The Project Gutenberg EBook of When the Mountain Shook, by Robert Abernathy

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Title: When the Mountain Shook

Author: Robert Abernathy

Illustrator: Kelly Freas

Release Date: June 16, 2010 [EBook #32836]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WHEN THE MOUNTAIN SHOOK

By Robert Abernathy

Illustrated by Kelly Freas

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction March 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: _Dark was the Ryzga mountain and forbidding; steep were its
cliffs and sheer its crevasses. But its outward perils could not compare
with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and
conquer...._]

At sunset they were in sight of the Ryzga mountain. Strangely it towered
among the cliffs and snow-slopes of the surrounding ranges: an immense
and repellently geometric cone, black, its sides blood-tinted by the
dying sun.

Neena shivered, even though the surrounding cold could not reach her.
The ice-wind blew from the glacier, but Var's love was round her as a
warming cloak, a cloak that glowed softly golden in the deepening
twilight, even as her love was about him.

Var said, "The Watcher's cave should be three miles beyond this pass."
He stood rigid, trying to catch an echo of the Watcher's thoughts, but
there was nothing. Perhaps the old man was resting. From the other
direction, the long way that they two had come, it was not difficult to
sense the thought of Groz. That thought was powerful, and heavy with
vengeance.

"Hurry," said Neena. "They're closer than they were an hour ago."

She was beautiful and defiant, facing the red sunset and the black
mountain. Var sensed her fear, and the love that had conquered it. He
felt a wave of tenderness and bitterness. For him she had come to this.
For the flame that had sprung between them at th