Bran Mak Morn: The Last King

Chapter .3.

Into the dim fens of the west came Bran Mak Morn. A cold wind breathed across the gloomy waste, and against the grey sky a few herons flapped heavily. The long reeds and marsh-grass waved in broken undulations and out across the wastes a few still meres reflected the dull light. Here and there rose curiously regular hillocks above the general levels, and gaunt against the somber sky, Bran saw a marching line of upright stones – menhirs, reared by what nameless hands?

Beyond these fens lay the foothills that grew to the wild mountains of Wales where dwelt still wild Celtic tribes that knew not the yoke of Rome. A row of well-garrisoned watch-towers held them in check. Even now, far away across the moors, Bran could glimpse the unassailable keep men call the Tower of Trajan.

Human life was not utterly lacking, even in these barren wastes. Bran met the silent men of the fen – reticent, dark of eye and hair, speaking a strange mixed tongue whose long blended integrals had forgotten their pristine separate sources. Bran recognized a certain kinship in these people to himself, but he looked on them with the scorn of a pure blooded patrician for men of mixed strains.

Not that the common people of Caledonia were altogether pure-blooded – they got their stocky bodies and massive limbs from a primitive Teutonic race which had found its way into Caledonia even before the Celtic conquest of Britain was completed, and had been absorbed by the wild Picts. But the chiefs of Bran’s folk had kept their blood free from foreign admixture since the beginnings of Time, and he himself was a pure-bred Pict of the Old Race. But these fen-men, over-run repeatedly by British, Gaelic and Roman conquerors, had assimulated the blood of each, and in the process, almost forgotten their original language and lineage.

Only in Caledonia, Bran brooded, had his people, once masters of all Europe, resisted the flood of Aryan conquest. He had heard of a Pictish people called Basques, who, in the crags of the Pyrenees called themselves an unconquered race; but he knew they had paid tribute for centuries to the ancestors of the Gaels, before these Celtic conquerors abandoned their mountain-realm and set sail for Ireland. Only the Picts of Caledonia had remained free, and they had been scattered into small feuding tribes – he was the first acknowledged king in five hundred years – the beginning of a new dynasty – no, a revival of an ancient dynasty under a new name. In the very teeth of imperial Rome, he dreamed his dreams of empire.

He wandered through the fens, seeking a Door. Of his quest he said nothing to the dark-eyed fen-men. They told him news that drifted from mouth to mouth – a tale of war in the north, the blast of war-trumpets along the winding Wall, of gathering fires in the heather, of flame and smoke and rapine, and the glutting of Gaelic swords in the crimson sea of slaughter. The eagles of the legions were moving northward and the ancient roads resounded to the measured tramp of the iron-clad feet. And Bran, in the fens of the west, laughed, well pleased.

One grey evening he strode on foot across the moors, blackly etched against the dimly crimson fire of the sunset. He felt the incredible antiquity of the slumbering land, as he walked like the last man on the day after the end of the world. Yet at last he saw a token of human life – a drab hut of wattle and mud, set in the reedy breast of the fen.

A woman greeted him from the open door, and Bran’s somber eyes narrowed with a sudden suspicion. The woman was not old, yet the evil wisdom of ages was in her eyes; her garments were ragged and scanty, her black locks tangled and unkempt, lending her an aspect of wildness well in keeping with her grim surroundings. Her red lips laughed but there was no mirth in her laughter, only a hint of mockery, and under her lips her teeth showed sharp and pointed like fangs.

“Enter, master,” said she, “if you do not fear to share the roof of the witch-woman of Dagon-moor!”

Bran entered and sat him down on a broken bench while the woman busied herself with her scanty meal which cooked over an open fire on a squalid hearth. He studied her lithe, almost serpentine motions, the ears which were almost pointed, the yellow eyes which slanted curiously.

“What do you seek on the fens, my lord?” she asked turning toward him with a supple twist of her whole body.

“I seek a Door,” he answered, chin resting on his fist, “I have a song to sing to the worms of the earth!”

She started upright, a jar falling from her hands.

“That is an ill saying, even spoken in chance,” she stammered.

“I speak not by chance but by intent,” he answered, “By the mottles on your skin, by the slanting of your eyes, by the taint in your veins, I speak with full knowledge and meaning.”

Awhile she stood silent, her lips smiling but her face inscrutable.

“Are you mad, man?” she spoke, “That in your madness you come seeking that from which strong men fled screaming in old times?”

