Dalan’s gross body moved uneasily in his saddle. He unsheathed his long blade.
Elak looked around. Behind him the army waited. Everything was ready.
The king of Cyrena rose in his stirrups. He lifted his rapier and gestured with it. He shouted:
“Charge! Ho—the Dragon!”
With a roar, Cyrena swept forward down the pass. Closer and closer the two vast forces came. The drums roared death. From the icy peaks the clamor resounded thunderously.
A cloud of arrows flew. Men fell, screaming. Then, with a crash that seemed to shake the mountainous walls of the Gateway, the armies met.
It was like a thunderclap. All sanity and coherence vanished in a maelstrom of red and silver-steel, a whirlpool, an avalanche of thrusting spears, speeding arrows, slashing blades. Elak was instantly surrounded by foes. His rapier flew swift as a striking snake; blood stained its length. His horse shrieked and fell hamstrung to the ground. Elak leaped free and saw Lycon charging to the rescue. The little man was wielding a sword almost as long as himself, but his pudgy fingers handled it with surprising ease. He lopped off one man’s head, ruined another’s face with a well-placed kick of his steel-shod fool, and then Elak had leaped astride a riderless steed.
Again he plunged into the fray. The brown bald head of Dalan was rising and failing some distance away; the Druid roared like a beast as his sword whirled and flew and bit deep. Blood soaked the brown robe. Dalan’s horse seemed like a creature possessed; it screamed shrilly blowing through red, inflamed nostrils, snapped viciously and reared and struck with knife-edged hoofs. Druid and charger raged like a burning pestilence amid the battle; sweat and blood mingled on Dalan’s toad face.
Elak caught sight of Sepher. The ruler of Kiriath, a bronzed bearded giant, towered above his men, fighting in deadly silence. Smiling wolfishly, Elak drove toward the king.
From the distance came the thin high wailing of pipes. Out of the side canyon men came pouring—barbarous men, half naked, their lean bodies smeared blue with woad. The men of Aynger! At their head ran Aynger himself, his gray beard flying, brandishing the hammer Helm-Breaker. The gray giant leaped upon a rock, gesturing toward the forces of Kiriath.
“Slay the oppressors!” he bellowed. “Slay! Slay!”
The weird pipes of the Amenalks shrilled their answer. The blue-painted men swept forward—
From the ranks of Sepher an arrow flew. It sped toward Aynger. It pierced his bare throat and drove deep—deep!
The Amenalk leader bellowed; his huge body arched like a bow. Blood spouted from his mouth.
A battalion charged out from the ranks of Kiriath. They sped toward the Amenalks, lances lowered, pennons flying.
Aynger fell! Dead, he toppled from the rock into the lifted arms of his men. The pipes skirled. The Amenalks, bearing their leader, turned and fled back into the valley!
Cursing, Elak dodged a shrewd thrust, killed his assailant, and spurred toward Sepher. The hilt of his rapier was slippery with blood. His body, under the chain-armor, was a mass of agonizing bruises; blood gushed from more than one wound. His breath rasped in his throat. The stench of sweat and gore choked him; he drove over ground carpeted with the writhing bodies of men and horses.
Down the valley Dalan fought and bellowed his rage. The battle-thunder crashed on the towering crags and sent deafening echoes through the Gateway.
Still the trumpets of Kiriath called; still the drums and cymbals of Cyrena shouted their defiance.
And still Sepher slew, coldly, remorselessly, his bronzed face expressionless.
Kiriath gathered itself and charged. The forces of Cyrena were forced back, fighting desperately each step of the way. Back to the narrowing of the pass they were driven.
High above the archers loosed death on Kiriath.
With ever-increasing speed Sepher’s army thrust forward. A gust of panic touched the ranks of Cyrena. A dragon banner was captured and slashed into flying shreds by keen blades.
Vainly Elak strove to rally his men. Vainly the Druid bellowed threats.
The retreat became a rout. Into the narrow defile the army fled, jammed into a struggling, fighting mob. An orderly retreat might have saved the day, for Kiriath could have been trapped in the narrow pass and crippled by boulders thrust down by the men stationed above. As it was, Cyrena was helpless, waiting to be slaughtered.
Kiriath charged.
