Читать книгу Drums of Mer - Ion Idriess - Страница 10

Evening. A breath from the sea became sweet with scent of flowers whose leaves reflected shy kisses from the stars. Gloaming light spread over the hill-sides, darkened the valleys, and brightened the boulders upon the shore. Myriad diamonds sparkling among the beach sands, their whiteness chequered with a black mosaic which was the distinct outline of shadowed palms.

The happy voices of men and maids as the villages practised the dance; the plaintive music of the burral, the flute of reeds; laughter of children tumbling upon the beach, while from sympathetic groups screened by fern and palm came an occasional little laugh which was part of the beauty of the night.

Along a banana-shadowed pathway Jakara strode noiselessly, impelled by the night and loneliness to ascend to his Lookout and commune with the loveliness which the heavens were showering upon the earth. He halted in surprise when from the foliage beside him there stepped a dream from the night. She smiled eagerly, while the shadows of the leaves played upon her alluring body. She was dressed in the clinging skirt of maidenhood, and her rounded arms were prettily girlish in their bracelets of pearl; a circlet of mottled crotons banded her hair, so profuse and wavy, every teasing strand a chain of tiny ringlets. Lithe and tall with strength in her beauty, her face was bright with intelligence, her lips dangerously ripe, her eyes big and black, full of liquid brightness. The velvety softness of her skin was not even as brown as his. Upon her clung an indefinable, a tantalizing scent, the kerakera – the girls’ love-charm.

Jakara gazed warily, for the Pretty Lamar of Las was a pleasure to look upon, and now her presence breathed a magnetic power. All these years, he had fought against an alliance with a native girl, because of the white man’s pride and because of the terrible thought that he might bring others unborn to the killing-club. And he desired to meet Eyes of the Sea. The night murmured with sympathy, and nature smiled, knowing that oft-suppressed desire forgets conscience. He stepped aside to pass, but she laughed softly and held up her face to be kissed. He seized her roughly, and her lips met his swiftly and sweetly. She nestled to him and sighed while her hands caressed his neck; the warmth of her breasts set his heart thumping hotly. Suddenly she thrust him aside, her eyes like those of an animal afraid. “Go!” she whispered tensely. “I hear something! It may be only a snake.”

He hurried away, his ever-present fear instantly master as his ears strained to catch the indrawing of a breath, the patter of hurried feet behind. Thus he came to the open hill-slope; and then wheeled round, gripping his shark-tooth sword: he was smiling in friendly inquiry.

Beizam’s fine chest was heaving, his eyes menacing. “Jakara,” he hissed abruptly, “do you desire the Pretty Lamar?”

“No, Beizam,” smiled Jakara with a shake of the head; “she is yours for the taking! I want no maid. As you know, my religion forbids me women, and, besides, I have no desire! Just as well, otherwise what chance should I have against a proven warrior, and he the son of a Mamoose?”

Beizam’s body relaxed. He sighed as he smiled, then his eyes widened ominously as he gazed at Jakara’s notched mai. The wrist-thong of his gaba-gaba tightened around his wrist.

“Better hasten after the maid,” advised Jakara, “While the night is young! A moment ago she mistook me for you, but only for an instant. She was abashed, and now is the chance for a warrior to comfort her.”

Beizam laughed musically as he laid a warm hand upon Jakara’s shoulder in genuine friendliness.

“ ‘Jakara the Strange,’ ” he smiled, “and ‘Jakara the Wise.’ What a warrior you would be if you would only drink of the Dance of Death! And not a girl in all the Islands would say you nay.” Like a young panther hot on the scent of a promising love affair he bounded down the slope.

Jakara drew a long, long breath, lifting frightened eyes to the stars. It was not because of the recent escape; he had experienced others such, and though the tongue be mightier than the sword, still the sword thrusts only once! No, it was for something else! Those deadly nicks upon the mai round his neck, representing the lives of men. What a prize the head of Jakara would be! His noted bravery, his cunning in war, his unbeaten fighting strength! Whoever drank of the head of Jakara – what a famous warrior he would instantly become! He would imbibe all Jakara’s qualities to strengthen his own. The killer would become invincible!

And now the idea had dawned in the ambitious mind of Beizam! It was sleeping again, but time would surely bring it to full wakefulness. As likely as not some little unexpected incident would hurry its consummation. Jakara’s spinal cord shuddered in sympathy. Mentally he decided to discard his native weapons and never walk without Lightning, nor ever meet the Pretty Lamar again, even by accident. The natives jokingly called her “Lamar” simply because she was the whitest-skinned girl on the island.

Weeks later, and Jakara had whistled as he climbed. He was glad to be away from the Council. For a solid week he, with the chiefs, had listened to a dispute which involved complicated land-laws whose rights went back for centuries.

For a great land-stealing case was before the Council. It had gone past individuals, having implicated the villages of Zerwageed and I’Laid. The island was seething with excitement.

But now Jakara’s duties in the case were over. Always he had sought to abstain from meddling with the affairs of the island otherwise than in war. Thus he incurred no man’s enmity, ran the risk of no private feuds. He merely took his seat on the Council when his position made it necessary. But he never helped in the voicing of any decision against individuals.

