Near the end of the corridor, one door was open. Lycon sprang over the threshold, saw a bare, empty cell with an iron slab ajar in the opposite wall. He went forward, sword dripping red on the stones as he lifted it.
Water was lapping softly nearby . . .
6. The Night of Gods
ELAK stepped through the portal and found himself in a narrow passage. Gray light bathed him. In the distance he saw a sparkling surface that rippled in the cold glow.
And suddenly he heard Dalan’s voice. It came softly from empty air, urgent, peremptory, calling his name.
“Elak! Elak!”
Searching the bare walls with incredulous eyes, Elak whispered, “Dalan? Where are you?”
The Druid’s voice rang out sharply. “No time now, Elak—the Shadow comes as I speak. Leap into the pool—dive into it, now! At the end of the passage——”
Still Elak hesitated. “But where are you——”
“There’s not time to talk now! Hurry——”
The stark urgency of Dalan’s words spurred Elak to action, sent him racing along the corridor. He checked himself sharply on the brink of a square basin. Little menace in that, or in the blue-green water that filled it. But within the pool dwelt horror. A Shadow lay upon it.
The shadow of a man, cast by—nothing! An opaque outline that lay incredibly on the surface of the pool. And it darkened into blackness, while the gray luminescence of the corridor dimmed.
“ ’Ware, Elak!”
Dalan’s voice, loud in warning! Elak whirled, saw a dark-skinned dwarf almost upon him, pale eyes blazing, bestial face menacing. In the Pikht’s hand was a dagger.
The two men smashed together on the pool’s brink, went down, clutching and tearing, the oily body of the dwarf squirming like a snake in Elak’s grasp. Steel grated on the stones. Elak’s fingers closed relentlessly on his opponent’s knife wrist.
With a powerful lunge the Pikht brought his dagger down, its point touching Elak’s chest. The two rolled over, snarling oaths, and—dropped into emptiness!
The pool took them—dragged them down into water icy as polar seas, blue as turquoise. Elak could see nothing but that illimitable blueness as he went down, choking for breath, battling against blinding panic. Was the pool bottomless?
The sapphire tint deepened to indigo, foamed in fantastic patterns before Elak’s eyes. He realized abruptly that his was not water surrounding him—could not be, or he would have drowned minutes ago. There was a swift accelerating rush, and abruptly frightful cold, incredible agony, tore at the citadel of Elak’s brain. He was conscious of a change.
Air rushed into his lungs—air stale and dead, as though it had never been breathed, yet curiously refreshing. Dim, flickering shadows were all about him. And the swarthy devil-mask of the Pikht’s face swam into view from the vagueness.
Pale eyes glared into Elak’s; the dagger came down viciously and buried itself in the ground as he writhed aside. He clutched at the dwarf’s wrist, missed, and flung himself bodily upon the Pikht, bearing the smaller man down by his weight. But he could not maintain a hold upon the muscular, oily body.
Snarling, the dwarf lunged forward, teeth bared. Elak smashed his forehead into the Pikht’s face, felt blood spurt into his eyes, blinding him. He shook the scarlet drops away.
Abruptly he released the Pikht’s wrist. His hand shot up and gripped the dwarf’s throat—sinewy hands that had been trained on battle-ax and rapier. The knife bit into his body, ripped flesh from his breast as he twisted desperately. But the Pikht had struck too late.
Elak’s tapering brown fingers almost met in oily flesh. Tendons stood out like rigid wires; there came a brittle cracking sound. A bubbling scream of agony died in the dwarf’s throat before it could emerge.
The pale eyes glazed. The stunted body went limp.
Elak stood up, bracing himself. He stared in sheer astonishment.
It was no earthly landscape which he saw. Obscure color-patterns, shifting and dancing strangely, weaved in the cool air all about him. He thought of the shadows of trees painted on white rock, flickering arabesques of dancing leaves fluttering in the wind. Yet the weird pattern was not only on the pale clay-colored plain on which he stood, but rather all about him in the air. He stood alone in a fantastic weave of somber shadows.
Colorless shadows, dancing. Or were they colorless? He did not know, nor was he ever to know, the color of the grotesque weavings that laced him in a web of magic, for while his mind told him that he saw colors, his eyes denied it.
