Legion from the Shadows

Morgain told herself that she would not cry out.

Atla was patient, and Morgain’s resolution gave out long before her consciousness finally left her.

***

Through the pain-fogged delirium, the memories passed through her mind as Morgain groped for returning awareness. Through the vertiginous darkness she clung to the reality of her pain, tracing its reality through the phantasmagoria of memories. And as she remembered why she felt the pain, she uttered a low moan and opened her eyes.

Morgain still hung from her wrists in the cage, her naked flesh now clothed in spiralling welts. Her toes slowly revolved over a dry patch of blood.

The girl painfully raised her head between her outstretched arms. Then from her dry lips a wilder cry of agony.

In another iron cage sprawled a motionless figure. Despite the thick mask of filth and gore, she recognized Bran Mak Morn.

13

MASTER OF SHADOWS

“You’ve killed her!”

Atla shrugged. “She’ll live. The little bitch almost strangled me. She’s lucky to escape with enough whole skin for the flaying knife. What does it matter to you, Nero?”

The legate glared at her. “She is my hostage.”

“A hostage of no value,” Atla pointed out. “Now that we have Bran Mak Morn.”

Their voices seeping through the oblivion that had swallowed him, Bran slowly opened his eyes. Without moving, the Pict took stock of his surroundings.

Stripped of his weapons, he lay sprawled across the floor of an iron cage. The flesh of his limbs was crisscrossed with the tears of their fangs and talons. Dried gore caked his shirt of mail, crusted on his torn flesh. He ached in every joint and sinew, but he could not detect any disabling wound.

Gazing past the iron bars. Bran could see the bare legs of Atla and the greaves of Claudius Nero, whose quarreling tones drifted to his hearing. With a sinking of his heart, Bran realized he had fallen into their hands. Turning his gaze, Bran caught sight of the bare feet that dangled above the floor of a cage opposite. A sharp cry of pain…

With a snarl of wrath, Bran bounded to his feet-flung himself against the bars that held him from his enemies.

“What have you done to Morgain!”

Hearing his shout, the girl called his name-relief that her brother lived imparting a bizarre note of joy to her cry. At the pitiful spectacle of her tortured body, her naked flesh raw with livid and bleeding welts, Bran went mad. In helpless rage the Pict shook the iron bars, howled curses through frothing lips.

Eventually it penetrated through the crimson haze of rage that his captors only laughed at his madness. Grimly Bran mastered his fury.

“Fool!” Nero sneered. “Did you think my warning only idle threat? You should have thought of Morgain when you plotted treachery at Kestrel Scaur last night. Had you not blundered into our realm, our next message would have been written to you on Morgain’s skin.”

“I might have been willing to let you and your serpent kinsmen live in peace here in your burrows,” Bran spat. “For what you’ve done to Morgain, I’ll hunt down every last one of you, though you crawl through your burrows to the hells beneath hell!”

“But my little barbarian king,” Claudius Nero taunted him, “you’re no longer in any position to threaten anyone.”

“My time will come.”

“Your time has passed, Bran Mak Morn. We have held our hand from smashing you, only on the chance you might yet prove valuable to our designs.”

“You know the answer to that!”

“Unfortunately-for you-I think I do. Your disregard for Morgain’s safety, your foolhardy attempts to thwart us-such obstinate stupidity convinces me you can never be trusted. And thus, you are no longer of value to us, King Bran.”

“Then why this cat’s game? Kill me and have done.”

“You may yet have some small use,” Atla interceded. “Perhaps Gonar will be more reasonable in this matter of alliances…”

“Gonar can make no treaties. I am king of Pictdom.”

“And you have forgotten the charade with the iron crown?” Nero jeered. “Oh yes, we know about that now. You didn’t really think you could keep secrets from us!”

“Gonar may have my crown-yet there is no king of Pictdom but Bran Mak Morn! Deal with Gonar if it pleases you. Only Bran Mak Morn can speak for the Men of the Heather.”

“So you cast away your iron crown, and still presume to speak for Pictdom,” Nero observed with heavy sarcasm. “A little barbarian king in a cage whose people have deserted him. You try my patience, King Bran. It is my thought to end this useless pretense.”

“Then end it!” Bran challenged. “Or is it that Quintus Claudius Nero does not speak for the People of the Dark!”

The legate’s pallid face flushed with anger. Bran knew his barb had struck deep-even before there sounded a hissing chitter from the shadow that might have been laughter. At the sound, Nero’s eyes dilated with a mixture of fear and soulless hatred that made his narrow face a demon’s mask.

“You are a fool, Claudius Nero,” came the voice from beyond the curtain of darkness. The voice spoke the Pictish tongue in such a strained and hissing tone as to be almost unintelligible. “And worse, you are an incompetent fool.”

The speaker from the shadow glided into the circle of light. Bran’s eyes widened in wonder. The sibilant voice came from a throat never intended to utter human speech.

“Ssrhythssaa!” Nero slurred the name in a manner impossible for Bran to emulate. “I thought you were…”

The sibilant chittering laughter rustled again. “Yours is not to think, Nero. Yours is to obey. I came to see for myself this troublesome Pict whom you confess is beyond your ability to deal with.”

At first Bran Mak Morn had assumed the newcomer was another of the half-human hybrids. A closer glance proved there was no trace of human blood in this creature.

The figure was as tall as Bran, and of skeletal leanness-although little else could be discerned through the voluminous folds of his robes. The arms that protruded from the flaring sleeves were covered with the pallid scales of some ancient serpent, taloned with long, black nails. The skull above the narrow shoulders was curiously flattened at the temples, and rose to a high peak. That peaked, hairless skull was encircled in a golden band, set with sullen gems of murky hue. His ears were pointed, the nose flared and pitted as a viper’s snout, the face little more than a pallid mask of scales tight across an inhuman skull. Bright and pointed fangs made a double row along the grinning jaw. Those yellow ophidian eyes mirrored a soul of elder evil that had looked unblinking across the expanse of centuries.

The Pict was aware of a distinct kinship of this imposing creature to the degenerate serpent-folk he had battled with in the darkness. A voice within him made Bran aware that here he looked upon one of the Children of the Night as that race had existed in a distant age, before millennia within these sunless burrows saw their race sink to its present degeneracy. Dimly Bran wondered if this creature were-like Bran himself-some atavism-or a survival of that eons-distant age.

Bran tore his eyes away from that unblinking gaze, whose hypnotic spell awoke atavistic terrors deep within his soul-instinctive fears from an age when his apish ancestors gibbered in spellbound helplessness before the ensnaring stare of some monstrous serpent. With a chill wrenching that left him suddenly aware how thoroughly wounds and exhaustion had leeched his strength, Bran broke the spell of those eyes-knowing now with dread certainty why the serpent was to all races an instinctive embodiment of evil.

“My slaves brought to me your proud boasts, Bran Mak Morn,” hissed the loathsome distortion of human speech. “Did you not trust them to express to me your stupid arrogance? Or is it that you thought to trespass with impunity where none of your race have dared intrude these long centuries?”

The slender hands gestured to the altar of skulls. “There stands that which you know well. Have you come to steal it again, or have you this time come to pay homage to the Black Stone?”

Bran fought off the numbing weakness. “I grow sick of your mockery, you vermin who would masquerade as men! Hellspawn are you then the hidden master of these slinking killers and woman-stealers? Then you know what answer I have given your slaves! There is no common enemy that can ally Pict -and serpent-spawn, and Bran Mak Morn shall become a dog of Rome before he fights against men on the side of those who have forgotten how to crawl!”

The serpent-mask face registered no emotion-though Bran sensed a darker flash within those yellow eyes. “I am master of this world, Pict. Perhaps before long it will be my pleasure to teach certain savages to crawl as befits them.”

“We waste time with this stubborn Pict,” Nero growled.

Ssrhythssaa silenced his outburst with a gesture. “Not all of this stubborn Pict’s talk is vain boasting, Claudius Nero. He speaks the truth when he states that only Bran Mak Morn is king of Pictdom. If we kill him, Pictdom will again fall apart into a hundred isolated and insignificant savage clans. Scattered and leaderless, the Picts can never stand before Rome, nor can they render any service to us.”

“A plague on these Picts! You overestimate their usefulness. With my legion-”

“Your legion is useful only within limits,” Ssrhyth-ssaa cut him off. “Your numbers are too few, nor can we replace those who fall in battle. To drive out the Roman-and to maintain our mastery of the surface world-we need the savage hordes of Pictdom. Be certain that none of the Celtic tribes will accept our rule. Only our ancient enemies of Pictdom can serve us in this. The Picts-like us, survivors of a forgotten age-are now hounded and driven into the waste places, their race degenerate and sunken into the slime of barbarism. Over the sweep of eons our destinies have followed parallel paths-and Pictish priests have sacrificed upon the altar of the Serpent…”

“Seek out Gonar with your treacherous proposals of alliance,” Bran snarled. “Gonar may have been a priest of the Serpent in past years. He has since sworn to serve me with all his black arts!”

Again the inhuman laughter. “Are you so certain of Gonar’s loyalty, King Bran? But no matter. As you said, Gonar is not king of Pictdom. There is only one king the Picts will follow, and though they murmur against you for the present, one resounding victory over the Roman will bring all of Pictdom rushing to rejoin your standard. We shall give you that victory, Bran Mak Morn.”

“Ill not accept that victory, Ssrhythssaa,” vowed the Pict. “Are you such a fool as to believe I could be tricked into some hideous pact with you and your slime-crawling brothers?”

The robed figure studied him expressionlessly. “In truth-for there is no longer purpose in disguising from you the truth of our intent-at the first I deemed you no more than a brash barbarian outlaw who had seized the legendary crown of Pictdom through boldness and the whims of fortune. It seemed to me quite possible that, by making your position desperate, a combination of dire threats and bright promises of power and wealth would compel you to obey my secret designs.

“I was in error. Whether you are indeed a greater man than the ambitious savage king I thought to deal with-or merely a madman-I cannot determine. But it is evident that you will not serve me of your free will.”

“Nor of your threats and your lying promises!” Bran swore, knowing he was speaking his death sentence.

“It would have been better,” mused Ssrhythssaa, “had you served us of your free will. Yet if you cannot be our unwitting dupe, it is possible you may become our willing vassal. I know your apish race of old, Bran Mak Morn. There is little man will not do out of greed or fear.”

“If you think I would willingly play traitor to my race, knowing the truth of your evil designs, then you know very little of mankind, and far less of Bran Mak Morn!” the Pict challenged.

Ssrhythssaa contrived to convey scorn in his grotesque tone. “I know enough of apes who think only of bright objects and petty comforts to know that every man has his price-and his limits of endurance. But I think it better that you know more of my race, Bran Mak Morn, and of your own race-enough to know my promises are not idle, nor my threats empty bluster.”

This time Bran’s curses only evoked a flicker of sardonic mirth. Heedless of the Pict’s angry defiance, the ancient serpent-man turned from the iron cage-and reverently approached the Altar of the Black Stone.

14

PHANTASMAGORIA

Ssrhythssaa raised his long arms on high, so that the flowing sleeves of his robes fell back over the pallid scales of his sinewy flesh. His serpent’s hiss whispered a long sibilance of syllables so alien that Bran could scarce be certain they were words in any tongue. It reminded him of a nest of vipers cast upon a fire of green faggots, or long, dry talons dragged over a tight drumhead of human skin.

Once in a plundered villa Bran had come upon a girl’s corpse hanging from a limb over a mosaic floor of a garden. The soft dripping of writhing maggots from the lich’s belly onto the tiles, and their blind wriggling through the scattered leaves, had evoked such a sound of utter abomination.

Darkness suddenly crept upon them from the shadowy recesses of the vast cavern. The eerie luminescence that seeped from the cairn of skulls grew dim, dimmer still. Now it seemed that the Black Stone itself began to glow-to emanate a radiance beyond the spectrum of natural light. Blackness swallowed the entire cavern. And upon the web of blackness the uncanny scintillance of the Black Stone began to weave a pattern of visual images.

At first chaos.

Then coalescence…

The darkness exploded into a phantasmagoria of monstrous shapes and steaming jungles and misshapen cities rearing above the primeval earth. The stars were set in constellations alien to the night skies, and savage beasts and unearthly vegetations such as no man ever looked upon rioted across the shimmering landscape. Colossal images of elder horror shambled across the stars-fought to the death with shapes even more hideously alien. Mountains dissolved into bright beacons of glowing lava. Annihilating energies beyond human conception streamed hellfire from the stars. Star-defying towers crumbled into flame; looming cities slumped stark and lifeless.