“I seek a vengeance,” he answered, “THEY I seek may give me that vengeance.”

She shook her head.

“You have listened to a bird singing; you have dreamed empty dreams.”

“I have heard a viper hiss,” he growled, “And I do not dream. Enough of this by-play. I came seeking a link between two world; I have found it.”

“I need lie to you no more, man of the North,” answered the woman, “THEY you seek still dwell beneath these sleeping hills. They have drawn apart, further and further from the world you know.”

“But they still steal forth in the night to grip straying women on the moors,” said he, his gaze on her slanted eyes. She laughed wickedly.

“What would you of me?”

“That you bring me to them.”

She flung back her head with a scornful laugh. His left hand locked like iron in the breast of her scanty garment and his right closed on his hilt. She laughed in his face.

“Strike and be damned, my northern wolf! Do you think that such life as mine is so sweet that I would cling to it as a babe to the breast?”

His grasp fell away.

“You are right. Threats are foolish. I will buy your aid.”

“How?” the laughing voice hummed with mockery.

Bran opened his pouch and poured into his cupped palm a stream of gold.

“More wealth than all the men of the fen ever dreamed of, together.”

Again she laughed. “What is money to me? Put up your rusty metal.”

“Name me a price,” he urged, “The head of an enemy – ”

“This!” she laughed, and springing, struck cat-like. But the dagger splintered on the mail beneath his cloak and he flung her off with a loathing flirt of his wrist which tossed her sprawling across her straw-strewn bunk. Lying there she laughed up at him.

“Very well! I will name you a price!” She rose and came close to him, her disquietingly long hands fastened into his cloak, “I will tell you, Bran Mak Morn, king of Caledon! Oh, I knew you when you came into my hut with your black hair and cold eyes. I will lead you to the door of Hades if you like – for a price. And that price shall be the kisses of a king! What think you of my wasted and bitter life, I whom mortal men loathe and fear? I have not known the love of men, the clasp of a strong arm, the sting of human kisses, I the were-woman of the moors! One night of love, oh king, and I grant you your desire!”

Bran eyed her somberly; he reached forth and gripped her arm in his iron fingers. And an involuntary shudder shook him at the feel of her sleek skin. He nodded slowly, and drawing her close to him, forced his head down to meet her lifted lips.

Chapter .4.

The cold grey mists of dawn wrapped Black Bran like a clammy cloak. He turned to the woman whose slanted eyes gleamed in the grey gloom.

“Make good your part of the contract,” he said roughly, “Give me a key to Hell.”

“I will,” the red lips smiled terribly, “Go to the mound men call Dagon’s Barrow. Draw aside the stone that blocks the chamber and enter. The floor of the chamber is made of five great stones, each eight sided, four grouped about the fifth. Lift out the center stone – and you will see!”

“Will I find the Black Stone?” he asked.

“Dagon’s Barrow is the Door to the Black Stone,” she asked, “If you dare take it.”

“Will the symbol be well guarded?” he unconciously loosening his blade in its sheath. The red lips curled mockingly.

“If you meet any of the folk of the Stone, you will die as no mortal man has died for long centuries. The Stone is not guarded. Perhaps THEY will be near – perhaps not. You must take your chance. But none guards it; why should they, since no man has sought them, has ever sought them? And no foe has come against them for a thousand years. Beware, king of the Picts! It was your folk you, so long ago, cut the thread that bound They of the Stone to human life. They were almost human then – they overspread the land and knew the sunlight. Now they have drawn APART. They know not the sunlight and shun the light of the moon. Not even do they seek the stars. They might have been human in time but for the spears of your ancestors.”

The sky was overcast with misty grey, through which the sun shone coldly yellow, when Bran came to Dagon’s Barrow, a round hillock overgrown with rank grass of a curious fungoid appearance. On one side of the mound showed the entrance of a crudely built stone chamber which evidently penetrated the barrow. One great stone blocked the entrance to the tomb. Bran laid hold of the sharp edges and exerted all his dynamic strength. It held fast. He drew his sword and thrust the blade between the blocking stone and the sill. Working carefully, as with a lever, he managed to loosen the great stone and soon wrenched it out. A foul charnel house scent flowed out of the aperture, and the dim sunlight seemed less to illuminate the opening than to be fouled by the rank darkness which clung there.