SUDDENLY darkness swept down, engulfing him. And very faintly a thudding sounded, and swiftly grew louder. With a giant pounding of Cyclopean feet something strode past Elak in the blackness, something that shook the plain with the thunder of its passing. There was no other sound save for the tremendous booming thuds of the Titan feet.
They died in the distance; the darkness lifted. Again the flickering shadow patterns grew in the air. And again they darkened into blackness.
The sound of wings came to Elak. Something was flying far overhead, something that wailed endlessly and mournfully, keening the cry of one lost and wandering in eternal night. A sense of overpowering awe touched Elak, and horror beyond all imagination—the horror one feels in the presence of a thing so alien that the flesh of mankind instinctively shrinks and shudders. Elak knew, somehow, that he had entered a land in which men had not been intended to exist.
“Elak . . .”
Faintly, from very far away, the thin whisper came—Dalan’s voice. Elak whispered the Druid’s name as the darkness changed into the vague shadow-patterns. The distant voice came again.
“You are in a perilous place, Elak, but you live. Lycon’s swordsmen slay the Pikhts now, the crystal tells me . . . you are very far away, Elak, but I come swiftly. Mider aids me . . .”
Blackness again, and a roaring as of great winds. Power unimaginable shuddered through Elak’s body like a spear shattering on a shield. And it passed, and the darkness lightened to the crawling shadows.
“You are with the gods, Elak,” came Dalan’s far whisper. “You are no longer in Atlantis, or even on earth. You are in a far land. And with you are those the Shadow has engulfed—the gods! Not the gods of Atlantis, nor the Viking gods, but the gods that have died. Around you move those whose flesh is not our flesh, whose lives are alien to ours. I come, Elak . . .”
Piercingly sweet, throbbing almost articulately, a harpstring murmured through the gloom. Dalan’s voice faded into silence, and again the note sobbed out. Above it a soft-toned song lifted in the words Elak knew were in no earthly language.
Startled, apprehensive, the Druid called, “Elak! Elf’s magic battles mine—he——”
Then silence, till a gentle voice spoke.
“Dalan,” it whispered. “Dalan, Elak . . . my enemies. Now you shall die, Elak, for the Druid cannot reach you. The power of my harp keeps him from our side.”
Very faintly Dalan called Elak’s name. Once again he called and was silent. Shifting shadows moved through the dim air. Elak’s hand went involuntarily to his side. Remembering that he was weaponless, he stooped and pried the dagger from the Pikht’s cold fingers. But despair was mounting within him. How could he fight Elf, alone in this lost hell, without Dalan to aid him?
“Your doom comes,” Elf murmured, and the harpstring twanged eerily, laden with bitter sweetness. “You live, Elak, and there is no life in Ragnarok. Only the dead gods, and the dust of the souls of men.”
The dancing shadow-patterns slowed their fluttering and became motionless. The sound of Elf’s harp died; it was utterly silent.
And, far in the distance and gigantic, towering above the horizon, a Shadow began to form in the air. In form it was human, but from its darkening nucleus there breathed chill horror that made Elak grip his dagger with desperate fingers. Fear shook him—the fear that attacks the citadel of man’s soul when it faces the Unknown.
7. Solonala—and Mider
A SOUND behi
nd him made Elak turn swiftly, his weapon ready. What he saw made him pause in wonder. Even in the shadowy gloom he sensed something fantastically unreal about the figure that came stealing out of the dusk with curiously rocking gait.
But there was friendliness in the gesture with which the half-seen being beckoned. It glanced beyond Elak to where the Shadow grew and darkened on the horizon and then swiftly bent above the dead Pikht. Dark hands moved quickly—and suddenly the dwarf moved, raised himself stiffly to his feet, and stood motionless as an automaton!
The Pikht had died—that Elak knew. Even now the bald, misshapen head lolled monstrously on one sagging shoulder. Elak could scarcely see the dwarf’s face, but he knew intuitively that the shallow eyes held no life. An icy shudder shook him.
The Pikht turned. Swaying, the squat figure raced forward, past Elak, toward the Shadow that loomed in black horror in the distance. A soft hand was thrust in Elak’s, and he looked down to see a white girl-face peering anxiously up at him.
