors. Though they were mainly of Eskimo and Indian extraction, many other elements were also present, including Mongol, white European and white American. Whenever we met up with a group of them they would politely stand aside for us. Oontawa explained that news of my run-in with Northan had already spread and that it had been greeted in many quarters with no uncertain delight. Plainly the warlord’s bullying ways were not generally appreciated.
Passing through at least three more galleries and crossing as many major tunnel systems, we finally arrived at a gallery larger than any we had seen so far. Here, cut into the walls between tunnel mouths, rock-hewn steps ascended to higher levels. C
limbing a wide stairway and entering a shaft two levels higher, I noted that we seemed to have turned at right angles to our original course, that now we were moving back toward the outer wall of the plateau, which fronted on the white wastes of the frozen plain and the distant scene of the recent battle.
When I mentioned this to Jimmy Franklin, he replied, “Yes, our apartments are right on the outer wall. Oontawa tells me that we are particularly fortunate; our rooms are comfortable, light and airy, and they command a view overlooking the entire front of the plateau. She says that Tracy’s room is really something; all furs and fancy carvings. It seems that Armandra is quite taken with you, Tracy.”
“How much farther are these rooms of ours?” Whitey painfully asked. “This leg’s giving me hell.”
“Almost there,” Jimmy answered.
As he spoke there came the smell of good, hot food from somewhere ahead. Suddenly I was very hungry. “Jimmy,” I said, “ask Oontawa what kind of food her people eat, will you? It strikes me that they re bound to be short on vegetables. In fact from what we’ve seen of this world so far I’d say they only eat meat. But surely they couldn’t make out on a diet of meat alone?”
“Sure they could,” he answered. “The Eskimos of good old Mother Earth have always been meat eaters—just meat—and raw at that! In fact that’s what the word Eskimo means; ‘eater of raw meat.’ And all of the northern Indian tribes lived mainly on meat. They had their berries and fruits, yes, but their diet was ninety percent flesh, and they did pretty well on it, too.”
Whitey sniffed the air. “You’ve convinced me, Jimmy, at least,” lie said. “If that’s our meal I can smell—well, I only hope it tastes as good, that’s all.”
We rounded a slight bend in the tunnel and natural light suddenly flooded the shaft, showing curtained entranceways to caves on both sides. Here, too, the tunnel ended, and we saw that the light came in through square windows cut into the shaft’s terminal wall. Oontawa beckoned us forward to these windows, indicating that we should look out.
We were at a height of some seventy feet above the white waste that gently, almost unnoticeably sloped away down to the distant, ominous pyramid whose hazy outline, even at this distance, marred the view. The very sight of the evil altar filled me with the same shuddery feeling I might get from the sight of a black, triangular fin cutting the surface of inviting blue waters …
“Rooms with a view,” said Tracy. “But where’s this meal?”
Oontawa led us in through one of the curtained entrances to a large cave beyond. Since this cave stood away from the outer wall, here the light was from candles in stone holders that stood upon a large ornamental stone table. The weak light of these candles was supplemented by a flickering of flames that leaped up from a metal grill, set in the floor of the farthest corner, to disappear with a quiet, controlled murmur through a similar grill in the ceiling.
While I could feel no change in the temperature (my own flesh remained as chill as Ithaqua’s influence had left it), Tracy was obviously delighted with the cave’s warmth; she immediately threw off her parkas and stretched herself luxuriously. “Hey,” she asked Jimmy, “do all of these people live like this?”
For in this cave the austerity of the tunnels and passageways ended. Here the walls were hung with sumptuous drapes of an American Indian weave; the floors were thick with soft furs; whenever naked rock might have shown unadorned it was carved with ethnic designs so intermingled that their ancient origins were no longer easily discernible.
Oontawa was plainly pleased that we were impressed. She sat down to eat with us. The still steaming meats, of appetizing cuts, were in stone bowls; and I was surprised to note that there were also two types of vegetable preparations upon the table, not counting the mushrooms that decorated the central dish, a splendid joint of meat not unlike a leg of pork. Each place of the five at the table was set with a large, slightly hollowed slab of agate and a goblet of the same exotic material.
Jimmy and Oontawa conversed while we ate, but I had little time for talking. I have never enjoyed food so much in my entire life. When at last we were done we washed down the meal with cool sweet water from the goblets. Then Jimmy told us of his conversation with Oontawa.
“I asked her about the fire in the corner there,” he nodded at the flickering column of flame. “Told her I saw no point in warming the plateau when no one seems to appreciate or need heat. Apparently all of the plateau’s outer caves are heated, not for the comfort of their dwellers but simply to stop them from freezing over and filling with ice! Apparently the weather is quite mild at the moment.