Sword in hand, ready for he knew not what, Bran groped his way into the chamber which was long and narrow, built up of heavy joined stones, and was too low for him to stand erect. Either his eyes became somewhat accustomed to the gloom, or the darkness was, after all, somewhat lightened by the sunlight filtering in through the entrance. At any rate he came into a round low chamber and was able to make out its general dome-like outline. Here no doubt, in old times had reposed the bones of he for whom this mound had been reared, but now of those bones no vestige remained on the stone floor. Five stones, Atla had said. And bending close and straining his eyes, he made out the strange, startlingly regular pattern of the floor – four well cut slabs grouped about a central stone.

He drove the point of his sword into a crack and pried carefully. The edge of the central stone tilted slightly upward. A little work and he lifted it out and leaned it against the curving wall. Straining his eyes downward he saw only the gaping blackness of a dark well, with small, worn steps that led downward and out of sight. He did not hesitate. Though the skin between his shoulders crawled curiously he swung himself into the abyss and felt the clinging blackness swallow him.

Groping downward he felt his feet slip and stumble on steps too small for human feet. With one hand pressed hard against the side of the well he steadied himself, fearing a fall into unknown and unlighted depths. The steps seemed to be cut into solid rock, yet his sense of feel told him that they were greatly worn away. The further he progressed, the less like steps they became, mere bumps of worn stone. Then the direction of the shaft changed sharply. It still led down but at a shallow slant, down which he could walk, elbows braced against the hollowed sides, head bent low beneath the curved roof. The steps had ceased altogether, and the stone felt slimy to the touch, like a serpent’s lair. What beings, Bran wondered, had slithered up and down this slanting shaft for how many centuries?

The tunnel narrowed until Bran found it rather difficult to shove through. He lay on his back and pushed himself along with his hands, feet first. Still he knew he was sinking deeper and deeper into the very guts of the earth – how far below the surface he was, he dared not contemplate. Then ahead began a faint witch-fire gleam. He grinned savagely and without mirth. If they he sought came suddenly upon him, how could he fight in that narrow shaft? But he had put the thought of personal fear or danger behind him when he began this hellish quest. He crawled on, thoughtless of all else but his goal.

And he came at last into a vast space where he could stand upright. He could not see the roof of the place. The blackness pressed in on all sides, and beside him he could see the entrance to the shaft from which he had just emerged – a black well in the darkness. But in front of him a strange grisly radiance glowed about a grim black altar built of human skulls. The source of that light he could not determine, but on the altar lay a sullen night-black object – the Black Stone!

Bran wasted no time in giving thanks that the guardians of the grim relic were nowhere near. He caught up the stone and gripping it under his left arm, crawled into the shaft. When a man turns his back on Peril, it menaces him more than when he advances upon it. So with Bran, crawling back up the nighted shaft, with his grisly prize, felt the darkness turn on him and slink behind him, dripping fanged and grinning. Sweat beaded his flesh and he hastened as well as he could, ears strained for some stealthy sound to betray that fell shapes were at his heels. Strong shudders shook him, despite himself, and the short hair on his neck prickled as if a cold wind blew at his back.

When he reached the first of the tiny steps he felt as if he had attained to the outer boundaries of the mortal world. Up them he went, stumbling and slipping, and with a deep gasp of relief, came out into the tomb, whose vague greyness seemed like the blaze of noon, in comparison to the Stygian darkness he had just traversed. He replaced the central stone and strode into the light of the outer day. He lifted the great blocking stone, shoving it back into place, and picking up the cloak he had left at the mouth of the tomb, he wrapped it about the Black Stone and hurried away, a strong revulsion and loathing shaking his soul and lending wings to his strides.

A grey silence brooded over the land. It was desolate as the blind side of the moon, yet Bran felt the potentialities of life – under his feet, in the brown earth – sleeping, but how soon to waken and in what horrific fashion?

He came through the tall masking reeds to the still deep lake men called Dagon’s Mere. No slightest ripple ruffled the cold blue water to give evidence of the grisly monster legend said dwelt beneath. Bran looked all about, scanning the breathless landscape. He saw no hint of life, human or otherwise. He sought the instincts of his savage’s soul to know if any unseen eyes fixed their lethal gaze upon him, and found no response. He was alone as if he were the last man alive on earth. Swiftly unwrapping the Black Stone he weighed it in his hands and calculating the distance, flung it far out, so it fell almost exactly in the middle of the lake; a sullen splash and the waters closed over it. There a moment of shimmering flashes on the bosom of the lake, then the surface was placid again.

