The three stood together now, the last of the defenders—Raynor and Eblik and Delphia. The soldiers ringed them, panting for their death, yet hesitating before the menace of cold steel. None wished to be the first to die.
And, as they waited, a little silence fell. The prince heard a sound he remembered.
Dim and far away, a low roaring drifted to his ears. And the eerie shrilling of pipes….
It grew louder. The soldiers heard it now. They glanced at one another askance. There was something about that sound that chilled the blood.
It swelled to a gleeful shouting, filling all the castle. A breeze blew through the hall, tugging with elfin fingers at sweat-moist skin. It rose to a gusty blast.
In its murmur voices whispered.
“Evohe! Evohe!”
They grew louder, mad and unchecked. They exulted.
“Pan, Pan is free!”
“Gods!” a soldier cursed. “What devil’s work is this?” He swung about, sword ready.
The curtains of samite were ripped away by the shrieking wind. Deafeningly the voices exulted:
“Pan is free!”
The piping shrilled out. There came the clatter of ringing little hoofs. The castle rocked and shuddered.
Some vague, indefinable impulse made Raynor snatch at his belt, gripping the sun-god’s talisman in bronzed fingers. From it grateful warmth seemed to flow into his flesh—and the roaring faded.
He dragged Delphia and the Nubian behind him. “Close to me! Stay close!”
The room was darkening. No—it seemed as though a cloudy veil of mist dropped before the three, guarding them. Raynor lifted the seal of Ahmon.
The fog-veils swirled. Dimly through them Raynor could see the soldiers moving swiftly, frantically, like rats caught in a trap. He tightened one arm about Delphia’s steel-armored waist.
Suddenly the hall was ice-cold. The castle shook as though gripped by Titan hands. The floor swayed beneath the prince’s feet.
The mists darkened. Through rifts he saw half-guessed figures that leaped and bounded… heard elfin hoofs clicking. Horned and shaggy-furred beings that cried jubilantly as they danced to the pipes of Pan….
Faun and dryad and satyr swung in a mad saraband beyond the shrouding mists. Faintly there came the screaming of men, half drowned in the loud shrilling.
“Evohe!” The demoniac roar thundered. “Evohe! All hail, O Pan!”
With a queer certainty Raynor knew that it was time to leave the castle—and swiftly. Already the great stone structure was shaking like a tree in a hurricane. With a word to his companions he stepped forward hesitantly, the talisman held high.
The walls of mist moved with him. Outside the fog-walls the monstrous figures gamboled. But the soldiers of Cyaxares screamed no more.
Through a castle toppling into ruin the three sped, into the courtyard, across the drawbridge, and down the face of the Rock. Nor did they pause till they were safely in the broad plain of the valley.
“The castle!” Eblik barked, pointing. “See? It falls.”
And it was true. Down it came thundering, while clouds of ruin spurted up. Then there was only a shattered wreck on the summit of the Rock.…
Delphia caught her breath in a little sob. She murmured, “The end of the Reavers for all time. I—I lived in the castle for more than twenty years. And now it’s gone like a puff of dust before the wind.”
The walls of fog had vanished. Raynor returned the talisman to his belt. Eblik, staring up at the Rock, swallowed uneasily.
“Well, what now?” he asked.
“Back along the way we came,” the prince said. “It’s the only way out of this wilderness that I know of.”
The girl nodded. “Yes. Beyond the mountains lie deserts, save toward Sardopolis. But we have no mounts.”
“Then we’ll walk,” Eblik observed, but Raynor caught his arm and pointed.
“There! Horses—probably stampeded from the castle. And—Shaitan! There’s my gray charger. Good!”
So, presently, the three rode toward Sardopolis, conscious of a weird dim throbbing that seemed to pulse in the air all about them.
At dawn they topped a ridge and saw before them the plain. All three reined in their mounts, staring. Beneath them lay the city—but changed!
It was a ruin.
Doom had come to Sardopolis in the night. The mighty towers and battlements had fallen, and huge gaps were opened in the walls. Of the king’s palace nothing was left but a single tower, from which, ironically, the wyvern banner flew. As they watched, that pinnacle, too, swayed and tottered and fell and the scarlet wyvern drifted down into the dust of Sardopolis.
