People of the Talisman

XV

The lights were on again.

He lay in a pool of light. The pool was deep orange, a suffocating color, very rasping to the nerves. Things moved in it, tall things that pranced and fluttered, trailing bright streamers.

“He’s awake,” they said.

The talisman lay on his breast, between his crossed hands.

“See?” they said. “His eyes are open…”

He sat up convulsively, his brain still unsteady from the drug. He was naked and unarmed. Only the talisman was left. He looked up at them and hated them, futilely, and feared them with a cold sick fear. His body had tiny cuts all over it that stung and pulled when he moved.

Hrillin came and bent above him, holding the other talisman. “You lost Kushat,” he said, and Stark knew that Hrillin was referring not to him alone but to all the humans. “You lost Kushat and so the world rolls in on us.” He raked himself with his free hand and blood ran down his narrow chest. His eyes burned. He twitched and swayed with a lunatic joy. “Do you feel the greatness of this time? Here we end. All the long, long ages, piled and gathered, and we bear them into the dark.”

The figures behind him danced stiffly, fluting wild cries without words.

Stark said, “But you gave us the weapons…”

“The weapons!” Hrillin whirled and took from one of his fellows a tube, perhaps the same one Stark had been carrying. He pointed the globed end at Stark and pressed the firing stud. He pressed it and pressed it, laughing, “I said these would kill more than you thought! Not enemies. Hopes, and dreams, and faith, but not enemies.” He ceased to press the stud and held the weapon upright like a club. “Ban Cruach promised you power. We have no power. The city warms us and lights us and gives us food and drink because it was built to do so, but beyond that we have nothing. All else is dead, worn out, corroded, crumbled, useless. Now the city ends, and that is the end of everything. The end of the promise…”

He brought his two hands together, striking the useless weapon hard against the talisman, and the talisman shattered and fell.

“The end!” cried Hrillin. “This is our night of carnival. We dance toward oblivion, laughing, shouting the name of Ban Cruach!”

He struck the talisman out of Stark’s hands and broke it, and the contact was gone. Forever.

They swooped on him in the orange light, in a swaying semi-circle, and began to prick him with their spurs. And as Hrillin had said, they were laughing. Stark ran.

He fled along the colored streets. They had brought him to a part of the city that was strange to him, away from the avenue. The great stone tower rose high above the roofs in one direction, and in the other, toward the perimeter of the city, he thought the lights chopped off short, as though the aliens had left a barrier of darkness against the people of Kushat.

By now the people would have learned that the precious weapons were useless. How many of them would dare to come back into the city, through total darkness and armed only with their swords, he did not know. He did not think there would be enough to be useful to him, and there was also a question of time.

The lighted streets were alive with excitement, with joy and murder.

Stark was not the only human they had taken in their stealthy raid. He could hear cries from other streets. Once he saw a man go stumbling across an open space ahead, with his tall pursuers deliberately matching stride and driving him. And at a place where two streets met there was a pink-and-gold cactus with a woman impaled on its spikes.

He was a swift runner, but he knew that they could outdistance him. He proved it fairly quickly, trying to break back down a long wide avenue that he was sure must lead to the outside. There was not a sign of a pursuer when he entered it, but at the second cross-street there they all were, laughing and springing toward him with blue light glinting from their spurs. He turned, and they let him run, but one—he thought it was the female with the amethyst streamers down her back—caught up and gashed his buttocks lightly, just to prove she could, before dancing away out of his reach.

So he ran, but he knew that there would come an end to running. And he looked all around, searching, his empty fingers flexing hungrily.

They drove him. At first he did not realize that, because sometimes they would disappear and he would think perhaps they had gone off on some other insane pursuit. Then as he would turn a corner or start across some square they would be there, and he would have to go another way. His control began to slip. He wanted to rush them and tear at them with his teeth and bare hands, but he knew that they could kill him any time they wanted to, and that they would merely enjoy his savaging as long as it pleased them. So he went on.

He began to find bodies. Some of them were human. Some of them were not, and in one broad pillared hall done all in bronze and gray he saw two of the creatures with bright cords stretched between neck and ankles, strangling themselves in a state of ecstasy while others watched, swaying like trees in a hot wind.

In the middle of a deserted square he found Rogain. He recognized him by his hands, the fine scholar’s hands stained with blood. A sword lay across the body.

Stark straightened and looked around. There was no one to see, but he knew they were watching. He knew he had been driven here deliberately. The sword was clean, both hilt and blade, and Rogain had never used it. It had been put there for him to find.

“All right,” he said to them, and added an obscene name. “I’ll do what you want.”