He felt himself being tugged along and yielded, smiling a little wryly. After all, into what worse hell could he be guided? The patterns flickered all around them as they moved, and presently Elak heard a low voice say, “We should be safe now.”
“You speak Atlantean?” he asked involuntarily, and quiet laughter mocked him.
“I speak my own tongue. All languages are one here. Just as the Shadow appears differently to everyone and yet is the same to everyone after being—taken—so do all tongues seem alike here. The world from which I came is far from yours. How are you named?”
“Elak. The—Shadow?”
“It has faded. See?”
Elak glanced over his shoulder but could make out nothing but the dancing patterns of alien color. The invisible girl went on. “I put life into the dead being and sent him to the Shadow so that we could escape while the Shadow fed. We are safe for a little while, Elak.”
She paused as the air lighted; they stood before a cave that opened into the side of a rampart which towered up until it was lost in the dimness. A misshapen, flat-topped boulder guarded the entrance of the tunnel mouth, and behind this Elak’s companion stepped swiftly.
“Come,” she urged. “We can hide here—for a time at least.”
But Elak had reached her side—had gripped her slim arms with fingers rendered cruel by his amazement. He stared at the girl in wonder, knowing that she sprang from no earthly race.
A satyr-girl! A faun-maiden, slender and white and virginal as cool marble, round-breasted, with red-golden hair that hung in velvet coils about the smooth shoulders. To her waist she was human. Below that all semblance of humanity ended, and sheer fantasy began.
Her legs were golden-furred and crooked like those of a beast—not ungainly goat legs, but rather the limbs of some graceful deer, ending in tiny hoofs that glinted golden in the dim light. Her face was as unearthly as her nether limbs, for all its classic beauty. No earth-girl had ever possessed golden eyes—eyes like flaky pools of pure gold, without white or pupil, that stared at Elak as unwinkingly as those of a cat. Her face was curiously feline in contour as she smiled at Elak, looking up at him fearlessly.
“I am strange to you?” she asked. “But you are strange, too. There are many worlds besides your own, Elak.”
“So it seems,” the Atlantean gasped. “By Bel! This must be some mad dream I’m having!”
The girl urged him further into the cave. A dim light irradiated its further recesses, which were draped with violet samite that hid the rough rock walls. Cushions carpeted and hid the ground.
“I am Solonala,” the faun-girl told Elak, relaxing gracefully in a little nest of soft pillows. “Has Elf’s magic sent you here, too?”
Elak did not answer; his eyes watched the eerie golden-furred legs in fascinated wonder. Solonala glanced down, smiling, and clicked her hoofs gently together.
“We are made in different patterns, you and I.”
Elak nodded. “Yes. Though—Elf, you say? D’you know him?”
“I know him, and I fought him. The land where I once ruled is far from here, and far from your own earth. But Elf’s powers enable him to go from world to world, and when he came to mine, I saw that he was evil and tried to destroy him. He was the stronger.”
She shrugged slender shoulders. “So I came here, or rather Elf exiled me here. He couldn’t kill me, for I’m not human, as you are—decay cannot touch my flesh, as it will touch yours in time. But he imprisoned me in this land, where in time I’ll be taken by the Shadow . . .”
“What is this Shadow?”
Golden eyes watched Elak, luminous in the glow. “You saw it as a man’s shadow—eh? A man such as yourself? But I saw it as Solonala’s shadow. Every being sees the Shadow as his own. For it is his own. It is the ultimate death. It is destruction. This land is its home, but it can come to other worlds when gateways have been opened.”
Gateways—such as the pool in the Pikhts’ underground den!
“And it is here that the gods come when they die, Elak.” Her voice was hushed. “You heard them pass, I think. Darkness always comes when the dead gods go by, for they wander this lost land alone in eternal night . . .”
FAINT, infinitely far away, there sounded a thin murmur—the hum of a plucked harpstring. Dim and drowsy, it stole into Elak’s mind until, scarcely aware he heard it, he realized that he was nodding sleepily. Solonala watched him alertly out of great golden eyes.
“I hear magic,” she said.
The harpstring throbbed on, blanketing Elak in drowsiness. As he went down into slumber he was conscious of Solonala leaning toward him, cat-face puzzled . . . and then darkness . . .
