The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (10 page)

For a long while she skimmed over the grass, tirelessly, wing-
heeled, her red hair flying. The panic died after a while, but that
sense of heavy disaster did not die. She felt somehow that tears would
ease her, but something in the frigid darkness of her soul froze her
tears in the ice of that gray and alien chill.

And gradually, through the inner dark, a fierce anticipation took form in her mind. Revenge upon Guillaume! She had taken from the temple only a kiss, so it was that which she must deliver to him. And savagely she exulted in the thought of what that kiss would release upon him, unsuspecting. She did not know, but it filled her with fierce joy to guess.

She had passed the column and skirted the morass where the white, blundering forms still bumped along awkwardly through the ooze, and was crossing the coarse grass toward the nearing hill when the sky began to pale along the horizon. And with that pallor a fresh terror took hold upon her, a wild horror of daylight in this unholy land. She was not sure if it was the light itself she so dreaded, or what that light would reveal in the dark stretches she had traversed so blindly—what unknown horrors she had skirted in the night. But she knew instinctively that if she valued her sanity she must be gone before the light had risen over the land. And she redoubled her efforts, spurring her wearying limbs to yet more skimming speed. But it would be a close race, for already the stars were blurring out, and a flush of curious green was broadening along the sky, and around her the air was turning to a vague, unpleasant gray.

She toiled up the steep hillside breathlessly. When she was halfway
up, her own shadow began to take form upon the rocks, and it was
unfamiliar and dreadfully significant of something just outside her
range of understanding. She averted her eyes from it, afraid that at
any moment the meaning might break upon her outraged brain.

She could see the top of the hill above her, dark against the
paling sky, and she toiled up in frantic haste, clutching her sword
and feeling that if she had to look in the full light upon the dreadful
little abominations that had snapped around her feet when she first
emerged she would collapse into screaming hysteria.

The cave-mouth yawned before her, invitingly black, a refuge from
the dawning light behind her. She knew an almost irresistible desire
to turn and look back from this vantage-point across the land she
had traversed, and gripped her sword hard to conquer the perversive
longing. There was a scuffling in the rocks at her feet, and she set
her teeth in her underlip and swung viciously in brief arcs, without
looking down. She heard small squeakings and the splashy sound of
feet upon the stones, and felt her blade shear thrice through semi-
solidity, to the click of little vicious teeth. Then they broke and ran
off over the hillside, and she stumbled on, choking back the scream
that wanted so fiercely to break from her lips.

She fought that growing desire all the way up to the cave-mouth,
for she knew that if she gave way she would never cease shrieking
until her throat went raw.

Blood was trickling from her bitten lip with the effort at silence
when she reached the cave. And there, twinkling upon the stones,
lay something small and bright and dearly familiar. With a sob of relief
she bent and snatched up the crucifix she had torn from her throat
when she came out into this land. And as her fingers shut upon it a
vast, protecting darkness swooped around her. Gasping with relief,
she groped her way the step or two that separated her from the cave.

Dark lay like a blanket over her eyes, and she welcomed it gladly, remembering how her shadow had lain so awfully upon the hillside as she climbed, remembering the first rays of savage sunlight beating upon her shoulders. She stumbled through the blackness, slowly getting control again over her shaking body and laboring lungs, slowly stilling the panic that the dawning day had roused so inexplicably within her. And as that terror died, the dull weight upon her spirit became strong again. She had all but forgotten it in her panic, but now the impending and unknown dreadfulness grew heavier and more oppressive in the darkness of the underground, and she groped along in a dull stupor of her own depression, slow with the weight of the strange doom she carried.

Nothing barred her way. In the dullness of her stupor she scarcely realized it, or expected any of the vague horrors that peopled the place to leap out upon her. Empty and unmenacing, the way stretched before her blindly stumbling feet. Only once did she hear the sound of another presence—the rasp of hoarse breathing and the scrape of a scaly hide against the stone—but it must have been outside the range of her own passage, for she encountered nothing.

When she had come to the end and a cold wall rose up before
her, it was scarcely more than automatic habit that made her search
along it with groping hand until she came to the mouth of the shaft.
It sloped gently up into the dark. She crawled in, trailing her sword,
until the rising incline and lowering roof forced her down upon her
face. Then with toes and fingers she began to force herself up the
spiral, slippery way.

Before she had gone very far she was advancing without effort,
scarcely realizing that it was against gravity she moved. The curious
dizziness of the shaft had come over her, the strange feeling of change
in the very substance of her body, and through the cloudy numbness
of it she felt herself sliding round and round the spirals, without effort.
Again, obscurely, she had the feeling that in the peculiar angles of
this shaft was neither up nor down. And for a long while the dizzy
circling went on.

When the end came at last, and she felt her fingers gripping the
edge of that upper opening which lay beneath the floor of Joiry’s
lowest dungeons, she heaved herself up warily and lay for a while on
the cold floor in the dark, while slowly the clouds of dizziness passed
from her mind, leaving only that ominous weight within. When the
darkness had ceased to circle about her, and the floor steadied, she
got up dully and swung the cover back over the opening, her hands
shuddering from the feel of the cold, smooth ring which had never
seen daylight.

