The Dark World by Henry Kuttner (readnow txt) 📖

like a striking snake for his throat. The shock of metal grating on bone jarred my wrist.

I tore the weapon free and glimpsed Lorryn, still grinning, engaging another of the guardsmen.

“Kill them!” I shouted. “Kill them!”

I did not wait for response. I went forward against the blind-eyed soldiers of Medea, slashing, striking, thrusting, as though these men were the Coven, my enemies! I hated each blankly staring face. Red tides of rage began to surge up, narrowing my vision and clouding my mind with hot mists.

For a few moments, I was drunk with the lust for killing.

Lorryn’s hands gripped my shoulders. His voice came.

“Bond!_ Bond!“_

The fogs were swept away. I stared around. Not one of the guardsmen was left alive. Bloody, hacked corpses lay sprawled on the gray flagstone of the courtyard. The woodsmen, panting hard, were wiping their blades clean.

“Did any escape to carry warning to Caer Secaire?” I asked.

Despite his perpetual scarred grin, Lorryn looked troubled.

“I’m not sure. I don’t think so, but the place is a rabbit-warren.”

“The harm’s done then,” I said. “We hadn’t enough men to throw a cordon around the Castle.”

He grimaced. “Warned or not, what’s the odds? We can slay the Covenanters as we killed their guards.”

“We ride to Caer Llyr,” I said, watching him.

I saw the shadow of fear in the cold gray eyes. Lorryn rubbed his grizzled beard and scowled.

“I don’t understand. Why?”

“To kill Llyr.”

Amazement battled with ancient superstitious terror in his face. His gaze searched mine and apparently read the answer he wanted.

“To kill — _that!“_

I nodded. “I’ve seen Ghast Rhymi. He told me the way.”

The men around us were watching and listening. Lorryn hesitated.

“We didn’t bargain for this,” he said. “Yet by the gods! To kill_ Llyr!_

Suddenly he sprang into action, shouting orders. Swords were sheathed. Men ran to untether the mounts. Within minutes we were in our saddles, riding out from the courtyard, the shadow of the Castle falling heavily upon us till the moon lifted above the tallest tower.

I rose in my stirrups and looked back. Up there, dead, sat Ghasti Rhymi, first of the coven to die by my hand. I had killed him as surely as if I had plunged steel into his heart.

I dropped back into the saddle, pressing heels into my horse’s flanks. He bolted forward. Lorryn urged his steed level with me. Behind us the woodsmen strung out in a long uneven line as we galloped across the low hills toward the distant mountains. It would be dawn before we could reach Caer Llyr. And there was no time to waste.

Medea and Edeyrn and Matholch! The names of the three beat like muffled drums in my brain. Traitors to me, Medea no less than the others, for had she not bent before the wills of Edeyrn and Matholch, had she not been willing to sacrifice me? Death I would give Edeyrn and the wolfling. Medea I might let live, but only as my slave, nothing more.

With Ghast Rhymi dead, I was leader of the Coven! In the old man’s tower, sentimental weakness had nearly betrayed me. The weakness of Edward Bond, I thought. His memories had watered my will and diluted my power.

Now I no longer needed his memories. At my side swung the Crystal Mask and the Wand of Power. I knew how to get the Sword Called Llyr. It was Ganelon and not the weakling Edward Bond, who would make himself master of the Dark World.

Briefly I wondered where Bond was now. When Medea had brought me through the Need-fire to the Dark World, Edward Bond, at that same moment, must have returned to Earth. I smiled ironically, imagining the surprise that must have been his. Perhaps he had tried, and was still trying, to get back to the Dark World. But without Freydis to aid him, his attempts would be useless. Freydis was helping me now, not Bond.

And Bond would stay on Earth! The substitution would not occur again if I could help it. And I_ could_ help it. Strong Freydis might be, but could she stand against the man who had killed Llyr? I did not think so.

I sent a sly sidewise glance at Lorryn. Fool! Aries too was another of the same breed. Only Freydis had sense enough not to trust me.

The strongest of my enemies must die first — Llyr. Then the Coven. After that, the woodsmen would taste my power. They would learn, that I was Ganelon, not the Earth weakling, Edward Bond!

I thrust the memories of Bond out of my mind. I drove them away. I banished them utterly.

As Ganelon I would battle Llyr.

And as Ganelon I would rule the Dark World!

Rule — with iron and fire!

XIV. Fire of Life

HOURS BEFORE we came to Caer Llyr we saw it, at first a blacker blackness against the night sky, and slowly, gradually, deepening into an ebon mountain as the rose-gray dawn spread behind us.

Our cantering shadows fell before us, to be trodden under the horses’ hoofs. Cool, fresh winds whispered — whispered of the sacrifice at Caer Secaire, of the seeking minds of the Coven that spied across the land.

But Caer Llyr loomed on the edge of darkness ahead — guarding the night!

Huge the Caer was, and alien. It seemed shapeless, a Titan mound of jumbled black rock thrown almost casually together. Yet I knew that there was design in its strange geometry.

Two jet pillars, each fifty feet tall, stood like the legs of a colossus, and between them was an unguarded portal. Only there was mere any touch of color about the Caer.

