The door was barred. He beat on it frantically, hearing the clatter of feet coming up the stairs, knowing that a thunderstorm of hurled weapons was on its way. “Sathi!” he cried. “Sathi, it is Kery, let me in!”
The first soldiers appeared down at the end of the corridor. Kery threw himself against the door. It opened, and he plunged through and slammed down the bolt.
Sathi stood there and wonder was in her eyes. “Oh, Kery,” she breathed, “Kery, you came…”
“No time,” he rasped. “Where is the pipe of Killorn?”
She fought for calmness. “Mongku has it,” she said. “His chambers are on the next floor, above these—”
The door banged and groaned as men threw their weight against it.
Sathi took his hand and led him into the next room. A fire burned low in the hearth. “I thought it out, against the time you might come,” she said. “The only way out is up that chimney. It should take us to the roof and thence we can go down again.”
“Oh, well done, lass!” With a sweep of the poker Kery scattered the logs and coals out on the carpet while Sathi barred the door into the next room. Drawing a deep breath the Killorner went into the fireplace, braced feet and back against the sides of the flue and began to dumb up.
Smoke swirled in the chimney. He gasped for breath and his lungs seemed on fire. Night in here, utter dark and choking of fouled air. His heart roared and his strength ebbed from him. Up and up and up, hitch yourself still further up.
“Kery.” Her voice came low, broken with coughing. “Kery—I can’t. I’m slipping—”
“Hang on!” he gasped. “Here. Reach up. My belt—”
He felt the dragging weight catch at him, there in the smoke-thickened dark, and drew a grim breath and edged himself further, up and up and up.
And out!
He crawled from the chimney and fell to the roof with the world reeling about him and a rushing of darkness in his head. His tormented lungs sucked the bitter air. He sobbed and the tears washed the soot from his eyes. He stood up and helped Sathi to her feet.
She leaned against him, shuddering with strain and with the wind that cried up here under the flickering stars. He looked about, seeking a way down again. Yes, over there, a doorway opening on a small terrace. Quickly now.
They crawled over the slanting, ice-slippery roof, helping each other where they could, fighting a way to the battlement until Kery’s grasping fingers closed on its edge and he heaved both of them up onto it.
“Come on!” he snapped. “They’ll be behind us any moment now.”
“What to do?” she murmured. “What to do?”
“Get the pipes!” he growled, and the demon blood of Broina began to boil in him again. “Get the pipes and destroy them if we can do nothing else.”
They went through the door and down a narrow staircase and came to the fourth floor of the palace.
Sathi looked up and down the long empty hallway. “I have been up here before,” she said with a coolness that was good to hear. “Let me see—yes, this way, I think—” As they trotted down the hollow length of corridor she said further: “They treated me fairly well here, indeed with honor though I was a prisoner. But oh, Kery, it was like sunlight to see you again!”
He stopped and kissed her, briefly, wondering if he would ever have a chance to do it properly. Most likely not but she would be a good companion on hell-road.
They came into a great antechamber. Kery had his sword out, the only weapon left to him, but no one was in sight. All the royal guards must be out hunting him. He grinned wolfishly and stepped to the farther door.
“Kery—” Sathi huddled close against him. “Kery, do we dare? It may be death—”
“It will be like that anyway,” he said curtly and swung the door open.
A great, richly furnished suite of chambers, dark and still, lay before him. He padded through the first, looking right and left like a questing animal, and into the next.
Two men stood there, talking—Jonan and Mongku.
They saw him and froze for he was a terrible sight, bloody, black with smoke, fury cold and bitter-blue in his eyes. He grinned, a white flash of teeth in his sooted face, and drew his sword and stalked forward.
“So you have come,” said Mongku quietly.
“Aye,” said Kery. “Where is the pipe of Killorn?”
Jonan thrust forward, drawing the sword at his belt. “I will hold him, prince,” he said. “I will carve him into very bits for you.”
