Bas groaned in horror. But the other Gael was lean and more than passing quick.
Cormac rolled, contriving to hurl himself several feet along the floor with a wrenching twisting exertion that would have crippled the back of a man whose body was not so agile and muscle-sheathed. Armour screamed on tile. A rushing ax chopped down the corpse of the Briton over which Cormac had fallen, and where he’d sprawled but a second before. Already he was scrambling to his feet, aiding himself with his hands like the animals that were his remotest ancestors. To such was he reduced.
A brief glance showed the Gael five foes converging on him. These were uncanny foes, unnatural foes, impervious to aught but the headless ax in his hand. Again he must needs run, fleet as a hare before hounds, racing around and between pillars tall as oaks-which he wished they were.
In shuddery silence, dead men followed, to join him with them.
Bas saw that Cormac was bent on making his way around and back to him. He saw too how the Dane hurried to cut off his former piratic comrade-and the druid hurled the broken piece of oak in his hand. The dead man moved too fast to be struck where Bas aimed, between the shoulder blades. The splinter-bristling chunk of wood fell short.
Yet again the druid was lucky or Behl-blessed; it struck the back of his knotty calf. In seconds he became mere bone. Again the ghastly cycle: man who had turned into corpse and then into bone and then into man-returned to bone.
With cries of rage and challenge that rang and echoed in the room, Ros and Brian burst into the hall of horror. Having heard the clangour and Cormac’s shouts, they’d hurried onto the gallery to stare down at that which erupted their bodies into gooseflesh. The two youths withstood the moveless watching as long as they could without intervening. Swallowing all fear, they came now loping like young hounds with more enthusiasm than knowledge or sense.
“STOP!” Bas bellowed, and it was no small voice the druid possessed. “Hold-only oak slays them-only oak!”
The two young men looked at him, at Cormac and his assailants-who though eerily silent looked quite natural-and at each other, and back to the druid.
Bas chopped a piece of splintery wood from the ruined airm of the throne of Kull. As though he’d commanded men all his life, as though he wore a crown and mail rather than robe and center-parted black hair that was rope-held about his forehead above his brows, Bas the Druid called out again.
“Come ye hither, both!”
Cormac was parrying a vicious sword-stroke from a man whose sword-wound he’d once treated, off Rechru isle after an encounter with a boat too full of Frisians. His hurried swing of his makeshift stave at the attacker was well caught on oval shield, even as Cormac blunted the ax-swing of a second foe on his own buckler.
“GET TO BAS!” he bellowed, without looking from his foemen.
Brian and Ros, as confused as they were quiveringly excited, were already doing so in obedience to the sword-wielding druid. Like a man whose wife is dying for lack of wood on the fire, the robed man chopped at the magnificent old throne with Cormac’s sword.
Diving headlong between two attackers and beneath their rushing blades, Cormac was able to strike a leg in passing with his strange weapon.
Nine of the Un-dead remained.
A flying chunk of wood struck one and rebounded to thud into the leg of a second. Brian of Killevy cried out in high glee at the double result of his throw.
Seven Un-dead stalked Cormac mac Art.
He fell before the simultaneous crash of two axes on his shield, which divided in twain nearly to the boss. Yet a moment later there were six of the enemy remaining, and then five, for Ros and the druid each hurled an oaken missile true. Brian’s second throw missed his target.
Slammed into a knee with a jolting force and then struck with a rushing sword, the splinter-tipped stave in Cormac’s hand bit his wrist… and went clattering and rolling noisily across the floor.
Without smiles of triumph on their mask-like faces, four grim, silent spectres from the other side of the grave closed on him. Blades rushed down-
And Cormac hurled himself, not between, but through the legs of one Un-dead enemy!
The cold of death stabbed through mail and tunic like an icy knife, and then he was landing on his hands without so much as a grunt. He skidded, rolled, came up running. The Gael sprinted for the throne and the three allies there. Ere he joined them, Bas had stepped away. His eyes blazed with an unearthly fire and his gesturing hands were like the claws of a rearing bear. Strange words issued from his lips, guttural words from the dim past of the race of man.