He picked up the sword. It felt very good in his hand. He thought perhaps they had made a mistake.

He took his bearings from the tower and started again toward the outside. They did not stop him. But from this square there was only one way that he could go.

He went, through the colored lights. A band of aliens came upon him suddenly from out of a tall pavilion. They were carrying between themselves two of their females who were either dead or close to it. All of them were bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. Stark wondered if they were drugged. Perhaps, or perhaps the euphoria of self-immolation was enough to make them as strange as they were. They laughed and pointed, and some of them came toward him. Stark had a weapon now, and his wisdom was all gone out of him. He bounded toward them like a big dark cat, and suddenly he was as lunatic as they, prancing and whirling with vicious grace as he drove the steel in. He could not avoid their spurs entirely. His shoulders bled, but he hardly noticed. He rushed on and the others swayed aside from the blade, apparently content to wait a little longer. After a bit he looked back and they had ambled on, dragging their wounded with them.

Then for a space it was quiet. The street led on between high walls. The light changed, blue, gold, violet, soft pink. And then there was another little square all enclosed in a fencing of fine wrought work in a pattern of strange leaves that must have been a memory of another place and a far gone time. At the far side of it, the street was covered by a series of elongated arches that receded in perspective, and the light was red. Coming toward him through the arches, in the bloody light, was a tall white-bodied long-striding woman, with black hair covering her shoulders and a sword in her hand.

Ciaran.

He stopped and waited. She saw him. She came into the square and stopped also, and said his name.

“I think I understand now,” she said, “why they gave me this.” She held up the sword.

Stark said, “Yes. And mine, too.”

“But how did they know…”

“You were a captive. And they heard what Balin said to you about your red wolves. They would know you had something to do with the taking of Kushat.”

He glanced from her in the red light, to the wrought work that fenced the square. Through the openings he could see them gathering to watch, their great eyes luminous. Then he looked beyond her through the arches.

“They are behind you now,” he said.

She nodded. “And behind you. They’re waiting for us to fight.” They faced each other, two naked humans in a strange far place, with swords in their hands.

Stark said, “Will you fight me, Ciaran?”

She shook her dark head. “No. Not to please them.”

“Will you fight with me, then? Will you be the shield at my back?”

She smiled. “No. But I will fight beside you, and we can guard each other’s backs.” She looked at the tall peering creatures and added, “I have never wanted more to kill.” Her white skin was marked like his with the pricking of their spurs.

“Good,” he said. “Then there are two of us.” He lifted his blade, feeling a new surge of hope and hot vengefulness. “Let us fence while we think how we can best use ourselves.”

They made the ceremonial gesture. Their blades rang together. They moved lightly, their flexing bodies pale in the red glare.

Stark saw how her eyes lighted and glowed. “Remember this is play,” he said, and she laughed.

“I’ll remember, Stark.”

They circled, and the heads in the bright conical caps bobbed to watch them. There was much fluting talk and the smell of dry leaves was strong.

Ciaran said, “I think the outside lies that way. We could try cutting our way through.”

They circled, and Stark’s eyes rested between strokes on the stone tower.

“It’s a long way to the outside,” he said, “and doubtful if we could make it. Remember, they expect to die. They could smother us by sheer numbers.” He parried a stroke and the blades clashed. “But if we took them by surprise, the tower is much closer. We might have a chance of reaching it.”

“The tower? And what would be gained by that?”

“That is the heart of the city. If it dies, all this dies too.” She parried him expertly. He was almost sorry that they would not truly fight. It would have been interesting. “I doubt,” he said, “that they could stand the cold for long.”

“Well,” said Ciaran, “we are not likely to live the night through in any case, so let us throw for the highest stakes.”

Stark nodded. “Quick, now.”

They turned from their fencing and sprang at the creatures that filled the entrance to the street down which Stark had come.

And they almost perished there.

The creatures were close-packed, and they were tall, and their arms were long. Even in dying they could reach and claw. They fluted and screamed and fluttered and Stark had a nightmare feeling that he and Ciaran were being pecked to death by a flock of ungainly birds. He swung his blade in a frenzy of disgust, literally cutting his way through, and glad of Ciaran’s strong shoulder beside his. He saw the street clear before them and they ran with all their might, and behind them the creatures began to stream from around the square and after them. Stark listened to the unmistakable tone of their voices and said between gasps, “They’re delighted. The game is going better than they hoped.”