Kery met his advance in a clash of steel. They circled, stiff-legged and wary, looking for an opening. There was death here. Sathi knew starkly that only one of those two would leave this room.
Jonan lunged in, stabbing, and Kery skipped back. The officer was better in handling these shortswords than he who was used to the longer blades of the north. He brought his own weapon down sharply, deflecting the thrust. Jonan parried, and then it was bang and crash, thrust and leap and hack with steel clamoring and sparking. The glaives hissed and screamed, the fighters breathed hoarsely and there was murder in their eyes.
Jonan ripped off his cloak with his free hand and flapped it in Kery’s face. The northerner hacked out, blinded, and Jonan whipped the cloth around to tangle his blade. Then he rushed in, stabbing. Kery fell to one knee and took the thrust on his helmet, letting it glide off. Reaching up he got Jonan around the waist and pulled the man down on him.
They rolled over, growling and biting and gouging. Jonan clung to his sword and Kery to that wrist. They crashed into a wall and struggled there.
Kery got one leg around Jonan’s waist and pulled himself up on the man’s chest. He got a two-handed grasp on the enemy’s sword arm, slipped the crook of one elbow around, and broke the bone.
Jonan screamed. Kery reached over. He took the sword from his loosening fingers and buried it in Jonan’s breast.
He stood up then, trembling with fury, and looked at the pipes of Killorn.
It was almost as if Mongku’s expressionless face smiled. The Ganasthian held the weapon cradled in his arms, the mouthpiece near his lips. He nodded. “I got it to working,” he said. “In truth it is a terrible thing. Who holds it might well hold the world someday.”
Kery stood waiting, the sword hanging limp in one hand.
“Yes,” said Mongku. “I am going to play it.”
Kery started across the floor—and Mongku blew.
The sound roared forth, wild, cruel, seizing him and shaking him, ripping at nerve and sinew. Bone danced in his skull and night shouted in his brain. He fell to the ground, feeling the horrible jerking of his muscles, seeing the world swim and blur before him.
The pipes screamed. Goodnight, Kery, goodnight, goodnight! It is the dirge of the world he is playing, the coronach of Killorn, it is the end of all things skirling in your body—
Sathi crept forth. She was behind the player, the hell-tune did not strike her so deeply, but even as his senses blurred toward death Kery saw how she fought for every step, how the bronze lamp almost fell from her hand. Mongku had forgotten her. He was playing doom, watching Kery die and noting how the music worked.
Sathi struck him from behind. He fell, dropping the pipes, and turned dazed eyes up to her. She struck him again and again.
Then she fled over to Kery and cradled his head in her arms and sobbed with the horror of it and with the need for haste. “Oh, quickly, quickly, beloved, we have to flee, they will be here now—I hear them in the hallway, come—”
Kery sat up. His head was ringing and thumping, his muscles burned and weakness was like an iron hand on him. But there was that which had to be done and it gave him strength from some forgotten wellspring. He rose on shaky legs and went over and picked up the bagpipe of the gods.
“No,” he said.
“Kery…”
“We will not flee,” he said. “I have a song to play.”
She saw the cold remote mask of his face. He was not Kery now of the ready laugh and the reckle
ss bravery and the wistful memories of a lost homestead. He had become something else with the pipe in his hands, something which stood stern and somber and apart from man. There seemed to be ghosts in the vast shadowy room, the blood of his fathers who had been Pipers of Killorn, and he was the guardian now. She shrank against him for protection. There was a small charmed circle which the music did not enter but it was a stranger she stood beside.
Carefully Kery lifted the mouthpiece to his lips and blew. He felt the vibration tremble under his feet. The walls wavered before his eyes as unheard notes shivered the air. He himself heard no more than the barbarian screaming of the war-music he had always known but he saw death riding out.
A troop of guardsmen burst through the door—halted, stared at the tall piper, and then howled in terror and pain.