Continents reeled. Cities and jungles died in shrieking steam and singing fire. Darkness crept over their buried embers…

Bran understood that a vast spread of eons fled before the rush of images. New continents arose from the ash-choked seas, new jungles rooted upon the crumbling land. New shapes crawled beneath their verdure to gaze in dread wonder at the decaying slag heaps where once alien towers defied the stars and cities floated on lakes of flame.

At first Bran thought the shapes were those of men.

They were not men, although they sought to walk erect. Vaguely Bran recognized in certain of the apish brutes the shape that would someday become man. Others of the beasts only mimicked the shape of emerging man.

For as man painfully evolved from the apes, Bran beheld other monstrous evolutions that sought to attain the guise of man. He saw strange shapes that spawned from the seed of wolves, of bats, of birds of prey, of horses and of goats. The sullen currents of the sea gave forth strange and aborted monsters that sought the slime of land. Other hideous mockeries of anthropomorphosis, the blighted spawn of some mad god’s nightmare. Creatures born of the riving of cosmic energies upon the degenerate progeny of the Elder races and the blind evolution of pre-Adamite earth. And among these shapes of depraved creation crawled serpents from whose bellies grew limbs to lift them from the primeval slime.

There were wars. Wars without quarter. Wars of vengeful savagery and mindless slaughter that surpassed the bloodlust that flamed in the heart of the Pict. Again bizarre cities and towers arose from the haunted jungle. Inhuman armies battled and conquered. Cities reeled in destroying flame and merciless pillage. The ancient soil turned black with libations of strange blood.

It was war to extinction between the rivals of infant mankind and mankind’s apish forebears. Death overshadowed the embattled land-not only in the titanic clash of colossal armies, but in the dark solitude of lonely forest trails, or in the still hours of the night. Creatures half man, half wolf set upon shaggy hunters, fell beneath their flint axes. In isolated huts leather-winged shapes ripped through thatched roofs to flap away into the night with their screaming prey.

How long this unrelenting war for mastery of earth’s dawn continued, Bran Mak Morn could not fathom-no more than could he number the countless myriads of the slain, nor call the names of the ancient heroes whose grim victories are but a lost echo of antediluvian myth.

As the centuries swam before his entranced vision, Bran became aware that mankind was at last winning his first and greatest war. The numbers of the were-creatures ebbed before the determined flow of man’s greater innate savagery and capacity to destroy. The rival cities fell into ruin and were not rebuilt. The inhuman armies dwindled and reeled under inexorable defeat. Into the waste places, the lost regions of the world, they fled, the hunted remnants of the half-human races. Some of them Bran recognized from the dark tales of his own race, and from the legends the Romans told-werewolves and weretigers, batmen and harpies, centaurs and satyrs, sphinxes and cyclopes-other creatures more monstrous and defying recognition.

Of all these abortive spawn of blighted evolution, the serpent-folk proved mankind’s deadliest rival. Theirs was a greater cunning-born of a certain instinctive wisdom imparted to their race through bloodlines that reached back to the smouldering ruins of Elder Earth. The serpent-folk-who hated man for usurping their rightful heritage, and at the same time mimicked human shape-were not so easily conquered.

In open warfare the surging armies of mankind burned the alien cities of the serpent-folk and destroyed their strange altars. The serpent-folk fought back through hideous sorceries and foul treacheries. Their relentless wars spanned centuries, but as ever the tide of humanity flowed stronger. Before the undaunted hordes of the ape-men, the dark wizardry and hellish servants of the serpent-folk could not prevail. When their last citadel fell to the brutish armies of mankind, the few survivors of the serpent-folk fled into the shadow.

And from the shadow, their enmity toward mankind burned undimmed.

Millennia drifted past in a swift kaleidoscopic panorama. Continents rose and fell; the seas gave birth to new lands. Steaming, reptile-haunted swamps dwindled into cold and lifeless deserts. Teeming and chaotic jungles rose into stately hardwood forests. Jagged mountains of adamantine rock erupted from the earth; endless horizons of steel-blue ice rolled over their broken fangs and left only rotted mounds of rubble.

On the night of their fateful confrontation, old Gonar had conjured a vision similar to that which passed before Bran Mak Morn’s mazed eyes.

Bran now recognized the fabled history of his race, the Picts-the First Race.

He watched the evolution of the brutish ape-men into lean and panther-quick savages, skilled in the working of flint and the hunting of game. Millennia swept before him. The Picts dwelt in peace upon the western isles, learned the arts of civilization. Time and again the First Race took up their weapons to defend their land from the still-evolving ape-men of the great forests to the south and the east of their isles-or to drive away the invading canoe-fleets of the half-human raiders of Lemuria, shark-hided anthropomorphic beings who had bypassed part of the evolutionary scale to evolve directly from the ancient seas.

Again the earth shuddered beneath cataclysms that sundered continents. Lemuria sank beneath the boiling sea. The western isles lifted above the waves, the mountain range of a new and inhospitable land. The Picts fled to the forests of the east and the south, hurled back into savagery.

Then there passed a bewildering panorama of changing continents and evolving races, of encroaching ice fields and ceaseless racial drifts. New races sprang forth to do battle with one another. Kingdoms and empires, cities and civilizations, marching armies and warring fleets-all flashed past like the scarcely glimpsed patterns of drifting snowflakes. Only the Picts remained a constant feature in this storm ofimages.

And in the shadow, the serpent-folk waited…

Only in lost and hidden regions of the earth did some few of the serpent-folk survive. On a far continent of the west their last great city stood for centuries after the Picts had driven them from the lands of men. Finally that last city fell before the furious onslaught of yellow-skinned warriors Bran sensed were the descendants of the primeval Lemurians. The survivors of that final massacre retreated into caverns beneath their valley floor-there to degenerate into bestial monstrosities not dissimilar to the vermin who now burrowed beneath the moors of Caledon. They worshipped a feathered serpent, carven of clear crystal, and a giant jewel not unlike the Black Stone, save that it burned steadily with sinister light of alien hue. Unspeakably foul were their rites and sorceries. Bran saw that their priests had power to reanimate the dead; there were other blasphemies which his mind could not grasp.

And in the realm of the Picts, the serpent-folk cunningly struck back at mankind through their evil craft. Their sorceries developed innate powers of hypnotism to terrible potency. Among the rising kingdoms of this lost age, kings and great warriors died through stealth-and in their places walked serpent-folk who had assumed the exact guise of the slain. Kingdom warred against barbarian kingdom in that dawn age-nations rose and fell-evil cults flourished and withered. And time and again when some key figure of some history-molding struggle at last died beneath the weapons of his enemies-in death that corpse assumed the hidden features of the serpent-folk. For theirs had become a shadow kingdom, and man was not always ruled by man.

In lost Atlantis where the shadow kingdom assumed its deadliest power, the serpent-folk worshipped in their temple a green jewel of some unearthly crystal, and through its sorcery the rising kingdoms of man all but became slave states ruled by serpents in the guise of men. Then through the shifting phantasmagoria strode a giant warrior whose smouldering visage was known to Bran Mak Morn-King Kull of Atlantis, king of fabled Valusia. Beside him stalked a Pictish warrior whose features at first seemed the image of Bran Mak Morn, though taller and broader of shoulder. This man Bran knew to be his own ancestor, Brule the Spear-slayer, on whose finger blazed the strange red gem that now glowed from Bran Mak Morn’s iron crown. Another imposing figure-a white-bearded wizard who bore a vague resemblance to Gonar. This man, Bran surmised, was Gonar’s ancestor, alike named Gonar, the greatest wizard of that lost age.

Together the three legendary heroes defied the sinister power of the serpent-folk. Through treacherous assassinations and momentous battles the serpent-folk sought to destroy King Kull. But the courage and craft of Kull and his companions proved stronger than the stealth and cunning of the serpent-folk. In a final great battle the serpent-folk made their last bold bid to seize mastery over mankind. It was for them a last stand. Kull and his armies-men of the new kingdoms and warriors of Pictdom-crushed the serpent-folk, hunted down their fleeing remnants. Some few fled beneath the earth and back into desolate corners of distant lands. The power of the serpent-race was broken.

Yet again, vast cataclysms shook the earth. Kingdoms plunged into the seas, and cloud-reaching waves ripped whole nations into tossing foam. Such monstrous tidal waves rolled over Atlantis. Part of Atlantis sank beneath the ocean depths; yet another portion of the land withstood to rear its sombre mountains over broad beaches, awash with the drift and jetsam of the drowned kingdoms. Though this survival of Atlantis yet brooded above the unsailed seas, a wizard’s curse doomed the lost isle to remain unknown to the tribes of mankind, until an age when certain portents should be fulfilled.

Again the men of the First Race were plunged into abject barbarism-while such as survived of the Pre-Cataclysmic nations fell into even more abysmal savagery. Again from brutish caves and apish nests in treetops, mankind crawled back along the path to civilization. New races and new kingdoms emerged from this, the Hyborian Age-and chief among these nations were the indomitable warriors of Pictdom. For the men of the First Race once again rose from savagery-albeit with each re-emergence their climb had not been quite so high as before the fall.

In the ghastly comedy of human history, once more new nations rose and flourished, proud cities spread across the land. And as always, new armies marched and burned; nations were massacred, and forest and desert devoured the rotting ashes of cities. The Picts waged war or made alliances with such of the new kingdoms accordingly as the mindless web of destiny might interweave their histories. For a space the hordes of Pictdom swept all armies before them, following the dreams of empire of an invincible warrior Bran knew to be the legendary Gorm, greatest of the Pictish kings in the eon-spanning history of that race. Gorm, who forged a conquering empire from the savage clans of Pictdom, who overthrew the civilization of the Hyborian Age. Gorm, whose saga Bran Mak Morn brooded upon every hour of his life.

The Picts were conquerors of the Hyborian Age. Their empire spanned the civilized world, halting only at the mountains of Cimmeria in the north and the Aesir-ruled lands of Nemedia to the east, dissipating on other far-flung frontiers into incessant warfare with other barbarian tribes. But the Pictish conquerors did not rebuild from the ashes of fallen civilization. Theirs was an empire of barbarism and constant wars fought over the ruins.

Ages passed. Again the ice-fields rumbled southward. New tribes marched before the glaciers, waged battles with the Picts. Tribal drifts swept across the snow-buried ruins of the Hyborian civilizations. New races emerged, old races died. More often their blood mingled to weld new nations of wandering nomadic warriors. Barbarism established its bloody mastery over the arrogant conceit of civilization. Barbarism, the natural state of mankind. Barbarism, an age of constant flux in which the men of the First Race waged a losing battle against the new tribes of man.

And hidden from the sight of men-in their sunless burrows and secret lairs in lost lands-the serpent-folk also sank into the abyss of barbarism. Very few of their number had survived that war of extinction in past eons. Through constant inbreeding their race grew degenerate and sickly. New monstrosities tainted their attenuated bloodline through depraved couplings with captured humans and with the great serpents of the jungles. Once the serpent-folk had almost become men. Now they reverted to the call of their ophidian heritage. Of their former civilization and wisdom, there remained only a memory of ancient depravities and a passion for the foulest of abominable sorceries.

Yet again, a smaller catacylsm rocked the earth. The seas pushed in to drown the ashes of the Hyborian kingdoms and the bones of the savage tribes who fought among the ruins. New mountains buckled forth from the northern continent. The ice-fields again rotted, retreated before the destroying sun to leave their crushed and shattered booty upon the warming earth. The newly reordered continents now assumed contours familiar to Bran’s age. The mountains of western Cimmeria were cut off by the devouring sea to form the isles of Britain. The blue waters of the Mediterranean swallowed the legendary lands of Argos, western Koth and Shem.

From barbarism Pictdom sank into deeper barbarism. Again the survivors of mankind struggled upward from brutish savagery. New races sprang from the scattered survivors of the Hyborian Age. Once more man groped toward civilization-following a crimson sword, and a torch raised on high to burn all that he could not carry off.

For a space of many centuries, the men of the First Race dwelt about the warm shores of the Mediterranean. Again the Picts attained a rude sort of civilization-tilling the soil and grazing their herds-their frontiers secure against the new tribes of man who fought among themselves in the wilderness beyond. For a time the Picts knew peace.

Then the southern-sweeping drifts of the new barbarian races overwhelmed the frontiers of Pictdom. Once more the men of the First Race waged war against the emerging tribes of mankind. Once more the earth-shaking clash of great armies, the remorseless massacre, the flaming death of cities. Once more relentless war to extinction.

This time the armies of Pictdom reeled back in gory defeat. Before the inexorable advance of the new barbarian migrations, the warriors of Pictdom stood firm-and died where they stood. The cities of the Picts now felt the torches of howling mobs of reavers. Their fields and orchards burned over the bodies of those who had tilled them. Their women were carried off along with their stolen herds.

