Horn Crown

15

Gathea took a pat of paste from her mouth, and pressing the cat’s eyelids down gently, she spread the mixture across the closed eyes. When she had finished she touched fingertips of both hands to Gruu’s skull between the ears. The girl appeared to take no note of the flame wall about us. The breath of that was, I believed, growing stronger. I strove to win some measure of sight through the play of the red tongues, but they seemed to stretch solidly.

Flame has been man’s tool for years uncounted, but it is also his bane. Now I felt that that space about us might at any moment narrow to consume us all. While Gathea sat supporting the head of the cat, her eyes also closed, using some inner power of her own to summon back whatever life essence our enemy of the tower had forced from its victim.

Gruu moved a paw, unsheathed claws. A mewing such as might issue from a bewildered kitten came from his mouth, which hung open to display his formidable fangs. Gathea caressed the fur behind his ears, rubbed along the line of his jaw.

“It is well. He is waking.”

“To what?” I retorted. “If he escaped this,” I waved toward the flame, “through illusion, why summon him back?”

My mouth was dry; I longed for a long pull at the water bottle hooked to my belt, except that I had no mind to waste the small store of liquid it contained. Sweat plastered my hair to my skull, ran in trickles within my clothing, making both linen and quilted jerkin cling tightly to my skin.

“Illusion,” Gathea repeated. She still soothed the cat. “It would seem that the weapon of this Power lies therein. And—”

She looked beyond me to the play of the flame wall. There was no need to put into words what thought had come into her mind.

“Perhaps that is an illusion,” I conceded. “Yet it is tight woven and I think we cannot break it—”

“As above, so below—” she said then, and the meaning of her words I did not understand.

“Illusion,” she continued, “means the drawing of thought from an enemy’s, or victim’s mind, building upon it. Then one summons from another plane the substance of that which is most feared—or desired—and the subject transposes it into life himself.”

“You mean, we feed this flame?”

“As long as we believe we see it, then our belief feeds it.” She nodded.

“And if you are not right, if we have indeed been dropped into a real place of fire?”

“Even reality can answer to Power. What can be summoned can also be dismissed. Have you not already proven that?”

I saw the trickle of sweat down her own cheek. Then Gruu’s head raised from her knee; the smears of dried herb paste cracked and fell away as his eyes opened; his gaze centered on her face. He made a sound between purr and growl.

Yes, I could accept the changes I had witnessed for myself as well-woven illusion—but this was something else again. For I was sure if I put out a hand those flames would sear my flesh to the bone.

My companion closed her eyes again and the great cat seemed content to stay where he was, as if he drowsed. In the red light I saw movement of her lips, though now no words were spoken aloud.

This playing with minds! No wonder my clansmen had fought shy of the ways of the Wise Women, much as they had depended upon the fruits of such delving into the unknown. I wanted no more at that moment than an opponent I could see, one with a sword in his fist, ready to do battle in a way which was open and of my own world.

I was not even sure that where we were now pent was in the world I knew at all. Certainly we had been snatched here in a way that suggested travel through a space not meant for those of my species. Even if we conquered the flames by whatever sorcery Gathea could summon—what then? If we were not in our own place—or time?

She opened her eyes to stare straight at me. “You hinder!” she accused. “You withhold unbelief! Oh!” She made a fist with one hand and pounded it against the hot rock of the floor on which she had hunkered as if that were spring cooled. “If I but had one who was fitted to this task! You—you fight me with your belief in the wrong things!”

Her emotion passed into the cat. He lifted his heavy head well up for the first time to snarl at me.

I was stung by her words. She owed me a little. I had kept her from answering to the false Dians, had I not? Once more I felt for the cup and raised it, hoping that I could again sniff that cool rich air which had served and saved me. There was nothing there now. Gathea looked at what I held and her eyes narrowed. There came a faint change in her expression; she might have been looking at some object she could put to better usage.

“If you only knew more—”

“Tell me, then!” To my sight those flames which sprouted from the fire wall were moving closer.

Gathea raised her hand to push back the hair plastered against her forehead.

“What you ask is impossible. You cannot compress years of learning into a few words here and now!”

Then she gave a jerk as a flame tongue nearly licked her hand and I saw the shadow of fear arise in her eyes.