On fallen towers and peristyles distant figures moved, with odd, ungainly bounding. Quickly Raynor turned his eyes away. But he could not shut his ears to the distant crying of pipes, gay and pagan, yet with a faintly mournful undertone.
“Pan has returned to his first altar,” Delphia said quietly. “We had best not loiter here.”
“By all hell, I agree,” the Nubian grunted, digging his heels into his steed’s flanks.
“Where now, Raynor?”
“Westward, I think, to the Sea of Shadows. There are cities on its shore, and galleys to take us to haven. Unless—” He turned questioning eyes on Delphia.
She laughed, a little bitterly. “I cannot stay here. The land is sunk back into the pit. Pan rules. I go with you.”
The three rode to the west. They skirted, but did not enter, a small grove where a man lay in agony. It was Cyaxares, a figure so dreadfully mangled that only sheer will kept him alive. His face was a bloody mask. The once-rich garments were tattered and filthy. He saw the three riders, and raised his voice in a weak cry which the wind drowned.
Beside the king a slim, youthful figure lounged, leaning idly against an oak-trunk. It was Necho.
“Call louder, Cyaxares,” he said. “With a horse under you, you can reach the Sea of Shadows. And if you succeed in doing that, you will yet live for many years.”
Again the king cried out. The wind took his voice and shredded it to impotent fragments.
Necho laughed softly. “Too late, now. They are gone.”
Cyaxares let his battered head drop, his beard trailing in the dirt. Through shredded lips he muttered, “If I reach the Sea of Shadows… I live.”
“True. But if you do not, you die. And then—” Low laughter shook the other.
Groaning, the king dragged himself forward. Necho followed.
“A good horse can reach the Sea of Shadows in three days. If you walk swiftly, you may reach it in six. But you best hurry. Why do you not rise, my Cyaxares?”
The king spat out bitter oaths. In agony he pulled himself forward, leaving a trail of blood on the grass… blood that dripped unceasingly from the twin raw stumps just above his ankles.
“The stone that fell upon you was sharp, Cyaxares, was it not?” Necho mocked. “But hurry! You have little time. There are mountains to climb and rivers to cross.…”
So, in the trail of Raynor and Eblik and Delphia, crept the dying king, hearing fainter and ever fainter the triumphant pipes of Pan from Sardopolis. And presently, patient as the silent Necho, a vulture dipped against the blue and took up the pursuit, the beat of its wings distinctly audible in the heavy, stagnant silence.…
And Raynor and Delphia and Eblik rode onward toward the sea.…
The Citadel of Darkness
Hearken, 0 King, while I tell of high dooms and valorous men in the dim mists of long-past aeons—aye, long and long ago, ere Nineveh and Tyre were born and ruled and crumbled to the dust. In the lusty youth of the world Imperial Gobi, Cradle of Mankind, was a land of beauty and of wonder and of black evil beyond imagination. And of Imperial Gobi, mistress of the Asian Seas, nothing now remains but a broken shard, a scattered stone that once crowned an obelisk—nothing is left but a thin high wailing in the wind, a crying that mourns for lost glories. Hearken again, 0 King, while I tell you of my vision and my drea
m.…
—The tale of Sakhmet the Damned
1. THE SIGN OF THE MIRROR
For six hours the archer had lain dying in the great oak’s shadow. The attackers had not troubled to strip him of his battered armor—poor stuff compared to their own forged mail, glittering with brilliant gems. They had ridden off with their loot, leaving the wounded archer among the corpses of his companions. He had lost much blood, and now, staring into the afternoon dimness of the forest, he knew death was coming swiftly.
Parched lips gaped as the man gasped for breath. Once more he tried to crawl to where a goatskin canteen lay upon the glossy, motionless flank of a fallen war-horse. And again he failed. Sighing, he relaxed, his fevered cheek against the cool earth.
Faintly a sound came to the archer’s ears—the drumming of hoofs. Were the raiders returning? One hand gripped the bow that lay beside him; weakly he strove to fit an arrow to the string.
Two horses cantered into view—a great gray charger and a dun mare. On the latter rode a tall, huge-muscled black man, his gargoylish face worried and anxious.
