He was mocking himself. I admired his coolness, if not his folly, as he signed Lieutenant Lukenbach forward. “Show this fellow how sharp our old-fashioned Ruhr steel can be.”
I became increasingly fearful for Scholar Fi, who lacked the physical strength to defend himself against the Nazi. Fromental, too, was looking a little worried, but motioned me back. He was prepared to trust the Off-Moo’s sense of survival.
Neither Scholar Fi’s expression nor his stance had changed as he watched this threatening drama. He seemed completely unmoved, murmuring in Greek as the SS man approached.
I would have been terrified by what I saw in Lukenbach’s eyes alone. They held that familiar dreaming glaze I had seen so many times in recent months—the look of the sadist, of a creature allowed to fulfill its most vicious yearnings in the name of a higher authority. What had the Nazis awakened in the world? Between relativism and bigotry, there is no room for the human conscience. Perhaps without conscience, I thought, there could only be appetite and ultimate oblivion—an eternity of unformed Chaos or petrified Law, which found such excellent expression in the lunacy of communism and fascism whose grim simplifications could only lead to sterility and death and whose laissez-faire capitalist alternative also brought us ultimately to the same end. Only when the forces were in balance could life flourish at its finest. The Nazi “order,” however, was a pretense at balance, a simplified imposition on a complex world—the kind of action which always brought the most destruction. The fundamental logic of reaction. I was about to witness another example of that destructive power as the SS officer came slowly on.
Lukenbach’s eyes were greedy for butchery. He drew back his arm and began to take the last few paces towards us, grinning into Scholar Fi’s extinction.
Unable to restrain myself as the Off-Moo’s life was threatened, I sprang forward, ignoring Fromental and the scholar. But before I could reach Lukenbach, another man appeared between us. This figure was also clad from head to foot in armor as baroque as the other I had seen, but his was jet black. Unfamiliar as his costume was, the face was all too familiar. Gaunt, white, with blazing eyes hard as rubies. It was my own. It was the creature I had already seen in my dreams and later in the concentration camp.
I was so shocked by this that I was stopped in my tracks, too late to grapple with the Nazi. “Who are you?” I asked.
My doppelgänger was prepared to reply. He mouthed some words, though I heard nothing. Then he moved to one side. I tried to see where he went, but he had vanished.
Lukenbach was almost on his victim. I could not reach him in time.
Slowly Scholar Fi raised a long, slender arm, perhaps in warning. Lukenbach continued to advance, as if he were himself entranced. His grip on the swastika dagger tightened as he prepared to aim his first blow.
This time both Fromental and I instinctively moved to defend the scholar but he gestured us back. As Lukenbach came within striking distance the Off-Moo opened his mouth wider than any human’s, almost as if he unhinged his jaw like a snake, and shrieked.
The sound was at once hideous and harmonious. A ululation, it seemed to weave its way through the quivering stalactites overhead, threatening to bring them all down on us. Yet I had the impression the shriek was directed very precisely and pitched in a specific way.
Overhead crystal began to tinkle and murmur in sympathetic vibration. Yet none broke free.
The shriek seemed endless, as melodic as it was controlled. High above, the crystals continued to rustle and chime until gradually they formed a single sweet harmonic whose note, surprisingly harsh, ended with a sudden snap.
A single slender spear had broken clear of its companions, as if the Off-Moo had selected it, and was dropping down towards the threatening Nazi whose grin broadened as he anticipated his pleasure. Clearly he thought Scholar Fi was shrieking with fear.
The crystal shaft hesitated a short distance above Lukenbach’s head. The Off-Moo was controlling the thing with sound alone.
The shriek ended. Scholar Fi made a tiny movement of his lips. In response to a murmured command, the crystal lance changed its angle and rate of descent. Then the scholar gestured very carefully. The stalactite described a gentle arc and then, with an almost elegant impact, struck deep, precisely into the Nazi’s heart.
That shriek continued to echo through the endless caverns while Lukenbach’s death throes took their rapid course.