Three horrors that had been men-and more lately corpses-stalked toward him with uplifted weapons. From the throne-chair oaken chunks whizzed. Two of the Un-dead became first putrefying corpses once again, then bones-and as they dropped, so fell the last of their number-with his flesh still sheathing his skeleton.
“HOLD!” Cormac called, and his hand leapt out to stay Brian’s arm. “That be the last-and he remains flesh, if not blood! The druid has wrought a spell upon him… upon it.”
The eyes of three weapon-men of Eirrin turned their gazes upon Bas. Still gesturing and still gutturally murmuring, he advanced upon the fallen Viking. The man, if such he could be called, lay still in his horn-sprouting helm and fine scalemail corselet and steel-bossed seagreen belt.
“…hear me?” the druid said aloud. “By all those names and conjuries and by the eternal golden sun and silv’ry moon, lord of day and lord of night, I conjure you… I command you. Answer! Your name, your name!”
The dead man’s chest did not move. The dead man’s voice rasped up from his throat like wood dragged over whetstone, and words emerged as though he had to think hard to form each one, and three men shivered who had never quaked in combat.
“Thor Bast… Shield – hewer-r-r-”
“Ah!” The druid stood now over the living dead man he had bound by ancient words to the floor. Now he forced him to speak on, by dint of powers greater even than the speechlessness of death. “And are ye dead, Thorgast Shield-hewer?”
Rasping and dry: “Ay-ye…”
“Gods,” Brian whispered, and beside him Ros gasped out, “Crom Cruach stead me!”
“Why came ye back, ye who were dead, to war thus on the living?”
“…sent-called, forced-I wa-as… had to-commme ba-a-ack… co-ol-l-ld…”
“Aye, colder than your northern home it is, for ye were not meant to be here thus. Release is at hand, Thorgast Shield-hewer, but first-answer! Why came ye back? What was your mission?”
“Kill-all who ca-ame… herre-kill-Ku-K… Cor-r-mac-mac-Aar-r-r-tt…”
Brian of Killevy saw it, as the dead spoke, but never did flaxen-haired Brian tell what he saw: Cormac mac Art shuddered and paled.
“Why him?” the druid demanded. “Speak, Thorgast Shield-hewer!”
“Let-me-e-ee-go-oh…”
“SPEAK, damned spirit that was a man, answer! Why must ye seek to slay Cormac mac Art?”
“…ha-ad to-ooo-ven-geann-ccce-”
“Vengeance? Ye knew him before?”
N-O-oh-passst-pa-a-ast-li-i-ife…”
“Ah.” The druid crouched close to the dead man, motionless but for the tortured moving of his lips. “And, Thorgast Shield-hewer, dead and not dead, poor cold shade dragged back from the Otherwhere… who called you here?”
“C-C-uth-no-o-ohh,” the corpse moaned, as though confused. “L-et me-go-oh…”
“Speak the name, Thorgast Shield-hewer that was. Who? Speak-and these will be your last words; speak, and return where you belong… dead man!”
Staring, his face pale, Cormac strained to hear.
Thorgast Shield-hewer spoke two words, a strange name if it was a name, and then he was still, and the flesh faded from his white face to leave behind only the eternally grinning death’s head on the skeleton he had been before he was called back by him whose name he pronounced: “Thulsa Doom!”
Chapter Seven:
Pacts
Brian and Ros were heroes. Both slim, and neither ill-favoured, the excited young men reminded Cormac of tail-wagging dogs after their first hunt. The hounds of Cormac, he thought, and wondered if he were not crediting himself with overmuch. His head had been swelled a bit by that name the crew had begun applying to themselves after the successful fighting off of the Pictish attack asea: the Cormacanachta; descendants or followers of Cormac.
So Ros and Brian-I-love-to-fight were heroes, and the two youthful weapon-men strutted and figuratively wagged their tails before the others, while responding to questions with answers longer than necessary. If those who had abided outside did not quite fawn on the two who with Cormac and Bas had “slain” no less than two-and-twenty ghastly un-men, they did certainly show their envy and adulation.
Most of the others, just as naturally, expressed the wish that they’d been allowed to go within, rather than remaining without; but… captain’s orders.