The gray’s rider seemed small beside the Nubian, but his strong frame was unwearied by hours in the saddle. Under yellow, tousled hair was a hard young face, bronzed and eagle eyed. He saw the shambles beneath the oak, reined in his steed.
“By Shaitan!” he snapped. “What devil’s work is this!”
The dying man’s fingers let the bow fall.
“Prince Raynor—water!” he gasped.
Raynor leaped to the ground, snatched a goatskin, and held it to the archer’s lips.
“What’s happened?” he asked presently. “Where’s Delphia?”
“They—they took her.”
“Who?”
“A band of warriors took us by surprise. We were ambushed. We fought, but—they were many. I saw them ride south with Delphia.”
The archer all of a sudden looked oddly astonished. His hand reached out and gripped the bow that lay beside him.
“Death comes,” he whispered, and a shudder racked him. His jaw fell; he lay dead.
Raynor stood up, a hard, cold anger in his eyes. He glanced up at the Nubian, who had not dismounted.
“We also ride south,” he said shortly. “It was a pity we fell behind, Eblik.”
“I don’t think so,” Eblik observed. “It was an act of providence that your horse should go lame yesterday. Had we been trapped with the others, we’d have died also.”
Raynor fingered his sword-hilt. “Perhaps not. At any rate, we’ll have our chance to cross blades with these marauding dogs.”
“So? I think—”
“Obey!” Raynor snapped, and vaulted into the saddle. He set spurs to the horse’s flanks, galloped past the heap of bodies beneath the oak. “Here’s a trail. And it leads south.”
Grunting his disapproval, the Nubian followed.
“You may have been Prince of Sardopolis,” he muttered, “but Sardopolis has fallen.”
That was true. They were many days’ journey from the kingdom where Raynor had been born, and which was no longer a home for him. Three people had fled from doomed Sardopolis—Raynor, his servant Eblik, and the girl Delphia—and in their flight they had been joined by a few other refugees.
And now the last of the latter had been slain, here in unknown country near the Sea of Shadows that lay like a shining sapphire in Imperial Gobi. When Raynor’s horse and gone lame the day before, he and Eblik had fallen behind for an hour that stretched into a far longer period—and now the archers were slain and Delphia herself was a captive.
The two rode swiftly; yet when night fell they were still within the great forest that had loomed above them for days. Raynor paused in a little clearing.
“We’ll wait here till moonrise,” he said. “It’s black as the pit now.”
Dismounting, the prince stretched weary muscles. Eblik followed his example. There was a brook nearby, and he found water for the horses. That done, he squatted on his haunches, a grim black figure in the darkness.
“The stars are out,” he said at last, in a muffled tone.
Raynor, his back against a tree-trunk, glanced up. “So they are. But it’s no moonrise yet.”
The Nubian went on as though he had not heard. “There are strange stars. I’ve never seen them look thus before.”
“Eh?” The young prince stared. Against the jet curtain of night the stars glittered frostily, infinitely far away. “They look the same as always, Eblik.”
But—did they? A little chill crept down Raynor’s spine. Something cold and indefinably horrible seemed to reach down from the vast abyss of the sky—a breath of the unknown that brooded over this primeval wilderness.
The same stars—yes! But why, in this strange land, were the stars dreadful?
“You’re a fool, Eblik,” Raynor said shortly. “See to the horses.”
The Nubian shivered and stood up.
“I wish we had never come into this black land,” he murmured, in an oddly subdued voice. “It is cold here—too cold for midsummer.”
A low whisper came out of the dark.
“Aye, it is cold. The gaze of the basilisk chills you.”
“Who’s that?” Raynor snarled. He whirled, his sword bare in his hand. Eblik crouched, great hands flexing.
Quiet laughter sounded. A shadow stepped from behind an oak trunk. A giant figure moved forward, indistinct in the gloom.
“A friend. Or at least, no enemy. Put up your blade, man. I have no quarrel with you.”
“No?” Raynor growled. “Then why slink like a wolf in the dark?”
“I heard the noise of battle. I heard strange footsteps in the forest of Mirak. These called me forth.”
