Wheel of Stars Page 11

  There was no sense of time, no day, no night, no hours marked by the ringing of the temple gongs—only dusky death printed on the fog of smoke and ash. While Ortha sat and the Power poured through her to show—

  A figure reeled through the curtain—a body wearing only scraps of clothing which had charred away, one who used blackened, twisted fingers to pull itself along. She saw the face turned up to hers, bloodsmeared. Dim memory stirred in her. The Arm—he who had tried to strike a bargain with her to learn a secret which she never knew.

  Even as she remembered the secret there came a change of the picture of the smoke curtain. The wide sweep of continued and continuing death rippled—vanished. There grew another vision—that of a stone-walled corridor—ahead a door around which were set bars in a pattern to form symbols on either wall—glowing bars, alive, fresh and strong with Power. She knew that this was the refuge which had been fashioned and which—somewhere—still held safe.

  That torn remnant of a man who was the Arm looked up and over his shoulder at the picture on her fog Mirror and then he lunged for her. The wrecks of his hands fell on either side of her body, pinning her fast to the throne. His face was now on a level with hers, and his eyes were as bright with fire as those new mountains beyond the temple.

  His lips moved—he might have been shouting—but she could not hear what he said. Did not hear, still she understood. He willed her, would use her, even as she used the Mirror. She was to aid him to reach that place and he would compel her to it.

  He was drawing power from her, still that which filled her seemed in very little diminished. More and more his eyes commanded—perhaps he also spoke, uttering some controlling ritual she could not hear. His burned body gleamed, its outlines now began to fade into the fog through which he had come. He was drawing—commanding—willing—

  More and more tenuous grew his hands. Ortha in turn was losing that strength which had filled her so full. He was trying to accomplish what she would not have believed possible—transport himself by his will and the energy filtered through her to that place of refuge.

  Now he was but a shadow of a man—as worn as an autumn leaf which had lasted too long with a stubborn hold upon a parent tree branch. Then he dwindled, fell in upon himself, crumbled as might a brittle clay figure. He was gone also as that living, demanding force. Whether he had reached at the last what he sought, she could not tell. Nor did the fog curtain show. For that was aswirl, lacking pictures.

  Ortha raised her head a fraction. It would seem that she was blind now, for there was only a red haze before her tormented eyes. And she was alone—utterly alone in a new way. What the Arm—this throne, the Power had done was accomplished, leaving her drained of all vestige of talent—a husk emptied of all but the faint spark of life which would not depart to leave her at peace. She wept and her tears burnt upon her cheeks. There was nothing remaining but—

  Perhaps it was those tears which cleared her vision for an instant—of a terror and final agony. For she saw—the wave was coming—up and up it reached and then—

  She was not overwhelmed by any rush of water. She was—Ortha—NO! That had been a dream, a horribly realistic nightmare, perhaps, but still a dream. Gwennan breathed deeply and opened her eyes. She was home, of course, safely home in her own bed, in warmth and sanity—reality.

  Only she saw rocks standing about her.

  Gwennan screamed.

  Monstrous things crouched at the foot of the hillock on which she sheltered. There was that hairy man-shape—also one with an owl’s head and fluttering wings. The latter raised a face wherein red rimmed pits were the eyes, and that color also marked the opening of a wicked beak—a tooth-edged beak, she noted with added fear. It upheld arms from which the wings appeared to spread, and displaying talons, long, curved, cruel.

  In this green light—Green light? It was as if her mind had been shaken again and again by direct, punishing blows. She was not back in the real world—she had returned to that place where the huntress and the hunter feuded. There they were, still watching her as if she had never been away—as if no time had lapsed between the instant when the hunter had loosed his creatures to come at her and this awakening.

  Gwennan felt so disoriented that she closed her eyes, opened them again. She had raised her hand to her aching head. Against her cheek the watch-pendant which she held in so unbreakable a grip was warm and somehow soothing. The girl might not understand what had happened to her, but she strove to put Ortha from her firmly, concentrate on what was immediately before her—WHO were before her.

  “Farfarer—” that woman who might have been Lady Lyle, who had certainly been the Voice, who might be either friend or enemy, and for whom now Gwennan had little trust, spoke, “you hold the balance.” She raised her spear and with it pointed to the pendant.

  “The balance,” agreed the man. “It must now be tipped—by you—either this way—” a motion of his hand indicated himself and the crew of monsters, “or that.” He pointed to the woman.

  All the while he smiled as one who expected no barrier to rise between him and his desires. “My dear kinswoman believes—”

  He was interrupted by a single loud yelp from one of the hounds. Gwennan's attention had been so closely engaged by him and his monsters, that she had not witnessed the shifting of the golden-eared pack. They had come between the beds of unwholesome flowers, leaving tracks upon the patches of golden sand, drawing in, to sit in a semi-circle at the foot of the hillock, moving between her own perch and the monsters.

  The hunter laughed.