Chapter .5.

The were-woman turned swiftly as Bran approached her door. Her slant eyes widened.

“You! And alive! And sane!”

“I have been into Hell and I have returned,” he growled, “What is more, I have that which I sought.”

“The Black Stone?” she cried, “You have really stolen it? Where is it?”

“No matter; but last night my stallion screamed in his stall and I heard something crunch beneath his thundering hoofs which was not wood – and there was blood on his hoofs when I came to see, and blood on the floor of the stall. And I have heard stealthy sounds in the night, and noises beneath my dirt floor, as if worms burrowed deep in the earth. They know I have stolen their Stone – have you betrayed me?”

She shook her head.

“I keep your secret; they do not need my word to know you. The further they have retreated from the world of men, the greater have grown their powers in other ways. Some dawn your hut will lie empty and if men dare investigate they will find nothing – except crumbling bits of earth on the dirt floor.”

Bran smiled terribly.

“I have not planned and toiled thus far to fall prey to the talons of the vermin of the earth. I have a word for the worms of the earth. I have their one idol – or whatever it be to them. If they strike me down in the night, they will never know what became of it. I will bargain with them.”

“Dare you come with me and meet them in the night?” she asked.

“Thunder of all gods!” he roared, “Who are you to ask me if I dare? Lead me to them, and let me bargain for a vengeance this night. The hour of retribution draws nigh. This day I saw silvered helmets and bright shields gleam across the fens – the new commander has arrived at the Tower to Trajan and Caius Camillus has marched to the Wall.”

That night the king went across dark desolation of the moors with the silent were-woman. This night was thick and still as if in ancient slumber. The stars blinked redly, mere points of red struggling through the unbreathing gloom. Their gleam was dimmer than the glitter in the eyes of the woman who glided beside the king. Strange thoughts shook Bran, vague, titanic, primeval. Tonight ancestral linkings with these slumbering fens stirred in his soul and troubled him with the vague, eon-veiled shapes of monstrous dreams.

Ahead of them loomed a low range of hills, which connecting with other, further ranges, climbed at last to the mountains of Wales, far away. The woman led the way up what might have been a sheep-path, and halted before a wide black gaping cave.

“A door to those you seek, oh king!” her laughter rang hateful in the gloom, “Dare ye enter?”

His fingers closed in her tangled locks and he shook her viciously.

“Ask me but once more if I dare,” he grated, “And your head and shoulders part company! Lead on.”

Her laughter was like sweet deadly venom. They passed into the cave and Bran struck flint and steel. The flicker of the tinder showed him a wide dusty cavern, on the roof of which hung clusters of bats. Lifting his torch he scanned the shadows recesses, seeing nothing but dust and emptiness.

“Where are THEY?” he growled.

She beckoned him to the back of the cave and leaned against the rough wall, as if casually. But the king’s keen eyes caught the motion of her hand pressing hard against a projecting ledge. He recoiled as a round black well gaped at his feet. Again her laugh slashed him like a keen silver knife. He held the torch to the opening, and saw again small worn steps leading down.

“THEY do not need those steps,” said Atla, “Once they did, before your people drove them into the darkness. But you will need them.”

She thrust the torch into a nitche above the well; it shed a faint red light into the darkness below. She gestured into the well and Bran loosened his sword and stepped into the shaft. As he went down into the mystery of the darkness, the light was blotted out above him, and he thought for an instant Atla had covered the opening again. But he then realized that she was descending after him.

The descent was not long. Abruptly Bran felt his feet on a solid floor. Atla swung down beside him and stood in the dim circle of light that drifted down the shaft. Bran could not see the limits of the place into which he had come.

“This is a great cave,” said Atla, her voice seeming small and strangely brittle in the vastness, “Many caves in these hills are but doors to greater caves which lie beneath. Even as a man’s outer actions are but small indications of the dark caverns of thought lying behind and beneath.”

And now Bran was aware of movement in the gloom. The darkness was filled with stealthly noises he knew no human foot might make. Abruptly sparks began to flash and float in the blackness, like flickering fire-flies. Closer they came until they girdled him in a wide half-moon. And beyond the first ring gleamed other sparks, a solid sea of them, fading away in the gloom until the furtherest were mere tiny pin-points of light. And Bran knew they were the eyes of the beings who had come upon him in such numbers that his mind reeled at the contemplation – and at the vastness of the cavern.