A glimmer of wan, silvery light crept through the trees. The moon was rising. Its glow touched a great billow of white hair; shaggy, tufted eyebrows, a beard that rippled down upon the newcomer’s breast. Little of the man’s face could be seen. An aquiline beak of a nose jutted out, and somber dark eyes dwelt on Raynor. A coarse gray robe and sandals covered the frame of a giant.
“Who are you?”
“Ghiar, they call me.”
“What talk is this of a—Basilisk?” Eblik asked softly.
“Few can read the stars,” Ghiar said. “Yet those who can know the Dwellers in the Zodiac. Last night the sign of the Archer was eclipsed by the Fish of Ea. And this night the Basilisk is in the ascendancy.” The deep voice grew deeper still; organ-powered it rolled through the dark aisles of the forest. “Seven signs hath the Zodiac! The Sign of the Archer and the Sign of the Fish of Ea! The Sign of the Serpent and that of the Mirror! The Basilisk and the Black Flower—and the Sign of Tammuz which may not be drawn. Seven signs—and the Basilisk rules tonight.”
Meeting the brooding stare of those dark eyes, Raynor felt a nameless sense of unease.
“My business is not with the stars,” half-angrily he said. “I seek men, not mirrors and serpents.”
The tufted eyebrows lifted.
“Yet the stars may aid you, stranger, as they have aided me,” Ghiar rumbled. “As they have told me, for example, of a captive maid in Malric’s castle.”
Raynor tensed. “Eh?”
“Baron Malric rules these marshes. His men captured your wench, and she is his prisoner now.”
“How do you know this?” Raynor snapped.
“Does it matter? I have certain powers—powers which may aid you, if you wish.”
“This is sorcery, Prince,” Eblik muttered. “Best run your blade through his hairy gullet.”
Raynor hesitated, as though almost minded to obey. Ghiar shrugged.
“Malric’s castle is a strong one; his followers are many. You alone cannot save the girl. Let me aid you.”
Raynor’s laugh was hotly scornful. “You aid me, old man? How?”
“Old? Aye, I am older than you think. Yet these oaks, too, are ancient, and they are strong with age. Let me tell you a secret. Malric fears the stars. He was born under t
he Sign of the Fish of Ea, but to me has been given power to rule, not to serve. The baron knows my power, and in my name you may free the girl.”
Eblik broke in. “What would you gain by this?”
For a moment Ghiar was silent. The cold wind furled his white beard and tugged at his gray robe.
“What would I gain? Perhaps vengeance. Perhaps Baron Malric is my enemy. What does that matter to you? If I give you my aid, that should be enough.”
“True,” Raynor said. “Though this smacks of sorcery to me. However”—he shrugged—“Shaitan knows we need help, if Malric be as strong as you say.”
“Good!” Ghiar’s somber eyes gleamed with satisfaction. He fumbled in his robe, brought out a small glittering object. “This amulet will be your weapon.”
Raynor took the thing and scrutinized it with interest. The amulet was perhaps as large as his palm, a disc of silvery metal on which figures were graven clockwise.
Six signs the amulet bore.
An arrow and a fish; a serpent and a circle; a flower and a tiny dragon-like creature with a long tail and a row of spines on its back.
In the amulet’s center was a jewel—cloudy black, with a gleaming starpoint in its tenebrous heart.
“The Sign of Tammuz,” whispered Ghiar. “Which may not be drawn! Yet by the star in the black opal ye may know him, Tammuz, Lord of the Zodiac!”
Raynor turned the object in his hand. On the amulet’s back was a mirror-disc.
Ghiar said warningly, “Do not look too long at the steel. Through the Sign of the Mirror the power of the Basilisk is made manifest, and you may need that power. Show Malric the talisman. Order him, in my name, to free the girl. If he obeys, well. If he refuses”—the deep voice sank to an ominous whisper—“if he refuses, turn the amulet. Let him gaze into the Sign of the Mirror!”
Ghiar’s hand lifted; he pointed south. “There is your road. The moon is up. Ride south!”
Raynor grunted, turned to his horse. Silently he vaulted to the saddle and turned the steed’s head into the trail. Eblik was not far behind.
Once Raynor turned to look over his shoulder. Ghiar was still standing in the clearing, his shaggy head lifted, motionless as an image.
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