Lin Carter - Green Star 1 - Under the Green Star

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Under the Green Star

Lin Carter

Part I

THE BOOK OF CHONG THE MIGHTY

Chapter 1

THE BOOK FROM TIBET

As I sit writing these words, a weird sensation of unreality sweeps through my being.

Beyond the bay window before which my desk is drawn I can see green fields and tall trees-hickory

and mountain laurel, pine and yellow poplar. And beyond those fields and hills lies the waking

world, filled with busy and teeming cities, with ordinary people who lead everyday lives-lives

that seldom touch on mystery and marvel.

Which is real-the fantastic adventure I feel compelled to relate-or the world beyond my windows?

Have I only dreamed that I have stood where no man of my race has ever set foot before, or is this

dull world of tax returns and ball-point pens, of air pollution and TV talk shows, itself but a

dream? Are both worlds real?

Are-neither?

Perhaps I could begin my story in earliest youth, when wide reading brought the first intimations

of the occult within the reach of my speculative imagination. But-no- shall begin this narrative

with the first moment I took into my hands that immeasurably ancient and incredibly precious book

from the secret heart of Asia.

The long-dead hand that inscribed these yellowed and wrinkled vellum pages in queer crooked

characters called this book the Kan Chan Ga. For a thousand years it lay in a jeweled box of Bold

in the most secret archives of the holy Potala-the Temple-Palace of the Dalai Lama in hidden Lhasa

itself. Before that ... no one can say for certain. The Commentaries say it was found in a

prehistoric stone tomb in the foothills of the Trans-Himalayas long centuries before even the

first God-King ruled from the Lotus Throne-but no one really knows. There were empires before

Egypt, and cities older than Ur, and the sages whispered of lost lands and forgotten realms long

before Plato dreamed of Atlantis and set those dreams down to excite the imagination of men

forever.

The title, Kan Chan Ga, is not Tibetan. Neither are the odd, crooked little rune-like letters

wherewith the vellum pages are thickly lined. The Commentaries say the book is written in Old

Uighur, a language that was forgotten before Narmer the Lion brought the Two Lands together under

one crown and ruled as the first Pharaoh. And certain obscure and ancient texts hint there was

once an Uighur Empire amidst the trackless sands of the Gobi in Central Asia . . . long. long ago

when all that desert was a blooming garden, before the Poles changed. I neither know nor care.

The book cost me two hundred thousand dollars and seven years. When holy Lhasa fell to the

invading hordes from Red China. and the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India, the Kan Chan Ga, and

certain other priceless treasures, were taken into hiding. In those confused, horrible days, when

the snowy peaks of ancient Tibet were crimson with the flames of burning lamaseries and scarlet

with the blood of murdered sages, the book was lost. It was to have traveled west with the Panchan

Lama and his retinue. but in the snowstorms, with the roar of machine guns echoing from the rocky

cliffs, one party of lamas went

astray. The book was hidden in the crypts beneath a minor lamasery of little consequence, from

which, after years of searching, my agents found and rescued it.

And now I held it in my hands . . . the book that the most ancient sages speak of with awe and

reverence as The Key of The Liberation of The Soul . . . .

My father invested wisely and well in the Market and left me with a private fortune large enough

to permit me to indulge my curiosity in the occult sciences.

I am thirty years old, tall, broad-shouldered, deepchested, and strongly-built. I have blond hair

and gray eyes and am accounted a handsome man. But strength and health and handsomeness are a

mockery to me, for since I was six years old I have not taken a single step without the help of

mechanical aids.

All my father's fortune could not purchase a cure for polio in the twenty years before the

perfection of the Salk vaccine.

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Being a cripple, it was perhaps natural that I should turn my attention inward. The lore of the

occult attracted me from my earliest youth. I had the finest tutors, and mastered Latin, Greek,

Sanskrit, and Hebrew. The ancient Eastern science called eckankar-soul-travel, the projection of

the so-called "astral body"-fascinated me. In my search for the secrets of this lost art, this

forgotten science, I went far. A thousand books hinted of the secret, but none could reveal it.

In that strangest of all books, the Bardo Thodol, I first heard of the old book in Uighur. The

Bardo Thodol, which may be described as a geography of the travels of the soul after death and

before birth, whispered of the Kan Chan Ga. Crumbling scrolls from an old abandoned monastery in

the Sinkiang province of China, smuggled out through Hong Kong, told me more. A hundred agents

searched the Orient at my behest, and at length the book was unearthed. The seventh of the "living

gods" of Tibetthe Gupcha Lama himself-translated the Uighur for me, on my promise that the sacred

book would be returned to the Dalai Lama once I possessed the wisdom that I sought. This has now

been done.

I read the translation of the odd, crooked characters with an inner excitement that my reader can

only dimly imagine. If the secret lay in these ancient pages, then 1,

who had not taken an unaided step in twenty-four years, could travel the earth as swift-winged as

thought itself. Unseen, I could walk the thronged bazaars of Rangoonpeer up at the smiling enigma

of the Sphinx by moonlightgaze upon the carven stone ruins of jungle-grown Angkor Vat-explore the

mysterious ruins of elder and cryptic Tiahuanaco amidst the plateaus of the Andes.