He lay still on the rocky surface, his blood welling up around the crystal spear jutting from his chest. Fromental and I were shocked by this death as much as we welcomed it. Gaynor was clearly revising his strategy.
My cousin bent forward and retrieved his dagger from Lukenbach’s stiffening fingers. With some distaste he stepped back, straightening and looking directly into my eyes.
“I’m learning not to underestimate you, cousin. Or your comrades. Are you sure you won’t throw in with us? Or failing that give me the Raven Sword and I’ll promise to harass you no further.”
I allowed myself to smile at his knowing effrontery while Fromental declared, “You’re in a rather weak bargaining position at the moment, my friend.”
“I have a habit of strengthening my position.” Gaynor was still looking directly at me. “What d’you say, cousin. Stay here with your new friends and I’ll take the sword back to the real world to carry on the fight against the forces of Chaos.”
“You’re not the forces of Chaos?” My amusement grew.
“They are exactly what I fight. Which is why I must have the Black Sword. If you return with me, you’ll have honors, power—power to make the kind of justice the world is crying out for! Hitler is merely a means to this end, believe me.”
“Gaynor,” I said, “you’ve given yourself in service to the Beast. You’ll bring nothing but chaos to the world.”
It was my cousin’s turn to laugh in my face. “Fool. Have you no idea how wrong you are? You’re duped if you believe I serve Chaos. Law’s my master and ever will be! What I do, I do for a better, more stable, predictable future. If you also believe in such a future, come over to our side while you can, Ulric. It’s you who serves the cause of Chaos, believe me.”
“This sophistry’s unworthy of a Mirenburger,” I said. “You have demonstrated your loyalty to evil. You are wholly selfish, I’ve witnessed your cruelty, heard your callousness too often, to be persuaded of any sincerity you protest, other than a sincere need to devour us all. Your love of Law’s no more than a madman’s obsession with tidiness, Gaynor. That’s not harmony. Not true order.”
A strange expression crossed Gaynor’s handsome features as if he recalled memories of better times. “Ah, well, cousin. Ah, well.”
“They’re dupes, my lord,” said Klosterheim suddenly. He looked troubled. “There’s no convincing them.”
“And do you, Herr Klosterheim, regard yourself a noble servant of Law?” asked Fromental.
Klosterheim turned his barren eyes on the Frenchman. He smiled his bleak, loveless smile. “I serve my own master. And I serve the Grail, whose guardian I shall again become. We shall meet again, gentlemen. As I told you, I am at last in my element. I have no fear of this place and shall eventually conquer it.” He paused and looked around him in joy. “How often I have yearned for the night and resented the interruption of day. Sunrise is my enemy. Here I can come into my own. I am not defeated by you.”
Gaynor seemed surprised by this outburst.
“A somewhat old-fashioned view,” I said. “You sound as if you’ve been reading far too much romantic poetry, Herr Major.”
He leveled glowering eyes at me and said flatly: “I am an old-fashioned man, a cruel and vengeful man.” For a moment his voice was filled with poisoned dust.
“You must go now,” said Scholar Fi suddenly. “If you are found in the light, our guards will kill you.”
“Go? Go where? What guards?”
“Go into the dark. Beyond the light. Our guards are many.” Scholar Fi gestured and it seemed the
pointed rocks all around moved slightly. In each one I saw the face of an Off-Moo. “Time is not our master, the way it is yours, Prince Gaynor.”
Gaynor and Klosterheim had underestimated us. I don’t believe we underestimated them. Gaynor von Minct had become a handsome, watchful snake. “If we go back, we can return with an army.”
“More than one army has been lost here,” said the scholar casually. “Besides, you are unlikely to get back to the place you left and equally unlikely to find an entrance to our world again. No, you will journey to the darkness, beyond the river, and there you will learn to survive or perish, as fate decides. There are many others of your kind out there. Remnants of those same armies. Whole tribes and nations of them. Men as resourceful as yourselves should survive well and no doubt discover some means of flourishing.”
Gaynor was contemptuous, disbelieving. “Whole nations? What do they live on?”