During that great deal of chatter, Cormac caught the eye of a rather sombre Lugh, and he winked. Lugh’s looks improved; Ros and Brian were the heroes of the hour-or moment-but that wink advised the archer that Cormac mac Art still remembered how initial entry had been gained to the Castle of Kull of Atlantis.
Bas ruminated apart, while Cormac, the dead man’s words having discovered to him his extraordinary danger from whom or whatever Thulsa Doom was, brooded on his future. How, he wondered, as Ros na Dun Dalgan and Brian na Killevy received the adulation and envy of their comrades, did a mere weapon-man protect himself, much less do combat against a sorcerer so powerful as to raise the dead and turn them into fighting men?
Wulfhere meanwhile was grim. The Dane was essaying not to show his unhappiness at being left out of the steel-wielding action-and probably suspecting Cormac of having cheated him of his beloved sport: the splitting of shields and helms and skulls. Cormac said nothing to the giant from Dane-mark. He had no doubt that impatient and impetuous Wulfhere would have been slain within. The Dane’s pride and concept of manhood would have prevented his employing the dodging, fleeing, circling, snapping-wolf tactics that Cormac had used-to the saving of his own life.
And Samaire sulked.
Wulfhere had held her fast, nor had she ceased struggling and railing at him until Cormac reappeared; four ashy-faced men emerging from the reeking charnel-house of the thrice-ancient castle. Released then, Samaire had not run to Cormac as all would have thought natural, but had turned from him. Nor would she say aught to the Dane or accept his bumbling friendly overtures.
Now, either forgetting their leader with two younger heroes to raise on high or perhaps respecting Cormac’s withdrawal into himself, all trooped inside to see what little there was to be viewed: corpse-slain corpses and oak-made skeletons. Eighteen of the former there were, mingled among a score and two of the latter. Blood and cruor, weapons and rattly bones, dismembered and beheaded corpses and a chopped-up throne; these were what remained to be seen.
And so they were noted and exclaimed over-along with the excited words of Ros and Brian, but one of whom was so much as a score of years of age.
Others remained outside in the still-warm sunlight of early fall.
With his soiled robe flapping in a little breeze, Bas walked away to be alone with himself and his gods. Cormac sat on a rounded stone, heedless of his wounds. Someone or other had salved and bandaged them; someone or other not Samaire. Again and again he examined and worked at his doffed coat of linked steel chain, though he was hardly aware of what he did. Cormac spoke not now to gods; he was alone with his thoughts.
Samaire, too, had remained outside. Around the castle she had walked, into the shadowy gloom betwixt it and the cliff. Her helmet of lacquered and bronze-studded cowhide she had removed, so that her wealth of orange-and-gold hair stirred about her shoulders and bounced when she walked.
Cormac noted well her departure, while making sure his noticing went unnoticed. He assumed she had gone to relieve herself; it was no privacy she’d had on the ship, and soon they’d be aboard again. Morosely, he ruminated.
Thulsa Doom.
Thulsa Doom, Doom, Doom, Thool-sah… Doooommmm. The name and its ominous sound pulsed within his head like a gloomy drum, thrumming there and somberly booming. Thulsa Doooommmm…
What was a Thulsa Doom?
Who was Thuls-
He knew.
He saw. It was what his former crewmen had called “the remembering” that was upon him once again; the pictures, the words and memories or “memories” within his brain.
A bronzed hand tore away the shielding veil from a tall, spectrally thin man in a dark, well-made robe. A woman screamed; white faces, including those of soldiers in uniforms and with weapons unfamiliar to Cormac mac Art, shrank bank. Revealed behind the veil was the face of the living man in the robe. But it was no living face; it was a bare white skull, in whose eye sockets flamed livid fire!
Cormac heard… a voice thrumming in his mind as if in an echoic cavern, and he knew that this was the voice of the faceless man…
“Aye, Thulsa Doom, fools! The greatest of all wizards and your eternal foe, Kull of Atlantis! You have won this tilt, but beware, there shall be others.”