Now that he faced his foes, Bran knew no fear. He felt the waves of terrible menace emanating from them, the grisly hatred, the inhuman threat to body, mind and soul. Being of an incredibly ancient race himself, he more fully realized the horror of his position than a Briton or a Roman would have been able to do, but he did not fear. His blood raced fiercely, but it was the hot excitement of the hazard, not the drive of terror.

“They know you have the Stone, oh king,” said Atla, and though he knew she feared, though he felt her physical efforts to control her trembling limbs, there was no quiver of fright in her voice, “You are in deadly peril; they know you of old – oh, they remember the days when their ancestors were men! I cannot save you; both of us will die as no human has died for ten centuries. You have stolen their Stone – and you are a Pict.”

Bran laughed and at the savagery in his laughter, the closing ring of fire shrank back. Drawing his sword with a rasp of steel, he set his back against what he hoped was a solid stone wall. Facing the glittering eyes, with his sword gripped in his right hand and his dirk in his left, he laughed as a blood-hungry wolf snarls.

“Aye,” he ground, “I am a Pict, a son of those warriors who drove your ancestors before them like chaff before the storm! My people flooded the land with your blood, and heaped high your skulls for a sacrifice to the Moon-woman! You who fled of old before my race, dare ye now snarl at your master? Roll on me like a flood, now, if ye dare! Before your viper fangs drink my life, I will reap your multitudes like ripened barley, of your severed heads will I build a tower and of your mangled corpses will I rear up a wall! Dogs of the dark, vermin of Hell, worms of the earth, rush in and try my steel! When Death finds me in this dark cavern, your living will howl for the scores of your dead and your Black Stone will be lost to you forever – for only I know where it is hidden and not all the tortures of all the Hells can wring the secret from my lips!”

Then followed a tense silence; Bran faced the fire-lit darkness, tensed like a wolf at bay, waiting the charge; at his side the woman cowered, her eyes a-blaze. Then from the silent ring that hovered beyond the torch-light, sounded a vague abhorrent murmur. Bran, prepared as he was for anything, started. Gods, was THAT the speech of creatures which had once been called men?

Atla straightened, listening intently. From her lips came the same hideous soft sibilances, and Bran, though he had already known the grisly secret of her being, knew that never again could he touch her save with soul-shaking loathing.

She turned to him, a strange smile showing her red lips dimly in the ghostly light.

“They fear you, oh king! By the black secrets of R’lyeh, who are you that Hell itself quails before you? It is not your steel they fear, but you yourself by the stark ferocity of your soul have driven unused fear into their strange minds. And they will buy back the Black Stone at any price.”

“Good,” Bran sheathed his weapons, “They shall promise not to molest you because of your part in this night’s work. And,” his voice hummed like the purr of a hunting tiger, “they shall deliver into my hands Titus Sulla, governor of Ebbracum, now commander of the Tower of Trajan. This they can do – how I know not. But I know that it the old days, when my people warred with these Children of the Night, babes disappeared from guarded huts and none saw the stealers come and go. Do they understand?”

Again rose the low frightful sounds and Bran, who feared not their wrath, shuddered at their voice.

“They understand,” said Atla, “Bring the Black Stone to Dagon’s Ring tomorrow night when the earth is veiled with the blackness that fore-runs the dawn. Lay the Stone on the atlar. There they will bring Titus Sulla to you. Trust them; they have not interfered in human affairs for many a century, but they will keep their word.”

Bran nodded and turning climbed up the stair with Atla behind him. At the top he turned and looked down once more. As far as he could see floated a glittering ocean of yellow eyes, upturned. But the owners of those eyes kept carefully beyond the dim circle of torch-light and of their bodies he could see nothing. Their low hissing speech floated up to him, and he shuddered as his imagination visualized, not a throng of biped creatures, but a swarming swaying myriad of serpents, gazing up at him with their glittering unwinking eyes.

He swung into the upper cave and Atla swung the blocking stone in place. It fitted with uncanny precision; Bran was unable to discern any crack in the apparently solid floor of the cavern. Atla made a motion to extinguish the torch but the king stayed here.

“Keep it so,” he growled, “until we are out of the cave; we might tread on an adder in the dark.”

Atla’s sweetly hateful laughter rose maddeningly in the flickering gloom.