Scholar Fi began to turn towards the settlement. His patience had expired. “They are primarily cannibals, I understand.”
He paused as we joined him. He looked back. Gaynor and the Nazis had not moved.
“Go!”
He gestured.
Gaynor continued to defy him.
Scholar Fi moved his mouth again, this time in a kind of echoing whisper. About a dozen crystal spears came crashing down a foot or two from the Nazis. We stood there and watched as Gaynor gave the command to retreat. Slowly the party disappeared into the darkness.
“We are unlikely to see them again,” said the Off-Moo. “Their time will be taken up with defending themselves rather than attacking us.”
Fromental’s eyes met mine. Like me, he did not share the scholar’s confidence.
“It’s perhaps as well we’re traveling to Mu Ooria,” he said. “We should at least report this.”
“I agree,” said the scholar. “And because of the circumstances, I suggest you take the voluk, rather than go on foot. We have no clear idea how closely the time flows coincide in this season, so it is as well to be cautious.” He was not expressing anxiety, rather common sense.
Fromental nodded his huge head. “It will be interesting,” he said.
“What is the voluk?” I asked him, after we had parted from Scholar Fi.
“I have never seen it,” he said.
When he returned me to my quarters, Ravenbrand was waiting for me. My hosts were telling me to be prepared for the worst.
I slept fitfully for what seemed a few hours, but my dreams were confused. I saw a white hare running across the underground landscape, running through sharp crags and looming inverted pillars, running towards the towers of Mu Ooria, pursued by a red-tongued, jet-black panther. I saw two horsemen riding across a frozen lake. One horseman wore armor of silvered copper, glaring in the light from a pale blue sky. The other, who challenged him, wore armor of black iron, fashioned in fantastic forms, with a helm on his head that resembled a dragon about to take flight. The face of the black-clad horseman was my twin. I could not see the face of the other horseman, but I imagined it to be Gaynor, perhaps because I had encountered him most recently. As I fell in and out of these dreams, I wondered about my doppelgänger, who had clearly not wanted me to interfere in the Off-Moo’s defense. Was I deluded? Was it only I who could see him? Was there some Freudian explanation to my dreams and visions? And if what I saw was real, how was it possible? I consoled myself that in Mu Ooria I might learn a little more of the truth. Oona, for instance, would be glad to educate me. And there, I decided, I would ask for help in returning to my own Germany, to join in the fight against an evil which must soon engulf the whole of Europe and perhaps the world.
I had been awake for only a short time when Fromental called for me. I was surprised to see that he was carrying a sword at his hip and a bow and quiver of arrows on his back.
“You’re expecting attack?” I asked.
“I see no point in not being ready for trouble. But I believe Scholar Fi’s optimism is probably well founded. Your cousin and his band will have much to occupy them in the Lands Beyond the Light.”
“And why do you travel to Mu Ooria?” I asked him.
“I hope to meet with some friends of Lord Renyard’s,” he said. And would not be drawn further.
I had wrapped my sword in a cloth and bound it up so that I, too, could sling it over my back. I had a few provisions and changes of clothing and was now wearing my own familiar outfit, complete with deerstalker, which looked even more incongruous than Fromental’s kepi.
After we had breakfasted on some rather bland broth, he led me through the twisting streets until we stood at last on the banks of the river, in a kind of cut where the waters were calmer. Scholar Fi and a group of Off-Moo were already on the harborside, apparently in lighthearted conference.
My own astonished attention was drawn to what was moored there. At first I thought the thing alive, but then I guessed it to be cunningly fashioned from some kind of crystalline stone, predominantly of dark marOone and crimson. The massive vessel seemed to have been carved from a single ruby. Yet the stone was light as glass and sat easily in the waters like a ship. The voluk looked like some mythical sea beast drawn up from the depths where it had long since petrified. As I regarded its fishy, reptilian face, all flared nostrils and jowls and coiling tendrils, I imagined that it looked at me. Was it alive? I had a nagging memory . . .
