Serpent's Tooth Page 6

  Those flames were not alone. The mummified bodies in the chairs each became a candle set alight by the boards they held.

  From the heart of each of those pulsed tongues of fire, but these were white.

  Modic still huddled in the chair. His body writhed from side to side as if he were caught in a trap and was fighting feebly for freedom. The Seeker's face had changed, it was the countenance of a stranger, a stranger who could not believe in what was happening to him. He

  screamed a fountain of words, beating upon the arms of the chair with his fists.

  The head of the snake thing had rolled to the foot of the first of the chairs. From it still spilled oily liquid which quickly drew sparks of fire. When the head thudded to a stop it was upright and those huge eyes stared at the funeral fire of the dead.

  "Farguel!"

  There was loss of all sanity in that whimper. Modic leaned forward to the next chair, paying no attention to the smoldering body it still supported.

  He spewed forth more words in an erratic pattern which held ghosts of the ritual sounds of a curse or incantation. Then suddenly he stopped--his head shifted and he tried to raise his hands.

  "Farguel..."

  The head with a tangle of molten metal still trailing into the burning stream stared with its round eyes back at him. Modic looked shriveled, empty, as he might have been one of the dead who shared his perch. Rentam tested the air once again.

  That nameless will which he had felt--centering for a while in Modic--was gone. The man was now what he had always been, a Seeker, sly, treacherous, greedy. Only he was rapidly becoming less and less of a man. Flooding out of him, even as the molten metal had flowed from the serpent's head, was that other--that strength which was not his but an unknown other's.

  He used the arms of his chair to lever himself to his feet and stood gazing about the whole of this chamber as might a child who had awakened from a dark dream. There was a looseness to his lips, his shoulders hunched as if he was awaiting some punishment. He said, not looking towards Rentam, but as if he spoke to himself:

  "He ... he is gone." His hands clenched on the chest of his under robe. The edge of it was scorched and there was a small trail of smoke coming from it.

  "He is..." now he shook his head as if to dislodge some insect. For the first time he appeared to recognize Rentam and there was bemusement on both his face and in the way he staggered as he arose from the seat.

  He leaned forward to stare down at the serpent, shivering.

  "Farguel... there is no way ... no way! They believe in the demons... we cleared the city so ... and then ..." He paused, looked at the dying embers which had been the bodies.

  "What do I say?" Modic drew a hand across his face and let it fall limply to his side.

  "I am not he ... but he remains in a little here." Again his hand arose, to touch his head "To be a king... more than a king ... to rule a world. That he might have done...." Then Modic lapsed into silence.

  For the first time Rentam spoke, "Who was he, Seeker?"

  "He was--one who waited--and waited--from our beginnings they came, all of them." He raised his hand a little to indicate the remains in the other chairs.

  "They made Farguel." His voice was stronger, as if some small thread of another still curled in his mind.

  "They would be rulers here and he was the greatest among them. But when those they awaited did not come, they put barriers about the cities they had taken and sat to wait. How long did you wait?"

  He addressed, the nearest chair as if that still held a living man.

  "Too long, too long. They said then that they would set up the final guards and sleep as they sometimes did when they traveled among the stars. So it was decided. But not by him! He went hunting always, hunting for that which would awaken the rest, take from them dreams of

  stars that they would learn of this world and what could be done here.

  "He sent out power to poison the land, to be another barrier behind which he remained to labor... ."

  Another pause. Modic dug his fists hard against his temples.

  "Why do I remember, tell me that, Guide? He holds... still he holds... and he will... No." Before Rentam could move, Modic, his voice shrilling upward, as it had during his frenzy of his possession, threw himself down and out. His body struck against the disintegrating head of the thing he had called Farguel. He did not scream again as he slid on and out into the fire which flowed with the stream.

  Rentam retreated swiftly to the far wall of the hall, then leaped toward the entrance of the corridor. As if the death of Modic was the last fuel, flames flared behind, reaching so that he had to beat the fire from the edge of his cloak. But that other will... that power which had measured him so hungrily was gone. There was no life any longer in this place.

  The guide reached the outermost part of the great palace or temple. Flames sped in waves along the sluggish stream. Only that light which had touched the sky was gone. Here was only a dry emptiness, an absence of all life within the ruin.

  That which Rentam had sensed as shadows of terror was also gone. He stood, his chest heaving from his run. All the stream was now afire.

  He glanced back just once at the palace from which he had escaped. His tongue flicked out... all life was not gone. There was a whinny. The horse showed himself within the core of a long gone building, picking his way toward the guide. Rentam's mind filled with surprise, then content. He and this animal were alive. The flame which destroyed the dead--the last of that was licking at the pool, flickering as what had fueled it was eaten up.

  "Come." The guide crossed to the horse who nuzzled at his shoulder and whinneyed louder than before. "Let us get out of this place, brother--for it is of long dead and should be left to them in peace."

  He swung up into the saddle. Willingly the horse turned without urging, pacing along that road which had led to the heart of Lonscraft.

  Rentam would never understand all which had happened, but his flickering tongue assured him of safety--here was only tumbled stone, dust, and a sprung trap. The destruction of the creature (he had to think of that as having life even though he could not sense it) and of the will of that other unknown which Modic had brought to half life, had perhaps reversed the poison of this dust-dry land and all it held. However let that be proven at some later time, by those who were born to be Seekers. For himself now, he wanted no more of the Dry. Thus he threaded a way between the masses of stone rubble until he passed beyond the gate of Lonscraft which once was.