“We may not even have time for a few words,” I pointed out grimly.

“Those who have the Power,” she answered hastily, “are said to be able to transfer objects from one plane of existence to the next. They look into the thing and see its innermost self. For each thing, born or made, was once only a thought, therefore it remains partly a thought. That thought being the substance we on the plane can see, does exit elsewhere in another form. A mistress of the Mysteries can seek out such a thought, reduce the object once more to its beginnings. This is what we are taught—”

“You have seen it done?”

Slowly Gathea shook her head. “It would take one who knew much to see the innermost heart of a thing and so use it.”

“But you have said that if I knew more,” I persisted, “you could help us. What should I know?”

She shook her head again slowly. “We do not know the innermost being of the force that sought to entrap us. And—”

“This—” I pointed to the flames again flaring inward at us. I was sure that the circling walls were coming closer—”is fire. Fire is born of fuel—wood—some liquids which burn fast if a striker spark ignites them. What is then the innermost part of fire—that which it feeds upon?”

In this fire I could see no sign of either wood or a trough for the oil we used for long-lamps.

“That which it feeds upon—” Gathea repeated thoughtfully after me. Then an expression of excitement began to grow on her thin face. “Yes, it could be that the food for the fire exists elsewhere.”

A statement which did not seem helpful to me, but which appeared to awaken new life and purpose in her.

“Come.” She reached upward, holding out her hand to me. “The cup—have you a measure of water to pour into that?”

“A very little.”

“It must do. I cannot do this thing, for the cup is yours. Only you can evoke the power it exerts. Pour water into it—hold it steady. Then link hand with me. Perhaps Gruu also can give us of his strength, since his own bespelling is broken. Do this—it may be our only chance! For my power cannot rise alone.”

I allowed a trickle of water to moisten the bottom of the cup, hardly enough to be seen. Holding it in a grip tight enough to cramp my fingers, I sat on my heels, my left hand firm clasped in hers.

“Now, close your eyes. There is a fire, it is burning—from wood—just as it would on a keep hearth. There is water, a spring of water and it is rising, rising. See this! You must see it!”

There was urgency, force in her words. Yet when I closed my eyes, my mind rebelled, I could not build such a picture. When I tried it was a pale thing which winked out of mind as the lack in me allowed it to vanish.

Somewhere a voice was to be heard—but far off, sounding in such need that I strained to hear better. No, it was the fire picture not the voice—not anything but a fire burning in the pocket of a forest clearing. A fire, laid on wood as might be in any hunter’s camp—a fire!

Something built within me, a strength of will which I had never known I possessed. It was as if the force of the water and the fire had themselves transformed their substance, and all the energy which both held now filled me. My weak and fluttering picture of the fire firmed, I could hold it longer. There were the rocks of a basin into which the water of a spring flowed. Fire and water—ancient enemies!

That fire, that basin of water, became the world. Nothing lay beyond them, no action mattered save that I hold them in mind’s eye as steady and clear as I could. Fire— and water!

Into me continued to flow that strength which made clear my sight, which now allowed me not only to visualize the fire, the stream from the basin, but enabled me to use that stream, to draw the water higher and higher in the basin. No, it was a full well of water, very deep. The water which filled it to the brim overflowed—toward the fire!

The fire flared, was gone. I held firmly to my thought-picture. It was there! And once more it was. The water had fallen away as I had concentrated on the fire. No, up water, up—over—down—I saw the rise of it like a wide sea wave, issuing forth from the mouth of the well, splashing, flowing heavier. Again, when my picture wavered, there was a renewal of the other strength so that I could catch and hold.

Down poured the water, it lapped at the wood, then engulfed it. The flames sputtered, fled to far ends of the brands which were its food; the water advanced upon those also. There was a last flicker of my picture as if the fire I watched knew its force was failing. Only I held, and the water flowed on in full flood. There were no flames left. I released the flood. It was gone. But had it, for a moment, mirrored a head crowned with horns? I could not be sure. I opened my eyes. The head was there, shining on the side of my cup. For the rest it was dark, we were no longer surrounded by the blistering heat of that wall.