Now that he was trying to reach it, the tower that had seemed so close looked as far away as the moons. He tried to approach it obliquely, as much as he could without losing distance, so that perhaps they would not understand his purpose until it was too late, and apparently at first they did not. They played as they had before, letting the quarry go and then heading them, only now there were more than had hunted Stark, quite a lot more. He and Ciaran obediently allowed themselves to be driven until they were level with the tower. Then Stark said, “We go now.”

They turned sharply, and the tower was directly ahead of them, set in a great wide circle beyond the end of the avenue.

They ran. And the creatures came striding on their long thin legs out of a side street, to bar the way.

Behind them, Stark heard others coming to close off their retreat. Ciaran heard too. She said, “I think the game has ended.”

Stark grunted. “Break through them now—we won’t have a second chance.”

If only their damned arms weren’t so long. The spurs jabbed and clawed for his eyes. He swung the swordblade high, around his head. This worked cruelly well, and Ciaran was using the same trick, alternately stooping low for the hamstring. They trampled over thin gold writhing bodies and through the line, but others were already pecking and pawing at their backs, and still others ran ahead to close them in again. They set their backs together and moved out across the open, keeping a vicious blur of steel between them and the probing spurs. They had stopped trying to kill. Their only interest now was in staying alive long enough to reach the tower.

“Look for a door,” Stark said.

“I see one. This way…”

They fought their way to the wall and around it, and it was easier now because the creatures could only come at them from three sides. And there were fewer of the creatures able to fight. But now they knew what the humans were up to, and for several minutes there had been loud calls as though for help.

They reached the door, a high and narrow door of metal set deep in the stone. “See if you can open it,” Stark said, and faced outward to hold the creatures off. Then he realized a surprising thing. They were drawing back. More and more of them drifted into the great circle, all that were left, he imagined, and suddenly a strange quiet was coming over them. They stood swaying gently, their bright streamers dabbled all with blood, and those who had come dragging after them the trophies of the chase now laid them down. Behind him Ciaran panted and cursed at the door, and then she said, “It’s open…”

It was a moment before Stark turned. A tall creature in stained flutterings of blue and green was walking among the crowd, his arms held high, calling out in a sort of chant. Apart from that there was no more sound nor movement in the circle. Stark listened. The whole bright city had gone silent.

He turned abruptly and went through the door into the tower.

“I’ll stand guard,” Ciaran said.

He shook his head. “No need. This is the end of the game.”

In the dark outer rim of the city, Balin and twenty-three men picked their way with drawn blades along the nighted avenue, starting at their own footsteps, their bellies cold with fear, cursing the pride that would not quite let them go without at least an attempt at rescue, or failing that, revenge. Far ahead of them the colored lights glowed.

There had been sounds. Now it seemed that there were no more.

Balin whispered, “Stop…”

They stopped. The world ached with silence. Even in his fear, Balin thought he could sense a waiting, a gathering, a rushing toward some tremendous and final moment. Ahead of him the lights flickered and went down. There was a deep hollow groan, more felt than heard. High overhead there was one vivid flash and then the stars sprang out clearly in the sky.

Very quickly, it began to grow cold.

It was morning. They stood on the slope at the mouth of the pass, Stark and Ciaran dressed in borrowed clothing and wrapped in borrowed cloaks. Of eleven men and women the aliens had taken, only they two survived. Behind them, the city lay quiet under the sun, rimed white with frost.

“We would have done better,” Balin said, “all of us—to forget Ban Cruach and his talisman, and hew our own wood as it came to hand.”

“Myths are unchancy things to lean on,” Stark said, and turned to Ciaran. Her hands were not bound this morning, and that was at Stark’s insistence. “Now you know that there is no power beyond the Gates of Death, and now that you have fed your red wolves with plunder, will you take your pack and leave Kushat in peace?”

She looked at him, with the cold wind blowing her hair. “I might do that—on one condition. Now that I cannot count on the talisman, I must look elsewhere for help. Ride beside me, Stark, to Narrissan, and we will guard each other’s backs as we did last night. Or have you made some other promise?”

“No promise,” Stark said. He remembered her eyes, glowing as the swords swung. A deep excitement stirred in him. “This time I’ll ride with you.”

Thanis came forward, and he caught her quickly up and kissed her to silence the angry words before she could speak them. “I owe you my life, little one, you and your brother. I do this for you, and for your Kushat. Build a new city, and build it in the world, so that your people will never end like they did.” He nodded toward the other city, dead and shining in the sun.

He set her down and took Balin’s hand. “Let us go ahead. By the time you come, the tribesmen will be clear of Kushat.” He held Balin’s strong grip a moment longer. Then he turned and walked with Ciaran, back through the Gates of Death.