Bit by bit, the secret emerged from the strange manuscript. Man is more than body and mind and

soul, the nameless sage of the Gobi had written. His nature is sevenfold: the animal flesh, the

material body itself; the vitalizing life-force that animates that flesh; the ego that is the

conscious "I" of every man; the memory, that contains a record of all that each man has seen and

felt and known: the astral body, the vehicle of the higher soullevels on the second plane; the

etheric body, that is the chalice contained within the astral vehicle; and, seventh and last, the

immortal soul itself, that is the precious flame within the chalice.

Subtly linked together are these seven selves, which make up the individual man. In deep sleep or

in hypnotic trance, the astral body sometimes . . . wanders . . . causing strange dreams of far-

off places and visions of distant friends. But only a stern discipline can release the etheric

body and the soul it contains, together with the conscious ego. That was the secret I had sought

so long; and I stood upon its threshold at last.

Night after night, mind-weary from the occult disciplines I had practiced, I lay in my bed and

stared wistfully up at the stars. If I could master the ancient art of soul-travel, no more would

I be chained and earthbound, locked in a helpless, crippled prison of flesh. I would be free ...

free as few men have ever been ... and bow I hungered for that freedoml

Day after day I practiced the inner concentration, the "Loosening of the Bonds." Few even of the

holy sages of old Tibet had ever in truth mastered eckankar-but few of them had been driven by the

motive that goaded me on.

I shall not bore my reader with a description of my labors. Nor shall I tell of the heartbreaking

moments of failure and despair that overcame me at times. The task was long and arduous ... it is

no easier to train the

muscles of the body to Olympic skills, than to train the mind and soul and spirit in this occult

science. But at last the day came when I deemed myself ready for the experiment.

Having fasted and performed certain austerities and calmed my mind with the recitation of certain

mantras, I informed my housekeeper that on no account was I to be disturbed, and locked myself

within the upper portion of my ancestral house which served as my private quarters and library.

The good woman was accustomed to this sort of behavior. My quarters were equipped with a

kitchenette and pantry, and many times in the past I had secluded myself for days on end behind

locked doors while busied in my researches. I impressed upon her that. she was not to interrupt me

for any reason.

Emptying my mind of all trivial thoughts, I stretched out on a soft, comfortable sofa and composed

myself as if for slumber. Closing my eyes, I visualized a black sphere. It hovered before my

mind's eye exact in every detail, almost as if it were a material object. My concentration was

focused upon that orb of darkness with such intensity that, ere long, I was unaware of outside

sounds. Then I began to will myself into the deepest trance. I began to lose all awareness of my

own body; all outer sensation faded; no longer could I feel the faint brush of moving air against

my face, or hear the beating of my own pulse, or feel the pressure of my crippled body against the

soft fabric of my couch. All of my attention was turned inward now.

Next I visualized the black sphere as not a globular object, but an illusion-I saw it as the

black, circular mouth of a tunnel, and down that endless tunnel I imagined myself traveling, until

I was swallowed up in unrelieved darkness.

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Deeper and deeper I descended, until at length I perceived the faintest spark of light ahead, like

a star against the breast of the night, like the far, dim opening at the end of the tunnel. I

drifted toward it at ever-increasing speeds, until I seemed to hurtle through the black hollow

darkness at an inconceivable velocity.

I emerged from darkness into dim ruby light.

For a moment I could make nothing of my surroundings. I seemed to be enclosed in a rectangular box

considerable depth, whose floor was drowned in deep gloom and whose upper levels were awash in

faint red luminosity.

Then, with a strange, tingling shock of surprise, I recognized my surroundings. I was in the very

room wherein I had immersed myself in the sleep-like trance ... but floating near the ceiling!

Many hours had passed, for early afternoon had given way to the hour of sunset, and the last level

beams shone redly through the windows of the western wall.

Gazing down from my height I saw . . . myself.

I lay stretched out on a couch, my arms folded upon my chest, my face waxen-pale and curiously

unfamiliar to me. It came to me then that I had never before actually seen my own face as others

saw it, but always in a mirror or through the medium of some other reflective surface. Always

before I had seen my face reversed, in reflection: but now I saw myself as the rest of the world

saw me. It seemed a trivial difference; but it was oddly stranger than it should have been. My

face was ... empty; blank and expressionless.

Was this because I lay in trance-like sleep, and all of my facial muscles-which in my waking

moments were in tension, giving my features what we call "expression"were now completely relaxed?

Or was the strange blankness of my features due to the fact that my body was

now-untenanted?

I cannot answer now, nor could I then.

Curiously, I turned my gaze upon my own being, and found that to the eyes of my immaterial self I

was an invisible spirit. Indeed, now that I began to accustom myself to this peculiar state, I

felt oddly unaware of myself in every way. A man in the flesh may strip himself naked and yet be

aware of his bodily envelope in a thousand small ways-the roughness of a carpet against his bare

soles-the chill wind blowing against naked flanks-the thousand little internal sensations of the

body, tongue resting against teeth, dryness of throat, an itching finger. None of these I felt in

my new spirit-state: it was as if I did not possess a body at all.

And, of course, that was the truth of the matter.

I had liberated myself from my body.

I was free!