I blinked and blinked again. The only source of light came from the dim glow of the head on the goblet, and that was slowly fading. If there had not been the firm stone under me I would have thought we had been whirled out of life itself. As the interior of the tower had been so was this blackness thick enough to swallow one, pressing against the body with a stifling hold. I heard a sigh from the dark and knew it came from Gathea.

“It—it worked!” I found my tongue. “The fire is gone. But we are not yet back—or is this still the tower?”

Somehow I did not believe that. There was an otherness which was like the Dark, pressing in. Now that we had lost the fire which had held my mind, I realized that one step could not mean a journey. Out of the thick black came Gathea’s voice to awaken my unease yet further.

“We are still trapped,” she said. “This is not of our time or place. . . . And—”

What she might have added I will never know for at that moment the darkness changed. There was no oval of light piercing it—rather we were being sucked, pulled through it at such a speed as to nearly tear my breath from me, so I gasped and fought to fill my lungs. My hold on Gathea’s hand was vise tight. At that instant I feared more than anything that we be separated, each whirled to a different fate.

My body seemed weightless, as fragile as a leaf caught up by the wind’s blast. I even closed my eyes, for the pressure of the dark through which we were drawn seemed painful against them, as if it would strike me permanently blind. We were drawn and that which drew us gathered strength, lapping us as lightly about as if we were encased in a net of ropes which drew tighter and tighter across and around our bodies.

Then—that feeling of rushing through the air vanished. We hung, still prisoners in the dark, for I ventured to open my eyes to see nothing. There was a purpose; I could sense it. Within me something marveled at how quickly I was able to sense the unknown. I had no teaching, as Gathea had pointed out. Then what had awakened me to this knowledge of things-which-were-not and the patterns wrought by Power?

We hung, as I say, helpless, waiting the need—or the pleasure—of a pressure so beyond my comprehension that I could not begin to guess at its nature. All that linked me to the real was my hand interlocked with Gathea’s. I wanted to ask questions, my words were smothered before they reached my lips by the heavy pressure of the black upon my chest and throat.

I think that I was not far then from retreating out of myself, seeking even death as a shelter, if one’s will can carry so far as that. The faint light which had outlined the face on the cup had vanished, perhaps blown from us during that wild journey. I could still feel it, know that, like Gathea’s hand, it was locked to me for good or ill.

There was another wrenching, we were on the move again. Once more I experienced that icy cold, that sensation of blasting through some unbelievable barrier. Now there was light—dim—gray—yet still enough to cut through the curtain, make me blink. It was below, as if we were aloft in the sky, but it grew larger, brighter, and we were falling toward it being wafted downward, upheld by will—whose will and why?

There was a shock, wrenching my body with such force that I was torn loose from Gathea. That power which imprisoned me carried me away at another angle. Now I might have looked through the eyes of a bird or some winged thing which held itself aloft by swiftly beating wings.

Below stood a circle of stone, silver bright, for there were moon’s rays across it. In the center was a block of shining white, so vividly aglow in this light that I would have hidden my eyes from its glare had I had the ability to raise my hands. Again no part of my body would obey my will. On the stone lay someone, a woman. Her hair was outspread behind her head, flowing back over the edge of the stone. She wore no clothing and at first I thought that she might be dead, for I could determine no sign of life in that quiet shape.

Now I saw that there were four pillars set at the four corners of the pavement, each bearing a moon sign—even as there had been in the shrine among the dale hills. Under each of these wavered a thin form which seemed unstable, wraithlike, weaving in and out of human outline. They thickened, became more stable the closer I was borne to their stations.

As bare of body as the woman they were plainly masculine. Each held a staff within his hands, and they did not stand steadily, but changed from one foot to another constantly, as if they marched or danced, still keeping their places. There was a shadow of excitement building here, it reached out to me, sought to enter my mind, my body.

Out of the shadows beyond that place of gleaming silver came a fifth shadow, dark, a body like a black blot which soiled the silver, tarnished the fresh cleanness of the moonlight. In my hands the cup came alive, it was warm, growing hotter. It might have been filling with anger, with outrage.

I was to be a tool, a weapon in the hands of the Dark to forge a needed spell, to turn Light awry. And I could not fight against the pressure.