Grimly fighting each step of the way, the men of the First Race were harried from the warm shores of the Mediterranean-driven across the continent, at last to take flight across the Channel to the white cliffs across the blue waves. Of the once vast nation of the Mediterranean Picts, only a handful of hunted savages remained in the mountains of Hispana.

To the isles of Britain fled all others who survived the collapse of their Mediterranean civilization. There the Pictish warriors confronted a race of red-haired giants, powerful and savage albeit of groping wit-these the descendants of survivors of some of the Hyborian tribes. Against these massive warriors the men of the First Race waged desperate battles-and this time Pictdom conquered. The survivors of these autochthonous savages fled into the northern wastelands.

But there was a far older race that also confronted the warriors of Pictdom. Here, in the caverns beneath this isolated land, the serpent-folk yet survived. After millennia of dwelling in buried lairs and indulging in unspeakable rites and couplings, the serpent-folk had degenerated into unplumbed depths of depravity. They hated the light of the sun now, and would have shunned the world of men altogether were it not for the undying hatred they tore toward all mankind.

Nor had the Picts forgotten their ancient warfare. With maniacal thoroughness, the Picts sought out the secret temples and hidden lairs of the serpent-folk. After millennia of blighted evolution, the serpent-folk had bred into a race of loathsome, dwarfish monstrosities-creatures whose hideous aspect was now only a hellish travesty of the human form-monsters for whom the appellation Worms of the Earth was more truth than denigration. By the hundreds the serpent-folk died beneath the blades and arrows of the Picts, shrivelled beneath destroying flame. Where during the endless centuries of barbarism, the serpent-folk in this desolate isle had presumed to dwell in rude hovels above the earth, to chip weapons and tools of flint, to mimic the arts of human culture-now the Picts utterly annihilated all those of their loathsome race who remained above ground.

Savage and cruel were their battles, long their war. And in the end the last survivors of the serpent-folk crept back into their hidden lairs beneath the earth, and cunningly disguised such Doors as gave egress to the world of men.

On rolled the tide of centuries. The Doors to Those Below remained closed. The Children of the Night became only a dread legend in the world of men. In their secret caverns, the serpent-folk continued on their downward drift to bestial degeneracy. Naked and abhorrent, the twisted and dwarfish Worms of the Earth lost all contact with humanity.

Only their hatred survived.

Centuries spun past.

And now another race of invaders followed the Picts to the Isles. The sword-wielding warriors of the Celts leapt howling from their ships and onto the blood-washed beaches of Britain. By tribe and by clan the Celts migrated into the Pictish Isles. Again the savage wars of defense and conquest. Again-again-as they were driven from the Mediterranean-the hordes of Pictdom were flung back in bloody defeat.

These final battles were grim and ruthless struggles of a stone age people against men of the new age-the last stand of the ancient Pictish nation. Defeat and slaughter were the fate of Pictdom. Uncounted feral battles were fought on desperate fields, where the Picts took savage toll of the Celtic invaders-but always more of the Celts came to swell their numbers, and among the Pictish ranks there sprang no new warriors to replace the fallen.

In a century or more the Celtic conquest was complete. Only in the desolate Highlands of Caledon did the remnants of Pictdom yet hold sway-in a mountainous waste where the Celts neither cared, nor dared, to follow. Ironically these last of the First Race now interbred with the survivors of the red-haired savages whom they had driven to these wastelands centuries before. From that interbreeding, the lithe and pantherish Picts degenerated into a race of misshapen dwarfs, of apish savages who with each passing century slipped farther back along the path of stone age barbarism.

Here in the Highlands of Caledon. The First Race. Pictdom-a race that had time and again scaled the heights of civilization only to plummet into the abyss of brutish savagery. Here they would remain, Bran realized-hunted outlaws in this age, ogrish goblins of the coming age when the glories of Pictdom no longer survived even in legend. Thus the fate of Pictdom-unless he could turn the tides of fate…

New invaders loomed across the panorama. The galleys of Rome beached on the shores of Britain. The legions of Caesar marched into the forests of Britain-and now the Celts were the hardpressed defenders of their homes-now Celtic warriors who died beneath the invaders’ swords.

In a rush of blood and flame, images of the Roman conquest flashed before him-images all too well known to Bran Mak Morn. Sword and spear. The armored order of the legion against the reckless charge of the Celts-smiting with their long iron swords they could not wield in close quarters, fighting from their dashing chariots whose quick mobility gave no advantage over the disciplined legionary formations.

Even coming as this did after eon-spanning panoramas of loathsome cruelties and history-wrenching wars, this vision of Roman conquest had the power to fill Bran’s heart with black hatred and killing rage. The staggering defeats of the Celtic tribes struck deep pain within his Pictish soul-Bran Mak Morn, a Pict, whose race had been driven from these same lands by the ancestors of these slaughtered Celts.

Not even the memory of the abominations of the serpent-folk could sicken him now-not as he viewed the lurid carnage and tyrannical devastations of the Roman invaders. His hatred of Rome became a burning agony in his heart, a gnawing demon in his brain.

And now the armored legions of Rome stood poised to spew forth murder and pillage through the Highlands of Caledon. Truly, any pact with any power was altogether justified if it would mean the defeat of Rome…

Abruptly there was blackness.

Then the slow return of eerie luminescence from the Altar of the Black Stone.

Bran’s eyes held a mad glare. Thunder of all gods-what a vision that had been! How long had he been held within its spell? His muscles ached from long immobility; his knees sagged against the iron bars in sudden weakness.

Yes, an alliance with beings who could wield such powers as he had glimpsed against the might of Rome… Like King Gorm, the conquests of Bran Mak Morn would make legends to outlast the age…

A tight smile crept over Bran’s battered face as he pondered the prospects…

Atlas shout broke the insidious spell.

“Where’s Morgain!”

15

NO WAY OUT

As the cavern dissolved into a fantastic mirage of past eons, Morgain alone among the watchers did not fall under its spell. The throbbing ache of her scourged flesh and the straining agony of her wrists were more compelling sensations than the hypnotic sense of wonder that caught up all the others-Bran, Atla and Claudius Nero, and the ancient serpent-wizard, Ssrhythssaa.

Slowly the girl spun at the end of the leather thongs that suspended her tortured body from the iron grating above. Alternately her pain-fogged eyes stared into the shimmering sorcery of the Black Stone’s mirage, or into the starless night of the cavern’s periphery.

A thread of memory. The ripping embraces of Aria’s long whip had spun her writhing body about on its tether. The twisted leather straps continued to unwind, wind, and unwind yet again as she hung pendant. Atla had been beating her when Claudius Nero arrived with the unconscious body of Bran Mak Morn. Nero had put a halt to the torture. How long had it gone on? Morgain could not remember. That she was still alive was evidence the witch must have waited for signs of returning consciousness before continuing the brutal flogging.

Still half in shock from her beating, Morgain had little attention for the awesome spectacle that held the others spellbound. The period of her slow revolutions were gradually diminishing when a sudden dull snap brought the girl from her stupor. Her body seemed to sag a fraction of an inch toward the floor of the cage. Morgain turned her face upward.

One of the twisted leather thongs had parted-cut through by the rasping friction of the strands against the rust-pitted bar.

Hope-so faint, so unexpected, as to seem a cruel jest-rallied Morgain’s broken spirit. Interrupted in her vengeance by Neros coming, Atla had not bothered to lock the cell of her comatose victim. The door was yet ajar.

A desperate chance-but Morgain knew full well she had nothing to lose. Her fingers were nerveless from loss of circulation, but she could still swing her hanging body about on its tether. Gritting her teeth against the pain her movements sent coursing through her tortured body, Morgain twisted herself violently against the tether-rasping the leather thongs against the pitted iron.

In the darkness her stealthy motion was well concealed. Knowing that at any instant one of the entranced watchers might turn away from the shadow-images thrown forth from the Black Stone, Morgain ignored the added strain on her wrists and shoulders, and struggled against the tether with desperate strength.

Hours seemed to drag hopelessly past. Dizziness and pain nauseated her. Doggedly Morgain kept to her task.

Another cord suddenly let go. Then a third snap…

Morgain dropped to the floor of the cage. The drop was only inches, but her knees buckled, and the girl flung out her nerveless hands to keep from felling flat. It seemed to her that the entire cavern reeled at the shock of her fall. Morgain waited breathlessly for the alarm.

Nothing. Held spellbound by the Black Stone, the others had not heard the soft slither of her collapse to the floor. A low hiss, long drawn-out. Morgain started. It was the sigh of her pent-up breath.

Warily the girl came to her feet. Her wrists were still tied together. A thousand white-hot needles lanced through her hands, as some degree of circulation returned to them. Dried blood caked the leather strands where they had bitten. It would take minutes, once untied, for her to regain use of her fingers, Morgain realized. Escape from the cell was the paramount dilemma for her.

Expecting any instant that her movement would be noticed, Morgain crept to the cell door. Its hinges had rasped horribly, she remembered. It stood ajar; the opening was only slight but Morgain was slim. Sucking in her breath, she edged her lithe form through the narrow opening.

Rusted iron scraped against her bare flesh. The girl pressed past the opening. It was very close…

A dull grunt from the hinges-thunder to her ears.

Then she had wriggled through. Wild-eyed, Morgain searched for evidence of alarm. There was none. The sound had not broken upon the watchers-not even to Bran, whom she dimly saw as a vague blotch upon the bars of his cage.

Incredibly, she was free.

Free to do what?

A scorpion, it is said, seeing itself encircled by converging flame, drives its fetal sting into its own back. All other creatures, lacking the scorpion’s wisdom, seek only to flee despite that impossibility. So it was with Morgain.

She had no idea what other eyes watched from the crouching darkness. At any instant she might be seen. She knew the blackness that seemed to hide her was a false refuge, for the eyes of the People of the Dark must surely pierce its veil, although the half-humans-Atla and Claudius Nero and those he commanded, still seemed to require some faint glow of light.

Weaponless, her wrists still bound together, there was nothing Morgain could do to help Bran escape from his cell. Any foolish attempt to do so must surely draw attention and end with her immediate recapture. If she fled, there remained the desperate chance to reach the world of men and to return with an army of Bran’s vengeful warriors.

The odds were hopeless-but death was the certain and hideous alternative. Morgain fled on silent feet.

Morgain owed her escape to two twists of chance. Senseless from her savage flogging, bound and helpless, the idea that the girl could escape was too remote for her captors to take seriously. At the same time, her pain-glazed delirium had spared her from the hypnotic fascination of Ssrhythssaa’s conjuration.

As she crept through the ensorcelled cavern and fled down the first passage she came upon, luck continued to favor the girl. The passage seemed to lead upward, and again fortune seemed to guide her steps. This last was cruel illusion.

How far she fled before she at last collapsed to gulp great breaths of dank air, Morgain did not know. The light from the scintillant mirage filtered eerily for a space through the passages that led from the cavern of the Black Stone. Beyond all was blackness-blackness tenanted by unseen peril, by hidden pitfalls and obstructions, by looming walls of stone, from which time and again her outflung wrists fended her staggering body away an instant before bruising collision.

After a long while it seemed to Morgain that her lungs could again draw breath enough to stop the pounding ache in her chest. Groping about the floor of the passage where she sprawled, the girl at length caught up a sharp-edged chunk of flint. Clumsily sawing the fist-sized flint shard against the leather thongs, Morgain was soon able to free her wrists from their bonds.

Again agony needled through her hands, as full circulation was at last restored. The girl’s body was one vast ache, so that the Iancinations of her hands only drew a dispirited curse.

The fact that she was utterly lost was so obvious that it did not greatly concern her-no more than the survivor of a shipwreck is concerned that he has gotten wet, or that the beach he swims toward with his last strength might be the country of his enemies.

It did seem strange to Morgain upon reflection, that so far she had encountered none of the serpent-folk in her blind flight. Perhaps it was day in the world above, she mused, and the Children of the Night remained nocturnal in their habits even in their realm of perpetual night. Then again, she might have blundered into some disused section of these limitless caverns and passages. She was certain she had stumbled past any number of branchings and turnings in her panic-stricken rush.

There was another reason for these caverns to be so little frequented by the serpent-folk, as Morgain might soon learn.

Anything was better than hanging helplessly in that awful cage, or so Morgain believed. Retaining the shard of flint until some better weapon presented, she again set out through the darkness. An upward passage must eventually return to the surface, she reasoned. There remained the matter of determining which of the unseen and labyrinthine tunnels led upward.

This last proved impossible in the darkness. Time and again Morgain wearily plodded into what proved to be a cul-de-sac, forcing her to retrace her aimless steps as best she could. Vaguely the girl realized her course must instead be taking her deeper into the burrows beneath the earth. Desperation drove her doggedly onward, although gradually fatigue, hunger and thirst began to wear away the last stores of her strength. That the Pictish woman walked at all after a flogging that would have killed most girls of Rome’s marble cities was a measure of the savage strength of her race.