Chapter 2

BEYOND THE MOON

To the windows I-drifted. I know of no other term whereby to describe the mode of locomotion I

employed. I did not stride or even swim through the air: I ... moved. In my bodiless state, the

whim was father to the deed. I but thought of going over to look out of the window, and found

myself there without any sensation of having propelled myself thither.

I gazed out. The sun was all but gone now, mere guttering embers burning amid the distant pines.

Suddenly, I wanted to be out in the open air . . . and again found that I had traversed an

interval of space with no sensation of having physically moved. I hovered far above the lawn,

which lay drowned in darkness below. Had I been here in the body, I should have experienced the

giddiness of vertigo; now I felt nothing. I hung in the air thirty feet above the wet grass, but

it was like a dream of flight, rather than the physical experience.

A sudden intoxication seized me: I could go anywhere-do anything! I rose to a great height with

the swiftness of

`thought. The hilly Connecticut countryside lay spread out beneath me, fields and forests and the

checkered farms with their sown fields. The rooftops of the nearest community, Harritton, were

visible from my height; I could see the white steeple of the Congregational church, the yellow

marquee lights of the cinema, the red neon sign of the Cozy Oak Bar and Grill, the luminous

funnels of moving headlights along the highway leading to New Haven.

At this height-in the flesh!-I would have felt intense cold, the pressure of great winds-but I

felt nothing. Nor

could I hear a sound, not even the beating of my own heart or the faint hollow roaring of blood

moving through the arteries of the inner ear, that seashell sound that is the closest to absolute

silence man ever knows.

Why should I be able to see and not to hear? True, I was as immaterial as thought itself, and

sound waves passed through me without the slightest obstacle-but was not this true of light waves

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as well? And it was truly light by which I saw, not the ghostly luminance of some astral sun, but

the light of the ordinary world. Why was I opaque to light, but transparent to sound or matter?

The ancient pages of the Kan Chan Ga said nothing of this. And to this day I have no explanation

to offer; I can but set down exactly what I experienced, and leave it to others wiser than myself

to explain.

I looked down. The woods bordering my property lay below, all but invisible in the darkness.

Within those woods was a narrow stream by whose banks I had played as a child before polio struck

me down. A whim bore me there without the slighest sensation of motion. The darkness under the

overhanging pine boughs was inky, but the moon was beginning to rise and a dim silver radiance

pervaded the place. The stream was wider than I remembered, and the banks more deeply cut-but that

should be the case, considering the years that had passed.

A fat raccoon was washing its food in the gliding waters. I watched it with delight. Had I been

present in the body, the wary little fellow would have vanished in the bushes on the instant: now,

although it paused, to rear up and peer around with bright eyes gleaming in its comic, black-

masked face, it showed no sign of being aware of my presence.

Like this fat, furry little inhabitant of the woods, 1, too, was-free! I could go where I would,

and no walls or barrier of steel could hinder my passage.

Behind me, in the great house, my body lay in deep sleep. My heartbeat had slowed by this time, my

body temperature had dropped, and my breathing was shallow. To leave my body far behind would not

cause it barm in any way, so the Kan Chan Ga assured me. Were I to spend hours, or even days in

this insubstantial state, I could return to my body in confidence that it had suffered in no way

from the departure of its tenant. In the deep trance state in which it now lay, the fires of life

burned

very low. There were minimal demands on that store of vitality in this state; to remain away for

days or even weeks would not mean that I would return to find a gaunt, starved corpse.

Nor did my exertions while in this astral state cause any drain of energy. I was essentially

disembodied thoughtfree spirit-and I drew upon cosmic sources of energy as yet unstudied by

Western science.

The moon was rising now; it glowed like a shield of pure silver through the black branches. A

sudden heady intoxication seized me-I could travel wherever I mightto the very moon itself, if the

whim pleased me!

But, no-men of my race had walked the desiccated powdery plains of that shining sphere-why should

I, in the perfect freedom of my spirit-state, .go where other men could travel?

I gazed beyond the moon to where the ruddy spark of Mars burned like a dim coal-Mars! The goal of

the human imagination for untold centuries-I could travel there, if I willed, with the unthinkable

swiftness of thought itself! What matter the vast distances of interplanetary space: a million

miles or eight millions are naught to the unleashed spiritl

Upon the very thought, my soul lifted with joy. To walk the surface of another planet-to go where

no man of my world had yet been in all the ages of infinite time! Vague thoughts of the books I

had read with such fascination in my boyhood came back to me-memories of old Edgar Rice Burroughs

and his unforgettable Martian adventure classics-now I, too, like John Carter, could stride the

dead sea bottoms of mysterious and romantic Barsooml

Again, the whim was father to the deed. In a twinkling the Earth vanished beneath me and the

blackness of space closed about my being. The moon flashed by in a dim dazzle of gray-silver, and

the blurred red sphere swam up before me until it filled my vision. I drifted down toward it -

like one in a dream, and slowly came to rest on an illimitable dim plain of dry red sand and

crumbling porous rock.

About me, stretching to a horizon that seemed strangely closer than Terrestrial horizons, I stared

through the dim twilight of the Martian day. The sun was only a fierce, scorching, and intolerably

brilliant star at this vast dis-

tance, and it shed little light on the red desert and the low ancient hills.