Quite suddenly Elak heard a voice. In through the mountains. Above the call of trumpets came the thin wailing of pipes. Louder it grew, and louder.
From the side canyon the blue barbarians of Amenalk rushed in disorderly array. In their van a group ran together with lifted shields. Upon the shields was the body of Aynger!
Weirdly, eerily, the ear-piercing skirling of the pipes of Amenalk shrilled out. The woad-painted savages, mad with blood-frenzy, raced after the corpse of their ruler.
Dead Aynger led his men to war!
The Amenalks fell on the rear of the invaders. Flails and scythes and blades swung and glittered, and were lifted dripping red. A giant sprang upon the shield-platform, astride the body of Aynger. In his hand he brandished a war-hammer.
“Helm-Breaker!” he shouted. “Ho—Helm-Breaker!”
He leaped down; the great hammer rose and fell and slaughtered. Casques and helms shattered under the smashing blows; the Amenalk wielded Helm-Breaker in a circle of scarlet death about him.
“Helm-Breaker! Ho—slay! Slay!”
Kiriath swayed in confusion under the onslaught. In that breathing-space Elak and Dalan rallied their army. Cursing, yelling, brandishing steel, they whipped order out of chaos. Elak snatched a dragon banner from the dust, lifted it high.
He turned his horse’s head down the valley. One hand lifting the standard, one gripping his bared rapier, he drove his spurs deep.
“Ho, the Dragon!” he shouted. “Cyrena! Cyrena!”
Down upon Kiriath he thundered. Behind him rode Lycon and the Druid. And after them the remnants of an army poured. Hira led his archers from the cliffs. The arbalesters came bounding like mountain goats, snatching up swords and spears, pouring afoot after their king.
“Cyrena!”
The drums and cymbals roared out again. Through the tumult pierced the thin, weird calling of the pipes.
“Helm-Breaker! Slay! Slay!”
And then madness—a hell of shouting, scarlet battle through which Elak charged, Dalan and Lycon beside him, riding straight for the bushy beard that marked Sepher. On and on, over screaming horses and dying men, through a whirlpool of flashing, thirsty steel, thrusting, stabbing, hacking—
The face of Sepher rose up before Elak.
The bronzed face of Kiriath’s king was impassive; in his cold eyes dwelt something inhuman. Involuntarily an icy shudder racked Elak. As he paused momentarily, the brand of Sepher whirled up and fell shattering in a great blow.
Elak did not try to escape. He poised his rapier, flung himself forward in his stirrups, sent the sharp blade thrusting out.
The enchanted steel plunged into Sepher’s throat. Simultaneously Elak felt his back go numb under the sword-cut; his armor tore raggedly. The blade dug deep into the body of the war-horse.
The light went out of Sepher’s eyes. He remained for a heartbeat upright in his saddle. Then his face changed.
It darkened with swift corruption. It blackened and rotted before Elak’s eyes. Death, so long held at bay, sprang like a crouching beast.
A foul and loathsome thing fell forward and tumbled from the saddle. It dropped to the bloody ground and lay motionless. Black ichor oozed out from the chinks of the armor; the face that stared up blindly at the sky was a frightful thing.
And without warning darkness and utter silence dropped down and shrouded Elak.
10. THE BLACK VISION
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.<
br />
—Revelations 20:10
He felt again the dizzy vertigo that presaged the coming of Karkora. A high-pitched, droning whine rang shrilly in his ears; he felt a sense of swift movement. A picture came.
Once more he saw the giant crag that towered amid the mountains. The dark tower lifted from its summit. Elak was drawn forward; iron gates opened in the base of the pinnacle. They closed as he passed through.
The high whining had ceased. It was Cimmerian dark. But in the gloom a Presence moved and stirred and was conscious of Elak.
The Pallid One sprang into view.
He felt a sense of whirling disorientation; his thoughts grew inchoate and confused. They were slipping away, spinning into the empty dark. In their place something crept and grew; a weird mental invasion took place. Power of Karkora surged through Elak’s brain, forcing back the man’s consciousness and soul, thrusting them out and back into the void. A dreamlike sense of unreality oppressed Elak.
Silently he called upon Dalan.
Dimly a golden flame flickered up, far away. Elak heard the Druid’s voice whispering faintly, out of the abyss.
