Jirel of Joiry (22 page)

“Let me—rest by the fire. Perhaps it—it—he won’t return.”

“But he must return!” She thought that nearly every voice around her spoke simultaneously, and eager agreement was bright upon every face. Even the two dogs had thrust themselves forward among the legs of the little crowd around
Jirel
, and their shadowed eyes, still faintly aglow as if with borrowed firelight, followed the conversation from face to face as if they too understood. Their gaze turned redly up to Alaric now as he said:

“For many nights we have waited in vain for the force that was
Andred
to make
itself
known to us. Not until you come does he create that vortex which—which is necessary if we are to find the treasure.” Again, at that word,
Jirel
thought she felt a little current of amusement ripple from listener to listener. Alaric went on in his smooth voice, “We are fortunate to find one who has the gift of summoning
Andred’s
spirit to
Hellsgarde
. I think there must be in you a kindred fierceness which
Andred
senses and seeks. We must call him out of the dark again—and we must use your power to do it.”

Jirel
stared around her incredulously. “You would call—
that
—up again?”

Eyes gleamed at her with a glow that was not of the firelight. “We would indeed,” murmured the evil-faced boy at her elbow. “And we will not wait much longer…”

“But—God’s Mercy!” said
Jirel
, “—
are
all the legends wrong? They say
Andred’s
spirit swoops down with sudden death on all who trespass in
Hellsgarde
. Why do you talk as if only I could evoke it? Do you want to die so terribly? I do not! I won’t endure
that
again if you kill me for it. I’ll have no more of
Andred’s
kisses!”

There was a pulse of silence around the circle for a moment. Eyes met and looked away again. Then Alaric said:

“
Andred
resents only outsiders in
Hellsgarde
, not his own kinsmen and their retainers. Moreover, those legends you speak of are old ones, telling tales of long-ago trespassers in this castle.

“With the passage of years the spirits of the violent dead draw farther and farther away from their
deathscenes
.
Andred
is long dead, and he revisits
Hellsgarde
Castle less often and less vindictively as the years go by. We have
striven
a long while to draw him back—but you alone succeeded. No, lady, you must endure
Andred’s
violence once again, or—”

“Or what?” demanded
Jirel
coldly, dropping her hand to her sword.

“There is no alternative.” Alaric’s voice was inflexible. “We are many to your one. We will hold you here until
Andred
comes again.”

Jirel
laughed. “You think
Joiry’s
men will let her vanish without a trace? You’ll have such a storming about
Hellsgarde
walls as—”

“I think not, lady. What soldiers will dare follow when a braver one than any of them was vanished in
Hellsgarde
? No,
Joiry
, your men will not seek you here. You—”

Jirel’s
sword flamed in the firelight as she sprang backward, dragging it clear. The blade flashed once—and then arms like iron pinioned her from behind. For a dreadful moment she thought they were
Andred’s
, and her heart turned over. But Alaric smiled, and she knew. It was the dwarf who had slipped behind her at an unspoken message from his master, and if his back was weak his arms were not. He had a bear’s grip upon her and she could not wrench herself free.

Struggling, sobbing curses, kicking hard with her steel-spurred heels, she could not break his hold. There was a
murmurous
babble all around her of that strange, haunting tongue again,
“
L’vraista
! Tai
g’hasta
vrai
!
El
vraist
’ tai
lau
!”
And the two devil-faced boys dived for her ankles. They clung like ghoulishly grinning apes, pinning her feet to the floor. And Alaric stepped forward to wrench the sword from her hand. He murmured something in their queer speech, and the crowd scattered purposefully.

Fighting hard,
Jirel
was scarcely aware of their intention before it was accomplished. But she heard the sudden splash of water on blazing logs and the tremendous hissing of steam as the fire went out and darkness fell like a blanket upon the shadowy hall. The crowd had melted away from her into the dark, and now the grip on her ankles suddenly ceased and the great arms that held her so hard heaved in a mighty swing.

Choking with fury, she reeled into the darkness. There was nothing to stop her, and those mighty arms had thrown her hard. She fell and slid helplessly across bare flagstones in black dark, her greaves and empty scabbard clanging upon stone. When she came to a halt, bruised and scratched and breathless, it was a moment before she could collect her senses enough to scramble up, too stunned even for curses.

“Stay where you are,
Jirel
of
Joiry
,” Alaric’s voice said calmly out of the blackness. “You cannot escape this hall—we guard every exit with drawn swords. Stand still—and wait.”

Jirel
got her breath and launched into a blasphemous survey of his ancestry and possible progeny with such vehemence that the dark for several minutes throbbed with her fury. Then she recalled Alaric’s suggestion that violence in
herself
might attract a kindred violence in that strange force called
Andred
, and she ceased so abruptly that the silence was like a blow upon the ears.

It was a silence full of tense waiting. She could almost feel the patience and the anticipation that beat out upon her from the circle of invisible jailers, and at the thought of what they awaited her blood ran chilly. She looked up blindly into the darkness overhead, certain for a long and dreadful moment that the familiar blast of storm-wind was gathering there to churn the night into chaos out of which
Andred’s
arm would reach…

After a while she said in a voice that sounded unexpectedly small in the darkness:

“Y-you might throw me a pillow. I’m tired of standing and this floor’s cold.”

To her surprise footsteps moved softly and quite surely across stone, and after a moment a pillow hurtled out of the darkness to thump softly at her feet.
Jirel
sank upon it thankfully, only to stiffen an instant later and glare about her in the dark, the hair prickling on her neck. So—they could see in the darkness! There had been too much certainty in those footsteps and the accurate toss of the pillow to doubt it. She huddled her shoulders together a little and tried not to think.