Weakness relentlessly gnawed at her aching body. Her long stride became an agonized shuffle, and, for all a lifetime of running barefoot more often than shod, her stone-gouged feet left unseen patches of blood. Her hands and arms were nerveless and bruised from fending off sudden obstructions, breaking her headlong falls that now came one after another.

Her belly cramped from hunger. How long since she had eaten? At least two days, perhaps longer. The hunger pains would gradually lessen, then the weakness would come in an inexorable rush. Her Ups and throat were cracked and dry, choked with the dust of the caverns. Somewhere there must surely be a pool of water. If she kept moving. If she did not only wander in blind circles, as at times she suspected.

Something turned beneath her stumbling feet, sent her sprawling through a heap of clattering debris. Morgain lay where she fell, fighting back unconsciousness with her last dregs of strength. Three abrupt recognitions brought the girl back from the edge of oblivion.

The dull roaring in her ears was not from her waning senses; it came from an underground river somewhere in the darkness beyond.

The objects she sprawled upon were bones-a skeleton neither animal, nor so cleanly picked as she might have liked.

And closer at hand, a rattle of dry bones as something stirred toward her.

16

AN END OF GAMES

Ssrhythssaa regarded the empty cage with no discernible change in his demon’s-mask features, yet Bran Mak Morn sensed that the creature seethed with inhuman rage. The ophidian stare shifted to Ada, and the witch cringed as if from the touch of a white-hot lash.

“It is a sad proof of the degeneracy to which my race has sunk, that I am compelled to choose my chief servants from such witness fools as these,” Ssrhythssaa commented, letting them both grovel at his malignant contempt.

His own senses still in turmoil from the sorceror’s phantasmagoria of lost eons, Bran was vaguely aware that Ssrhythssaa’s anger was not over Morgain’s escape-rather that Atla’s improvident outcry had wrenched the Pictish king from the insidious spell of the mirage. For a moment Bran Mak Morn had given thought to surrendering to some damning part with the serpent-folk.

“Our races have both fallen into abject decline,” Ssrhythssaa insinuated to the Pict. “We are alike, you and I-men of a distant age, who dream to restore ancient glories from ashes and decay. We are the last of the peoples of Earth’s Dawn, Bran Mak Morn. Ancient enemies, it is true-but in this dismal age all hands are raised against us. We must put away the old hates and join together now.”

“There can be no joining together, hellspawn!” Bran growled with undiminished resolution. “Were you another of the ancient tribes of man, your reasoning would hold true. But you he when you presume we two are alike! For you are serpent and I am man, and the only alliance Pictdom shall offer the Worms of the Earth remains that of fire and sword! What matters it that every hand is raised against Pictdom? That is the way of man and of man’s wars. Against serpents a man only stamps down his heel!”

The wrath in Ssrhythssaa’s yellow eyes met the primitive rage in the Pict’s smouldering gaze. Ssrhythssaa it was who turned away from the encounter.

“It grieves me to acknowledge that you are right, Claudius Nero,” Ssrhythssaa hissed. “The Pict cannot be trusted to cooperate with us. I think there is a madness in his soul that no temptation nor threat can overcome.”

“What is your will?” Nero’s voice was exultant. “I, too, have grown tired of this Pict’s arrogance. Shall I have him to crawl for us before death?”

“Fool!” Ssrhythssaa sneered. “Bran Mak Morn must not die. I need him to lead the army of Pictdom. No other man can serve as catspaw for me.”

“But I fail to understand…” Nero began in vexation.

“You fail to understand many things, my legate! Which is why I only order you to recapture Morgain before she strays too far. You can manage that, can’t you? Her value as hostage is ended, but I think the Great Old One will not refuse her.”

A rustle of devil’s laughter as Ssrhythssaa contemplated the Pict’s helpless fury. “Atla, you will remain with me. There may be some minor piece of assistance you can render me.

“As for you, Bran Mak Morn-you will see that not all of our ancient powers of elder sorcery have perished. Since I cannot break your will, be certain that I shall slay your soul. The warriors of Pictdom shall follow their king-but their king shall not be the man they believe to be Bran Mak Morn!”

“There is no sorcery foul enough to enslave Bran Mak Morn to the will of the Worms of the Earth!” the Pict roared his defiance. “Before you kill my soul, hellspawn, my body shall be mutilated carrion, and my ghost shall curse you in hell!”

Atla’s voice was sharp with an edge that puzzled Bran. “Remember Titus Sulla, Wolf of the Heather!” The words were as a taunt, but there was strange pleading in her eyes. “I’m not a soft Roman coward to shrink in mewling madness from the visions of hell!” Bran swore fiercely.

“Perhaps you might have asked Titus Sulla what visions he saw, before judging him carelessly,” Ssrhythssaa advised, toying with his captive.

“King of Pictdom, you are a greater fool than these who serve me! Your bluster and brash arrogance can only be stupidity-or madness. But madman or bold fool, you shall come to serve me as do these slaves!

“If only more of the ancient wisdom survived, this tedious game would have been needless. In that lost age we would have secretly slain a fool such as you, and another king would have ruled in your guise-the exact image of Bran Mak Morn until death shattered the spell, and a betrayed nation beheld the visage of the serpent beneath the crown. But King Kull broke our power in that age, and in the eons since, our race has sunk far, too far.”

Ssrhythssaa paused, lost in reflection. “I am old, Bran Mak Morn, old enough to have watched the relentless degeneracy of my race into what it has now become. I have waited long centuries for a chance to reverse that ineluctable decline into final bestiality. Often I believed I had waited too long for my race-that we of the Serpent had sunk into such an abyss we could never resume our destined mastery of the earth. Your race usurped that mastery, stole our destiny from us. Helpless to turn the ebbing tide of my race, I could only wait and watch the inevitable descent into the slime.

“How ironic that your race-the Picts, our oldest and deadliest enemies-should cast into my possession the weapons I needed to reverse that ebbing tide! Many of the Romans survived massacre when we rushed upon them in the caverns beneath Serpent Gorge. For millennia we have stolen your women, set upon them on dark nights upon the moors. The progeny of such sporadic matings were a scale above the degenerate offspring of our own sickly blood, so I had observed.”

Ssrhythssaa’s inhuman laughter was as obscene as the long black tongue that flickered over his double row of curved fangs.

“The capture of the Ninth presented me with a considerable breeding stock. There were many of their women, and we spared a few of the males for slaves who eventually forgot their abhorrence of our women. Some of their offspring seemed to have slipped into curious mutations of the evolutionary scale, but after several generations I had bred a considerable body of strong warriors-although I think you would deem some of them not so stalwart to look upon as Claudius Nero.”

Bran’s curses could not express a portion of the revulsion that underscored his hate. Ssrhythssaa chittered in obscene revery.

“Almost a century was the breeding of my legion, Bran Mak Morn-but what are centuries to Ssrhythssaa the Deathless? And was not the time pleasantly spent?

“Were it not for Rome, I should have waited another century perhaps-bred a hundred such legions to sweep the earth. But Rome with its continent-ruling might is a threat to me. Not since in ages far beyond even my span of centuries has such an empire ruled the earth. I must strike soon, before the Romans suspect what waits even beneath the hills of their lands-soon, before Severus and his legions make even the wild Highlands of Caledon a conquered province.”

Ssrhythssaa’s hissing voice somehow achieved a ring of fanaticism. “Soon-for I yearn to lead my race forth from their burrows-forth beneath the moonless night, where the silent temples of the Serpent shall once more resound with the bleating of sacrifices…”

His voice drifted into unintelligible harangue. And Bran Mak Morn knew he must kill this serpent, even if his ghost must tear itself out of the fires of hell to slay Ssrhythssaa.

The ancient serpent-wizard returned from his dreams of unleashed abomination. Again the Pict felt the full force of those hypnotic eyes-and through utter revulsion fought back the psychic intrusion.

“You are strong, King Bran/ hissed Ssrhythssaa, breaking that loathsome contact. “But we shall soon see who is stronger.

“I need you, man!” the serpent-wizard demanded, frustrated anger giving birth to candor, candor of ominous portent for the Pict. “I need the armies of Pictdom to hurl against the swords of Rome’s legions. Claudius Nero’s legion is trained, after a fashion, armed with the plunder of the Ninth and of the Roman camp they massacred. But Legio IX Infernalis, as he pleases to style it, has not even the (strength of a full legion. I can recruit no more troops from my race. But Bran Mak Morn can summon the hordes of Pictdom to his victorious standard. Yes, and even the Celts will follow you once your conquests sweep the Romans from the land.

“I must have you, Bran Mak Morn! I must have your apish hordes as inexhaustible meat for the legions’ stabbing spears and chopping swords! The legions have butchered such barbarian hordes by the tens of thousands in a single battle. Your army shall dull their blades, exhaust their swordarms-crush the legions beneath your slain thousands so that Claudius Nero can easily destroy what is left.

“Pictish blood shall wash Roman steel from this land! Pictish blood shall win for my race its return from the shadows! Pictish blood shall pay the price for the eons your race has driven my race into hiding beneath the land that is ours by right of destiny!”

The ancient serpent-wizard glared at the man in the cage with that hatred which is deadliest because the hated object is also indispensable.

“So you understand, Bran Mak Morn, why there can be no possible fate for you but to obey. Only you can lead the armies of Pictdom. Five centuries have passed since I saw the last king of all Pictland; five centuries more shall not bring forth another.

“Had the knowledge our race once commanded survived the age of King Kull, this game should not have been necessary. Could I have bound you to me through deception, through temptations and threats that would have swayed a hundred other barbarian kings, it would have been far better for both of us. Enough! I sought to ensnare your will with all my craft and cunning.

“I failed. But your victory has cost you your soul.” Ssrhythssaa’s voice was almost impossible to understand for the hatred that poisoned each sibilance.

“I shall destroy your soul, King Bran. I shall pluck it forth as cautiously and as painfully as when these hands have flayed the skin of a maiden without flawing the delicate hide. And just as the skinless wretch still screams from the life that refuses to quit her raw flesh-so shall your disembodied soul howl in the shadows of hell, while the mindless husk, that men shall still call Bran Mak Morn, shall posture and prance as my consciousness gives it will!”

“I think I shall die first,” Bran stated flatly.

“I think not,” Ssrhythssaa mocked him. “For I shall be very, very careful. Infinitely more careful than when I amuse myself with the flaying knife, and it has been very many years since one of my subjects has died before I could hold the perfect skin up before her lidless eyes to admire.”

Ssrhythssaa gloated, “You understand something of the powers of the Black Stone, Bran Mak Morn. Do I now make idle boasts?”

“You lie, as your serpent-race has always lied,” Bran snarled, knowing that Ssrhythssaa spoke no lie.

“Claudius Nero is right,” Ssrhythssaa sneered. “Your bravado is tedious. Come, Atla. There are crucial points of this where I must make no mistake. I have certain materials that you shall examine with me.

“When I return, King Bran, I think you will then share certain knowledge with us as to the powers of the Black Stone. Perhaps such wisdom will amuse you, as your soul drifts forever in hell.”

17

THE THIRD TIME

That moment in the darkness transcended all the terrors Morgain had thus far endured. The false hope of her escape, cruelly stifled after hours of blind wandering through this maze of enclosing stone-hope now stirred from the ashes by the distant rush of water, an unseen river that must flow somewhere beyond these caverns-a surge and fall of emotion that left the girl racked between utter despair and reborn hope. And as she sprawled amongst a litter of charnel refuse, exhausted and in pain, and clutched at the desperate hope of the distant river-the stealthy rattle of bones warned her that she was not alone in this place.

The blackness was impenetrable. Since fleeing the cavern of the Black Stone, Morgain could have been physically blind and it would have made no difference. Now there was something else that moved in this lost labyrinth-some creature of this sunless maze that stalked her through the darkness. One of the serpent-folk? Or some new and deadly horror of the pits? One, or a score? Morgain’s imagination conjured a hundred dread visions, as she lay paralyzed from fear.

The grotto where she crouched stank of new death and old decay-and of a deeper, more repellent stench she could not identify, although it might have been the reptilian musk of the serpent-folk steeped in a slime of filth. In the darkness sounds seemed enormously magnified, distorted further by the workings of her frighted imagination. Why, if her panting breath and quick heartbeat deafened her own ears in the silence, could she not hear the breathing of her stalker? Only the chance rattle of scattered bones as it approached. No footfall. Was there a dry rustle, as of some smooth-scaled bulk drawn across stone?

The Pictish girl was too close to the wild, too certain of her atavistic instincts, to doubt that the unseen presence in the darkness was anything less than malignant-and was stalking her with deadly intent.