A veil of flickering rainbows played lambently, like a veil across the threshold. Opalescent and faintly glowing, the shadow-curtain swung and quivered as though gentle winds drifted through gossamer folds of silk.

Fifty feet high was that curtain and twenty feet broad. Straddling it the ebon pillars rose. And above and beyond, towering breathtakingly to the dawn-clouded sky, squatted the Caer, a mountain-like structure that had never been built by man.

From Caer Llyr a breath of fear came coldly, scattering the woodsmen like leaves before a gale. They broke ranks, deployed out and drew together again as I raised my hand and Lorryn called a command.

I stared around at the low hills surrounding us.

“Never in my memory or my father’s memory have men come this close to Caer Llyr,” Lorryn said. “Except for Covenanters, of course. Nor would the foresters follow me now, Bond. They follow you.”

How far would they follow? My wondering thought was cut off as a woodsman shouted warning. He rose in his stirrups and pointed south.

Over the hills, riding like demons in a dusty cloud, came horsemen, their armor glittering in the red sunlight!

“So someone did escape from the Castle,” I said between my teeth. “And the Coven have been warned, after all!”

Lorryn grinned and shrugged. “Not many.”

“Enough to delay us.” I frowned, trying to make the best plan. “Lorryn, stop them. If the Coven ride with then-guards, kill them too. But hold them back from the Caer until —”

“Until?”

“I don’t know. I’ll need time. How much time I can’t say. Battling and conquering Llyr won’t be the work of a moment.”

“Nor is it the work of one man,” Lorryn said doubtfully. “With us to aid you, victory will fly at your elbow.”

“I know the weapon against Llyr,” I said. “One man can wield it. But keep the guardsmen back, and the Covenanters too. Give me time!”

“There will be no difficulty about that,” Lorryn said, a flash of excitement lighting his eyes. “For look!”

Angling across the hills, riding one by one into view, hotly pursuing the armored rout, came green-clad figures, spurring their horses forward.

Those figures were woodsmen’s women whom we had left behind in the valley. They were armed now, for I saw the glitter of swords. Nor were swords their only weapons. A spiteful crack echoed, a puff of smoke arose, and one of the guardsmen flung up his hands and toppled from his mount.

Edward Bond had known how to make rifles! And the woodsfolk had learned how to use them!

At the head of the woods women I noted two lithe forms, one a slim, supple girl whose ashy-blond hair streamed behind her like a banner. Aries.

And at her side, on a great white steed, rode one whose giant form I could not mistake even from this distance. Freydis spurred forward like a Valkyrie galloping into battle.

Freydis and Aries, and the women of the forest!

Lorryn’s laugh held exultation.

“We have them, Bond!” he cried, his fist tightening on the rein. “Our women at their heels, and we to strike from the flank — we’ll catch and crush them between hammer and anvil. Gods grant the shape-changer rides there!”

“Then ride,” I snapped. “No more talk! Ride and crush them. Hold them back from the Caer!”

With that I raced my steed forward, lying low on the horse’s mane, driving like a thunderbolt toward the black mountain ahead. Did Lorryn know how suicidal might be the mission on which I had sent him? Matholch he might slay, and even Medea. But if Edeyrn rode with the Coven guards, if ever she dropped the hood from her face, neither sword nor bullet could save the woodsmen!

Still they would give me time. And if the woodsmen’s ranks were thinned, so much the better for me later. I would deal with Edeyrn in my own way when the time came.

Ahead the black columns stood. Behind me a shouting rose, and a crackle of rifle-fire. I looked back, but a fold of the hills hid the combat from my eyes.

I sprang from the horse’s back and stood before the pillars — between them. The coruscating veil sparkled and ran like milky water before me. Above, towering monstrously, stood the Caer, the focus of the evil that had spread across the Dark World.

And in it reposed Llyr, my enemy!

I still had the sword I had taken from one of the woodsmen, but I doubted if ordinary steel would be much good within the Caer. Nevertheless I made sure the weapon was at my side as I walked forward.

I stepped through the veil.

For twenty paces I moved forward in utter darkness. Then light came.

But it was the light that beats upon a snow plain, so bright, so glittering, that it blinds. I stood motionless, waiting. Presently the dazzle resolved itself into flickering atoms of brightness, weaving and darting in arabesque patterns. Not cold, no!

Tropical warmth beat upon me.

The shining atoms drove at me. They tingled upon my face and hands. They sank like intangible things through my garments and were absorbed by my skin. They did not lull me. Instead, my body greedily drank that weird snowstorm of — energy? — and was in turn energized by it.

Tide of life sang ever stronger in my veins.

I saw three gray shadows against the white. Two tall and one slight and small as a child’s shadow.

I knew them. I knew who cast them.

I heard Matholch’s voice.

“Kill him. Kill him now.”

And Medea’s answer.

“No. He need not die. He must not.”

“But he must!” Matholch snarled, and Edeyrn’s sexless, thin voice echoed his.

“He is dangerous, Medea. He must die, and only on Llyr’s altar can he be slain. For he is the Sealed of Llyr.”

“He need not die,” Medea said stubbornly. “If he is made harmless — weaponless — he may live.”

“How?” Edeym asked, and for answer the red witch stepped forward out of the dazzling white shimmer.

No longer a shadow. No longer a two-dimensional