“Mider—aid him, Mider—”
Fires of Mider vanished. Elak felt again the sense of swift movement. He was lifted—
The darkness was gone. Gray light bathed him. He was, seemingly, in the tower on the summit of the crag—the citadel of Karkora. But the place was unearthly!
The planes and angles of the room in which Elak stood were warped and twisted insanely. Laws of matter and geometry seemed to have gone mad. Crawling curves swept obscenely in strange motion; there was no sense of perspective. The gray light was alive. It crept and shimmered. And the white shadow of Karkora blazed forth with chill and dreadful radiance.
Elak remembered the words of Mayana, the sea-witch, as she spoke of her monstrous son Karkora.
“He walks in other worlds, beyond unlit seas, across the nighted voids beyond earth.”
Through the whirling chaos a face swam, inhuman, mad, and terrible. A man’s face, indefinably bestialized and degraded, with a sparse white beard and glaring eyes. Again Elak recalled Mayana’s mention of Erykion, the wizard who had created the Pallid One.
“Perhaps he dwells in his citadel yet, with Karkora. Not for years have I seen the sorcerer.”
If this were Erykion, then he had fallen victim to his own creation. The warlock was insane. Froth dribbled on the straggling beard; the mind and soul had been drained from him.
He was swept back and vanished in the grinding maelstrom of the frightful lawless geometrical chaos. Elak’s eyes ached as he stared, unable to stir a muscle. The shadow of the Pallid One gleamed whitely before him.
The planes and angles changed; pits and abysses opened before Elak. He looked through strange gateways. He saw other worlds, and with his flesh shrinking in cold horror he stared into the depths of the Nine Hells. Frightful life swayed into motion before his eyes. Things of inhuman shape rose out of nighted depths. A charnel wind choked him.
The sense of mental assault grew stronger; Elak felt his mind slipping away under the dread impact of alien power. Unmoving, deadly, Karkora watched—
“Mider,” Elak prayed. “Mider—aid me!”
The mad planes swept about faster, in a frantic saraband of evil. The dark vision swept out, opening wider vistas before Elak. He saw unimaginable and blasphemous things, Dwellers in the outer dark, horrors beyond earth-life—
The white shadow of Karkora grew larger. The crawling radiance shimmered leprously. Elak’s senses grew dulled; his body turned to ice. Nothing existed but the now gigantic silhouette of Karkora; the Pallid One reached icy fingers into Elak’s brain.
The assault mounted like a rushing tide. There was no aid anywhere. There was only evil, and madness, and black, loathsome horror.
Quite suddenly Elak heard a voice. In it was the murmur of rippling waters. He knew Mayana spoke to him by strange magic.
“In your hour of need I bring you the talisman against my son Karkora.”
The voice died; the thunder of the seas roared in Elak’s ears. A green veil blotted out the mad, shifting planes and angles. In the emerald mists shadows floated—the shadows of Mayana.
They swept down upon him. Something was thrust into his hand—something warm and wet and slippery.
He lifted it, staring. He gripped a heart, bloody, throbbing—alive!
The heart of Mayana! The heart beneath which Karkora had slumbered in the womb! The talisman against Karkora!
A shrill droning rose suddenly to a skirling shriek of madness, tearing at Elak’s ears, knifing through his brain. The bleeding heart in Elak’s hand drew him forward. He took a slow step, another.
About him the gray light pulsed and waned; the white shadow of Karkora grew gigantic. The mad planes danced swiftly.
And then Elak was looking down at a pit on the edge of which he stood. Only in the depths of the deep hollow was the instability of the surrounding matter lacking. And below was a shapeless and flesh-colored hulk that lay inert ten feet down.
It was man-sized and naked. But it was not human. The pulpy arms had grown to the sides; the legs had grown together. Not since birth had the thing moved by itself. It was blind, and had no mouth. Its head was a malformed grotesquerie of sheer horror.
Fat, deformed, utterly frightful, the body of Karkora rested in the pit.
The heart of Mayana seemed to tear itself from Elak’s hand. Like a plummet it dropped, and fell upon the breast of the horror below.
A shuddering, wormlike motion shook Karkora. The monstrous body writhed and jerked.