  “Would you try such powers then—against me,” he asked of the woman. “Is that not just what I have long wanted? Or do you believe that you have already won her to take your side—” He nodded in Gwennan's direction. For the first time since her coming out of that Ortha nightmare she herself spoke:

  “I do not know what game you play here—” In her own fears her voice sounded unnaturally loud. The watch pendant she now held cradled directly beneath her chin, the warmth, hot burning heat rising from it, somehow seemed to clear her head, sharpen her thoughts. “I do not know how I came here—or why. But I am friend to neither of you.”

  She gazed directly at the woman—defiantly. No, she was not going to admit that either of these strangers and this dream—or dreams within dreams—had any hold on her! The pendant—that was what they wanted—that or else her, as long as it answered to her.

  Answered to her? The way the Mirror had answered to Ortha? No—she was not going to think about that. Bury it—bury it deep—keep her mind on what was happening here and now.

  “So—” the man made a long drawn out sound of that simple word. “Perhaps you are right, out-worlder. Our games—as you deem them—are not for the faint-hearted. There is some purpose to them, I assure you.” He clapped his hand to his thigh with a sharp sound.

  The owl creature dropped to a half crouch to face the nearest of the hounds. Its beak opened and closed again with a fierce clicking, and it flexed its talons. Behind it the others of that monstrous company edged closer and the green light itself appeared to become more pallid—shading towards grey.

  “Your games!” The woman spat. She sat the straighter on her stag and looked to Gwennan.

  “You are a farfarer,” she said slowly. “Without training and without any foreknowledge to guide you. True enough—how can you judge by the measurements and customs of this world? Very well, think on it now! Think on it—”

  She raised the spear and pointed to the hairy humanoid which opened a fang-ringed mouth to snarl back at her.

  “There has been an awakening,” she continued. “For so long there was only ignorance and forgetfulness—because many of the old race fled, even in their minds, from the terror of the dark days. Some of them sought blood as payment for the aid of false gods. They tore from their own kin the hearts to let that blood flow, believing that this would appease such gods of vengeance as they had imagined out of their terror. They offered their o
wn children to fires in temples, they slew in haste any in whom the true Power kindled and who tried to use that for their good.

  “The world cowered in darkness. Power was smothered, slept. Only a handful remembered and sought it—and of those again only a few sought it for the good of all. For one who can summon lightning can also control men with a hard hand. So there was war in the shadows—and sometimes the Dark became very powerful indeed—because of our forgetting—”

  “Which,” the hunter cut in, his smile gone, the blue of his eyes gem hard, “was because you and your kind willed it so. Had any of you dared to lead during the darkest days there would have been no forgetfulness—”

  “No—worse!” She instantly replied. “For the Power itself was then running wild and it could not have been brought under any hand for a good purpose. Rather it would have utterly possessed the one who summoned it, and that one would have lived as a slave to an energy which cared nothing for man. We were left to be guardians, teachers—not rulers and conquerors—”

  “For how long?” he challenged. “And to what purpose? Had not the Dark, by our own reckoning, come more nearly the victor because you stayed apart? The lines have mended, they run true again. The Power lies ready for a calling. And the star wheel out of time has also turned. There approaches another period of travail and if we do not use the Power—then this time may be the end for us all.”

  “Ours the burden, not any victory,” she said as one repeating many times an old truth. “We must watch, aid where we can—where it is wise—carry on—”

  He shook his head violently. “No, this is the time to come out of hiding, kinswoman! Do you think that the star wheel awaits upon any living thing? It moves on its course and none can stop or slow its turning. Now it rolls into danger and you would burrow once again, and hide, and hope for a dawn which may never come—remaining by choice in a night of nothingness!”

  “We do that which is laid upon us.”

  “Not,” he grinned like one of his own monsters, his lips drawing back from his teeth, “I! I did not swear by your oath—remember? You chose that I should not be one of you.”

  “Even you cannot escape that which lies in your blood, the burden of your birth.” She sounded tired, but there was no slumping of her straight back, no change in the keen watch she kept upon him. “The wheel turns, but this time there lies a chance—”

  “Even less, I should think, for your purpose,” he grinned. “Since this time the change for the world rides upon the will and folly of men, not on the arrival of any wanderer out of space blundering into our skies. And men, while they may be shaped, are all flawed from their birth. They are no sure tools, but turn easily this way and that, even when you believe you have firm grip upon them. Men—only the full use of Power can hold them. Have I not said so from the beginning?”

  “So—to prove your power you must send such as these to do your will in the world.” There was a shadow of contempt on her face as she once more used the spear to point to the monsters. “Drawing them through to bewilder, frighten, threaten—”

  “To amaze also,” he added swiftly, “divide, confuse—constrain—even dispose so of some opponent. Oh, there are many uses for my army. A sighting made by a person of influence and reported can discredit at a time when that person's words are most needed. Even an army might be broken should certain of my pets appear among their ranks, freed to do as they wish. While those reporting such an attack would be considered mad and removed from their posts—to further serve my purposes. Men closed their minds to some things long ago. They do not even believe that our time ever existed. They have built up their own legends which are universally accepted—they speak learnedly of ice ages, of men who were once haired and ignorant beasts—like these pets of mine—carrying stones for weapons. They treat the few remains which are left from our days of glory as frauds, and hide them as soon as they can when they are found. Do you deny that this is not so? And part of this hiding of the past is of your doing—so accept the consequences of it.