That black shadow wavered and weaved in a dance which led from one of the pillar men to the next, halting for a moment before each one to throw skeletal arms high in some invocation, while each this shadow so visited became more and more real as if fresh and powerful life were drawn into it. Still all this time the woman lay on the altar bespelled or in deep slumber, knowing, I believed, nothing of what chanced.

Downward the compulsion which had pulled me here forced me now. I was close enough to see their faces—all save that of the moving shadow who made the circling about, raising the power. That I could feel, streaming about me like a swift current.

If the dancing men saw me they gave no sign of it. I had reached the ground now, my feet were on the pavement, those moon silver blocks by the altar. I looked down and saw—Iynne!

Gone was the girl who had ridden in Garn’s train. She was changed in a manner which I did not understand. Her lips, dark against the pallor of her face, showing not red, but black in the light, curved in a slight smile. I could believe that she was dreaming, finding in sleep some great happiness never experienced by the timid maid I had always known and who shrank from others, perhaps so cowed by her father’s strong possessiveness that she dared not lift her eyes unless he might order it so.

Iynne! A—sacrifice. I needed no one to tell me that. Whatever was being wrought here was no act of the Light, rather of evil—of a Dark as black as that place from which I had been drawn.

I stood, the cup between my hands, feeling its growing heat. Its metal heart might have been filled with leaping flames, so did it burn my flesh. This was its defense against what would happen here. That silver face on the side blazed, from its eyes shot brilliant spears of light—white as the moon above us—yet in their way different.

That dancing shadow, still formless in its many swaddlings of night black, save for the skeletal arms, turned from the last man and came jigging and prancing toward me. The head was hooded; I could catch no sign of a face within that shadow. Still I knew that this one was aware of my coming, that it was in league with the presence which had sent me here.

Once more those arms were flung up and out, the wide sleeves fell away from arms which were skin over bone—ancient skin, ancient bone—to uncover them near to the shoulder. The crooked fingers which might be of extreme age, long of nail, knobbed and twisted, swooped down, reaching at the cup across the sleeping girl. I held to that fiercely, knowing that in my hold alone was this talisman safe.

I set my will, not against that which brought me here, for I believed that opposed to that I would have no chance at all. Rather I strove to center what strength I had upon continued possession of the Horned Man’s goblet. To that I bent every effort.

Fingers drove nails into my flesh and I jerked free. Perhaps I had taken by surprise whatever power had sent me here as a captive, perhaps the goblet I held, and determined to go on holding, roused in me strengths I did not know that I had.

The thing which would grasp the goblet made a second attack. Now its efforts loosed the full cowl over its head. The material fell away. Another woman—a travesty of her sex. She was very old and her aging had not been by good and well sought ways. Thus her deeply wrinkled face was a mask of ancient hatreds, imprinted by vices beyond reckoning. Across a nearly bald skull straggled a few wisps of greasy white hair, and, as she opened her mouth to spit and curse at me, I saw but one or two yellow teeth, more like Gruu’s fangs than those grown in any human mouth.

She was malevolent and she was powerful. What she desired to do moved her to greater strength than I would have thought possible, judging by her bony body. Having failed in her first grab at the cup, she rounded the altar on which Iynne slept, coming straight for me, her eyes pits of rage, born of both cunning and madness, her crooked hands out to rip my face to tatters.

To move against the power which had sent me was like struggling through thick sand. I could not avoid her leap at me, nor would I loose my hold on the cup. I strove to lessen her attack, take the force of it against my shoulder, my raised arms.

There was spittle at the corners of her mouth as she shouted forth strange words. To my amazement I could see those words. They were both red and smoky in the air, swirling up and about my head, pressing down as if they would scorch me like true fire.

It was then that I flung up my head and once more cried aloud.

“Ha! Kurnous—By the Name of the Horns!”

She might have run full against a wall, for she staggered back one step and then two, striving to keep her footing. Her mouth worked, spit dribbled down her chin. Now her hands moved, sketching out signs. Those, too, carried the red-black of the Dark weaving in the air.

The cup within my hands was almost too hot to hold; still I brought it level with my own mouth as if I were about to drink down what it held—though it was empty. From those eyes on the side the beams of brilliance were like the heads of spears set to bring down the charge of enemies.

