Cursed Be the City by Henry Kuttner

Author:Henry Kuttner [Kuttner, Henry]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi Short
Published: 2010-03-07T17:36:50.515000+00:00

CHAPTER IV

The Valley of Silence

YET at first there seemed nothing terrible about the valley. They entered it from a cavern that opened on a thick forest, and, glancing around, Raynor saw tall mountainous ramparts that made the place a prison indeed. It was past sunset, yet already a full moon was rising over the eastern cliffs, outlining the Reaver’s castle in black silhouette. They entered the forest.

Moss underfoot deadened their footsteps. They walked in dim gloom, broken by moonlit traceries filtered through the leaves. And now Raynor noted the curious stillness that hung over all.

There was no sound. The noise of birds and beasts did not exist here, nor did the breath of wind rustle the silent trees. But, queerly, the prince thought there was a sound whispering through the forest, a sound below the threshold of hearing, which nevertheless played on his taut nerves.

“I don’t like this,” Eblik said, his ugly face set and strained. His voice seemed to die away with uncanny swiftness.

“Pan is fettered here,” Delphia whispered. “Yet is his power manifest…”

Soundlessly they went through the soundless forest. And now Raynor realized that, slowly and imperceptibly, the shadowy whisper he had sensed was growing louder—or else his ears were becoming more attuned to it. A very dim murmur, faint and far away, which yet seemed to have within it a multitude of voices…

The voices of the winds… the murmur of forests… the goblin laughter of shadowed brooks…

It was louder now, and Raynor found himself thinking of all the innumerable sounds of the primeval wilderness. Bird-notes, and the call of beasts…

And under all, a dim, powerful motif, beat a wordless shrilling, a faint piping that set the prince’s skin to crawling as he heard it.

“It is the tide of life,” Delphia said softly. “The heart-beat of the first god. The pulse of earth.”

For the first time Raynor felt something of the primal secrets of the world. Often he had walked alone in the forest, but never yet had the hidden heart of the wilderness reached fingers into his soul. He sensed a mighty and very terrible power stirring latent in the soil beneath him, a thing bound inextricably to the brain of man by the cords of the flesh which came up, by slow degrees, from the seething oceans which once rolled unchecked over a young planet. Unimaginable eons ago man had come from the earth, and the brand of his mother-world was burned deep within his soul. Afraid, yet strangely happy, as men are sometimes happy in their dreams, the prince motioned for his companions to increase their pace. The forest gave place to a wide clearing, with shattered white stones rearing to the sky. Broken plinths and peristyles gleamed in the moonlight. A temple had once existed here. Now all was overgrown with moss and the slow-creeping lichen. “Here,” the girl said in a low whisper. “Here…”

In the center of a ring of fallen pillars they halted. Delphia pointed to a block of marble, on which a metal disk was inset.

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