The Sword of Rhiannon

XIII. Catastrophe

The days that followed after that were long strange days for Matthew Carse. He drew a map from memory of the hills above Jekkara and the place of the Tomb, and Rold studied it until he knew it as he knew his own courtyard. Then the parchment was burned.

Rold took one longship and a picked crew, and left Khondor by night. Jaxart went with him. Everyone knew the dangers of that voyage. But one swift ship, with Swimmers to scout the way, might elude the Sark patrols. They would beach in a hidden cove Jaxart knew of, west of Jekkara, and go the rest of the way overland.

“If aught goes wrong on the return,” Rold said grimly, “we’ll sink our ship at once.”

After the longship sailed there was nothing to do but wait.

Carse was never alone. He was given three small rooms in a disused part of the palace and guards were with him always.

A corroding fear crept in his mind, no matter how he fought it down. He caught himself listening for an inner voice to speak, watching for some small sign or gesture that was not his own. The horror of the ordeal in the place of the Wise Ones had left its mark. He knew now. And, knowing, he could never for one moment forget.

It was not fear of death that oppressed him, though he was human and did not want to die. It was dread of living again through that moment when he had ceased to be himself, when his mind and body were possessed in every cell by the invader. Worse than the dread of madness was the uncanny fear of Rhiannon’s domination.

Emer came again and again to talk with him and study him. He knew she was watching him for signs of Rhiannon’s resurgence. But as long as she smiled he knew that he was safe.

She would not look into his mind again. But she referred once to what she had seen there.

“You come from another world,” she said with quiet sureness. “I think I knew that when I first saw you. The memories of it were in your mind—a desolate, desert place, very strange and sad.”

They were on his tiny balcony, high under the crest of the rock, and the wind blew clean and strong down from the green forests.

Carse nodded. “A bitter world. But it had its own beauty.”

“There is beauty even in death,” said Emer, “but I am glad to be alive.”

“Let’s forget that other place, then. Tell me of this one that lives so strongly. Rold said you were much with the Halflings.”

She laughed. “He chides me sometimes, saying that I am a changeling and not human at all.”

“You don’t look human now,” Carse told her, “with the moonlight on your face and your hair all tangled with it.”

“Sometimes I wish it were true. You have never been to the Isles of the Sky Folk?”

“No.”

“They’re like castles rising from the sea, almost as tall as Khondor. When the Sky Folk take me there I feel the lack of wings, for I must be carried or remain on the ground while they soar and swoop around me. It seems to me then that flying is the most beautiful thing in the world and I weep because I can never know it.

“But when I got with the Swimmers I am happier. My body is much like theirs, though never quite so fleet. And it is wonderful—oh, wonderful—to plunge down into the glowing water and see the gardens that they keep, with the strange sea-flowers bowing to the tide and the little bright fish darting like birds among them.

“And their cities, silver bubbles in the shallow ocean. The heavens there are all glowing fire, bright gold when the sun shines, silver at night. It is always warm and the air is still and there are little ponds where the babies play, learning to be strong for the open sea.

“I have learned much from the Halflings,” she finished.

“But the Dhuvians are Halflings too?” Carse said.

Emer shivered. “The Dhuvians are the oldest of the Halfling races. There are but few of them now and those all dwell at Caer Dhu.”

Carse asked suddenly, “You have Halfling wisdom—is there no way to be rid of the monstrous thing within me?”

She answered somberly, “Not even the Wise Ones have learned that much.”

The Earthman’s fists closed savagely on the rock of the gallery.

“It would have been better if you’d killed me there in the cave!”

Emer put her gentle hand on his and said, “There is always time for death.”

After she left him Carse paced the floor for hours, wanting the release of wine and not daring to take it, afraid to sleep. When exhaustion took him at last, his guards strapped him to his bed and one stood by with a drawn sword and watched, ready to wake him instantly if he should seem to dream.

And he did dream. Sometimes they were nothing more than nightmares born of his own anguish, and sometimes the dark whisper of an alien voice came gliding into his mind, saying, “Do not be afraid. Let me speak, for I must tell you.”

Many times Carse awoke with the echo of his screaming in his ears, and the sword’s point at his throat.

“I mean no harm or evil. I can stop your fears if you will only listen!”

Carse wondered which he would do first—go mad or fling himself from the balcony into the sea.

Boghaz clung closer to him than ever. He seemed fascinated by the thing that lurked in Carse. He was awed too but not too much awed to be furious over the disposal of the Tomb.

“I told you to let me bargain for it!” he would say. “The greatest source of power on Mars and you give it away! Give it without even exacting a promise that they won’t kill you when they get it.”

His fat hands made a gesture of finality. “I repeat, you have robbed me, Carse. Robbed me of my kingdom.”

And Carse, for once, was glad of the Valkisian’s effrontery because it kept him from being alone. Boghaz would sit, drinking enormous quantities of wine, and every so often he would look at Carse and chuckle.

“People always said that I had a devil in me. But you, Carse—you have the devil in you!”

“Let me speak, Carse, and I will make you understand!”

Carse grew gaunt and hollow-eyed. His face twitched and his hands were unsteady.

Then the news came, brought by a winged man who flew exhausted into Khondor.

It was Emer who told Carse what had happened. She did not really need to. The moment he saw her face, white as death, he knew.

