by LEIGH BRACKETT
There was a boy-God, sleeping through
eternity. And there were his "Stone of
Life" and the androids he had created
of matter and energy. And there was a
world that was to die from the
machinations of the androids' diabolic
minds. There were Mouse and Ciaran to
stem the death-flood--two mortals fighting
the immortals' plans for conquest.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mouse stirred the stew in the small iron pot. There wasn't much of it.
She sniffed and said:
"You could have stolen a bigger joint. We'll go hungry before the next
town."
"Uh huh," Ciaran grunted lazily.
Anger began to curl in Mouse's eyes.
"I suppose it's all right with you if we run out of food," she said
sullenly.
Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watched
her with lazy grey eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a head
shorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin as
a young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind ever
combed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a small
red thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, and
her bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.
Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missing
behind it. He said, "It's just as well. I don't want you getting fat
and lazy."
Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent and
threw the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enough
to let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brown
knees. It began to purr softly.
Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazy
in a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor and
crush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silence
of the place was wonderful.
He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from the
Phrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut,
but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, far
below, the sea spread sullen and burning, cloaked in a reddish fog.
To his right, also far below, were the Forbidden Plains. Flat,
desolate, and barren, reaching away and away to the up-curving rim of
the world, where Ciaran's sharp eyes could just make out a glint of
gold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.
Mouse said suddenly, "Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain of
Life."