With every sense strained, Morgain sought to pinpoint the thing that stalked her-all the while frantically formulating some means of escape. Obviously the blackness was no handicap to the creature. That it had not simply rushed upon her indicated it had some fear of her-or else that it was certain of its prey. Could it be the serpent-folk stealthily encircling her? With their stunted bodies, they might hesitate to close with the desperate Pict-she could smash their puny bones with the shard of flint she held in her fist.

A cold, slimy touch licked over her bare leg. Morgain screamed-the feral cry of the stone age savage unleashed from her Pictish soul-and flung her body away from the loathsome touch. A strong, certain grip closed over her leg, jerked her back.

Spitting like a cat, Morgain recoiled, struck out blindly at the vise-like grip that pinned her. The sharp edge of the flint shard ripped into cold and rubbery substance-boneless and the thickness of a man’s thumb. The grip tightened with crushing strength-hauled her clawing across the littered stone.

Morgain hacked frenziedly, then the sinewy bond parted, leaving its severed end wound about her bruised leg.

Flung back by the sudden release, Morgain scrambled across the stone floor. A cold breath of air warned her, and she flung herself away just as something foul slashed past her in the darkness.

Silence, except for her own hoarse breathing. And total darkness. Morgain realized she still had no conception as to what deadly presence invisibly stalked her.

A rustle of dry bone to her left.

Morgain sprang away from the sound. A heavy bulk seemed to flop against the stones as she ducked away. Again a loathsome touch of cold slime lashed across her flesh, striking her across her bare shoulders. The impetus of her lunge carried her away before the grip could tighten. Morgain cried out as she felt flesh rip from her raw back.

Dimly she realized that something still clung to her leg. She hacked desperately, felt the touch slacken and fall away. It had been the severed fragment of whatever had ensnared her leg an instant before.

Again the rush of cold air. Morgain leapt away. This time a vengeful snap from the space she vacated-the closing of deadly fangs, or only the splintering of dead bone?

A long bone rolled beneath her foot, almost tripping her as she backed away blindly. Instantly Morgain stooped and caught it up with her free hand. A femur, she judged, human or anthropoid, and heavy. It would make a good enough club, if she could only see to wield it.

Then the clatter of bones from behind her. Morgain spun, swinging out blindly with the heavy femur. The dense length of bone smashed into something in the darkness-something that crunched and yielded, spattered her arm with gouts of ichor.

Still silent, the unseen assailant went down under the impact. Striking at chest level, Morgain had no idea where her blow had fallen. She drew her arm back to strike again.

Something closed upon her club from behind, tore the femur from her grasp.

There were more than one…

Morgain leaped blindly forward. She fell headlong over the writhing mass of flesh that her blow had brought down-dying or only stunned, she never knew-no more than she could form a clear impression of what manner of creature she fought. Cold, repellent with slime-it was impossible in that fleeting contact to tell whether the abhorrent flesh beneath the slime was clad in scale or bristle or rubbery sinew. What might have been limbs slapped at her aimlessly, as the girl rolled past its heaving bulk and scrambled to her feet.

From the area of the writhing mass on the floor, now came the repulsive slap and smash of heavy bodies entangled in combat. Morgain sensed that many unseen presences had gathered about her here-that they now fell upon the creature she had wounded. In the horror-laden silence, she could hear the tear of rending flesh and bone-and of an unspeakably hideous sucking-or gushing-sound.

Sanity slipping from her, Morgain flung the chunk of flint into that monstrous feasting with all her strength, heard it smack into yielding flesh. Not daring to think about pursuit, the girl ran blindly into the darkness.

Something beyond panic now drove the girl onward. In the past few days she had suffered through physical and emotional ordeals that would have killed a girl of civilized races, or left her mewling and helpless in a mindless and broken shell. There is a limit to any human endurance. Morgain had been pushed somewhat beyond hers.

Beneath the madness that now gave strength to her aching limbs and overtaxed muscles, some instincts of self-preservation directed her toward the sound of rushing water. In a corner of her reeling consciousness, Morgain knew that one more loathsome touch, one fragmentary glimpse, of whatever nightmare stalked her in the dark and her mind would shatter into madness as black and ultimate as the darkness through which she fled.

Morgain fled she knew not where, naked and weaponless, on bleeding feet and cramping legs, oblivious to pain and fatigue. She did not know that they Eursued her. Confirmation of that pursuit could not ave increased her dread.

The cavern floor was rough and irregular. Morgain held her balance by mostly sheer luck, and by greater luck scrambled to her feet with whole limbs each time she fell. No longer did she caroom with bruising force from the passage walls. Evidently the cavern had swollen into a major grotto here. The stone beneath her feet was damp and cold-treacherous with dank scum. The roar of unseen waters grew steadily louder, although echoes in this vast labyrinth made its exact distance and position impossible to judge.

The air was cold and hung with mist now. The rock seemed of polished smoothness, slippery from the moist slime that splattered over her flailing legs. The rush of unseen waters seemed very near.

It was somewhat nearer than Morgain suspected.

A scramble of arms and legs as the rock shelf pitched sharply downward-slime-hung stone that gave no purchase-and Morgain dropped headlong into blackness that was suddenly icy and rushing and wet.

The shock of frigid water calmed the madness that screamed through her frightened senses. Sputtering for breath, the girl shot back to the inky surface-awareness of her situation coining to her now. The current of the underground river was quite strong, although its depth seemed considerable and it flowed without turbulence for all its swiftness. Morgain was a good swimmer and rode the current without struggling-bobbing upon the midnight surface like a bit of flotsam in the Styx.

The current tended to draw her away from the shore, which may have been just as well. The slime-coated, polished stone of the deeply carven shoreline would have been impossible to climb over if she wanted to regain the nightmare-haunted cavern from which she had just fled-and in the impenetrable darkness, the current could dash her against the unseen rocks with killing force.

Morgain could see neither bank of the river, had no conception how broad or how deep it might be. For all that, she had no idea where the river was flowing-whether out of the caverns or deeper into the earth, perhaps to plunge into some bottomless abyss. The thought was of minor interest, inasmuch as she would have dived into frothing rapids or ravenous maelstrom to escape the unseen shapes that had stalked her in the cavern.

It came to the girl as she drifted with the current, that she must eventually tire of treading water. Before then she must reach the invisible shoreline-or drown.

The scales tipped toward the latter with each passing minute. The chill current numbed her aching flesh, steadily sapped the remaining dregs of her strength. A strong swimmer might breast the current and eventually clamber back onto the shore. Morgain had been on the brink of collapse at the moment she tumbled into the river. Even the minimal effort necessary to keep her head above water taxed her failing strength. With each swirling league, the icy chill of the river seeped into her body, and her limbs were leaden weights that pushed feebly against the relentless current.

Drowning, so Morgain had heard, was an easy death. The girl had never thought to put this platitude to the test, although now that the likelihood crept upon her, it was a far cleaner death than others she had barely escaped here. Already in her numbed state she no longer winced from the lire of her flogged flesh, the ache of fatigued limbs. It would be very easy just to stop this useless struggle to remain afloat, let her mind go numb, let the black waters drag her down.

Remember, when you were young? How you shone in the sun…

No sun here. Endless night. Like death.

And now you’ve grown old. And your skin is so cold…

So cold…

A mouthful of water strangled her, brought the girl sputtering back to the surface. The third time, so it’s said, you don’t come back up. Morgain wondered why it had to be three times.

It occurred to her that she did not want to die. That discovery brought forth another desperate outpouring of energy-wrung forth like the final bits of moisture from an empty wineskin. For a while she kept afloat, thinking of wine and its warmth.

Not mulled wine but icy water now filled her mouth. Choking, Morgain again pushed her leaden body to the surface. Twice. Her last moments of life now. Third time you stay down.

Or was it third time you stay up? Morgain could not be certain any longer. Just now she watched herself sitting by the fire in the great hall in Baal-dor. There was a roaring fire, and she was telling Bran that drowning was too cold a way to die, and that after three times…

Then something seized her leaden body and dragged her violently beneath the surface.

18

DEATHSONG

Hopelessness is an iron cell, lost and buried beneath the floor of hell; where the king who wore the iron crown, shall lose his soul far underground.

Bran Mak Morn never thought it would end this way…

Death had been his constant shadow ever since the day a youth with wild dreams of glory had followed the swords of the Wolf clan southward to daunt a mighty empire. Death had become too much a part of the Piers life for it to concern him overmuch. A mountaineer who daily scales cloud-locked heights and sheer precipices has no fear of heights, although he knows some day there will be a misstep.

Bran’s greatest fear was that he might die before his dream could be won. Beyond that, death in battle was a risk to which he gave little thought. He knew he would die before the Romans could ever take him alive. Bran Mak Morn would never gasp out his life on the Roman Cross, or be dragged m captive chains through the streets of Rome, as was the sorry fate of Caratacus.

Death here, at the hands of the Worms of the Earth, was a doom that left him sick and cold-a dismal fate he would not accept. And infinitely worse-to die with the knowledge that his soulless shell would return to take up his iron crown, to make Bran Mak Morn the foulest traitor to Pictdom in the eons-spanning history of the race.

As the hours dragged on, it came to Bran Mak Morn that there would be no escape from this doom. That realization was beyond any enduring. Desperately Bran sought to deny the inevitable, to defy the workings of fate through sheer force of will. When the final futility of his struggle was borne upon him, Bran Mak Morn would go mad.

Fate.

A web meticulously woven by the omniscient gods, or spun to the demented fancy of a laughing horde of mad devils? Was man’s life a predestined course, or a twisted path that wandered through the chaos of blind chance? Fortune or destiny, it matters nothing to man. Man is trapped by the impersonal malice of the gods he hates. Man is helpless victim of the blind and chaotic workings of chance. Chaos or the gods, either way man is the toy of powers beyond his comprehension. Only a few men have ever seized control of fate, and in doing so they called down both the hatred of the gods and the malice of chance. Fate.

And Bran Mak Morn sat in an iron cell in the dungeons of hell, and vowed to fate that this doom should not be…

Ssrhythssaa had taken the Black Stone and withdrawn to some secret abode wherein he and the witchwoman now conferred over the exquisite preparations for the incantation that would destroy his soul. That the Black Stone held such power, Bran did not doubt. He understood some vague hints as to the powers of unthinkable transmutation contained in the daggerlike glyphs etched into the hexagonal faces of this alien survival of Elder Earth, when the gods were more direct in their mad jests upon mankind.

The power was there. But Ssrhythssaa was uncertain, afraid of failure. Failure that might completely blast the man he sought to control-destroy life along with will. The difficulty and the danger must be extreme-or the ancient serpent-wizard would not have turned to it as a last resort, after the Pictish king had seen through his guile and sneered at his threats.

It gave Bran a grim sense of triumph. He had driven Ssrhythssaa to the desperate limits of his dark powers. That the wizard had held this until the last, that he even now devoted hours of intense study to the spell-meant that Ssrhythssaa feared failure in this final ploy.

Invoking the power of the Black Stone to destroy the Pict’s soul and spare his living flesh, Bran mused, was probably equivalent to attempting to extract an arrowpoint lodged close to the heart through one mighty stroke of a two-handed sword. Possible, perhaps-but…

And knowing that failure for the serpent-wizard meant certain death for Bran Mak Morn, the Pict earnestly prayed that Ssrhythssaa would fail. That faint hope, for death instead of soulless slavery, held Bran’s mind from shattering as the hours stretched bleakly on.

Without the Black Stone, the altar of human skulls continued to emanate a sickly radiance. Bran suspected that the skulls had been treated with some phosphorescent substance, recalling the phosphorus-smeared altar in Dagon’s Ring. The serpent-folk evidently held in awe the light they could no longer endure, and their ghastly rites had incorporated the wan phosphorescence as a sick mockery of that which they feared.

Bran did not wait alone. Half a dozen of Claudius Nero’s legionaries watched impassively before the cage. In the poor light that seeped from the cairn of skulls without the Black Stone’s influence, the Pict could see very little of those who guarded him. From their armor and weapons, they might have been Romans, albeit their stature was slight even for the men of Rome. The eyes beneath the plundered helmets glowed in amber slants, and the few words they spoke were in Latin made unintelligible through slurring sibilants. While they stood their watch like trained soldiers, it occurred to Bran that no legionaries would have passed the tedious duty in near silence.

Their presence here proved that Ssrhythssaa had taken every precaution. Bran was unchained, but the iron cage had earlier resisted the full limit of his strength-nor in the hours since his capture had the Pict been able to discover any weakness in either bars or fastening. Trapped here, in the unknown depths of the earth, where his friends could never win through to him even if they so tried-because Bran had commanded Gonar and Grom to secrecy, to allow their king to play a lone hand. The presence of armed guards was only the most final of precautions-a bleak reminder to the Pict that even if by some miracle he broke free of his cage, this cordon of armed warriors would put an abrupt and certain end to such abortive escape.