Kery played. And as he played Killorn rose before him. He saw the reach of gray windswept moors, light glimmering on high colds tarns, birds winging in a sky of riven clouds. Space and loneliness and freedom, a hard open land of stern and bitter beauty, the rocks which had shaped his bones and the soil which had nourished his flesh. He stood by the great lake of sunset, storms swept in over it, rain and lightning, the waves dashed themselves to angry death on a beach of grinding stones.
He strode forward, playing, and the soldiers of Ganasth died before him. The walls of the palace trembled, hangings fell to the shuddering floor, the building groaned as the demon music sought and found resonance.
He played them a song of the chase, the long wild hunt over the heath, breath gasping in hot lungs and blood shouting in the ears, running drunk with wind after the prey that fled and soared. He played them fire and comradeship and the little huts crouched low under the mighty sky. And the walls cracked around him. Pillars trembled and broke. The roof began to cave in and everywhere they died about him.
He played war, the skirl of pipes and the shout of men, clamor of metal, tramp of feet and hoofs, and the fierce blink of light on weapons. He sang them up an army that rode over the rim of the world with swords aflame and arrows like rain and the whole building tumbled to rubble even as he walked out of it.
Tenderly, dreamily, he played of Morna the fair, Morna who had stood with him on the edge of the lake where it is forever sunset, listening to the chuckle of small wavelets and looking west to the pyre of red and gold and dusky purple, the eyes and the lips and the hair of Morna and what she and he had whispered to each other on that quiet shore. But there was death in that song.
The ground began to shake under Ganasth. There is but little strength in the lungs of one man and yet when that strikes just the right notes, and those small pushes touch off something else far down in the depths of the earth, the world will tremble. The Dark Landers rioted in a more than human fear, in the blind panic which the pipes sang to them.
The gates were closed before him, but Kery played them down. Then he turned and faced the city and played it a song of the wrath of the gods. He played them up rain and cold and scouring wind, glaciers marching from the north in a blind whirl of snow, lightning aflame in the heavens and cities ground to dust. He played them a world gone crazy, sundering continents and tidal waves marching over the shores and mountains flaming into a sky of rain and fire. He played them whirlwinds and dust storms and the relentless sleety blast from the north. He sang them ruin and death and the sun burning out to darkness.
When he ceased, and he and Sathi left the half-shattered city, none stirred to follow. None dared who were still alive. It seemed to the two of them, as they struck out over the snowy plains, that the volcano behind was beginning to grumble and throw its flames a little higher.
IX
HE STOOD alone in the gardens of Ryvan’s palace looking out over the city. Perhaps he thought of the hard journey back from the Dark Lands. Perhaps he thought of the triumphant day when they had sneaked back into the fastness and then gone out again, the Piper of Killorn and Red Bram roaring in his wake to smash the siege and scatter the armies of Ganasth and send the broken remnants fleeing homeward. Perhaps he thought of the future—who knew? Sathi approached him quietly, wondering what to say.
He turned and smiled at her, the old merry smile she knew but with something else behind it. He had been the war-god of Killorn and that left its mark on a man.
“So it all turned out well,” he said.
“Thanks to you, Kery,” she answered softly.
“Oh, not so well at that,” he decided. “There were too many good men who fell, too much laid waste. It will take a hundred years before all this misery is forgotten.”
“But we reached what we strove for,” she said. “Ryvan is safe, all the Twilight Lands are. You folk of Killorn have the land you needed. Isn’t that enough to achieve?”
“I suppose so.” Kery stirred restlessly. “I wonder how it stands in Killorn now?”
“And you still want to return?” She tried to hold back the tears. “This is a fair land, and you are great in it, all you people from the north. You would go back to—that?”
“Indeed,” he said. “All you say is true. We would be fools to return.” He scowled. “It may well be that in the time we yet have to wait most of us will find life better here and decide to stay. But not I, Sathi. I am just that kind of fool.”
“This land needs you, Kery. I do.”
He tilted her chin, smiling half sorrowfully into her eyes. “Best you forget, dear,” he said. “I will not stay here once the chance comes to return.”