I gazed up, searching for the famous twin moons, and at length I found them. They were very much

smaller than I had thought they would be, and very dim, almost invisible. I looked beyond them to

the Earth I had left behind, and found it, a dim, remote blue star with a minute silvery

companion.

Then I stared down at the dim-litters red sands beneath me. I sought to bend and touch the sands,

but I had no bodily awareness at all and do not know if my spirit-self performed the action or

not. This is very difficult to describe: I was not aware of having arms wherewith to reach, or a

waist wherefrom to bend; and all that chanced was that my "level" sank until "I" was closer to the

ground than before.

I next ascended and floated above the endless plain, searching for some feature-either the

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legendary canals the early astronomers bad seen, or had thought they had seen---or the immense

craters NASA had photographed from Mariner.

I saw neither . . . instead, I saw--.a cityl

Excitement flamed up within me, and I sank toward it.

It lay in the shelter of encircling hills, and the red sands lapped up to drift about its squares

and to sift slowly into the streets. I stared about me with heartaching wonder. A city of tall,

impossibly slender, incredibly graceful fluted towers with flaring tiers and swelling domes, all

fashioned from some unknown and glistening stone, like pale golden marble, faintly veined with

green. There were broad avenues and mighty forums and long shadowy arcades of slim columns, and on

the slopes of the encircling hills, facing upon what had once been a broad seashore a billion

years ago, were the husks of lovely villas.

I drifted like a ghost through the deserted city, wondering what sort of beings had dwelt in these

empty palaces and what dreams they had dreamed, gazing up at the cold mockery of the stars. And in

a small square I found at last a likeness of the long-gone dwellers of the seaside metropolis, and

gazed with wonder upon the slim, graceful statue of palest alabaster, that limned the likeness of

a race that bad died before the first Terrestrial mammal had risen from the primordial slime.

It was manlike, slender and impossibly tall, with a

featureless oval for a head. Two of its several boneless limbs were lifted to the skies, and the

smooth casque of its face was tilted on its long graceful neck, as if it stared up longingly at

the stars it could never reach.

At the base of the statue was an inscription, but in no tongue known to me, a lovely, elaborated

script full of curlicues and flourishes.

I turned from the slim, mournful, lovely thing restlessly: this city was a necropolis. Here

reigned Death and only shadows drifted through these silent streets. I wandered on, floating above

the domed villas, and through the column-fronted palaces, and found murals filled with the

slender, faceless beings posed against fantastic gardens that had withered to dust aeons ago: Not

even a bone had been left untouched by time.

Beyond, on the stone quays where once the blue waves of a forgotten sea broke in sheeted foam

beneath the hurtling glory of the moons, I raised my sight to the stars that blazed like strewn

diamonds on black velvet, far clearer and more brilliant than those that glitter through the

watery atmosphere of my own world.

If I could traverse the abyss between the worlds, the stars themselves were not beyond my reach,

and I had no fear of becoming lost in the star-sewn immensities of the universe, no fear of

traveling so far I could not find my way back to that shell of flesh that lay slumbering on Earth.

For the mere act of wishing my return would cause it, even if I had no conception of distance or

direction.

So again 1 lifted up my sight ... and a strange green star caught and held my attention.

Green it was, that distant spark, as a flame of emerald, and it blazed down steadily from its

height as if beckoning to me . . . as if calling me from the illimitable vastnesses wherein it

hung.

Why this particular star, out of the millions that jeweled the Martian night, seized my attention

I cannot say. Perbaps it was only that green is a rare hue for stars and that I could not recall

having ever seen a star of this strange color before. Or there may have been some other and far

stranger reason for the fascination which now seized upon me-and of this I shall speak at another

time and in another place.

Suffice it to say that floating there amid the impossibly slim towers of the Martian city, I was

rapt and held by

the flame, of emerald green that blazed above me through the night. And I thought to myself-why

not?-mere distance is no hurdle to a bodiless spirit-I could circumnavigate the Universe itself,

if so I desired.

And I soared up from the barren surface of Mars and left the ghostly city behind me to its shadows

and its immemorial memories, and flew out into the greater universe that lay beyond.

By now all conception of time bad left me. In this bodiless spirit-realm, both time and space-

distance and durationwere without real meaning, and I discovered that the awareness of passing

time is only a habit of the flesh-bound consciousness, no more.

Thus I cannot say whether my flight to the Green Star was as swift as a flashing instant, or

occupied some duration. I was not aware of any slightest sensation of motion. The dim red disk of

Mars shrank and vanished beneath me; the fierce star-like beacon of the sun dwindled and was lost

in the jeweled mists of clustered stars that gemmed the night. I flashed on through darkness in a

strange dreamlike flight and it may have been an aeon-or an instantbefore the Green Star swung

before me like a tremendous globe of vernal flame.

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For a long moment I floated there in space before the terrific orb of furious light.

Then a world swam into view out of the darkness-a planet, like the one whereon I had been born, or

the one from whose surface I had flown hither, an instant or an aeon ago.

On sudden impulse, I directed my flight toward the dim silvery orb whose surface was wreathed in

lacy mists. Down through its atmosphere I flashed . . . down to the surface of a new and unknown

world . . . and into an adventure more strange and perilous and thrilling than any other man has

ever lived!

Chapter 3

WORLD OF THE GREEN STAR

And I found myself in the midst of an astounding scene, unlike any surroundings I had ever seen

before.