For a space Bran considered rushing headlong across the cage and smashing his skull into the bars. Though the cage was cramped, he might succeed in dashing out his brains or in snapping his neck, before his guards could subdue him. The idea of suicide was repugnant to him, for it implied surrender to his fate.

Even so, Bran might have made the attempt-but he remembered the reanimated corpses he had seen in the Black Stone’s phantasmagoria-this the abominable power of the serpent-folk in another land and another age. Did Ssrhythssaa command this dark power as well-or was this part of the elder knowledge lost by the People of the Dark across millennia of degeneration? Bran could not be certain. It would be better, perhaps, to bide his time-and hope that Ssrhythssaa would err.

And if he tried suicide, and failed-knocking himself senseless in the attempt-they Would surely bind him hand and foot. The thought of waiting helplessly, like some trussed sacrificial victim in the wicker cages of the Druids, was more than he could endure.

But-if he tried suicide, they would have to enter his cage, attempt to subdue him. He might break away from them, plunge into the dark passages, elude the hordes of the serpent-folk who doubtlessly lurked in the blackness beyond…

Another desperate plan, serving mainly to stave off madness and despair. Yet again, he had heard nothing more of Morgain. Could she have evaded them? If she could win free, could not he do the same?

Bran knew what the chances were for either of them ever to see the light of day again. Still, he could try. One desperate chance, with failure certain to wipe out any other chance that might come along… Hopelessness is an iron cell…

A tall figure abruptly strode into the pool of light. At first Bran thought it must be Ssrhythssaa returning to commence the hellish sorcery, for his guards had evidenced no alarm.

Bran was in error, the figure was that of Death, and the guards had had no warning.

Bran recognized Liuba in that astonished instant-the lithe feminine figure beneath the clinging tunic of chainmail, the swing of the raven-black hair at her nape. But the long silver sword was unsheathed now, and as she fell upon them, the sword was in motion.

The first guard died without ever knowing what killed him. A flash of her blade as she came past, and his head and helmet spun lazily away from the stump of his neck-clattering grotesquely across the stone as his corpse slowly toppled after them.

Already Liuba was moving past the second of the guards, closing with a third. Bran wondered why the second guard ignored the woman, then saw the spatter of the arc of blood-saw him lose interest in the shield he tried to raise, drop the shield, pitch forward over the spilled tangle of entrails that Liubas slashing backhand had torn from beneath his leather cuirass.

Bran watched in amazement. He had never seen anyone so swift and certain in his movements. Liubas long blade was an invisible flicker in her unconventional two-handed grip-striking sudden death among the startled guards.

The sword and shield of the third guard clattered to the stone an instant after the legionary tried to bring them to defense. The inhuman fist still closed about the swordhilt, and most of one shoulder followed the shield to the floor. The guard spun about, trying to reach the spouting ruin of his shoulder with what was left of his other arm.

Only a space of seconds had elapsed. The three remaining guards had only time to realize that death had leapt upon them without warning-so sudden, so unexpected, that in those first seconds no shout of alarm had been raised. With hissing cries-more from startled reflex than thought-they sought to rush upon her all at once.

Liuba whirled to face the nearest guard. Another assailant flung himself toward her back. Bran could scarcely follow the blur of Liuba’s blade as the girl pivoted strangely, slashed behind her without seeming to look-then snapped forward to engage her first opponent. The guard who had thought to attack the girl from her unprotected rear tilted back on his heels and fell like a tree, his skull split from helmet to chin.

The other guard, anticipating the attack on Liuba’s back by his fellow, faltered uncertainly. His shield dropped for an instant. Liuba’s blade licked through the exposed space between helmet and shield rim. Another helmeted head rolled across the stones.

The one remaining guard, closing from her right flank from his position at the time of her attack, was scant seconds slower in reaching the swords woman. He outlived his comrades by that many seconds. Seeing the sudden death that had claimed the others in the space of a few breaths, the last guard lost heart in the duel and fled. Liuba darted forward, blade curving downward like the flicker of summer lightning. The swordtip clove through spine with no pause for cuirass or bone.

The armless guard fell with a clash of armor even as Liuba turned from her last victim. In the interval it took to collapse, he had bled to death from two severed brachial arteries. Liuba bent over the disembowled guard to still his writhing, then stepped past their slaughtered carcasses without a backward glance. Wiping blood from the blade between thumb and forefinger, she cooly returned sword to scabbard.

Bran realized he was gaping. He was fast; his comrade Cormac na Connacht, was almost as fast; the Pictish king had never seen their equal in the countless battles and duels he had survived. Now he had. Heretofore swordplay as the Pict knew it-and Bran was a master swordsman-was hack and parry, slash and thrust-a rough and tumble brawl in which the point was used only rarely, and a strong, fast swordarm was everything-whether one fought with the sweeping two-handed blades of the Celts and Picts, or with the chopping shortswords of the armored legionary. Liuba fought as no one Bran had ever seen-with blinding speed, and with certain, deadly precision in her movements. Even in the extremity of the situation, Bran Mak Morn stood in reverent wonder of an artist whose consummate skill he could only hope to equal.

There were matters more urgent.

“Liuba!” Bran gasped with sudden hope. “How did you come here! Are there others with you?” Liuba’s eyes were sardonic. She seemed scarcely out of breath after the swift slaughter of six armed guards. “I came alone, King Bran. You did not return, even as I had given you forewarning. I reasoned that the vermin would spare you for certain abominations such as they love, and that they should take you to the cavern of the Black Stone. I followed to discover if I might still save the bold king of Pictdom from his doom.”

Bran had questions, but this was no time to raise them. “Can you open the cell? Did you see the key on any of the guards?”

“I can open your cell,” Liuba told him.

Bran swore at her coolness. The struggle had been sudden and deadly-concluded before any had shouted the alarm. But at any second someone might come to investigate the brief clamour of combat.

“Thunder of all gods, woman! Then let me out!” Liuba seemed of a mood to savour her moment. “Once before I freely offered to you my aid, Bran Mak Morn. You spumed my offer and my warning.”

“Liuba, will you…!”

“Listen well, this time, King Bran!” Her tone was implacable as her blade. “This time do I again offer my aid-but for a price!”

“Damn you, woman!” Bran was frantic at this unhoped for chance to escape. “Name your price and be done!”

Liuba’s eyes were cold as her smile. “The price shall be of my naming when I so choose to name it-nor shall you refuse to honor me in that which I demand.”

Bran would have bartered even his soul in that moment, when the alternative was certain and hideous doom at the ancient serpent-wizard’s soul-slaying sorcery. “Anything that’s mine to give, short of the crown of Pictdom, is yours to demand, Liuba! This I swear to you! Now open the cell!”

“Have no fear, King Bran,” Liuba told him. “I’ll not demand that crown you make sham to cast away. Now, will you bid me to enter your cell?”

“Liuba! Enough of your game! The serpent-folk…”

“Will you bid me to enter your cell?”

Bran groaned in frustration. “Milady Liuba, will you be pleased to enter my humble cell.”

“At your request,” murmured Liuba without humor. In the poor light, Bran had not seen the girl work the key into the lock. He assumed from her confidence she had plucked it from the body of the one guard she had paused beside for the coup de grace. More to the point, the lock instantly sprang open at Liuba’s touch.

Bran pushed past her as she opened the door and made to enter. She deserved to enjoy her game for what she had done for him, but Bran had half a mind to strangle her.

Swiftly Bran caught up a fallen sword. The short Roman blade was strange to his hand, but to have sharp steel in his fist again brought a surge of new strength to his exhausted frame.

“Would that there were time to strip a pair of these vermin,” Bran said in sudden inspiration. “But we dare not stretch our luck any farther. The serpent-folk may come upon us in another instant.”

“What do you desire of twice-plundered Roman equipage?” Liuba asked him.

“To pass ourselves off as a pair of Nero’s legionaries,” Bran explained. “Or at least, for myself. I came here for Morgain, and I’ll not leave without her. I can’t ask you to share any greater risk than you have already, but if you dare to hunt through these caverns a while longer…”

“I so dare,” Liuba snapped. “You have bought my sword, and I must see that you live to pay account. Lead on-if you know where!”

Bran found the girl’s mordant sense of humor unnerving under the circumstances. “Morgain escaped from her cage some hours ago,” he explained, striding quickly away from the corpse-strewn island of light. “I’ve heard nothing of her since.”

“I can’t believe she could have slipped past them to the surface,” Liuba hazarded. “They must have her.”

Bran spat a curse. “The wizard ordered Nero to take her to the Great Old One. Do you…?”

“If Morgain has been given to the Great Old One, there’s no more you or the gods can do for her!”

“I’ve got to know for sure!” Bran growled.

“Then you’ll need to look in the lair of the Great Old One,” Liuba advised darkly. “And that one isn’t the passage you want. Come this way, and stay close.” Having no other recourse, Bran followed Liuba’s lead. There were urgent questions that must be answered, he promised sombrely. But the moment held matters of far more pressing urgency than demanding answers of this enigmatic angel of death-who seemed too well acquainted with all the paths and demons of hell.

19

DEATH AND STARLIGHT

Cold water closed over Morgain’s face, choking her. By pure reflex she struck out. Her fists flailed against stone. Dimly she realized the river had swept through a tunnel in the rock. There was no longer any air to come up to-only solid rock overhead.

Then the current sucked her into its embrace, wrenched her through its midnight millrace like a bit of flotsam caught in a maelstrom. Rushing turbulence hurled her limp body past drowned walls of polished stone. She spun helplessly-blind, exhausted, her last breath failing. Stone walls grazed her bare flesh-the current ran at a speed that would have smashed every bone in her drowned body if she struck anything head on.

Not that it would have mattered to Morgain. She was drowning within the drains of hell.

It seemed her lungs would burst. Then she glanced off a rushing wall of smooth jet, felt the sharp crack of her ribs through the ache of her lungs-and her breath burst from her chest in one last ecstatic bubbling cry.

Icy water sucked into her lungs as she could no longer defeat the reflex to inhale. Morgain thrashed about aimlessly with the last of her strength, no more conscious of what she did than an infant crawling headfirst to birth.

And this was death.

Coughing and choking for breath, Morgain strangled on mouthfuls of spray, blindly struggling through the primitive instinct for life. She was too far beyond coherent thought to understand that air filled her lungs again, along with the tossing froth of rapids.

A trick of the tumbling current swept her battered form over a shallow ledge, where she was flung up against a barrier of lodged drift. Scarcely knowing what she did, Morgain dragged herself along the pile of drift-he crawled over the moss-slick outcropping from knee-depth torrent and onto a gravelled beach.

Agony stabbed her bruised ribs as she vomited again and again, forcing the black water from her belly and lungs. When she was able to control her retching long enough to pillow her face on the cold gravel, Morgain became aware of a brilliance that dazzled her aching eyes.

It was starlight.

***

For a space Morgain lost consciousness. Dreamless, deeper than sleep, it was the final collapse of her overtaxed body. For some few hours, the girl lay motionless as the drowned corpse she had almost been-a battered piece of drift cast up by the currents of hell.

Eventually she uttered a low cough, and stirred from her near coma. The cold gravel bruised her sore body, and Morgain painfully sat up-shivering under the chill caress of the night winds on her still damp flesh. Taking hold of a driftwood snag, Morgain pulled herself to her feet.

The night was moonless. Evidently only a few days had passed since her abduction, since the moon had been in last quarter when last she saw it. Time had meaning again.

And space? Morgain gazed about her surroundings in baffled wonder. As her dazed consciousness sought understanding, the girl realized the underground river had ultimately cut its way through stone and back to the world of men. But where? She had wandered beyond all reckoning beneath the hills of Caledon.

The wan starlight seemed almost glaring after the impenetrable blackness of the abyss. Dawn must not be far off, Morgain decided, for she sensed that she had lain in a stupor for some hours. Unsteadily the girl picked her way over the shallow bar of gravel, struggled atop a spur of tumbled boulders to see if she might orient herself. A sharp pang stabbed through her side with each lurching movement. Morgain had no clear memory of receiving an injury, but she guessed there were a few cracked ribs, if nothing worse.

The stars seemed to be dimming as she worshipped the night skies. Either dawn was stealing their light, or else her eyes were growing accustomed to their glow-if such reverse acclimation were possible. Morgain stood on a rising mound of stream-washed boulders, overlooking the narrow valley of a rushing mountain torrent. The escarpment rose black and close at either bank of the river. Morgain could discover no break in the rock face of the cliffs that might demarcate the point of emergence of the underground river. Either she had been washed downstream for some distance without realizing she was in the open water, or presumably the buried river fed this mountain stream through some underwater cavern.