With war the matter was different. There the whole of the island was united, and the men who could plan success were revered as the greatest in the Group.

Jakara reached his Lookout, got his telescope, and searched the sea – searched as if he awaited some dearly beloved thing. But the horizon all around was bare of any sail. Sighing, he trained his telescope down on Mer.

Around the disputed land all the population was gathered in an interested circle, very quiet, however, for C’Zarcke and the Zogo-le were personally examining the boundary line before judgment.

Jakara then directed his glass down upon the snub nose of Gelam-Pit, where the waves rolled lazily against the cliffs. From the south-west end of Mer the island rises steeply in long grassy slopes to culminate in giant Gelam, and Jakara trained the telescope well inland at the main taboo country hidden around its base. The telescope showed plainly the huge training-ground in the centre of the Kwod.

The Kwod was purely a training college, where the island youths were fitted to become men of Mer, to be worthy of its past traditions, to fit themselves to carry on the work begun by the great supermen of the past.

Their training lasted from early boyhood until stripling age. As tender lads, numbers of them were taken from their homes and rarely saw their parents again until they were almost grown to manhood.

Their training was Spartan. Jakara could see squads of them now, while he watched with a reminiscent sympathy as they broke and flew when, with a fearful yell, a crowd of hideously masked men, flourishing shark-tooth swords, rushed on them from the surrounding timber. Thus were the lads trained in quickness of brain, eye, feet, and body. Also for an hour twice daily they were shot at, the severity growing by degrees until finally some of the best bowmen on Mer would fire at them with war-bows. Later still the lads would have to stand in the open and dodge showers of arrows that rained on them from archers hidden among the trees. With the arrows would whizz many sling-stones. Naturally, a number of lads each year never left the Kwod.

Jakara had had to go through all that strenuous training. He had done so willingly enough, and now was very glad. In it he had gained an amazing proficiency in the use of weapons, and had developed his physique in a manner that stood him in good stead when he had to fight in earnest. There he had gained proficiency in harpooning dugong, in turtle capture, in all manner of fishing. There he had learned the religion, the beliefs, the life of all the Island peoples. Step by step he had won his initiation degrees, and at last, most interesting of all, he had been put through their mystic rites relating to the spirit-land, though only to the degree permitted to a fighting chief. The deep secrets and the malevolent magic were for the Maid-le alone, while the “most known by men” was only for the Zogo-le, with their terrible head C’Zarcke, Au-Zogo-zogo-le, Au-Maid-maid-le.

Jakara stayed on his Lookout until the sun went down. It was very lonely then. He climbed down the Lookout to his hut, not whistling. From Maiad village came the plaintive fluting of the burral, sweet but sad. The villages slept. The Islands slept. The sea never sleeps: she dreams sometimes, as does the night. Upon their mats the people slept coiled up like tired children, a wealth of resting limbs and tangled tresses abandoned in dreaming repose. Outside, all was utter silence; even Nature dreamed and leased the air and the land and the sea to the spirit folk and the unknown energy that is.

Within the Zogo-house sat C’Zarcke the dreaded, C’Zarcke the all-powerful, C’Zarcke the hungry seeker after knowledge. He communed in silent company, for skulls do not talk, at least, in words that humans hear. Twenty were his company, once men whose individual history was a lifetime spent in acquiring knowledge. Each had its characteristics, and each a personality of its own which grimaced: “Read me now, if you can!” There were two characteristics common to all: their silence, and the roominess of the brain cavities. For his personal souvenirs, C’Zarcke collected only those relics whose bony walls had once held brains that reasoned, that sought to know things.

Though mostly of black and brown people, there were representatives of high civilization there, for a Spanish don leered over one shoulder while C’Zarcke stared straight into the eye-sockets of an English captain. A blueness illuminated the shadowy room; the light was diffused from the sockets of a box-shaped skull. Other things were in that room, a nameless feeling of presences in the heavy air; the vagueness, and the possibility of what might be, gave to that ghostly, dimly-lighted place a fearfulness that belonged to darkness. Yet something – to the human mind a repellant feeling of uncanny power – would not be denied, and that heavy silence and darkness seemed to be its element. Not nearly so repugnant were the sentinel forms of men stretched mummified. Their appearance was dreadful, so let them stay shrouded in the night. Then there was a “something” from the rafters that stared straight down upon C’Zarcke’s head. It had once been a woman. So terrible was it that no stranger would have looked twice, although he would at once have realized that the woman had triumphed over death, for she was still beautiful.