Cormac saw that death’s head man burst the cords that bound him; saw him swing to stalk, dark robe whirling and flapping about his heels to the tall ornate door. The back of his head, too, was the skull of a man long dead. Cormac saw a sharp blade transpierce the tall figure… and emerge unblooded. Seated on a stone on a lonely island plain incalculable years later, Cormac saw the skull-faced mage turn, saw him laugh, heard him speak, sneering-
“Ages ago I died as men die! Nay, I shall pass to some other sphere when my time comes, not before. I bleed not, for my veins are empty… Stand back, fool, your master goes. But he shall come again to you, and you shall scream and shrivel and die in that coming!”
Cormac saw…
The skull faced wizard step to a door bordered all about with squared, runic decor, and pass through it, and… vanish.
He heard… a man’s voice-what man? Could there be men with names such as Ka-nu, and Tu?
Aye, there had been, time out of mind.
“Next time we must be more wary, “ one said, within the mind of the seemingly stricken mac Art, “for he is a fiend incarnate-an owner of magic black and unholy. He hates you, for he is a satellite of the Great Serpent.”
“Me? Hates me? I broke? I broke his power, I? But I am… I am…”
“He has the gift of illusion and invisibility… you must beware of Thulsa Doom, for he vanished into another dimension, and as long as he is there he is invisible and harmless to us… but he will come again.”
Dimension? What other dimension?
What is a “dimension”?
And Cormac saw…
…a death-duel with swords, all shrouded in a swirling eerie mist not of nature born. One man fought with a green-glowing blade, and his face was a pallid, awful skull… Thulsa Doom once again! The other man Cormac could not see… the other man was himself.
And they fought well and with the clangour of blades of steel within the mist, and the wizard’s flashing green glaive was ensorceled, so I (he? I? He? He is I; I was he; I am he!) contrived to switch swords, warned by some shade or god from without the machina and aye, he was stronger at once, for the enchanted green brand of the wizard drank the source of life and energy itself, and gave it to the wielder that he became ever more strong and virile.
Cormac spoke aloud, dully, sitting and staring down at the earth. His voice was that of an old and weary man.
“And I grew strong and he weak, until he was drained. Then sank he down into naught but dust for the fickle winds to play with. For dust he was or should have been afore, a man long dead, a servant of… a servantish minion of… ka nama kaa lajerama!”
Well away along the plain of the Castle of Atlantis, another robed man with knowledge arcane stood, ruminating. At sound of those words he whirled about. A great
look of surprise, of astonishment was writ on his well-boned face… well-boned, but fleshy that face, and not unpleasant to look upon, while his robe was of Nature’s green, not night-dark like that of the mage whose age was measured in millenia. A servant of the gods of men was this man, not of rustling spiteful serpents who must ever hate the race possessed of voices and legs.
“Ka nama kaa lajerama,” Bas repeated. “La ka nam’an vorankh amarejal!” Sweat stood out on the druid’s brow as he stared at the hunched and slackfaced Cormac mac Art. “And he thinks he be but a descendant of that great ancient Kull, King Kull, that once and always King Kull! For it is all the same, Celt and Kelt, the Keltoi of the Greeks and the Celtii/Keltii of the Latins. All the same: Cormac and Kull, Cull and Kormak!”
The druid shook as with palsy. He murmured on, “And that I, I, Miall’s son Bas of Tir Conaill, am alive at this time, and him alive and abroad in goodly body once more. Aye… and menaced!”
Bas the Druid strode to the seated, bowed man. His hand fell gently on Cormac’s shoulder.
Up jerked a dark head, and eyes like ice from within the crevasses of their slits stared wildly up at Bas. “Tu! It’s he! We must-”
Cormac broke off. Bas waited a moment longer, feeling his own hand quiver on that powerful shoulder. He saw Cormac’s eyes come into focus. Then the druid said what he had come to say, what he must say.
“Cormac mac Art! You are in more danger than any man on earth, for a timeless master of evil and illusion has marked you for his own. Vengeance he seeks, not on you whom he knows not in this life, but on him ye once were. Cormac mac Art! I who was there too, as councillor and enemy of the same enemy… I shall not leave your side, for sword and prowess alone will not prevail against the one who seeks grim vengeance from a time so far removed from this that men have not the numbers to count the years!”
Cormac did not move; it was as if the powerful weapon-man did not hear, so lost was he in visions and memories that were not memories, and voices of the past that was never past, never wholly gone, but one more portion of the flowing river of the eternal present.
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