From the bleeding heart blood crept out like a stain. It spread over the deformed horror. In a moment Karkora was no longer flesh-colored, but red as the molten sunset.
And, abruptly, there was nothing in the pit but a slowly widening pool of scarlet. The Pallid One had vanished.
Simultaneously the ground shook beneath Elak; he felt himself swept back. For a second he seemed to view the crag and tower from a distance, against the background of snow-tipped peaks.
The pinnacle swayed; the crag rocked. They crashed down in thunderous ruin.
Only a glimpse did Elak get; then the dark curtain blotted out his consciousness. He saw, dimly, a pale oval. It grew more distinct. And it was the face of Lycon bending above Elak, holding a brimming cup to the latter’s lips.
“Drink!” he urged. “Drink deep!”
Elak obeyed, and then thrust the liquor away. He stood up weakly.
He was in the pass of the Gateway. Around him the men of Cyrena rested, with here and there a blue-painted warrior of Amenalk. Corpses littered the ground. Vultures were already circling against the blue.
Dalan was a few paces away, his shallow black eyes regarding Elak intently. He said, “Only one thing could have saved you in Karkora’s stronghold. One thing—”
Elak said grimly, “It was given me. Karkora is slain.”
A cruel smile touched the Druid’s lipless mouth. He whispered, “So may all enemies of Mider die.”
Lycon broke in, “We’ve conquered, Elak. The army of Kiriath fled when you killed Sepher. And, gods, I’m thirsty!” He rescued the cup and drained it.
Elak did not answer. His wolf face was dark; in his eyes deep sorrow dwelt. He did not see the triumphant banners of the dragon tossing in the wind, nor did he envision the throne of Cyrena that waited. He was remembering a low, rippling voice that spoke with longing of the fields and hearth-fires of earth, a slim, inhuman hand that had reached through a curtain—a sea-witch who had died to save a world to which she had never belonged.
The shadow was lifted from Atlantis; over Cyrena the golden dragon ruled under great Mider. But in a sunken city of marble beauty the shadows of Mayana would mourn for Poseidon’s daughter.
Cursed be the City
This is the tale they tell, O King: That ere the royal banners were lifted upon the tall towers of Chaldean Ur, before the Winged Pharaohs reigned in secret A
egyptus, there were mighty empires far to the east. There in that vast desert known as the Cradle of Mankind—aye, even in the heart of the measureless Gobi—great wars were fought and high palaces thrust their minarets up to the purple Asian sky. But this, O King, was long ago, beyond the memory of the oldest sage; the splendor of Imperial Gobi lives now only in the dreams of minstrels and poets.…
—The tale of Sakhmet the Damned
1. THE GATES OF WAR
IN THE GRAY light of the false dawn the prophet had climbed to the outer wall of Sardopolis, his beard streaming in the chill wind. Before him, stretching across the broad plain, were the gay tents and pavilions of the besieging army, emblazoned with the scarlet symbol of the wyvern, the winged dragon beneath which King Cyaxares of the north waged his wars.
Already soldiers were grouped about the catapults and scaling-towers, and a knot of them gathered beneath the wall where the prophet stood. Mocking, rough taunts were voiced, but for a time the white-bearded oldster paid no heed to the gibes. His sunken eyes, beneath their snowy penthouse brows, dwelt on the far distance, where a forest swept up into the mountain slopes and faded into a blue haze.
His voice came, thin piercing.
“Woe, woe, unto Sardopolis! Fallen is the Jewel of Gobi, fallen and lost forever, and all its glory gone! Desecration shall come to the altars, and the streets shall run red with blood. I see death for the king and shame for his people.…”
For a time the soldiers beneath the wall had been silent, but now, spears lifted, they interrupted with a torrent of half-amused mockery. A bearded giant roared:
“Come down to us, old goat! We’ll welcome you indeed!”
The prophet’s eyes dropped, and the shouting of the soldiers faded into stillness. Very softly the ancient spoke, yet each word was clear and distinct as a sword-blade.
“Ye shall ride through the streets of the city in triumph. And your king shall mount the silver throne. Yet from the forest shall come your doom; an old doom shall come down upon you, and none shall escape. He shall return—He—the mighty one who dwelt here once….”
Elak of Atlantis Page 16
