Blood for blood, rank for rank.
--_Thlinket Code_.
"Hear now the death of Ligoun--"
The speaker ceased, or rather suspended utterance, and gazed upon me
with an eye of understanding. I held the bottle between our eyes and
the fire, indicated with my thumb the depth of the draught, and shoved
it over to him; for was he not Palitlum, the Drinker? Many tales had
he told me, and long had I waited for this scriptless scribe to speak
of the things concerning Ligoun; for he, of all men living, knew these
things best.
He tilted back his head with a grunt that slid swiftly into a gurgle,
and the shadow of a man's torso, monstrous beneath a huge inverted
bottle, wavered and danced on the frown of the cliff at our backs.
Palitlum released his lips from the glass with a caressing suck and
glanced regretfully up into the ghostly vault of the sky where played
the wan white light of the summer borealis.
"It be strange," he said; "cold like water and hot like fire. To
the drinker it giveth strength, and from the drinker it taketh away
strength. It maketh old men young, and young men old. To the man
who is weary it leadeth him to get up and go onward, and to the man
unweary it burdeneth him into sleep. My brother was possessed of the
heart of a rabbit, yet did he drink of it, and forthwith slay four of
his enemies. My father was like a great wolf, showing his teeth to all
men, yet did he drink of it and was shot through the back, running
swiftly away. It be most strange."
"It is 'Three Star,' and a better than what they poison their bellies
with down there," I answered, sweeping my hand, as it were, over the
yawning chasm of blackness and down to where the beach fires glinted
far below--tiny jets of flame which gave proportion and reality to the
night.