The Sword of Rhiannon

XI. Dread Accusation

That night torches lighted the banquet hall with a smoky glare. Fires burned on round hearths between the pillars, which were hung with shields and the ensigns of many ships. The whole vast room was hollowed out of the living rock with galleries that gave upon the sea.

Long tables were set out. Servants ran among them with flagons of wine and smoking joints fresh from the fires. Carse had nobly followed the lead of Ironbeard all afternoon and to his somewhat unsteady sight it seemed that all of Khondor was feasting there to the wild music of harps and the singing of the skalds.

He sat with the Sea Kings and the leaders of the Swimmers and the Sky Folk on the raised dais at the north end of the hall. Ywain was there also. They had made her stand and she had remained motionless for hours, giving no sign of weakness, her head still high. Carse admired her. He liked it in her that she was still the proud Ywain.

Around the curving wall had been set the figureheads of ships taken in war so that Carse felt surrounded by shadowy looming monsters that quivered on the brink of life, with the torchlight picking glints from a jeweled eye or a gilded talon, momentarily lighting a carven face half ripped away by a ram.

Emer was nowhere in the hall.

Carse’s head rang with the wine and the talking and there was a mounting excitement in him. He fondled the hilt of the sword of Rhiannon where it lay between his knees. Presently, presently, it would be time.

Rold set his drinking horn down with a bang.

“Now,” he said, “let’s get to business.” He was a trifle thick-tongued, as they all were, but fully in command of himself. “And the business, my lords? Why, a very pleasant one.” He laughed. “One we’ve thought on for a long time, all of us—the death of Ywain of Sark!”

Carse stiffened. He had been expecting that. “Wait! She’s my captive.”

They all cheered him at that and drank his health again, all except Thorn of Tarak, the man with the useless arm and the twisted cheek, who had sat silent all evening, drinking steadily but not getting drunk.

“Of course,” said Rold. “Therefore the choice is yours.” He turned to look at Ywain with pleasant speculation. “How shall she die?”

“Die?” Carse got to his feet. “What is this talk of Ywain dying?”

They stared at him rather stupidly, too astonished for the moment to believe that they had heard him right. Ywain smiled grimly.

“But why else did you bring her here?” demanded Iron-beard. “The sword is too clean a death or you would have slain her on the galley. Surely you gave her to us for our vengeance?”

“I have not given her to anyone!” Carse shouted. “I say she is mine and I say she is not to be killed!”

There was a stunned pause. Ywain’s eyes met the Earth-man’s, bright with mockery. Then Thorn of Tarak said one word, “Why?”

He was looking straight at Carse now with his dark mad eyes and the Earthman found his question hard to answer.

“Because her life is worth too much, as a hostage. Are you babes, that you can’t see that? Why, you could buy the release of every Khond slave—perhaps even bring Sark to terms!”

Thorn laughed. It was not pleasant laughter.

The leader of the Swimmers said, “My people would not have it so.”

“Nor mine,” said the winged man.

“Nor mine!” Rold was on his feet now, flushed with anger. “You’re an outlander, Carse. Perhaps you don’t understand how things are with us!”

“No,” said Thorn of Tarak softly. “Give her back. She, that learned kindness at Garach’s knee, and drank wisdom from the teachers of Caer Dhu. Set her free again to mark others with her blessing as she marked me when she burned my longship.” His eyes burned into the Earthman. “Let her live—because the barbarian loves her.”

Carse stared at him. He knew vaguely that the Sea Kings tensed forward, watching him—the nine chiefs of war with the eyes of tigers, their hands already on their sword hilts. He knew that Ywain’s lips curved as though at some private jest. And he burst out laughing.

He roared with it. “Look you!” he cried, and turned his back so that they might see the scars of the lash. “Is that a love note Ywain has written on my hide? And if it were—it was no song of passion the Dhuvian was singing me when I slew him!”

He swung round again, hot with wine, flushed with the power he knew he had over them.

“Let any man of you say that again and I’ll take the head from his shoulders. Look at you. Great nidderlings, quarreling over a wench’s life. Why don’t you gather, all of you, and make an assault on Sark!”

There was a great clatter and scraping of feet as they rose, howling at him in their rage at his impudence, bearded chins thrust forward, knotty fists hammering on the board.

