A WEIRD NOVEL OF FASCINATING POWER
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 nexttown."
"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 saidsullenly.
Ciaran leaned back comfortably against a moss-grown boulder and watchedher with lazy grey eyes. He liked watching Mouse. She was a headshorter than he, which made her very short indeed, and as thin asa young girl. Her hair was black and wild, as though only wind evercombed it. Her eyes were black, too, and very bright. There was a smallred thief's brand between them. She wore a ragged crimson tunic, andher bare arms and legs were as brown as his own.
Ciaran grinned. His lip was scarred, and there was a tooth missingbehind it. He said, "It's just as well. I don't want you getting fatand lazy."
Mouse, who was sensitive about her thinness, said something pungent andthrew the wooden plate at him. Ciaran drew his shaggy head aside enoughto let it by and then relaxed, stroking the harp on his bare brownknees. It began to purr softly.
Ciaran felt good. The heat of the sunballs that floated always, lazyin a reddish sky, made him pleasantly sleepy. And after the clamor andcrush of the market squares in the border towns, the huge high silenceof the place was wonderful.
He and Mouse were camped on a tongue of land that licked out from thePhrygian hills down into the coastal plains of Atlantea. A short cut,but only gypsies like themselves ever took it. To Ciaran's left, farbelow, 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 ofthe world, where Ciaran's sharp eyes could just make out a glint ofgold; a mammoth peak reaching for the sky.
Mouse said suddenly, "Is that it, Kiri? Ben Beatha, the Mountain ofLife."
Ciaran struck a shivering chord from the harp. "That's it."
"Let's eat," said Mouse.
"Scared?"
"Maybe you want me to go back! Maybe you think a branded thief isn'tgood enough for you! Well I can't help where I was born or what myparents were—and you'd have a brand on your ugly face too, if youhadn't just been lucky!"
She threw the ladle.
This time her aim was better and Ciaran didn't duck quite in time. Itclipped his ear. He sprang up, looking murderous, and started to heaveit back at her. And then, suddenly, Mouse was crying, stamping up anddown and blinking tears out of her eyes.
"All right, I'm scared! I've never been out of a city before, andbesides...." She looked out over the silent plain, to the distantglint of Ben Beatha. "Besides," she whispered, "I keep thinking of thestories they used to tell—about Bas the Immortal, and his androids,and the grey beasts that served them. And about the Stone of Destiny."
Ciaran made a contemptuous mouth. "Legends. Old wive's tales. Songsto give babies a pleasant s