Imagine a world whose skies are a dome of dim, pearly mists, through which but faintly a sun like

a sphere of incandescent emerald blazes.

A world of colossal trees-trees which loomed about me on all sides-trees of such unthinkable girth

and height that beside their like the titanic Redwoods of California would dwindle to saplings-

trees that must have towered two full miles into the misty, luminous airl

I had come to rest an enormous distance above the surface of this strange new world. Near me

soared the vast bole of a tree taller than many Earthly mountains. Its trunk soared aloft, hidden

from me by innumerable branches of comparable size-branches as broad as six-lane highways-from

which burst an infinite number of strangely yellow leaves larger than men.

Below me, the trunk of this forest titan dwindled thousands of feet down until it also became

obscured and finally concealed by the tangle of immense boughs and the thickness of innumerous

leaves. I could see perhaps half a mile in every direction, but everywhere I looked my vision

eventually ended in masses of pale yellow leaves or entangled oaklike boughs of enormous size. I

felt like an ant amid Sequoiae, or a mote floating among the towers of Manhattan.

The rays of the Green Star above the mists shone down through the immense foliage whose yellow

leaves filtered the light into a strange dim green-gold gloom.

In this mystic half-light I began to perceive forms of higher life. Perhaps six hundred feet from

where I hovered, a scarlet reptile with a saw-toothed spine clung with sucker-feet to the

underside of one colossal bough thrice the breadth of Broadway. The scarlet lizard itself was the

size of twin Bengal tigers.

I caught a flicker of movement below me-a twinkle of jeweled brilliance, the glitter of gold, the

sheen of sheeted opal-and in the next instant my attention was riveted upon the most fantastic

steed and rider imaginable.

The steed was like a dragonfly-but larger than a Percheron. Four long narrow oval translucent

wings flickered in the currents of air ... wings like thin slices of glassy opal, veined with

crawling threads of glistening jade!

A head like a glittering helmet of burnished gold, crowned with branching antennae of crimson

velvet, soft as down; and, for eyes, the fabulous creature had two immense, curving, teardrop-

shaped protuberances of faceted jet.

Its long, tapering, and cylindrical body was plated with overlapping flat rings of flashing

silver, powdered with dust of azure. Like the goblin steed of some impossible elf-knight, it

flashed through the dim amber gloom on its undreamable mission!

Then my dazzlement woke to astonished awe-for I glimpsed tasseled, silken reins affixed to the

base of the delicate antennae-a saddle of padded and sumptuous velvet belted about the torpedo-

like torso of the winged creature-and seated therein-an elfin knight in truth!

Graceful-slim as a ballet dancer-feminine in his delicate beauty-the chevalier mounted upon this

airy courser was all but nude. A cuirass of gilt leather formed a broad flat collar about his slim

throat and shielded his hairless, girlish chest, tapering to join the girdle he wore low about his

hips. Gems flashed and winked in the gilt leather-red, green, and indigo.

This elfin chevalier wore a strange, complicated helm of glittering glass: the design was vaguely

like that of antique Japanese armor. A long gauzy plume of gossamer white floated back from the

horns of this fantastical helm.

Beneath the helm, this face was elfin in its delicate beauty-large amber-golden eyes set aslant in

a fineboned, heart-shaped, point-chinned face. His skin was the

mellow tone of old ivory and his mouth a dainty pink rosebud.

His shoulders and arms were bare, as were his long graceful legs, but he wore stiff brocade

gauntlets, heavy with gold wire and flashing purple stones, and high swashtopped corsair boots of

scarlet leather, with high gilt heels and jeweled buckles.

A long cloth of purple was wound about his supple loins, and attached to his warrior-harness he

wore a long rapier like a curved glass needle.

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As I hung in mid-air, stunned with amazement at this gorgeous vision, the glittering elf-knight on

his dragonflysteed flashed by me in a twinkling and was gone.

But in his track came yet another, this one cloaked in drifting veils of misty gray, his loincloth

-of deep blue, his helm of intricate and diamond-studded silver, his plume a wisp of shimmering

gold.

The second rider bore a slim lance of sharp glass, from which a long banderole of sulphurous

yellow, charged with a nine-pointed star of deep black, slowly uncoiled behind him in his flight.

He too flashed past me, and now I saw that the two elfin warriors were ascending to a higher level-

perhaps to the immensely broad branch far above me.

They were the fore guard of a stately train, for now came three in blazing yellow surcoats, the

black star on their breasts, their slim-featured faces masked behind visors of silver cloth,

riding abreast like an honor guard.

And behind them, borne through the misty golden twilight like Titania in her chariot, came a

delicate car of fluted pearl shaped like a scallop shell, drawn by four gigantic dragonflies.

Throned therein on many-colored pillows was a man in a long narrow robe of fierce yellow with a

spiky crown of black crystals on his brows and fathomless eyes of emerald flame, cold and

intelligent and subtle. In his ungauntleted hand he bore a scepter like a rod of black crystal.

This aerial entourage ascended to the vast branch above me, and, drawn by a fascination I cannot

describe, I floated on their heels-to . a vision of supernal beauty transcending description.

