Collected Fiction, page 570
He stood on a sandy plain among clumps of low-growing shrubs. Far off a glow of faint color staining the mist told him where the city lay, but he was not sure at all that he dared seek out that city. He needed time to think, to search his mysteriously closed memory for things he so desperately needed, now to know.
Where was he—in what impossible land? What did he want here? For he had come through the crystal window in answer to a compelling urge toward—something. An urge to follow—her—to find her? That nameless, all but faceless woman who wore an iron crown and whose very memory was like a chain to draw him after her wherever she might go.
Where had he known her? What had she been to him? Why did the shiver of recollected danger ripple over him whenever he let her memory float back into his mind? He had no answers to these or any other questions. He only knew he was lost in the fog of an incredible land and he did not think he dared seek out that city which was its only familiar landmark.
The Sorcerers’ City. Its name came into his mind blindly. It was an evil city, full of strange enchantments and stranger men and women. He felt a sudden urge to look upon it, and struck out on impulse through the fog toward a rise of ground he saw a little distance away.
From the eminence the city was clearer, veiled and unveiled by the constant, silent drifting of blue-grey clouds. Enigmatically the great walls rose, enclosing their clusters of lighted towers, their crystal roofs, their tented canopies that glowed like lanterns from the lights within.
Through the mists a sound came faintly to him. He turned. Far away, winding through the cloudy plain, he saw a procession coming toward the city. There was a curious darkness over the long, wavering column. Tiny lamps gleamed through it and the sound of bells rose and fell as the procession wound its way through the fog. He was near enough to make out a little of those who walked in the line . . .
Boyce had no recollection of what happened next. He only knew he was sitting on the sandy ground, his face in his hands, while waves of sickness receded slowly as he sat there. He was shaking all over.
He remembered then that he had seen those—those beings—before. Somewhere in her company. As to what they looked like, what they were, his conscious mind had no recollection. He thought he would never know consciously. They were too terribly alien to all that is human. He only knew that they walked upright like men, yet were not men, and that such revulsion went through him at the very thought of them that his mind blanked wholly out . . .
WHEN he heard the laughter of the Huntsman in the fog, he was almost glad. He got up unsteadily. The dark procession with its lights and bells had vanished into the city and the mist was empty now. The Huntsman laughed again, nearer at hand, and on the heels of his laughter rang out the first cry Boyce had heard from the Huntsman’s pack—a high, shivering scream that made his hair prickle at the roots.
He ran.
This time the hunt was after him in earnest. Twice he heard the pack snuffling almost at his very heels, and the thin, clear screaming of their voices was never long silent in the fog. He ran without direction or purpose for what seemed an endless time, with the sandy plain spinning by featurelessly underfoot. He only knew he must not go near the city and those who had entered it.
Gradually it began to dawn upon him that the Huntsman was deliberately herding him. For the pack gave him breathing-spaces. At intervals the Huntsman’s halloo would ring through the mist and the screaming would die away, and Boyce would fling himself full-length upon the damp sand and go limp with exhaustion.
If they meant to pull him down, they could have done so a dozen times in the hours upon hours that the hunt lasted. They were herding him in some one general direction, for some unfathomable reason of the Huntsman’s own.
Now the ground began to rise in jagged foothills, and Boyce knew he was coming again to mountains. The pack was close behind him. He panted up a steep slope, hearing the voice of the Huntsman and the shuddering screams of the beasts echoing hollowly through the fog.
Then suddenly the ground before him dropped away in a sheer cliff. He paused and looked frantically about. If the Huntsman had driven him deliberately to this spot, then perhaps it was with no other purpose than to trap him more easily for the kill. For he could not go on or go back.
There was a new sound in the fog. A dull, rhythmic clopping that was oddly familiar. Boyce strained his eyes toward it, trying to quiet his painful gasping. But the fog hid the source of the noise and distorted its sound.
A clear, shivering scream from close behind him made Boyce swing around. Out of the greyness a low, lithe shape took form, lifting a snarling face to stare at him. Another and another behind it moved soundlessly forward, like creatures in a dream.