“What do you take yourself for, you pup of the sandhills?” Rold shouted. “Have you never heard of the Dhuvians and their weapons, who are Sark’s allies? How many Khonds do you think have died these long years past, trying to face those weapons?”

“But suppose,” asked Carse, “you had weapons of your own?”

Something in his voice penetrated even to Rold, who scowled at him.

“If you have a meaning, speak it plainly!”

“Sark could not stand against you,” Carse said, “if you had the weapons of Rhiannon.”

Ironbeard snorted. “Oh, aye, the Cursed One! Find his Tomb and the powers in it and we’ll follow you to Sark, fast enough.”

“Then you have pledged yourselves,” Carse said and held the sword aloft. “Look there! Look well—does any man among you know enough to recognize this blade?”

Thorn of Tarak reached out his one good hand and drew the sword closer that he might study it. Then his hand began to tremble. He looked up at the others and said in a strange awed voice, “It is the sword of Rhiannon.”

A harsh sibilance of indrawn breath and then Carse spoke.

“There is my proof. I hold the secret of the Tomb.”

Silence. Then a guttural sound from Ironbeard and after that, mounting, wild excitement that burst and spread like flame.

“He knows the secret! By the gods he knows!”

“Would you face the Dhuvian weapons if you had the greater powers of Rhiannon?” Carse asked.

There was such a crazy clamor of excitement that it took moments for Rold’s voice to be heard. The tall Khond’s face was half doubtful.

“Could we use Rhiannon’s weapons of power if we had them? We can’t even understand the Dhuvian weapons you captured in the galley.”

“Give me time to study and test them and I’ll solve the way of using Rhiannon’s instruments of power,” Carse replied confidently.

He was sure that he could. It would take time but he was sure that his own knowledge of science was sufficient to decipher the operation of at least some of those weapons of an alien science.

He swung the great sword high, glittering in the red light of the torches, and his voice rang out, “And if I arm you thus will you make good your word? Will you follow me to Sark?”

All doubts were swept away by the challenge, by the heaven-sent opportunity to strike“ at last at Sark on at least even terms.

The answer of the Sea Kings roared out. “We’ll follow!”

It was then that Carse saw Emer. She had come onto the dais by some inner passage, standing now between two brooding giant figureheads crusted with the memory of the sea, and her eyes were fixed on Carse, wide and full of horror.

Something about her compelled them, even in that moment, to turn and stare. She stepped out into the open space above the table. She wore only a loose white robe and her hair was unbound. It was as though she had just risen from sleep and was walking still in the midst of a dream.

But it was an evil dream. The weight of it crushed her, so that her steps were slow and her breathing labored and even these fighting men felt the touch of it on their own hearts.

Emer spoke and her words were very clear and measured.

“I saw this before when the stranger first came before me, but my strength failed me and I could not speak. Now I shall tell you. You must destroy this man. He is danger, he is darkness, he is death for us all!”

Ywain stiffened, her eyes narrowing. Carse felt her glance on him, intense with interest. But his attention was all on Emer. As on the quay he was filled with a strange terror that had nothing to do with ordinary fear, an unexplainable dread of this girl’s strong extra-sensory powers.

Rold broke in and Carse got a grip on himself. Fool, he thought, to be upset by woman’s talk, woman’s imaginings…

“—the secret of the Tomb!” Rold was saying. “Did you not hear? He can give us the power of Rhiannon!”

“Aye,” said Emer soberly. “I heard and I believe. He knows well the hidden place of the Tomb and he knows the weapons that are there.”

She moved closer, looking up at Carse where he stood in the torchlight, the sword in his hands. She spoke now directly to him.

“Why should you not know, who have brooded there so long in the darkness? Why should you not know, who made those powers of evil with your own hands?”

Was it the heat and the wine that made the rock walls reel and put the cold sickness in his belly? He tried to speak and only a hoarse sound came, without words. Emer’s voice went on, relentless, terrible.

“Why should you not know—you who are the Cursed One, Rhiannon!”

The rock walls gave back the word like a whispered curse, until the hall was filled with the ghostly name Rhiannon! It seemed to Carse that the very shields rang with it and the banners trembled. And still the girl stood unmoving, challenging him to speak, and his tongue was dead and dry in his mouth.