She shook her head blindly, drew a deep breath, and said with a catch in her voice, “Then stay as long as you can, Kery.”
“Do you really mean that?” he asked slowly.
She nodded.
“You are a fool too,” he said. “But a very lovely fool.”
He took her in his arms.
Presently she laughed a little and said, not without hope, “I’ll have a while to change your mind, Kery. And I’ll try to do it. I’ll try!”
PEOPLE OF THE CRATER
by Andre Norton
I
SIX MONTHS and three days after the Peace of Shanghai was signed and the great War of 1965-1970 declared at an end by an exhausted world, a young man huddled on a park bench in New York, staring miserably at the gravel beneath his badly worn shoes. He had been trained to fill the pilot’s seat in the control cabin of a fighting plane and for nothing else. The search for a niche in civilian life had cost him both health and ambition.
A newcomer dropped down on the other end of the bench. The flyer studied him bitterly. He had decent shoes, a warm coat, and that air of satisfaction with the world which is the result of economic security. Although he was well into middle age, the man had a compact grace of movement and an air of alertness.
“Aren’t you Captain Garin Featherstone?”
Startled, the flyer nodded dumbly.
From a plump billfold the man drew a clipping and waved it toward his seat mate. Two years before Captain Garin Featherstone of the United Democratic Forces had led a perilous bombing raid into the wilds of Siberia to wipe out the vast expeditionary army secretly gathering there. It had been a spectacular affair and had brought the survivors some fleeting fame.
“You’re the sort of chap I’ve been looking for,” the stranger folded the clipping again, “a flyer with courage, initiative and brains. The man who led that raid is worth investing in.”
“What’s the proposition?” asked Featherstone wearily. He no longer believed in luck.
“I’m Gregory Farson,” the other returned as if that should answer the question.
“The Antarctic man!”
“Just so. As you have probably heard, I was halted on the eve of my last expedition by the sudden spread of war to this country. Now I am preparing to sail south again.”
“But I don’t see—”
“How you can help me? Very simple, Captain Featherstone. I need pilots. Unfortunately the war has disposed of most of them. I’m lucky to contact one such as yourself.”
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And it was as simple as that. But Garin didn’t really believe that it was more than a dream until they touched the glacial shores of the polar continent some months later. As they brought ashore the three large planes he began to wonder at the driving motive behind Parson’s vague plans.
When the supply ship sailed, not to return for a year, Farson called them together. Three of the company were pilots, all war veterans, and two were engineers who spent most of their waking hours engrossed in the maps Farson produced.
“Tomorrow,” the leader glanced from face to face, “we start inland. Here—” On a map spread before him he indicated a line marked in purple.
“Ten years ago I was a member of the Verdane expedition. Once, when flying due south, our plane was caught by some freakish air current and drawn off its course. When we were totally off our map, we saw in the distance a thick bluish haze. It seemed to rise in a straight line from the ice plain to the sky. Unfortunately our fuel was low and we dared not risk a closer investigation. So we fought our way back to the base.
“Verdane, however, had little interest in our report and we did not investigate it. Three years ago that Kattack expedition hunting oil deposits by the order of the Dictator reported seeing the same haze. This time we are going to explore it!”
“Why,” Garin asked curiously, “are you so eager to penetrate this haze?—I gather that’s what we’re to do—”
Farson hesitated before answering. “It has often been suggested that beneath the ice sheeting of this continent may be hidden mineral wealth. I believe that the haze is caused by some form of volcanic activity, and perhaps a break in the crust.”
Garin frowned at the map. He wasn’t so sure about that explanation, but Farson was paying the bills. The flyer shrugged away his uneasiness. Much could be forgiven a man who allowed one to eat regularly again.
Four days later they set out. Helmly, one of the engineers, Rawlson, a pilot, and Farson occupied the first plane. The other engineer and pilot were in the second and Garin, with the extra supplies, was alone in the third.
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