On the voluk’s back was a large, flat area, created by a kind of enormous saddle, making a platform, a raft large enough to take fifteen or twenty passengers and steered by two massive sweeps, one on each side.
I was impressed by the size as well as the complexity of the carving and remarked on it to Fromental as we followed the Off-Moo crew up the gangplank to where they took their places at the oars.
The Frenchman was amused by this. “It’s nature’s hand, not the Off-Moo’s, you must blame for this monster. They draw these remains from their lake and find that with only minor modification, they can employ them as rafts. But, of course, they’re rarely used, since they have to be dragged back upstream. Clearly, by putting a voluk at our disposal, our hosts are showing they believe the situation to be serious.”
“They expect attack from Gaynor, when they are so easily able to defend themselves? Have they a means of seeing into the future?”
“They can see a million futures. Which in some ways is the same as not seeing any. They trust their instincts, I suspect, and know Gaynor’s type. They know he will scarcely sleep until he has been revenged for what happened out there. They have survived for so long, my friend, because they anticipate danger and are ready to counter it. They will not underestimate men such as Gaynor. Whatever lives out there in the Lands Beyond the Light seems dangerous enough, from what I’ve learned. But the Off-Moo know that periodically one of the creatures unites the others in a truce, long enough to try to attack Mu Ooria. They can see that Gaynor and Klosterheim have the intelligence and motive to succeed in creating some kind of alliance of the darklands tribes. All hate Mu Ooria because at some stage Mu Ooria has welcomed them and then banished them to the outer darkness.”
“Are we all eventually banished there?”
“By no means. Wait until you get to Mu Ooria herself!” Fromental clapped me on the back, clearly relishing the wonders he would soon be showing me.
Scholar Fi approached us as we settled into the shallow seats at the center of the raft. He was gracious. He hoped we would return, he said, and let them all know how we fared. Then he went ashore, the gangplank was raised, and the slender Off-Moo, in their nodding conical cowls and their flowing pale robes, lent their strength and experience to the sweeps, guiding us out of the calm water and into the black, star-studded channel of the main river.
At once the current caught us. The crew had little to do but keep the monstrous hull on course. We moved with alarming speed, sometimes striking white water as the river narrowed between high banks and seemed to pour even deeper into the core of the planet.
Not
, of course, that we were any longer on the planet, as we knew it. This was the Mittelmärch, which obeyed the laws of Elfland.
The dark waters were surprisingly clear and it was often possible to see to the bottom, where the rock had been worn to an artificial smoothness. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that we were actually moving along a man-made canal. The light grew increasingly bright as we neared the lake and the temperature also grew warmer, suggesting that this inland sea was the source of the Off-Moo civilization. It was to them what the sun and the Nile were to Egypt.
Although both banks were visible most of the time, the shadows and strange shapes of the rocks, the way the light from the water constantly varied, made it seem that the river course was populated with all kinds of monsters. Gradually I became used to the phantasmagoric nature of the swiftly passing landscape. But then, as I admired a grove of slender stalagmites which grew just on the edge of the water, like Earthly reeds, I was sure I saw an animal of some kind.
It was not a small animal. The light had caught its eyes, emerald green, glaring at me from the darkness. I turned to Fromental, asking him if he knew what creature it might be. He was surprised. There were usually no animals about larger than the Off-Moo themselves. Then, in a length of bank where the light flickered strongly, I saw it again.
I’d seen it once before. In my dream. A gigantic cat, far larger than the largest tiger, jet black, its red tongue lolling from a jaw filled with sharp, white fangs, and two enormous curving incisors. A saber-toothed panther, its long tail lashing even as it ran, was keeping pace with us. A creature of my dreams. Running beside the raft as the current bore us towards the Off-Moo capital!
Now Fromental could see the beast. He knew what it was. “Those cats are never normally found this close to the river, as they loathe and fear it. They hunt the Lands Beyond the Light. The cannibals are their natural prey. They’re greatly feared because they can see in the dark, if not in the conventional sense. Though it seems those eyes look at you, in fact the beasts are completely blind.”
The Dreamthief's Daughter Page 14