When she turned from this task she was aware of the reason for
the lessening in the gloom around her. A guttering light outlined
the hole in the wall from which she had pulled the stones—was it a
century ago? The brilliance all but blinded her after her long sojourn
through blackness, and she stood there awhile, swaying a little, one
hand to her eyes, before she went out into the familiar torchlight
she knew waited her beyond. Father Gervase, she was sure, anxiously
waiting her return. But even he had not dared to follow her through
the hole in the wall, down to the brink of the shaft.

Somehow she felt that she should be giddy with relief at this safe
homecoming, back to humanity again. But as she stumbled over the
upward slope toward light and safety she was conscious of no more
than the dullness of whatever unreleased horror it was which still lay
so ominously upon her stunned soul.

She came through the gaping hole in the masonry into the full
glare of torches awaiting her, remembering with a wry inward smile
how wide she had made the opening in anticipation of flight from
something dreadful when she came back that way. Well, there was no
flight from the horror she bore within her. It seemed to her that her
heart was slowing, too, missing a beat now and then and staggering
like a weary runner.

She came out into the torchlight, stumbling with exhaustion, her mouth scarlet from the blood of her bitten lip and her bare greaved legs and bare sword-blade foul with the deaths of those little horrors that swarmed around the cave-mouth. From the tangle of red hair her eyes stared out with a bleak, frozen, inward look, as of one who has seen nameless things. That keen, steel-bright beauty which had been hers was as dull and fouled as her sword-blade, and at the look in her eyes Father Gervase shuddered and crossed himself.

5

They were waiting for her in an uneasy group—the priest anxious and dark, Guillaume splendid in the torchlight, tall and arrogant, a handful of men-at-arms holding the guttering lights and shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. When she saw Guillaume the light that flared up in her eyes blotted out for a moment the bleak dreadfulness behind them, and her slowing heart leaped like a spurred horse, sending the blood riotously through her veins. Guillaume, magnificent in his armor, leaning upon his sword and staring down at her from his scornful height, the little black beard jutting. Guillaume, to whom Joiry had fallen. Guillaume.

That which she carried at the core of her being was heavier than
anything else in the world, so heavy she could scarcely keep her knees
from bending, so heavy her heart labored under its weight. Almost
irresistibly she wanted to give way beneath it, to sink down and down
under the crushing load, to lie prone and vanquished in the ice-gray,
bleak place she was so dimly aware of through the clouds that were
rising about her. But there was Guillaume, grim and grinning, and
she hated him so very bitterly—she must make the effort. She must,
at whatever cost, for she was coming to know that death lay in wait
for her if she bore this burden long, that it was a two-edged weapon
which could strike at its wielder if the blow were delayed too long.
She knew this through the dim mists that were thickening in her
brain, and she put all her strength into the immense effort it cost
to cross the floor toward him. She stumbled a little, and made one
faltering step and then another, and dropped her sword with a clang
as she lifted her arms to him.

He caught her strongly, in a hard, warm clasp, and she heard his
laugh triumphant and hateful as he bent his head to take the kiss she
was raising her mouth to offer. He must have seen, in that last moment
before their lips met, the savage glare of victory in her eyes, and been
startled. But he did not hesitate. His mouth was heavy upon hers.

It was a long kiss. She felt him stiffen in her arms. She felt a coldness
in the lips upon hers, and slowly the dark weight of what she bore
lightened, lifted, cleared away from her cloudy mind. Strength flowed
back through her richly. The whole world came alive to her once more.
Presently she loosed his slack arms and stepped away, looking up into
his face with a keen and dreadful triumph upon her own.

She saw the ruddiness of him draining away, and the rigidity of
stone coming over his scarred features. Only his eyes remained alive,
and there was torment in them, and understanding. She was glad—
she had wanted him to understand what it cost to take Joiry’s kiss
unbidden. She smiled thinly into his tortured eyes, watching. And
she saw something cold and alien seeping through him, permeating
him slowly with some unnamable emotion which no man could ever
have experienced before. She could not name it, but she saw it in
his eyes—some dreadful emotion never made for flesh and blood to
know, some iron despair such as only an unguessable being from the
gray, formless void could ever have felt before—too hideously alien for
any human creature to endure. Even she shuddered from the dread
ful, cold bleakness looking out of his eyes, and knew as she watched
that there must be many emotions and many fears and joys too far
outside man’s comprehension for any being of flesh to undergo, and
live. Grayly she saw it spreading through him, and the very substance
of his body shuddered under that iron weight.

And now came a visible, physical change. Watching, she was
aghast to think that in her own body and upon her own soul she had
borne the seed of this dreadful flowering, and did not wonder that her
heart had slowed under the unbearable weight of it. He was standing
rigidly with arms half bent, just as he stood when she slid from his
embrace. And now great shudders began to go over him, as if he were
wavering in the torchlight, some gray-faced wraith in armor with tor
ment in his eyes. She saw the sweat beading his forehead. She saw a
trickle of blood from his mouth, as if he had bitten through his lip in
the agony of this new, incomprehensible emotion. Then a last shiver
went over him violently, and he flung up his head, the little curling
beard jutting ceilingward and the muscles of his strong throat corded,
and from his lips broke a long, low cry of such utter, inhuman strange
ness that Jirel felt coldness rippling through her veins and she put up
her hands to her ears to shut it out. It meant something—it expressed
some dreadful emotion that was neither sorrow nor despair nor anger,
but infinitely alien and infinitely sad. Then his long legs buckled at
the knees and he dropped with a clatter of mail and lay still on the
stone floor.