“Hold never reached the Tomb,” she said. “A Sark patrol caught them on the outward voyage. They say Rold tried to slay himself to keep the secret safe but he was prevented. They have taken him to Sark.”

“But the Sarks don’t even know that he has the secret,” Carse protested, clutching at that straw, and Emer shook her head.

“They’re not fools. They’ll want to know the plans of Khondor and why he was bound toward Jekkara with a single ship. They’ll have the Dhuvians question him.”

Carse realized sickly what that meant. The Dhuvians’ hypnotic science had almost conquered his own stubbornly alien brain. It would soon suck all Rold’s secrets out of him.

“Then there is no hope?”

“No hope,” said Emer. “Not now nor ever again.”

They were silent for a while. The wind moaned in the gallery, and the waves rolled in solemn thunder against the cliffs below.

Carse said, “What will be done now?”

“The Sea Kings have sent word through all the free coasts and isles. Every ship and every man is gathering here now and Ironbeard will lead them on to Sark.

“There is little time. Even when the Dhuvians have the secret it will take them time to go to the Tomb and bring the weapons back and learn their use. If we can crush Sark before then…”

“Can you crush Sark?” asked Carse.

She answered honestly. “No. The Dhuvians will intervene and even the weapons they already have will turn the scale against us.

“But we must try and die trying, for it will be a better death than the one that will come after when Sark and the Serpent level Khondor into the sea.”

He stood looking down at her and it seemed to him that no moment of his life had been more bitter than this.

“Will the Sea Kings take me with them?”

Stupid question. He knew the answer before she gave it to him.

“They are saying now that this was all a trick of Rhiannon’s, misleading Rold to get the secret into Caer Dhu. I have told them it was not so but—”

She made a small tired gesture and turned her head away. “Ironbeard, I think, believes me. He will see that your death is swift and clean.”

After a while Carse said, “And Ywain?”

“Thorn of Tarak has arranged that. Her they will take with them to Sark, lashed to the bow of the leader’s ship.”

There was another silence. It seemed to Carse that the very air was heavy, so that it weighed upon his heart.

He found that Emer had left silently. He turned and went out onto the little gallery, where he stood staring down at the sea.

“Rhiannon,” he whispered. “I curse you. I curse the night I saw your sword and I curse the day I came to Khondor with the promise of your tomb.”

The light was fading. The sea was like a bath of blood in the sunset. The wind brought him broken shouts and cries from the city and far below longships raced into the fiord.

Carse laughed mirthlessly. “You’ve got what you wanted,” he told the Presence within him, “but you won’t enjoy it long!”

Small triumph.

The strain of the past few days and this final shock were too much for any man to take. Carse sat down on the carven bench and put his head between his hands and stayed that way, too weary even for emotion.

The voice of the dark invader whispered in his brain and for the first time Carse was too numb to fight it down.

“I might have saved you this if you had listened. Fools and children, all of you, that you would not listen!”

“Very well then—speak,” Carse muttered heavily. “The evil is done now and Ironbeard will be here soon. I give you leave, Rhiannon. Speak.”

And he did, flooding Carse’s mind with the voice of thought, raging like a storm wind trapped in a narrow vault, desperate, pleading.

“If you’ll trust me, Carse, I could still save Khondor. Lend me your body, let me use it—”

“I’m not far gone enough for that, even now.”

“Gods above!” Rhiannon’s thought raged. “And there’s so little time—”

Carse could sense how he fought to master his fury and when the thought-voice came again it was controlled and quiet with a terrible sincerity.

“I told you the truth in the grotto. You were in my Tomb, Carse. How long do you think I could lie there alone in the dreadful darkness outside space and time and not be changed? I’m no god! Whatever you may call us now we Quiru were never gods—only a race of men who came before the other men.

“They call me evil, the Cursed One—but I was not! Vain and proud, yes, and a fool, but not wicked in intent. I taught the Serpent Folk because they were clever and flattered me—and when they used my teaching to work evil I tried to stop them and failed because they had learned defenses from me and even my power could not reach them in Caer Dhu.

“Therefore my brother Quiru judged me. They condemned me to remain imprisoned beyond space and time, in the place which they prepared, as long as the fruits of my sin endured on this world. Then they left me.

“We were the last of our race. There was nothing to hold them here, nothing they could do. They wanted only peace and learning. So they went along the path they had chosen. And I waited. Can you think what that waiting must have been?”

“I think you deserved it,” Carse said thickly. He was suddenly tense. The shadow, the beginning of a hope…

Rhiannon went on. “I did. But you gave me the chance to undo my sin, to be free to follow my brothers.”

The thought-voice rose with a passion that was strong, dangerously strong.

“Lend me your body, Carse! Lend me your body, that I may do it!”

“No!” cried Carse. “No!”

He sprang up, conscious now of his peril, fighting with all his strength against that wild demanding force. He thrust it back, closing his mind against it.

“You cannot master me,” he whispered. “You cannot!”

“No,” sighed Rhiannon bitterly, “I cannot.”

And the inner voice was gone.

Carse leaned against the rock, sweating and shaken but fired by a last, desperate hope. No more than an idea, really, but enough to spur him on. Better anything than this waiting for death like a mouse in a trap.

If the god of chance would only give him a little time…

From inside he heard the opening of the door and the challenge of the guards, and his heart sank. He stood breathless, listening for the voice of Ironbeard.