For atop the broad level branch ran a great boulevard of gray stone. And half a mile away, where

the bough met and joined with the colossal trunk of the forest giant, a

city built' of ten thousand jewels flashed and glittered in the crotch of the tremendous tree!

Thus I first looked upon the gemmed ramparts of Phaolon the Glorious-Jewel City of the Goddess-

Queencapital of the airy kingdom of the Laonese-wherein I was to find my heart, my destiny, and my

own peculiar doom!

As one enmeshed in dream I followed the flying entourage to the landing place before the high-

turreted gates of the Jewel City.

Their dragonfly steeds drifted to a landing, as did the team which drew the pearly chariot of the

man in yellow robes who wore the spiky miter of flashing black crystals.

A party of fairy knights came forth to greet them with high ceremony. Elfin heralds in jeweled

tabards like glittering tapestries flourished long, fluted silvery horns. An honor guard in colors

of gold and emerald saluted stiffly and led the way through gates that blazed with turquoise and

topaz . . . and I followed after, bedazzled by such beauty.

Into the faerie metropolis the party of visitors swept, and up a tall narrow staircase of

shimmering crystals toward a towered edifice, like Queen Mab's palace.

Drawn up to either side, the elfin populace watched, but with no cheering. Mute and sullen and

unhappy were their expressions, or fiercely resentful, or tragic and bitter. It was as if a cruel

and conquering emperor had arrived at their gates to demand utter surrender.

Into the mosque-domed palace they swept with regal and imperious stride. Through a tall, Gothic-

pointed gateway studded with immense, glittering jewels they swaggered, the gaunt, cold-eyed man

with the crown of spiky black crystals striding before them with the proud stance of a conqueror.

And at their heels, unseen, I flitted like an invisible spirit attendant on the presence of some

master sorcerer.

The visiting party at length entered a vast, domed audience hall, floored with milky jade and

roofed with a vaulted dome of lucent ruby through which struck level shafts of burning and

sanguine splendor.

Here was assembled a princely company, begowned and begemmed in fantastic panoply-the court of

some Princess of Faerie-the Hall of a Goblin Queen! They stood

silent, with closed faces, bending inscrutable gaze on the tall man in narrow robes of fierce,

incandescent yellow, who strode through the throng, glancing neither to right nor left, bearing

himself with all the arrogance of an emperor.

They neither bowed nor made any salute as he passed, and their elfin features were impassive and

unreadable; but I saw anguish in the eyes of the women, and despair was written on many a brow.

Intrigued by the mystery, by the strange and pregnant drama of the scene upon which I had

intruded, I lingered a time to see what would occur.

In the midst of the immensity of the ruby-domed hall a slim throne towered atop a pedestal of

sparkling crystal. The chair, with its curved and slender legs of gilt, and high, fluted back,

resembled for all the world a chair from the reign of Louis XIV.

The throne stood empty; slim-legged heralds, resting the belled mouths of long silver bugles on

their hips, stood in a semicircle about the untenanted throne, gems twinkling on their tabards. A

bald, fat-paunched chamberlain in thick robes of imperial purple strode from the throng to bow

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stiffly before the cruel-faced man in the narrow yellow robes.

There ensued a lengthy pause in which I sensed, but could not hear, the taut-stretched, aching

silence.

And then the bugles blew!

As a field of gorgeous flowers bows beneath a wave of wind, all that splendid and glittering

company sank in profound obeisance before the young woman who appeared in a tall, pointed doorway.

She swept through the kneeling throng, past the tall, cold-faced man crowned with black crystals,

mounted the several tall steps of the dais, and seated herself in the gold throne.

And for the first time I looked upon the incredible, the heart-shaking beauty of Niamh-Niamh of

Phaolon, Goddess-Queen of the Jewel City!

Niamh-the Queen of the Green Star! And queen of my heart from that first, breathless moment to the

last moment of my lifel

Chapter 4

PRINCESS OF THE JEWEL CITY

How can I describe her as I first saw her, enthroned in her golden chair under that immense dome

of dim and luminous ruby? Words, I think, fail and falter before the task of describing such utter

perfection of feminine beauty.

She wasyoung, a girl, a mere child: she looked perhaps fourteen when I saw her first in the Great

Hall of Phaolon. Slim and graceful as a dancing girl, with her slight, tip-tilted breasts and

long, slender legs, she had the coltish grace of an adolescent which contrasted with her regal,

queenly dignity.

She wore robes of dull, heavy plush-plush with a shimmering silvery nap-plush the dim hue of

damask roses. A scooping neckline exposed the upper slopes of her shallow, adolescent breasts,

laid bare her slim shoulders and the fragility of her slender throat. All of her upper bosom was

the creamy hue of old mellow ivory.

The bodice of her gown fitted her like a second skin, and clung seductively to the slender waist

and smooth, boyish hips of Niamh. But from her girdle, slung low about her hips in the style of

the Renaissance, the rose plush skirts of the gown swelled out like the open petals of some soft,

lovely flower. This gown was slit up the sides, demurely revealing the silken loveliness of her

soft, smooth long legs, naked to the upper thigh, and from beneath the hem of this gown could be

glimpsed the tiny, exquisite foot of a Mandarin princess, shod in slippers of golden filigree.