“She also tells me that the interiors of all the dwelling-caves are done up in pretty much the same way as this one. She’ll show us our personal caves in a moment. I asked her how many people there are in the plateau. She says there are some twenty thousand, and—”
“Twenty thousand!” I cut him off. “But where did they all come from? They can’t be indigenous to Borea?”
Jimmy cocked his head at me. “They are now, I suppose, but certainly their forebears came from Earth, the Motherworld. They were brought here by Ithaqua, just like us. Their history goes back thousands of years, before the races of Earth had writing, but their numbers have been kept down through warring with the Children of the Winds, Ithaqua’s own people. It is only recently, since Armandra grew to womanhood, that the People of the Plateau have started to win out over the Wind-Walker’s worshippers.
“Now there are twenty thousand of them in the plateau, and room for ten times that number. It is a spare-time task of each family unit or military group to prepare dwelling-caves, barrack halls and stables for future families and armies, future generations. In this way the plateau’s many natural tunnel systems have been supplemented over the centuries, or extended and improved. The entire outer wall of the plateau, its face, is a fortress, with hundreds of observation posts and hidden exits from which the warriors and their bears can go out to battle in times of siege.”
“Times of siege?” Whitey repeated him. “You mean when Ithaqua and his lads are about?”
Oontawa nodded, speaking now for herself. “Yes, when Ithaqua leads Children of Winds against us, then we must stay within walls of plateau or die. Only bravest of our warriors go out to defend outer tunnels and snow-ship harbors.”
“And Armandra?” I asked. “Does she fight with the warriors, as we saw her fighting today?”
The girl’s almond eyes widened and her hand flew to her breast. “No, lord, not when Ithaqua rides wind, for it is only to trap her and take her back that he wages war against plateau’s people. She is his daughter, but she rebels against her father’s tyranny, defying him.”
As she finished speaking I saw that my question had disturbed her deeply; the thought of losing Armandra to Ithaqua and the Children of the Winds was too dreadful to contemplate. Now Oontawa stood up.
“Come, I show you your rooms and bathing place. And you—” she turned to Whitey, “I tend to your leg. Then you all sleep before going to Council of Elders.”
And sleep we did, but not before bathing.
I bathed quickly, along with the other two men, in the hot waters of a cave with a scooped out rock floor. Tracy had a smaller, private bath, a hypocaust affair, in the quite large and sumptuous cave that was her apartment. The water of these baths was constantly changing itself; melting and dripping down from higher, outer ramparts of the plateau, heated by the oil-fire systems of the outer caves and channeled to the baths, finally overflowing to spill away down stone sluices into the plateau’s heart, there to turn the wheels of the workshops.
My own small room was as richly appointed as the others and had a deep square window that looked out over the white wastes. There, stretched out on my back on a pile of furs a foot thick, I quickly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, one of complete exhaustion and oblivion.
And I came even more quickly awake at the urgent touch of Oontawa’s hand. I felt refreshed, reborn, a new man from the mom
ent she shook me awake, and I knew that my sleep must have been a long one.
“Up, up,” Oontawa was saying. “You are summoned to Council of Elders. Armandra is there. She prepares to see—to see—” She stumbled over her words, searching for an expression. “She looks over long distances. I do not know, in your tongue, how—”
“Tell me, Oontawa,” said Jimmy Franklin from the door. “Tell me in your own tongue.”
They conversed rapidly while I put on fur boots, then Jimmy said: “It appears that Armandra is, well, a seer, I suppose you could call her. She can see things at a distance, with her mind, things that are happening here on Borea. But she can only do this when—when her father himself is personally concerned.”
Snapping shut the heavy buckle of my fur belt, I turned to Oontawa “You mean Ithaqua is back on Borea?”
She nodded. “He is at his temple. Armandra desires that you should know your enemy better. When she is finished with her seeing, then you speak with Council of Elders. But hurry, they are waiting.”
We went out into the tunnel where Tracy soon joined us. She was dressed in fur trousers, fur boots and a splendid fur jacket with a high collar. She seemed to glow. Whitey appeared last, and it amazed me that his limp was barely noticeable. Whatever ointments these people used, they were certainly effective.
Then, with Oontawa leading, this time following a rock-carved symbol we all recognized well, a five-pointed star!—we proceeded to the Hall of the Elders. The way must have been half a mile, on a course that saw us climbing massive flights of stone stairs and passing through at least a dozen of the great galleries. Finally we approached the end of a wide tunnel that terminated in a smooth stone face of rock through which a great doorway had been cut. Above this entrance a huge five-pointed star was deeply carved in the rock. The Hall of the Elders.