They struck at that black-robed crone, met resistance, sprayed sideways, lapped across the altar stone and the sleeping girl. I might have loosed a fountain of light, for this radiance did not fade. Instead, the beams mingled with the moonlight, grew sharper, brighter.

The crone, with an agility which I would have thought beyond her years, hurled herself backwards once again, withdrawing from the outer wash of that light. She screamed, and the sound of her voice within my head made me cringe in turn, for it was pain such as I did not think I could bear.

Yet I stood my ground. The pressure which had brought me here was gone. I could if I wished have thrown aside the cup with its torment of fire, run from that confrontation. But in my heart I knew that I would not do. What strange battle was mine I could only guess. But I held as the light washed on and farther out.

The crone stumbled back and back. She stood now on the very edge of the pavement. There she halted as if determined to make a last stand. I well knew that she was summoning up the full force of her power. Though I had been long the prisoner of something beyond my comprehension, I was still warrior trained. I caught that small motion of her head, saw that, for a moment, her eyes did not hold on me, but had flashed to the girl.

It was my turn to attack. I so discovered that I had not lost all the ways and skills of a swordsman. An instant and I was between the crone and the girl. Also I shot a glance at the nearest of the men—would those four now move in upon me at the service of this sorceress? They were bare of body and had no weapons I could see, save those staffs they held. However, who might tell what other arms they might have which were not of my knowing at all?

The two I could see had not moved. Still they stood by the pillars, dancing from foot to foot, their eyes not for me, nor for the crone, but facing inward, though I could not be sure whether they watched Iynne or not—

A bolt of light flashed at me. I again swung up the goblet. Not only from the eyes of the Horned Lord did the answering radiance stream now, it welled from within the cup itself, fountaining into the air, sparking outwards, forming a veil between me and the crone. While on the pavement the flood of light also swirled outwards. It reached the bare feet of the nearest man. For the first time he awakened to what was happening. He twisted, his gaze breaking as he looked down at the stream now about his ankles.

Handsome he had been beyond the common; now his features writhed and moved in a sickening manner. His fine body might have been caught in a furnace of heat, shriveling, becoming stunted. He cried out like a wordless beast in agony as his staff turned into a silver flame ignited by the flood. He hurled it from him.

No man stood tall there now. Rather there crouched at the foot of the pillar a hairy, crooked thing with a great toad-wide mouth, a mixture of beast and reptile. He strove to hop or throw himself away from the flood of light that held him full captive.

I looked to the other man. He also had been wrought upon. What struggled in the morass overflowing from the cup I held was part bird, such a bird lived in no land I knew, tall as the man had been, rapacious of beak—bearing resemblance in part to those black fowl which we had seen in Garn’s dale, save that this was a giant of their species.

The crone—she retreated another step, off the moon-drenched pavement. The creeping flow of light halted at the edge of the stone, did not reach her. She was in a half crouch as if trying to overleap that rippling spread of light, still coming at me. For, though I might have baffled her for the moment, I knew that she was far from defeated. Nor was she done with whatever game she had attempted to play here.

Her mouth worked as it had when she had thrown at me those fiery curses. Only this time there were no words to be seen. Instead she brought her two hands together, and the sound which followed that gesture of flesh meeting flesh was as loud as a clap of thunder.

She was gone!

I backed against the altar. The two things at the bases of the pillars could not move in spite of their struggles. I swung around to view the other two. The radiance was creeping in their direction also. But it was not to reach and entrap them. Though they showed no sign that they could see the danger seeping toward their feet, they both suddenly snuffed out as had the crone.

Leaning back against the altar stone, I tried to view what lay outside that silver square. That I had been borne out of the other place where the Presence in the tower had sent us, I was sure. This was my own world—though what portion of it I could not begin to guess. This was certainly not that shrine in the hill above Garn’s dale. While Gathea and Gruu—where were they? Had they been left behind in that nothing place? If so—how might they be brought forth?

There was a sigh from behind me. I swung around. Iynne’s eyes were open, she was waking up, that shadow smile still on her lips, her eyes languorous, as if she had come from such a dream as no true maiden might hold in her mind.