  “I can go to war and make my pawns believe themselves mad, I can rebuild such a world as I wish and perhaps defeat your end of time in another way. But it will be my way and to my plan. I do not lie under any oath to see that different. You have called this one—” he gestured to Gwennan. “Her I once knew, her I used—to such purpose that her own talent grew—a talent which might have led her to a higher plane. But it was burnt out of her and lost because she accepted your teachings. You call upon her because there still moves in her the older blood—an ability to answer—you call upon her—”

  “Because,” the woman said, and there was a note in her voice which appeared to strike him silent, “the stars have ordained it. Once more they have moved into the places where this one bears again the birthright of their giving, even as she did when you used her. There will come a new reckoning, and she is once more within the circle of Power—even though she does not know it and you have not believed such could be so. She is no weapon, no tool—but shall move freely along the path which that other one would have followed had not the wanderer come. For this is a daughter of the stars born at the proper hour for fulfillment and this time there will be no death from space to deny her her true destiny.”

  He had lost his mocking, twisted grin now. “You lie!”

  “You know that in such matters I cannot. She is the one who was born at the right moment under the proper stars—”

  “She will fare no better for that!” He moved his hand. The owl man turned from eyeing the hound. He looked upward and Gwennan knew that he was preparing to spring at her. She crowded back against the stone, the pendant in both hands. At that moment she sent forth what was both a plea for help, and a demand that it be granted her.

  9

  Gwennan had escaped from one nightmare—surely this must be another. Out—just let her wake and be out of this also! She held the watch pendant tighter, pressed her body against the rock, closed her eyes, centering all her will on the need for waking, for regaining the real world.

  Cold—cold whipped in fierce blasts about her, a freezing lash of wind. Then followed a single thrust of fear so deep that it seemed to enter her whole body at one blow. Then she opened her eyes once more.

  There was a flash, eye-searingly bright, across the sky, a roll of thunder. Night—clouds—and darkness. She still crouched by stones, between two of them. Flaming mountains—the wave—was she entrapped once more in that world of death?

  “Gwennan—”

  The thunder rolled into silence. There glowed a light below her—not from earth fire, nor any reflection of the stones. Someone stood there, holding a torch that its gleam might illuminate his own face. For a long moment, so entangled was she in what had happened, the girl could not have named him. Then reality returned.

  Tor Lyle—not the Arm—not the hunter—but the man of her own time. Though he had in him both those others. When she stared dazedly down at him it was as if shadows of both of those others came and went, resting on him, fading, appearing again.

  “Gwennan—” he called her name a second time. There was no growl from the out of season storm to drown out his voice. Instead, the night had calmed into an odd silence. So quiet it was that the girl felt this man could hear, even from where he now stood, the heavy beating of her own heart. She summoned strength and courage to rise to her feet, though she did not take her eyes from him.

  He advanced confidently, as if he believed she expected him to join her, though he came no farther than the foot of the mound. There he halted, the light still turned up at his face.

  “You have it—” He spoke in an even tone. They might have parted in good relationship only moments earlier. “Saris made sure of that, didn't she? She—” He shook his head, and smiled. “There was never any trust for me in her. We can hate, we old ones—very bitterly. Have you discovered that much about us yet, Gwennan? No, perhaps it is because in you the old blood has been so diluted—”

  The conversati
on from the green-lit world might have carried on into this one. She did not want to listen. If she had her will she would have thrust her fingers into her cars, but she could not. He would have his way, she found herself unable to escape his voice.

  His eyes narrowed a fraction. So clear was his face in the light that she could scan every line of it, believe that never would she be able to forget his features, would instinctively forever know now each reaction or change in his expression.

  “So you still do not understand.” He was impatient, wearing the mien of one who struggled with a fog of stupidity when time was limited and he had that of importance which she must be brought to believe. “Look upon what you hold then—look with more than just your eyes!”

  She obeyed his sharp order, nor could she set her will against his. Gwennan raised the pendant, looked at the dial on which those astrological symbols took the place of hours and minutes, a beam of light the hands. The beam once more moved, also there were other faint filaments of light dividing the dial base—thread fine, still to be seen. Among them stood more symbols she did not recognize. That beam marked time which was not the normal passage of her own world as it swept about, illuminating for an instant first one and then another symbol, imprinting them sharply on her mind. Just as she would never forget Tor Lyle's face, so was Gwennan now convinced she would always remember the sequence of the star time.

  “The stars in their courses—” he said. “It takes such time as man can hardly measure for them to make the full circle and return. We are born, we die, we rise again—but there remains always the stars moving in their own stately fashion. When they are aligned aright that which is lost may be regained.”

  “I don't know what you mean—” Gwennan made her bid for freedom from him and his obscure knowledge.

  Tor shrugged. “Perhaps you walk with a closed mind now. But it shall open—” He spoke with determination, a setting of his jaw made her clasp more tightly the watch. It was plain that he had no intention of letting her go until he had from her what he wanted.