From heavy, telling puffed sleeves, her slim arms ex-

tended, bare and unadorned. In all that splendid company, Niamh alone wore no gems at breast or

throat, lobe or brow or fingers. She had no need of the frozen mineral fire to add luster or

brilliance to her loveliness.

Her face was fine-boned, heart-shaped, exquisite. Beneath delicately arched brows, her eyes were

enormous wells of depthless amber flame wherein flakes of gold fire trembled. Thick jetty lashes

enshadowed the dark flame of her eyes, but her hair, elaborately teased and twisted and coiffed,

was startlingly white: a fantastic confection of frosted sugar, an exquisite construction of spun

silver.

Her mouth was a luscious rosebud, daintily pink, moistly seductive.

A delicate flower of superb and breathtaking loveliness was Niamh the Fair, when first I looked

upon her there on the gilt throne, bathed in shafts of somber and ruby light from the hollow dome

above.

The portly chamberlain rang his great silver mace of office against the polished tiles; and there

commenced a scene of dramatic confrontation which baffled and maddened me-for, not only was it

conducted in a language unknown to me, but a language whose tones I could not even hear!

The spirit-state in which I floated unseen had annoying properties. Although I could see clearly,

by the agency of some interaction of forces inexplicable to me then and now, no sound whatsoever

reached my impalpable senses. Thus it was that the tense drama now enacted before me was conducted

in total silence, insofar as I was concerned.

The tall gaunt man with the cruel face and intense eyes, whose name was Akhmim, as I later

learned, seemed to be presenting the princess with an ultimatum of some sort. He set forth his

terms with vehement gestures and emphatic curtness, dictating, as I gathered, from a position of

superiority. That his terms were unpalatable I assumed from the glum expressions on the faces of

those courtiers nearest to me; and that they were peremptory and affrontive I gathered from the

stiffness of Niamh's posture and from the rich color that glowed in her cheeks.

There was a sneering insolence in Akhmim's arrogant posture, in the negligent courtesy he made to

the throne, and in the insufferable smugness wherewith he rested his

case, awaiting with folded arms and lofty expression the reply of the princess.

As for Niamh, long lashes hooded the amber fire of her eyes, but indignation colored her cheeks

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and her breasts rose and fell, panting with suppressed fury.

As for me, although I understood none of this, I longed to seize Akhmim by the scruff of the neck

and the seat of his robe and chuck him out of the hall in a most unceremonious monious manner,

calculated to bruise his selfimportance, if not even more tender portions of his physical anatomy.

And if I read correctly the outrage and insult that smoldered in the gaze of many of Niamh's

courtiers, there were many in the hall that day who would have applauded such an act, had it been

possible for me to perform it.

Still Niamh hesitated before giving her answer to the ultimatum of Akhmim. I somehow sensed that

her reply, once given, would be irrevocable.

Then something caught my attention, and drew me from this scene of tension. Niamh's gilt throne

rose on a manytiered pedestal in the center of the hall; but the hall itself was cruciform, like

the crux formed by the two passages of a cathedral, and, where the nave of a cathedral would be,

there rose a most curious structure. It was like an immense sarcophagus, but one built of delicate

blown glass, chased with arabesques and painted with inscriptions in a tongue unknown to me.

Within this crystal coffin there reposed the body of a man so perfectly preserved that his

appearance was in all details utterly lifelike. Indeed, you would have unhesitatingly sworn he was

not dead at all, but lay in light slumber. The bloom of life was on his cheeks, his grim lips were

moist, almost you saw his deep chest tremble to the susurration of light breathing.

In no way did he resemble the dainty, effeminate men of Phaolon. Where they were small and

exquisite, he was tall, broad of shoulder, with great arms and thighs of mighty girth. Where their

limbs were delicate as those of smooth young girls, his were corded with sinews, thick with

swelling thews. Where their faces were fine-boned and elfin, his was a rude frame of jutting bone,

square and massive of jaw, swarthy of hue, and, lacking their smoothness, rough and harsh as from

the burning kiss of tropic suns and the lash of stinging tempests.

He had been a mighty warrior, I guessed, and perhaps

had led many a war-host in the field: for the stern, grim-lipped air of command lay about him like

a crimson cloak.

He was unclothed, the Sleeping One-which, as I later learned, was what the folk of Phaolon called

the warrior in the crystal coffin-and his great arms lay folded upon his breast, where they were

clenched about the massive pommel of a gigantic broadsword of blue steel. A glittering scarlet

crystal flashed and winked in the pommel of that sword.

Something about the Sleeping One caught my attention, drew me to the glass sarcophagus wherein he

lay enshrined. I cannot explain the fascination that mighty form exerted upon my imagination; it

was as if every line and lineament of those grim features was engraved upon the tablets of my

memory-as if I had known him, somewhere, somewhen, perhaps in some former life . . . .

I drifted down toward the great figure, where it lay stretched out upon a pallet of sumptuous

velvets. And then there occurred a miracle, the strangest among the many I had thus far

experienced; for my spirit-self floated down to scrutinize the body of the Sleeping One-and

entered it-

And lived again in human flesh!

The transition from disembodied spirit to a spirit which dwelt in living flesh was instantaneous

and utterly astounding. In my spirit-state I had been aware of no bodily sensations whatsoever-now

the pulse thundered in my temples, the heart labored in my breast, and my lungs ached, starving

for air!

