Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/76

76 Tanil brought hers from another planet, but you are not yet ready to understand that Tanil is from another planet. She is a 'witch,' an evil person, if you are ignorant and fearful. She is a 'good fairy' if you are a sentimental fool. She is a sane and normal person trying to do her job and take care of her own fate in her own wise way—if you know her well. You reserve such decisions as to what is evil and what is not, for when you know a great deal more than you do about life and its ways you will find this: a thing is evil only when its hurts life's proper development, and no other thing is evil. Tanil is not a person that hurts things much, is she, Mr. Kent?"

I looked at Kyra, my mind confused.

"I'll reserve judgment. But mind you, I don't trust you either. You have never explained how you got those whip marks on your back, which were what led me here in truth, and not your lies."

"Among the other unusual things of the caverns, there is a cult of flagellants not far away from here in the underworld. I went to see their procession not long ago; and getting too near, one of them mistook me for a participant. He liked my looks, I guess, for he laid it on heavy. They are very mad people. There are many such lost groups, scattered through these endless caverns. You have much to learn " She had disregarded my insult, was musing of something else.

I said:

"I caught you robbing my rooms, too."

Her face flushed with sudden anger at my insistence on explanations from her. She cried:

"In a few weeks you may be doing for more questionable things for Tanil, and liking it too! You virtuous yokel!"

She flung out of the room, angry with me, left me feeling like a yokel indeed, for it was witless of me to anger one I thought of as constantly as herself. Kyra was wise and clever, and knew her way around here where I was completely at sea. I felt swaddled in wool, and trying to walk where there was no place to put my feet.

Now that I was alone, I dressed, walked out of the sleeping room into the long gloomy corridor and paused, my breath taken for a moment by the ageless splendor of the Elder work that had carved this passage from the rock no one knew when. Carved it so that the walls were many bodies of many beautiful people all pushing together up the walls, and the ceiling a splendor of half-revealed forms in gay abandon as though it were the place the pushing bodies tried so hard to reach.

I followed the beautiful passage in the direction I thought lay the room of the great dragon drapes. I passed several great doors into the lovely cavern rock chambers, and hearing the murmur of voices behind one, I stopped, slid cautiously forward to the aperture, peered in.

Tanil—talking with a man. The same man who had stabbed Kyra in my dream! Somehow Kyra was my friend, and I hated this man instantly. On such things hinge future events, sometimes. But Kyra hated him, too. I had heard her mention his name with venom, Nueces Panot. He looked like an Indian.

HE must not know our plans any more. She will tell such men as this newcomer, and sooner or later their squeamishness will take offense at our needful work and betray us!"

Tanil's voice was scornful.

"Betray us to whom, may I ask? Do they know the life, the ways, the roads of the caverns? Could they go to far Ornouts with their tales, or would that fool, Chong, listen if they did? They would die before they had gone fifty miles. You talk like a fool sometimes, Nueces! You tend to your work. And don't imagine I do not see through you. Always I have this ambition in such as you, fearful of every newcomer, jealous of every glance I give a man. One would think you my lover!

"Nueces, you may have power in your own way and your own field, but see that you do not get the idea that you are preferred by the hidden ones to myself. They cannot do without my wisdom, and they can do without your flummery. Kent will learn nothing that would make him squeam from us, and for that matter what do we do that is so criminal? Or are you hiding something horrible from me that you fear one of these newcomers may blunder on? Is it your own acts you fear may betray you? Nueces, sometimes you go too far!

"This Kent has been with us but one night and one day, and already you come to warn me of him! Fool, that man Kent is in love with me, or with Kyra, or both, and Kyra is my right hand! Quit your