He dreamed. He dreamed of the black galley’s cabin and of Dalan, crouching over his crystal globe. Within the sphere a flame rose up like a blossoming flower. It grew and lifted till it towered above the Druid’s glistening bald head.
Its scarlet tip bent down, expanded into a lambent rose of fire. It swayed and trembled in midair. Dalan prayed.
“Mider, hear me. God of the Druids, Lord of Flame, let your hand draw back this man from the Shadow——”
The vision faded. The dim murmur of a harpstring put a period to it. Vaguely Elak saw Solonala’s face swimming in silver mistiness, her lips parted.
Again the harp sent its sorcerous whispering into Elak’s sleeping mind—Elf’s harp, fraught with deadly magic!
“Elak!”
Dalan’s voice!
The harpstring twanged angrily. Above its noise came a harsh cry.
“Elak! Mider aid me—Elak! Hear me!”
The tall adventurer sprang to full wakefulness, his hand racing to the dagger at his belt. A low murmuring sounded from without the cave. Elak got quietly to his feet and moved toward the portal.
There he paused, his eyes wide. On the flat rock before the cave mouth crouched Solonala, her white body gleaming in the shifting shadow-patterns, and all about her, genuflecting and abjecting themselves in ghastly worship, was a horde of tiny, hideous white things that moved so swiftly Elak could not clearly define their outlines. Indeed, he had no chance, for as he appeared Solonala lifted her head, saw him, and flung out a slim arm commandingly. The white beings streamed away and were lost in the distance.
Now Elak saw what had previously escaped him. Towering to the sky beyond Solonala, menacing and terrible, loomed—the Shadow!
The girl let her arm drop to her side. Without moving she watched Elak.
“Elf’s magic brought the Shadow here while you slept,” she said. “I could not waken you, though I tried. Those little ones—I made them. Living things, to appease the Shadow’s hunger while we flee. Perhaps we can escape.” She paused doubtfully.
From empty air roared the voice of Dalan.
“Courage, Elak! I come—and with aid!”
And the voice of Elf, disembodied, gentle—mocking.
“What can Mider do against the Shadow, Druid? Your god lives—and there is no life in Ragnarok.”
/> The immense Shadow on the horizon grew darker. The flickering patterns in the air seemed to weave faster, troubled.
Without warning Elak saw the Shadow fold down tremendously and swoop upon him. He felt Solonala’s soft body shuddering against his, and his arms went instinctively about her. The faun-girl cried out—and her voice was clipped off into utter silence. Blackness abysmal and unearthly smothered them.
They were one with the Shadow. They were nothingness— annihilation, complete and final emptiness. And yet Elak was dreadfully conscious of a feeling of power—cosmic power, terrible in its illimitable vastness. Aside from this, nothing existed for him. Solonala’s body no longer pressed against his. He felt the fortress of his soul, his mind, crumbling under the assault of the Shadow.
And, suddenly, hope came. How it first manifested itself Elak did not understand, but he realized that no longer was he being absorbed into the Shadow. Something was pulling him back—lifting him from the sucking void that was annihilation.
He heard the Druid’s voice, strained, triumphant. “Mider! Save him, Mider—god of oak and fire——”
Light flashed out all around—warm, rose-tinted, luminous flame. In its fierce glow was revealed the figure of Solonala, unearthly in her beauty—and also the incredible thing on which the two stood. It was a hand.
Eight-fingered, colossal, it was no earthly hand. The hand of Mider himself, reaching down into the hell of the Shadow at the Druid’s prayer. The Titan hand swept upward, carrying Elak and Solonala . . .
It checked itself. Blackness crept back, dimming the rosy flame-walls. A sea of shadow rose like a tide, and the hand began to sink down, slowly at first, and then with ever-increasing speed.
Dalan’s cry came, despairing, inarticulate. And Elf’s soft laughter.
Solonala knelt beside Elak. She put her arms around his neck; tender lips brushed his. Then, before he could move, she sprang away and flung herself into the void. For an intolerable age-long second her white and gold figure loomed against blackness—and was gone. A cry, gull-plaintive, drifted to Elak’s ears as he started forward.
Collected Fiction Page 36