With an involuntary start of surprise, my thews convulsed; I rose from my pallet, brandishing my

arms, and the great broadsword to which I clung clove through the glass sarcophagus, shattering it

to ten thousand ringing shards l

The explosion of shattering glass filled the hall with ringing echoes. A hundred startled eyes

turned to see me rise from my place among the glorious dead. The miracle of my resurrection wrung

a gasp of stupefied amazement from a hundred throats.

But none in all that place were more astounded at this turn of events than was I myself!

For I had not willed myself down into that dead or

sleeping form. Hovering near, I had been caught helpless in the attraction of some force unknown

to me, sucked down as by a vortex into that body, helpless to resist the suction as any chip

caught in a maelstrom.

Niamh stared at me with unbelief in her wide eyes and astonishment written in her face.

From where he stood before the throne, Akhmim regarded me as if I were an apparition. I sensed

that something in my resurrection-perhaps its timing, which had come almost as if in answer to his

ultimatumdisconcerted him, shook his arrogance, struck doubt into the armor of his confidence.

For a breathless moment he stood, twisted about awkwardly in his stiff robes, looking

uncomfortable and somehow foolish. And he knew it, for he paled and bit his lip and tugged at his

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garments as if to rearrange them.

For a long moment the entire company stood frozen in shock. No one spoke or moved. Then, from

among a rank of courtiers who stood in a semicircle behind Niamh's throne, one elderly sage thrust

himself to the fore and addressed me. From the rising lilt of his tones I gathered it was an

interrogation. The only trouble was that the question was spoken in a language completely unknown

to me-a fluid, musical tongue that sounded rather like a cross between Hawaiian and French, with a

sibilant tang of old Castilian.

The question thus addressed to me was spoken in loud, clear tones fully audible to all who stood

within the ruby-domed hall. Whatever the nature of the query may have been, I sensed from the

breathless silence that followed upon the old man's words, and from the keen and alert fixity with

which all eyes were trained upon me, that it was one of enormous importance. Without exception,

all who stood there waited in tense expectancy for my reply.

From the moment I had stood up, shattering free of the glass sarcophagus, I had stood

motionlessly, my face impassive, clenching the mighty broadsword in one scarred fist. I had not

chosen this immobile stance consciouslythe fact of the matter was that I was suffering exquisitely

from the torment of renewed circulation. How long this trance-bound body had slept in its

transparent tomb I did not know, but the pins-and-needles sensation of numb flesh awakening and

the intolerable ache of long-unused mus-

cles forced to work again, combined in a torture beyond description.

In my agony, I scarcely heard the sage's query, and it was not until long after that I realized

its importance, and the import of my answer. By pure accident, without even thinking, I did

precisely the right thing.

I-nodded.

And in the next instant the ruby dome above rang to a peal of thunderous acclamation. Joy blazed

in the eyes of the throng; exaltation shone in their happy faces. Indescribable relief and bliss

glowed in the face of Niamh the Fair. Her eyes shone down on me, brilliant with an inexplicable

fervor, and she clasped her small hands to her throbbing heart in an ecstasy beyond all my

comprehension.

A burly, hard-faced guard captain, who stood very near the foot of his princess' dais, turned upon

me a gaze of wordless adoration. Then he removed his sword from his scabbard and raised it aloft

in salute to me.

A hundred swords leaped from their scabbards to flash aloft like narrow mirrors in the rich glory

from above.

And from a hundred throats rang one word-

"Chong! Chong! CHONG!"

And I knew it was no word, but a name.

My name!

Chapter 5

THE WISDOM OF KHIN.NOM

At the command of my royal hostess, a gorgeouslyappointed suite of apartments was reserved for me,

and a squadron of guards-warriors vied for the honor of serving me, led by the hard-faced captain

who had been the first of all to hail me. His name was Panthon.

My own name I first mistook to be Kyr-Chong, for thus I was addressed by all who spoke to me,

including Panthon and his warriors. It was only later, as I became familiar with the oddly musical

language spoken by the Laonese, as the folk of Phaolon term their race, that I came to understand

the phoneme kyr was a prefix of honor, denoting something like "Lord Chong" or perhaps "Sir

Chong"; as for "Chong" itself, it was an affectionate diminutive, used in a blending of respect

and love, as the Englishmen of old referred to Richard the Lionhearted as "stout old Rick" or as

those of a later age spoke of Henry V as "Hal" or "Harry."

My full name, it seemed, was Chongaphon tai-VenaVena, and the allusions above to the Lionheart and

the victor of Agincourt are not far off the mark. For Lord Chong had been a warrior hero of mythic

fame, a doer of legendary deeds. No doubt existed in those who clustered about me on my rare

public appearances but that I was that mighty man, reborn again in my original body, which had

been perfectly preserved against just such an eventuality. An ancient prophecy had been made that

someday in great time of need I would return again to lead the warriors of Phaolon the Jewel City

to victories and triumphs

as of old, and to save the realm from doom in its hour of ultimate peril.

I am certain that my total ignorance of the Laonese, of their history, their language, and their

ways, was carefully kept secret from the courtiers and the commonfolk. The most embarrassing

element in my "amnesia"-for thus it was regarded-was my lack of any familiarity with the language.

This was first on the agenda of my education.

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