The clop-clopping was louder now. Abruptly the Huntsman’s voice rang out in a high, summoning shout. The beautiful, snarling beasts hesitated. The Huntsman shouted again, and abruptly the pack was gone. Mist closed around them and they vanished like nightmares as they had come.
The Huntsman’s laughter rang out once more, mocking, edged with that inhuman snarl. Then silence.
The rhythmic, half-metallic noise came on. Boyce turned.
Out of the fog that rolled back like a curtain from its shoulders, a huge black charger paced. Upon it rode a man—Boyce’s eyes widened—a man who had ridden straight out of a lost century.
Chain-mail, glistening with moisture, hung in faintly ringing folds upon his great body. A conical helmet with metal-mesh hanging from it framed a harsh face in which eyes of pale blue stared unwinkingly at Boyce. A sword swung at the knight’s waist.
Another enemy, Boyce thought. He glanced back into the fog, but there was no trace of the Huntsman or his pack.
CHAPTER III
Earthquake
THE mounted man said something. Boyce was stunned to find he could understand the language. Not easily, but it was the old French, the tongue spoken by Frenchmen six hundred years ago. The words and inflection were archaic, garbled—but understandable.
“I am a friend,” Boyce said slowly, carefully. “I come in peace.” But his tense muscles did not relax. If the knight charged, perhaps he could dodge aside and somehow wrench the man from the saddle.
“If you ran from the Huntsman, you are no friend of the City dogs,” the knight said, his harsh mouth relaxing a trifle. “You may come in peace with me—at least. Where is your home?”
Boyce hesitated. What would modern place-names mean to this archaic figure?
“Another land,” he said at random. “Far from here, I think.”
The blue eyes widened.
“Beyond the mountains? Or—not a land of blue sky and a bright sun? Not a land named—Normandy?”
Still Boyce hesitated. The knight leaned forward in his saddle.
“By your garments you are no man of this haunted world. And you speak our tongue. By the Rood, stranger—answer! Do you know Paris and Rome? Byzantium? Answer! What world do you come from?”
“I know Paris and Rome, yes,” Boyce said, through his amazement. “But I do not understand—”
The knight clapped his gauntleted hand to his thigh.
“Oh, by all the gods! Now if you were helot to the Huntsman or servant of Satanas himself, I’d take you to Kerak with me! Up—up, man! The pack may return, or other dangers may threaten. We ride a perilous patrol on these marches. Up, I say!”
A mailed hand gripped Boyce’s. The American was swung up, finding a seat behind the knight. The great charger, well trained, scarcely stirred until the armored man spoke a word. Then the horse cantered forward, picking its way delicately through the fog.
“I am Godfrey Morel—Godfrey Longshanks they call me,” came the hard, firm voice. “Not in my memory has any man come here from the lands of the cross. We were the last. Dear heaven, how my soul has sickened and lusted for a breath of clean wind from Normandy!
“Even the Turk sirocco, hell-hot as it was, would have been grateful, instead of the perfumed stink of this abode of Satanas! Spy or traitor you may be—we can learn that later. But first you will tell me how the world moves—whether we still hold Antioch, and if the Red Lion still leads his Seljuk Turks against our armies.”
About to answer, Boyce paused as an elbow jolted into his ribs.
“Silence now, for a while,” Godfrey Morel said softly. “Kerak is under siege. It is always under siege, but the fight grows hotter of late. We must ride warily. And in silence.”
The war-horse paced on through the thickening mists. Boyce’s throat was dry. Byzantium? Antioch? More than six hundred years had rolled over old Earth since the banners of the Crusaders flaunted on the ramparts of Antioch!
Boyce breathed deeply. This was no stranger or more fantastic than the fantastic questions that seethed in his brain. This world was not Earth—he knew that without any question. The crystal gateway through which he smashed had led him into . . . what? Her world, yes.