A thick boskage of birch and pine clotted the floor of the gorge. Bracken clothed the banks of the stream, and blooming clusters of heather climbed the steep slopes of the ravine. The Highlands of Caledon, clear enough. Morgain smiled for the first time in an age. No matter where in the Highlands. She would follow the river until she came upon some Pictish dwelling.

Climbing down from her vantage, the girl painfully made her way along the fern-fringed river bank, skirting the jumbled piles of boulder and floodstranded drift. Several hours of deep sleep had restored her somewhat, and the starry vision of the free Highlands gave her new strength. Nonetheless, she longed to drag her wounded body into the shelter of bracken and stretch out on the soft earth there, sleep for a day or until hunger awakened her. But it seemed wisest to work her way downstream, put as much distance between herself and the watery egress from the caverns of the Children of the Night as possible.

The stars now had definitely grown dim. It was the intense darkness that foreshadowed the dawn. Otherwise Morgain might earlier have caught sight of the mound of stone that she limped toward along the winding gorge. She at last made out its vague outline bulking up from the base of the escarpment and against the pitch-black skies. A huge mound of broken stone-but this was not the work of nature.

It was a cairn.

And Morgain knew she was in Serpent Gorge.

Ghosts no longer had power to terrify her. Not after she had wandered through the mazes of hell. Morgain repressed a shudder not born of the cold wind, and resolutely picked her way past the silent cairn.

The cairn was not entirely silent. A spill of gravel spun Morgain about with a gasp.

Two-three-no, more! Shapes in Roman armor suddenly loomed up from the thin ground-mist. They were cutting her off.

Ghosts! Legend told that the cairn in Serpent Gorge was haunted by the ghosts of the massacred Ninth Legion.

Or Romans-living Romans! The ruined camp had been under construction not far from here. Stragglers, or fresh troops sent to avenge the massacre.

Morgain started to dash through them-saw that she was cut off. She whirled around. No retreat either.

There was not so little starlight now that she could fail to notice how their eyes gleamed amber in the false dawn. Morgain knew then these were worse than Romans, shades or flesh.

“Why Morgain, you seem to be lost,” observed Claudius Nero.

20

PROSERPINA AND DIS

“You are a very resourceful woman, Morgain,” stated Claudius Nero with sardonic admiration. “Either it is true that Picts are harder to kill than cats, or fortune has made a favorite of you.”

Morgain had her own impressions as to the whims of fortune just then, but chose not to voice them.

“You are also a very beautiful woman, Morgain.” The admiration was unfeigned.

Conscious of the legate’s frank scrutiny, and of the circle of his inhuman soldiers, Morgain felt her skin crawl from a deeper chill than the night winds. Concealment was as unpossible as escape. She reminded herself that she was the sister of the King of Pictdom, and did not cringe-returned his personal appraisal with chin high, eyes level and aloof. The girl stood proud and fierce as some bird of prey.

“Proserpina,” Nero mused aloud, recalling a favorite legend. “And Ssrhythssaa is a fool. You shall not be bait for the Great Old One.”

To Morgain’s astonishment, the legate unpinned the cloak from his shoulders. She stood very straight and still, as he came close, wrapped his woolen cloak about her bare shoulders, fastened it with a gold pin. Morgain’s eyes flashed in wonder.

“Proserpina must not take a chill,” Nero told her. “Do you know the story of Proserpina and Dis?” Morgain shook her head, drawing the cloak tighter about her body. She had not realized how cold she was.

“No?” Nero’s voice was strange. “All the better, for I shall presently tell you their tale.”

He gestured to his men, and they fell in behind her. “I think it best to go back now,” Nero hissed. “I have been able to accustom myself to endure the touch of the sun at dawn, but some of my command are less accomplished than I. This way, if you will,” he invited with irony.

A section of what appeared to be sheer rock pivoted outward from the base of the escarpment, not far from the cairn that marked the doom of Legio IX Hispana. Darkness and the mephitic taint of the serpent folk oozed from the gaping doorway.

A Door to Those Below, Morgain reflected as she followed Claudius Nero. Mother of the Moon, how many more such hidden portals were there, where the vermin of hell could issue forth to poison the clean land of heather and moor! Was the entire earth but a hollow and crumbling shell, beneath which waited the realm of nightmare and shadow? Morgain knew that if by chance she lived to walk the Highlands of Caledon again, she would forever wonder how fragile was the shell of reality over which she trod.

The last of Nero’s legionaries entered the tunnel, and behind them the door swung shut. Back within my tomb, Morgain mused morbidly, deriving some scant relief from the torch that someone set flaming.

“Unlike our dwarfish kinsmen who skulk within the nether caverns, we still find use for light,” Claudius Nero told her, with a trace of pride that Morgain marked.

“I rather thought you might have escaped the crawlers,” Nero remarked as they walked along. “We trailed you to where you had blundered into their lair. There was a great mess of carnage where the crawlers had feasted-and a trace of blood-smeared footprints that ran to the shore of the river, that only I saw. I sent word to Ssrhythssaa that you had been eaten by the crawlers, then passed through the caverns to where I knew the river must cast you forth, if you still lived.”

“What were… the crawlers?” Morgain asked reluctantly, unable to deny her curiosity.

“Some more of one thing, some of another,” Nero said evasively. “But I forget you could not have seen those who hunted you beside the river.

“The People of the Dark have sunk far into the slime of devolution-deeper than Ssrhythssaa dares admit. There have been certain mutations, monstrous couplings with other creatures of the abyss. Certain of the offspring have escaped to lair in the unused sections of the caverns-feasting on carrion and fungi, breeding still more loathsome monstrosities. Were it mine to command, I should have exterminated them all. Ssrhythssaa finds them amusing.”

“And it is Ssrhythssaa’s to command,” Morgain needled.

Claudius Nero flashed her a dark look. “Ssrhythssaa is one of the Old Ones. The People of the Dark are the master race, and Ssrhythssaa is their master. We are but slaves of the masters by reason of the human taint of our blood.”

It sounded as if Claudius Nero had recited a catechism that had been drilled into his half-human people since birth, Morgain decided. The anger in his eyes gave the lie to his sincerety. There was something more in his eyes, as he watched her.

“You told the wizard I was dead, but you suspected I still lived,” Morgain asked sharply. “Why?”

“You are my Proserpina,” Nero smiled. “Iron bars do not cage you; the crawlers cannot snare you; the river cannot drown you. Ssrhythssaa shall not have you.”

Morgain thought it unwise to pursue the implication.

They rounded a curve. Before her the passage opened into an immense cavern.

“Welcome to the camp of Legio IX Infernalis,” bade Quintus Claudius Nero with a proud gesture.

The scene within the cavern was as bizarre as anything Morgain had yet seen.

The cavern was huge-evidently a considerable natural grotto that had been extensively hollowed out to accommodate the half-human army. Beyond its confines Morgain saw that a broad passage opened onto a similar cavern on a lower level. At long intervals cressets flamed fitfully, to some extent dissolving the stygian darkness within the caverns.

Such illumination was a dismal sort of thing, to Morgain’s thinking, but light even this tenuous was a noonday sun after the stifling blackness of the burrows of the serpent-folk. She wondered in what measure the descendants of the Ninth Legion actually required such light, and to what extent these lost torches were a point of pride in their master-slave relationship with the true serpent-folk.

By the wan torchlight Morgain could discern the neat rows of barracks that rose along either wall of the cavern. Barracks-enclosed within these artificially expanded grottoes thousands of feet within the side of a mountain. Precisely ordered structures of mortared stone, arranged in facing pairs of ten units in each rectangular block. The buildings were unroofed, and from their slight elevation, as she looked down Morgain thought suddenly of the toy forts of sticks and pebbles and mud she had played with as a child.

Not even a child’s nightmare could have peopled a toy fortress with such demons as toiled among these hidden streets and roofless buildings.

“I have structured Legio IX Infernalis after the exact organization of the Roman legion,” Nero announced in a lordly tone. “Each barracks unit houses one century, or one maniple for each paired unit.”

“I count five maniples here, legate,” Morgain remarked disdainfully. “Does your legion number only eight hundred?”

“This cavern houses only the First Cohort,” Nero answered easily. “The other cohorts are stationed in smaller caverns that lead off from this central one. You shall see them all eventually, if you like.”

He pointed to a massive structure along the wall where only two pairs of barracks were arranged. The sombre edifice was vaulted with a stone roof; a broad columnade made an imposing fa9ade. “The principia is over there. My headquarters, although we won’t be going there just now. Later I shall show you the sacellum perhaps. Have you ever visited a legionary fortress… before?”

Morgain shook her head. Bran had spent considerable time in Eboracum, before his face became too well known to risk any further such spy missions. He had told her a good deal concerning the military organization of the Romans.

“A pity,” Nero said, a note of wistfulness in his voice. “I should have been interested to learn how our camp compares. But no matter. In days to come I’ll study such plundered Roman forts at my leisure.” By now their party had crossed the first cavern and descended through the broad passage that opened onto a second artificially enhanced grotto. This proved much similar to the one they had just quitted, although perhaps not so large. More neat rows of stone barracks-Morgain counted three paired units, remembered that only the first cohort of a legion contained ten centuries, the remaining nine cohorts being comprised of six centuries each. Claudius Nero had paid meticulous care to details.

“The Second Cohort, I assume,” she said drily. She could see at least two more such passages as they now traversed leading away from this grotto. “And are there eight more such caverns?”

“Not quite,” Nero admitted grudgingly. “We are not yet at full legionary strength. We could be easily, if I had more material to recruit from. The People of the Dark are worthless as soldiers, and as it is, I am compelled to force military training on some of our number who are not far above the crawlers…” Nero bit off his words, as if angry over speaking too much of his thoughts.

“Another principia, legate?” asked Morgain, pointing to the squat stone structure at the far wall-not as impressive as the principia, but imposing nonetheless. Surely a vaulted roof within these caverns was only sheer ostentation.

“The praetoriumNero corrected her. “My palace, for now. I envision certain improvements once I have the plunder of Roman cities to draw upon.”

He gestured grandly toward the passages that led off from this cavern. “There is much more beyond. The barracks of the other cohorts. The valetudinarium. The horrea-although no Roman grains are stored there. The fabricae. Along the river we have really excellent baths.”

“I’m sorry to have missed them on my swim,” Morgain said bitterly. “It would have saved this long walk around.”

“Not the same river,” Nero corrected her. “You were fortunate to blunder into one that flowed outward. There are many rivers beneath the earth. Most-such as the one which runs through our camp and furnishes us with water and fish-flow inward to sunken abysses unknown even to Ssrhythssaa. I don’t think you would have fared well on whatever shores those rivers might have cast you forth.”

Morgain had little taste for the shores fate’s cruel jest had cast her upon, as it was-but held her tongue. There were worse horrors within these sunless mazes, as she well knew-although she felt a chill at certain of the legionaries who crouched in deeper shadow, seemingly abhorring the dismal torchlight, Claudius Nero strutted through the external columnade that fronted the praetorium. A pair of legionaries stood guard beside the open doorway. Their salute was worthy of the emperor’s guard, although Severus probably did not include men of mottled skin and taloned fists in his personal guard.

“Your home, Proserpina,” announced Nero with a sardonic sweep of his arm.

“I see no iron cage,” Morgain returned.

“Such accommodations little become you. I think these may suit you better.”

The legate led Morgain across the columnaded central court and into the wing beyond, where a curtained doorway opened upon a suite of rooms. Furnishings were elaborate-plunder from the baggage train of the Ninth and the recent sack of the Roman camp, Morgain decided. Mosaics and carpets, a sunken bath, hangings and trophies she cared little to inspect, chests and tables, a few small lamps, a wide couch for sleeping.

Under other circumstances Morgain might have found this palatial house, this luxurious apartment, a thing of wonder and delight. These were not such circumstances.

That this was obviously Claudius Nero’s private chambers did not improve matters.

Morgain knew better than to express innocent confusion-or to presume that the legate meant to give his chambers over to her. Hugging the cloak tightly about her shoulders, she stared wide-eyed at her surroundings.

A servant-girl entered with wine and two wide cups-more plunder from the Roman camp. She was the first woman of this hybrid race Morgain had seen this closely-Morgain excepted Ada, since the witch-woman of Dagon-Moor at least was born in the world of men. The girl returned the Pict’s curious stare with the expressionless gaze of her ophidian blood-neither gloating nor sympathetic. She was a slender creature, small-breasted and with pointed features. While Atla easily passed at first glance as human, there was something about this girl that branded her as inhuman beyond doubt.

She swiftly assisted Claudius Nero with his cuirass and greaves, silently fled when the legate dismissed her. Nero mixed water and wine into the two cups, following the Roman custom. He poured rather more wine than water.

“Here.” He handed her one cup, raised his in salute. “You do seem cold. I hope you haven’t taken a chill.”

