The Island Under the Earth Read Online Free Page A

saw the centaurs all streaming away across the rolling landscape, saw the country-dame running as though pursued, and then in the midst of his maddening pain he thought:
She it was who led us into this trap. Her tale was a lie. A fool I was to have yielded, to have listened, plainly she was a spy, a land-siren and lure-lurly …
    The poisonous ichor ate at his face like venom. Each breath he forced into his toiling lungs boiled like red-hot acid. Scale formed between his eyes and his eyelids; he forced his fingers in to claw apart the choking scab which grew apace upon his nostrils and across his bubbling lips. The cool hands of death closed upon his heart, and pressed.

Chapter Five
    There in the Cold Gray Realm he stumbled along with the other stunned and white-faced dead. Blows fell upon their shoulders if they went to the right or to the left of the path: some unseen but not unfelt daemon scourged unwitting disobedience; abruptly the half-darkness vanished and there was the hot sun and there were the white-waved seas beating at the base of some high-built, stout-girt tower keep: blue seas, orange sun, red flames, coffers full of jewels and sewn skin sacks of sand-of-gold. Eyes watched him as he made away, eyes helpless to do more for now than mark the hated and swift-departing faces, eyes filled with hatred and with menace….
    The two of them spoke in soft voices as they dipped the cloths and wrung them out and exchanged them for the one upon the side of his face … that is, the country-dame was speaking, and the other woman now and then answered with a low-toned word.
I was wrong, then
, Stag thought.
Not the first time
.
    “… hot water is best, of course,” the other one was saying; “ant-amber melts fastest in hot water … it was luck that flask of water had been getting the sun all the while and was well warm. So first you put in just a bit and you stir it and stir it until you see the water is ‘ginning to turn color, then right away you put in more.” She might have been discussing a recipe for sweetmeal cake. “And luck! Hadn’t I noted that ant-heap back such a short ways! Where would he be now, your poor lord?”
Still in Hell with the other shades
, the poor lord thought.
    “Yes, yes…. And not just no ordinary ant-heap, needn’t I tell you, dear. Only the great golden ants do make the amber, then right away they bury it, for they don’t want folk to find it. Ah, and I don’t know why they grudge it, for what else can take the venom out of centaur-blood? Directly saw I that ugly black sixy-brute go fling his filthy hand at your poor lord, off I went, gallop-a-trot, back for to find the ant-heap, yes; what is your own name, dear, for mine is Rary — ”
    “Spahana.” He thought:
Yes, that
is
her name…
.
    The bosun’s voice: “Here, Captain, should you be sitting up? How d’you feel? How’s that eye?”
    Stag blinked through it before hazarding a reply. “No worse — now — than if it had caught a dash of sea-water…. So it’s true, then, goodmother, that the blood of the six-limbed folk is deadly venom to humans — yes,
Earth
Mother! what am I saying! don’t
I
know now it’s true? I’d completely forgotten that I’d ever heard it and when I had heard it I just laughed and said it was another granny-tale. — So then it’s true, too, about the ant-amber?”
    She nodded, inclined her head to the few golden granules of it still in her lap. He looked at them, looked at her. She wore the roughspun blouse and plain pantalets of the hill-woman and her hands were almost as calloused as her feet … hands which automatically went on wringing the cloth into the basin … but her eyes already had begun to rove around and her lips were now once again engaged in forming silent words. Names.
    He grunted, took the bosun’s hand and jumped to his feet. “All right. I’m healed. Woman — Rary — You gave me my life. I’ll give you your children.” She nodded, gathered up the ambers and