“But what and where? He knew it did not matter. Enough that it was here—the girl he could neither forget nor remember, whose image was a scar upon his memory. But for the rest, his questions must go unanswered a while longer.
Godfrey Morel’s armor creaked and rang. Beneath them the great war-horse’s ponderous gait rocked them both to the same rhythm. Himself, and a man who asked after Antioch and the fate of battles six hundred years lost and won. He must not think now of Godfrey Long-shanks’ enigma. His brain was dizzy already with unanswered questions.
The mists blew apart before them and Boyce saw, high on a crag, the towers and bastions of the great grey castle he had glimpsed across the valley. The crimson banner streamed from its keep-height. Briefly through his mind went the wonder that he had come so straight for it. Was that the Huntsman’s doing? And if it was, why?
Before him in the saddle he saw Godfrey’s mighty mailed back go rigid. He heard the Crusader’s caught breath. Then a deep-throated shout made the mist echo around them.
“Look—look at hell opening again!” roared Godfrey.
The horse beneath them staggered. No—not the horse, but the earth itself. Boyce saw a long swell of sandy ground swiftly rising as if the plain breathed. Between them and the castled heights of the mountain the land lay bare for a moment of mist, and all that space was heaving incredibly. It was more than earthquake—more purposeful, far more sinister.
THEN the earth split. And the long jagged rent moved horribly, like a crawling serpent, toward the base of the crags that upheld the castle.
Godfrey Morel roared, “Kerak!” and waved a great arm toward the castle as if his shout could rouse the garrison to its danger. Then he bent in the saddle and drove his spurs deep. The war-horse gathered itself on the rocking earth and staggered, then leaped forward with a lengthening stride.
Boyce clutched the Crusader’s belt and coughed in the dust that billowed up from the pounding of the hoofs. The whole world seemed to be shaking now, with a shifting uneasy motion that tossed them like a ship on water.
And there was a crawling all over the plain, a converging of the serpentine rents as though the earth meant to swallow Kerak whole. Huge cracks tore themselves open, lengthening jaggedly. The plain was like a sheet of ice breaking in a spring thaw, shattering toward the crags upon which Kerak towered.
“Sorcerers!” Godfrey howled. He was upright in the stirrups now, yelling an ancient war-cry, blindly spurring the charger across the shuddering plain. Boyce hung on desperately, not daring to shift his grip.
Before them he saw the ground yawn suddenly. He could look down steep, crumbling lips of earth into darkness, and he felt the stallion shudder with the shudder of the plain. Then powerful muscles gathered beneath them, were ponderously released as the charger with its double burden hurdled the widening gap.
“Dieu lo vult!” Godfrey breathed suddenly, as they thundered on across the shaking ground. It was the Crusaders’ rallying cry, Boyce knew, but something in Godfrey’s voice told him this time it meant more—relief, prayerful thanks—“God wills it!”
He looked up. From the heights of Kerak a flicker of light was broadening like a halo around the topmost tower. It shivered and widened and pulsed outward as the rings widen in water from a dropped pebble. Circle after circle, broadening and slowly dropping, until the whole castle was ringed with falling wheels of fire . . .
They did not stop at the base of the castle. They dropped farther, ringing the crags. They came down and down, slowly, silently, flowing and widening as they came, and ever the topmost tower pulsed them forth anew.
Where the first of the broadening hoops of fire touched the plain the earth ceased to shudder—and none too soon. For by then Kerak itself had begun to pitch a little, like a great castled galleon riding a stormy sea. The deep groan of rocks shaken one upon another sounded from the tortured crags. A little more of that, and Kerak would have begun to crack like the plain itself.
But the touch of the fiery rings was like the touch of oil on angry water. The earth quieted, the groaning of the cliffs fell silent. Kerak was firm again upon its great grey crags. And as the showering wheels of fire fell slowly downward in circles that broadened toward the watchers, the cracks in the plain began to close.