They stared at him, all of them—Ywain and the Sea Kings and the feasters silent amid the spilled wine and the forgotten banquet.

It was as though he were Lucifer fallen, crowned with all the wickedness of the world.

Then Ywain laughed, a sound with an odd note of triumph in it. “So that is why! I see it now—why you called upon the Cursed One in the cabin there, when you stood against the power of Caer Dhu that no man can resist, and slew S’San.”

Her voice rang out mockingly. “Hail, Lord Rhiannon!”

That broke the spell. Carse said, “You lying vixen. You salve your pride with that. No mere man could down Ywain of Sark but a god—that’s different.”

He shouted at them all. “Are you fools or children that you listen to such madness? You, there, Jaxart—you toiled beside me at the oar. Does a god bleed under the lash like a common slave?”

Jaxart said slowly, “That first night in the galley I heard you cry Rhiannon’s name.”

Carse swore. He rounded on the Sea Kings. “You’re warriors, not serving maids. Use your wits. Has my body mouldered in a tomb for ages? Am I a dead thing walking?”

Out of the tail of his eyes he saw Boghaz moving toward the dais and here and there the drunken devils of the galley’s crew were rising also, loosening their swords, to rally to him.

Rold put his hands on Emer’s shoulders and said sternly. “What say you to this, my sister?”

“I have not spoken of the body,” Emer answered, “only of the mind. The mind of the mighty Cursed One could live on and on. It did live and now it has somehow entered into this barbarian, dwelling there as a snail lies curled within its shell.”

She turned again to Carse. “In yourself you are alien and strange and for that alone I would fear you because I do not understand. But for that alone I would not wish you dead. But I say that Rhiannon watches through your eyes and speaks with your tongue, that in your hands are his sword and scepter. And therefore I ask your death.”

Carse said harshly, “Will you listen to this crazy child?”

But he saw the deep doubt in their faces. The superstitious fools! There was real danger here.

Carse looked at his gathering men, figuring his chances of fighting clear if he had to. He mentally cursed the yellow-haired witch who had spoken this incredible, impossible madness.

Madness, yes. And yet the quivering fear in his own heart had crystallized into a single stabbing shaft.

“If I were possessed,” he snarled, “would I not be the first to know?”

“Would I not?” echoed the question in Carse’s brain. And memories came rushing back—the nightmare darkness of the Tomb, when he had seemed to feel an eager alien presence, and the dreams and the half-remembered knowledge that was not his own.

It was not true. It could not be true. He would not let it be true.

Boghaz came up onto the dais. He gave Carse one queer shrewd glance but when he spoke to the Sea Kings his manner was smoothly diplomatic.

“No doubt the Lady Emer has wisdom far beyond mine and I mean her no disrespect. However, the barbarian is my friend and I speak from my own knowledge. He is what he says, no more and no less.”

The men of the galley crew growled a warning assent to that.

Boghaz continued. “Consider, my lords. Would Rhiannon slay a Dhuvian and make war on the Sarks? Would he offer victory to Khondor?”

“No!” said Ironbeard. “By the gods, he wouldn’t. He was all for the Serpent’s spawn.”

Emer spoke, demanding their attention. “My lords, have I ever lied or advised you wrongly?”

They shook their heads and Rold said, “No. But your word is not enough in this.”

“Very well, forget my words. There is a way to prove whether or not he is Rhiannon. Let him pass the testing before the Wise Ones.”

Rold pulled at his beard, scowling. Then he nodded. “Wisely said,” he agreed and the others joined in.

“Aye—let it be proved.”

Rold turned to Carse. “You will submit?”

“No,” Carse answered furiously. “I will not. To the devil with all such superstitious flummery! If my offer of the Tomb isn’t enough to convince you of where I stand—why, you can do without it and without me.”

Rold’s face hardened. “No harm will come to you. If you’re not Rhiannon you have nothing to fear. Again will you submit?”

“No!”

He began to stride back along the table toward his men, who were already bunched together like wolves snarling for a fight. But Thorn of Tarak caught his ankle as he passed and brought him down and the men of Khondor swarmed over the galley’s crew, disarming them before blood was shed.

Carse struggled like a wildcat among the Sea Kings, in a brief passion of fury that lasted until Ironbeard struck him regretfully on the head with a brass-bound drinking horn.