C’Zarcke sat as in a death-like trance, made horrible, however, because his “dead” face was so expressive of life and burning expectancy; inside the massive head all reasoning was concentrated to absorb something coming to him through the air. Presently his eyes clouded as if to dim his vision and focus sight straight back upon the brain within. Then in his eyes appeared that intense, blue-black glitter. He sighed lingeringly, and his splendid chest barely moved, while through his eyes, and possibly his ears, he was drinking in mind-energy sent to him from all the Zogo-le of the Strait, aye, and from every Maid-le priest of the Bomai-Malu Cult far south down the Australian coast, and to north-west right up along the New Guinea shores. Each of these sat in a comfortable position inside his Zogo-house, and, if compass lines had been drawn from every island, the three groups of the Zogo-le and every man of the Maid-le priesthood would have been found staring straight towards C’Zarcke. In a crescent around each man, with his own head as the centre, were evenly-placed skulls, though it is believed that these were kept not because the present Zogo-le believed them to possess a really tangible power, but because their ancestors in dim ages had superstitiously used them in first seeking after knowledge. Each skull grinned on a level with, and at, the priest’s head. All else was darkness, a waiting, almost a living silence, and every man of them – some with brutal, but all with intellectual, faces, drawn taut and strained, and their queer, bright eyes with the purple glitter staring inwards and outwards – strove to hypnotize his body and brain and force out towards C’Zarcke that deep inner consciousness which, they firmly believe, quits the body temporarily in sleep, but for ever in death.

Presently, the Zogo of Eroob sighed, his body sagged, his thick brown arms slid down beside him queerly reminiscent of dying snakes. His head settled upon his chest, he fought to control the stream of his consciousness going out, out – and C’Zarcke the receiver awaited with chest expanding and big eyes widening, intensely bright. When the Zogo of Eroob crouched limp as a man dead, C’Zarcke whimpered like a baby in gratification, for within his brain-cells he had stored the reasoning life of his lesser priest.

The Zogo of Ugar was the next to lend tribute of reasoning force. With him, visibly at least, the forcing out of his consciousness was painful. He moaned in sore distress while his legs and arms shot out with the jerky, stiffly-controlled movement of an automaton. His muscles bunched, his sinews stretched the skin like tautened bow-strings. Moaning horribly, he rolled back with open mouth, shrunken in body and with stiffened limbs all crooked.

Then, in quick and urgent succession, as C’Zarcke accumulated each man’s power of reasoning, so into trance slipped each one of the Zogo-le and the lesser far-scattered priests of the Bomai-Malu Cult.

C’Zarcke, though trained during many intense years and with the knowledge of others gone before to help him, could not have absorbed more vibratory energy, or else even his great mind would have burst under pressure of the force within. As the last priest surrendered his reason, C’Zarcke stood up, not of his volition, and raised knotted arms to the roof. The physical strength of the man, immense at any time, was now supernatural. Vitality electrified the muscles that appeared straining from the body. His face was radiant as at a vision of deified power. His hands snatched at a salvaged bar; with a smile of intense joy he bent that iron, tied it in knots, and twisted it until the hot metal snapped and clattered to his feet. He fastened his teeth in a hardened beam of Wongai wood, and the timber splintered like a match chewed by a child.

Then something unexplainable happened within C’Zarcke, for that portion of his mind which he had first purposely put to sleep, was endeavouring to control and combine the reasoning individualities which he had absorbed. We know how it is with a man dreaming, who is aware that he is dreaming and determines that he must remember his dream and impress it on his mind for reference in waking hours, and who, on awakening, remembers that he had a dream – remembers perfectly that he tried to impress the vision upon his conscious mind – but now remembers nothing of the dream itself. With C’Zarcke the reverse was the case. In years of study he had striven to impress his conscious mind to take control after he had fallen asleep; for then every physical motion released his surplus power back to the Zogo-le from whence it had come. They were starving for its return, as demagnetized iron might starve for that of which it had been robbed. C’Zarcke was like an engine under terrific pressure, whose dreamy driver hesitates which button to press in order to control its strength so that every atom will be utilized as directed, and this power was attached by invisible threads to those who craved its return. C’Zarcke was quivering to expend his borrowed energy on a mad excess of physical exertion. It had always been so, the fight of the physical to take command, the resolve of the mind to control the physical and also to impress the waking memory with the wondrous things which in these flights he saw.

For C’Zarcke sought to transplant his mind out into the world of space. Such has been a mind-dream of men in many ages.

With but a partly-trained reason directing him, he reached up and, like a child handling a toy, slid back a portion of the roof. Under this was a rude couch; C’Zarcke leaped up, lay flat on his back, settled his body to perfect ease, and then rolling back his tongue attempted to swallow it. As he lost consciousness the glorious star of Kaek smiled down and enveloped the priest in dazzling affinity with existences in space. At long last, after the Zogo-le were deep in exhausted sleep, C’Zarcke’s eyes opened vacantly to the risen sun. Long he lay, then covered his face with his arms. C’Zarcke the feared sobbed like a heart-broken child. He had glimpsed the vision splendid and could not remember it – only fantasies of an entrancing dream. And, as time sped on, the Zogo-le and the priests of Bomai would individually, like a flash, on some odd occasion, glimpse a something wonderful, which they would recognize was what C’Zarcke had really seen with a portion of their being when he was seeking among the stars.

As the writer of this story, I would like to explain what the remnants of the Zogo-le have assured me the great priest saw in these “mind” travels of his. Such, however, might only prove of interest to students of the occult. To other readers, such an attempted description might read as a fantasy. I. L. I.