Wherever the moving rings touched them, the earth healed itself. Without a sound the great rents were sealed like closing mouths. Boyce thought of the mouths of giants, silenced but not appeased by this quiet magic. There was a feel of sullenness to the yielding of the plain. The rings flowed steadily outward, healing and quieting as they came, but the earth was not appeased.
In silence it yielded, but it was not conquered. He could feel that, somehow, in the very silence of the place. The great gaping lips of earth closed, but they closed on threats to come. They bided their time.
Godfrey reined in his trembling charger. They waited while the first wave of light lapped gently around them and went on. Then the Crusader shook the caparisoned reins on the neck before him and they paced forward sedately, the stallion wading through wave upon wave of quiet fire.
Godfrey laughed, a deep, contented noise in his chest.
“The old mage has not lost his wisdom. Kerak is still safe in Tancred’s hands. But the day may come—” He flashed a glance across his shoulder.
“You may be a spy of the Huntsman—or worse,” he said. “Or you may be an honest man. It’s not my part to guess. There are few places now a man could come from—save the City. If spy you are, when you return tell the sorcerers that Tancred is still their match.”
“I’m no spy,” Boyce said hesitantly, fumbling for words in the strange, yet familiar tongue. “You saw the Huntsman follow me—
“No man knows what drives the Huntsman,” Godfrey said. “Well, here are the bastions of Kerak. Look up, stranger. Feast your eyes, if you came to spy. This is Kerak of the Crusaders!”
High, high, tremendous with quarried blocks of granite, the mighty bastions towered. It made a man dizzy to stare up those vast, converging heights. And the banner that tore at its staff as if it fought for freedom with the wind made a sound of screaming cloth and a flame of burning crimson. It rolled over the tremendous battlements like a banner of fire, shrieking to the wind in a language of its own.
“Now you must face the Oracle,” Godfrey said. “And be judged, for life or death. But even if the judgment be death—by the Lance, stranger, you shall give me news from my old home before you die. That I have promised myself.”
The iron gates of Kerak screamed on their iron hinges and Godfrey’s stallion paced forward through the rings of falling fire. And it was thus Boyce first entered Kerak, where the last Crusaders dwelt.
CHAPTER IV
The Oracle
MIST hung in the open courts of Kerak.
Attendants in archaic garments ran forward to help the riders dismount; they crossed a stone-flagged pavement, invisible In mist, and entered a half-seen door. The cold smell of stone and the fragrance of wood-fires closed about them as they went down a corridor and into a great stone hall high enough to have a drift of mist like miniature clouds hanging in layers under the vast ceiling.
This was a room out of another age. Boyce had seen pictures of such halls many times, but he had certainly never thought to stand in one, looking down the length of the room toward the dais at one end with a bright fire roaring in the chimney and men and women in the garments of six hundred years past lounging before the blaze.
He followed Godfrey over the rush-strewn floor toward the dais. There were women there, in bright velvets, belted with jewels. The breath came suddenly thick in his throat He knew no more about her than the outline of her body against a crystal window and the flash of a brilliant face glancing once at him across her shoulder. But if she sat here on the dais, he would know her. And perhaps she did. Perhaps she did . . .
A great voice rang out suddenly.
“Well, Godfrey! What skulker from the marshes d’you bring us now?”
Boyce started violently and paused among the rushes, staring toward the speaker. He knew the voice. He knew it as well as his own. He had heard it somewhere very lately—not with the arrogance that was in it now, but with the same inflections, the same pitch and pacing of phrase—the same voice.
Godfrey took his arm and they went up the steps of the dais and stood before the speaker, Boyce staring hard.
“A stranger from our own land, I think, Sir Guillaume,” Godfrey was saying. “A stranger from home—or a spy. I found him in the marshes fleeing from the Huntsman’s pack.”
The man in the high-backed seat of honor by the fire lolled at his ease, glaring up at Boyce under thick brows. He was a big man with immense strength in every line of him under the long velvet robe. His tanned face was seamed with the scars of old sword-strokes but his blue eyes were very bright and the mouth beneath a drooping yellow moustache had the arrogance born of a lifetime of command.