The darkness was enormous above her. Age upon age went by, with no sound except
her own
soft breathing to break that quiet pulsing with waiting and anticipation. Her terror grew. Suppose that dreadful storm-wind should come whooping through the hall again; suppose the bodiless arm should seize her and the mouth come ravening down upon her lips once more… Coldness crept down her spine.

Yes, and suppose it did come again. What use, for her? These slinking abnormalities who were her jailers would never share the treasure with her which they were so avid to find—so avid that they dared evoke this terror by night and brave a death which legend whispered fearfully of, simply that they might possess it.
It
—did they know, then, what lay in
Andred’s
terribly guarded box? What conceivable thing could be so precious that men would dare
this
to have it?

And what hope at all for her? If the monstrous thing called
Andred
did not come tonight—then he would come again some other night, sooner or later, and all nights would find her isolated here as bait for the monster that haunted
Hellsgarde
. She had boasted without hope when she said her men would follow. They were brave men and they loved her—but they loved living more. No, there was not a man in
Joiry
who would dare follow where she had failed. She remembered Guy of
Garlot’s
face, and let violence come flooding up in her for a moment. That handsome coward, goading her into this that he might possess the nameless thing he coveted… Well, she would ruin his comely face for him with the cross-hilt of her sword—if she lived. If she lived! She was forgetting…

Slowly the stars wheeled by the arrow-slit windows high up in the darkness of the walls.
Jirel
sat hugging her knees and watching them. The darkness sighed above her with vagrant drafts, any one of which might be
Andred
roaring down out of the night.…

Well, her captors had made one mistake. How much it might avail her she did not know, but they thought they had disarmed her, and
Jirel
hugged her greave-sheathed legs in the darkness and smiled a wicked smile, knowing they had not.

It must have been after midnight, and
Jirel
dozing uneasily with her head on her knees, when a long sigh from the darkness made her start awake. Alaric’s voice, heavy with weariness and disappointment, spoke in his nameless language. It occurred to
Jirel
to wonder briefly that though this seemed to be their mother tongue (for they spoke it under stress and among themselves), yet their speech with her had no taint of accent. It was strange—but she was beyond wondering long about the monstrous folk among whom she had fallen.

Footsteps approached her, walking unerringly.
Jirel
shook herself awake and stood up, stretching cramped limbs. Hands seized her arms from both sides—at the first grasp, with no groping, though even her dark-accustomed eyes could see nothing. No one bothered to translate Alaric’s speech to her, but she realized that they had given up their vigil for the night. She was too drugged with sleep to care. Even her terror had dulled as the endless night hours dragged by. She stumbled along between her captors, making no effort to resist. This was not the time to betray her hidden weapon, not to these people who walked the dark like cats. She would wait until the odds were evener.

No one troubled to strike a light. They went swiftly and unhesitatingly through the blackness, and when stairs rose unexpectedly underfoot
Jirel
was the only one who stumbled.
Up steps, along a cold and echoing hall—and then a sudden thrust that sent her staggering.
A stone wall caught her and a door slammed at her back. She whirled, a hot Norman oath smoking on her lips, and knew that she was alone.

Groping, she made out the narrow confines of her prison. There was a cot, a jug of water, a rough door through whose chinks light began to glimmer even as she ran questing hands across its surface. Voices spoke briefly outside, and in a moment she understood. Alaric had summoned one of his apish men to watch her while he and his people slept. She knew it must be a man-at-arms and not one of Alaric’s
company
, for the fellow had brought a lantern with him. She wondered if the guardsmen knew how unerringly their masters walked the darkness—or if they cared. But it no longer seemed strange to her that Alaric dared employ such brutish men. She knew well enough now with what ease he could control them—he and his night-sight and his terrible fearlessness.

Silence fell outside.
Jirel
smiled a thin smile and leaned into the nearest corner, drawing up one knee. The long, thin-bladed knife she carried between greave and leg slid noiselessly from its sheath. She waited with feline patience, her eyes upon the lighted chinks between the door’s planks.

It seemed a long while before the guard ceased his muffled pacing, yawned loudly,
tested
the bar that fastened the door from without.
Jirel’s
thin smile widened. The man grunted and—she had prayed he would—settled down at last on the floor with his back against the panels of her door. She knew he meant to sleep awhile in the certainty that the door could not be opened without waking him. She had caught her own guards at that trick too often not to expect it now.

Still she waited. Presently the even breath of slumber reached her ears, and she licked her lips and murmured, “Gentle
Jesu
, let him not wear mail!” and leaned to the door. Her knife was thin enough to slide easily between the panels.… He was not wearing mail—and the blade was razor-keen. He must scarcely have felt it, or known when he died. She felt the knife grate against bone and gave it an expert twist to clear the rib it had grazed, and heard the man give a sudden, startled grunt in his sleep, and then a long sigh.… He must never have awakened. In a moment blood began to gush through the panels of the door in heavy spurts, and
Jirel
smiled and withdrew her knife.

It was simple enough to lift the bar with that narrow blade. The difficulty was in opening the door against the dead weight of the man outside, but she accomplished that too, without too much noise—and then the lantern sat waiting for her and the hall was long and empty in the half-dark. She could see the arch of the stairway and knew the way she had come. And she did not hesitate on the way down. She had thought it all out carefully in the darkness of the hall downstairs while she crouched on the cushion and waited for
Andred’s
ravenous storm-blast to come shrieking down above her bent shoulders.

There was no way out. She knew that. Other castles had posterns and windows from which a fugitive might escape, but
quicksands
surrounded
Hellsgarde
and the only path to freedom lay along the causeway where Alaric’s guard would be watching tonight. And only in minstrels’ romances does a lone adventurer escape through a guarded courtyard and a guarded gate.