Morgain accepted the cup with a shaking hand and greedily drank from it. Nero’s solicitude did not warm her toward him. His tone was that of concern over a new acquisition.

Her cup was empty, and Nero quickly refilled it, as well as his own. Morgain sipped, continued to look about the room. The wine warmed her, but, exhausted and with nothing but river water in her stomach, she felt light-headed despite its dilution.

“You’re very cool, Morgain,” Nero commented. “But then, I expected no less. I like things that are cold and strong. I’m that way.”

“What a wonderful book!” Morgain pounced upon a box of scrolls, one of which was rolled open upon a reading table.

“Caesar’s De Bello Gallico,” Nero informed her proudly. “It belonged to my great-grandfather, Publius Calidius Falco, legate of the Ninth at the massacre here. I’ve read it a hundred times.”

He came up behind her to refill her cup. When he finished, he touched the gold pin at her throat.

“You don’t need my cloak now,” he told her, drawing the woolen wrap from her reluctant grasp.

Morgain forced herself to swallow the wine. Her throat seemed not to work for dryness.

“You’re very lovely, Morgain,” Nero breathed. “I was right not to return you to Ssrhythssaa.”

The last was implied threat. While there might be fates worse than death, she knew the ancient serpent-wizard would spare her in neither. Morgain decided she wanted more wine. Her mind sought dizzily for some means of avoiding the inevitable.

“I promised to tell you of Proserpina, and of Dis,” said Nero huskily.

“Yes! Please do!” Morgain begged, grasping at the wrong straw. Anything to keep him talking…

Claudius Nero took pains to make certain she understood.

Morgain cried out only once, in shock and utter revulsion. But it was at that moment when a maiden often cries out, and Nero only felt his blood roar the fiercer.

21

SWORD’S EDGE

Morgain stirred at last from nightmare-haunted sleep. Even the horror and the shame of Nero’s possessing her had not been able to stave off her exhaustion. Still cold from the shock of it, Morgain had soon slipped into a deep slumber. She dreamed of Proserpina and Dis, and of serpents that performed horrible and obscene acts.

When she awoke, she opened her eyes in the dim hope it might all have been nightmare. The lamplit bedchamber was unchanged, and she knew the worst of her nightmare had been reality. Morgain wondered if she would ever feel clean again.

Angry voices brought her fully alert. Morgain sat up, wincing at the pain of her bruised ribs.

Claudius Nero had already risen. Was it morning? Meaningless. Here it was always night. The flickering lamps cast the same grotesque shadows as before, although Morgain sensed she must have slept through the period of daylight in the world outside.

Beside the sunken bath, the servant-girl towelled the legate dry. A furious Atla railed at him.

“So the Pictish bitch was torn apart by the crawlers! And how does she come to be here in the praetorium of Claudius Nero? You lied to Ssrhythssaa! You fool! What will you say to him when he finds out?”

Nero’s pointed face was dark with anger, and he petulantly brushed the towel away. “The girl somehow eluded the crawlers. I recaptured her only hours ago; she had managed to reach Serpent Gorge and was well on her way to freedom when I intercepted her. I told Ssrhythssaa no lie at the time. As for now, he has no further use for Morgain-and I have as much a claim to her as the Great Old One.”

“Ha! Let me hear you tell that to Ssrhythssaa! He’ll feed you to the Great Old One along with the girl!”

Nero spoke with more confidence than he felt. “Ssrhythssaa would not dare. He has need of me, witch-and that is more than either of us has for you!

Atla gave a strangled cry of rage, broke past him for where Morgain crouched. Nero followed with a shout of menace.

The witch towered over Morgain, eyed the soiled covering with a sneer. “Well, you little slut! Bran Mak Morn will be interested to learn how his sister was robbed of her maidenhood! Now put on your virginal airs and taunt me for lying with Romans! Hell-worm bait! Don’t you wish you’d stayed safe in your cage!”

Anger drove shame from Morgain’s face. She sensed the reason underlying Atla’s fury, and so struck back to preserve her own pride and to wound the witch’s vanity.

“You’re either naive or blind, Atla dear,” she smiled poisonously. “Nero robbed me of nothing. I gave myself to him of my own will. Does it bother you that the lord of the underworld prefers a human maid for his consort?”

Ada’s hand streaked for her dagger, but Nero was quicker. He pinned the furious witch-woman’s arms, flung her away from the bed. Atla broke free and tried to claw past him. Nero struck her an open-handed blow that sent her reeling across the chamber.

There was fierce pride in the legate’s voice. “Well, there’s your answer, witch! Now that you’ve delivered your message to me, it should be obvious that I have no further use for you. Leave us now!”

Atla’s tone breathed hate. “Will you cast aside Atla for this savage whore! You’ll beg me to come back after Ssrhythssaa gives her to the Hell-worm!”

“If you go to Ssrhythssaa with your lies,” Nero warned, “I’ll see that it’s you who ornaments the altar of the Great Old One! Ssrhythssaa needs me to command Legio IX. Your only use to him was to ensnare Bran Mak Morn. You failed, Atla. Do you really want to try Ssrhythssaa’s gratitude?”

Snarling, Atla slunk from the room. At the curtained doorway she paused to scream in spite. “It might interest you, Morgain-that while you play the wanton with his enemy, your brother throws away his life searching for you!”

Nero stepped toward her. Atla fled with a venomous laugh.

“What does she mean?” Morgain asked in alarm. At her last contact with her brother, she assumed Bran would remain a prisoner while Ssrhythssaa sought to coerce him into some sort of evil alliance. Her own strategy now was to play for time until she could find a way to escape and bring help.

“Nothing that concerns you,” Nero said evasively. “She came to inform me that Bran Mak Morn has escaped. Evidently a band of his men somehow slipped past our guards, found the cavern of the Black Stone, released him. Impossible on each count, but nonetheless he’s at large for the moment. They can never escape. It’s only a matter of time.”

Morgain refrained from comment, her mind working furiously.

“I must go to see to his recapture,” Nero told her, watching her impassive face suspiciously. “We know he hasn’t left the caverns. Every way is guarded, even if they could find their way back. We will recapture him. Ssrhythssaa will bend Bran to his will-living or dead. The struggle is useless.”

Nero opened a chest, withdrew a gorgeous gown of sinuous silk. “Here,” he said, offering it to her. “This should fit you. You’re about Ada’s size.”

He considered her cunningly. “It may be-if your heart is as sincere as your speech to Atla-that you can persuade your brother to obey reason. The… family interest… might change his stubborn mind about an alliance. There is much to be gained of power and wealth for him if he joins us of his will. If not, Ssrhythssaa will still make use of him.”

Morgain followed the thread of instinct that had guided her to this pass. “Perhaps I could,” she suggested, “if it was an alliance of warriors, and not of crawling things. Why do you need Ssrhythssaa? You say yourself that the Worms of the Earth are worthless in battle. If your legion is so powerful, why do you grovel for puny vermin?”

Nero’s eyes narrowed. The thought was not a new one. With feminine craft, Morgain manipulated his vanities and his hatreds. The legate’s obsessive attention to the details of Roman military and social organization showed clearly how maniacally Claudius Nero sought to mimic the race of man. A man of such conceit and such compulsions could only hate his inhuman master and the race of vermin he served through tradition and fear. Morgain instinctively sought the chink in his armor, twisted her deadly blade.

“In your fine tale,” she pursued, “you said nothing about Dis bowing his head to a horde of stunted weaklings. Bran Mak Morn would suffer any death before prostrating himself to a degenerate pack of vermin who hide from the light.”

With an effort, Claudius Nero turned his back on her. “You are dangerous, Proserpina,” he mused. “Could I be certain of you…”

“You said you loved strength,” Morgain pressed.

“If you desire only a tepid spirit with hot loins, call back Ada and beware of the sister of a Pictish king.”

“I’m not afraid of you!” Nero declared. “Nor of Ssrhythssaa! Don’t think to goad me with your insinuations, girl! Claudius Nero is his own master!” He stalked angrily from the room. “You will remain here until I return,” he called back. “My servants will see to your needs-and my guards are posted throughout the praetorium.”

Morgain wondered if she had overplayed it, decided she had not. There was madness in the soul of Claudius Nero-a certain dark fanaticism similar to that which drove her brother. With care and cunning, she might find a weapon in that madness.

The servant-girl watched her impassively. Morgain could see an armored figure beyond the curtained doorway. No escape. At least this cell was an improvement over the iron cage.

Gingerly Morgain climbed out of bed. Her ribs ached abominably, her limbs could not have been any sorer had she been stretched on the rack, and her bruised feet would scarcely bear her weight. It helped to take her mind off the foulness that burned within her. Morgain lowered herself into the sunken bath, scrubbed herself savagely-knowing she would not feel clean afterward either.

The servant-girl toweled her dry, and carefully rubbed some soothing ointment over her livid skin. The marks of Ada’s whip had faded, except where the skin had been broken. From her familiarity with healing wounds, Morgain guessed her flogging must have taken place at least two days ago. For the first time Morgain felt optimistic enough about her chances to worry whether the lash marks would scar.

A deeper welt across her shoulders and around one leg marked the grip of the crawlers. Morgain realized she still had no clear conception even as to what sort of member had clutched her in the darkness. So many bruises marked her bare flesh that she fancied she might pass for one of the mottled-skinned serpent-women.

Unable to contain her hunger, Morgain ate cautiously from a tray of smoked fish and other uncertain items she left untouched. She was alive, she meditated, and for the moment safe enough. The price…

Last night had been horrible. (Vaguely Morgain realized it had been this morning; it had been dawn when she was recaptured.) Coming after hours of constant terror, her senses had been blunted-accepting the outrage with little capacity to feel. Morgain was glad that the wine and exhaustion had blurred the memory somewhat. If she lived long enough, she would someday sit alone in the heather and weep. For now she was alive, against all odds-and walking a sword’s edge somewhere between hideous death and a faint hope for escape.

It gave her encouragement to know that Bran had escaped. She wondered who had been able to break him free. Grom would risk anything for his king, and old Gonar might have the craft to direct them to where Bran was imprisoned. If they had accomplished that much in the face of the odds, conceivably they could win their way back to Baal-dor-or even come to her rescue here in Claudius Nero’s camp. It came to Morgain that Bran’s continued presence in these caverns must be on her account. Bitterly she reflected that had she not escaped from her cell, even now she might be with her brother and those who had come to rescue them.

The silken gown fit her well-a loose sleeveless thing of dark blue that fastened at either shoulder with silver pins, belted with scarlet cord. It was easily the costliest garment Morgain had ever worn, and she guessed it was still another article of plunder from the baggage train of the Ninth.

The rooms here were filled with such artifacts. It might have been a shrine. Nero had stated that Calidius Falco had been his great-grandfather; she had fallen asleep listening to his talk of the fate of the Ninth, of his own boastful dreams of conquest. The survivors of the Ninth had lived for years, impressing their Roman heritage upon their half-human progeny-until it attained the aspect of a cult for them.

Surrounded by trappings of Rome, obsessed with his creation of a legionary fortress on the Roman model-Claudius Nero was as fanatically Roman as any aristocrat who claimed ancestry back to Romulus and Remus. When the girl thought about the emotional stresses that must derive from this obsession-and the reality of Nero’s serpent-blood, his servitude to a race of vermin, commanded by an ancient wizard to ally his cherished legion with the hated Picts against sacred Rome-Morgain realized the madness that surged within the man who styled himself legate of Legio IX Infernalis. For a man of his arrogance and grandiosity, the only emotional recourse would be a certain faith in his own superiority, and a gnawing hatred of everything that reminded him of his position of inferiority.

Morgain knew she could play upon Nero’s madness. It might mean her salvation. A misstep would certainly be deadly.

She rather wished Bran would find her, and get her out of this before her nerve suddenly failed her.

She sensed a sudden tension in the air, There was a commotion in the hallway beyond. A strident tumult in the shrill hisses of the serpent-folk.

“Bran!” cried Morgain joyously.

A tall figure pushed through the curtained doorway at her outcry.

It was Ssrhythssaa.

22

FROM THE CRYPTS OF HELL

From the cavern of the Black Stone, the passage into which Liuba had drawn Bran pitched sharply downward. Bran guessed they must have covered a distance of several miles in total darkness without incident-Bran following close behind Liuba’s long, swift stride. The woman never faltered in her quick pace, moved unerringly around sudden obstructions that Bran had not perceived, ignored passages that entered or broke away from this one she had chosen. Now and again Liuba’s low tones warned Bran of some unseen pitfall, advised him of a sudden turning; otherwise they descended in ghostly silence into the stygian depths of the earth.

At length they paused for breath-more for his sake than Liuba’s, Bran sensed in annoyance. It also occurred to him that the enigmatic swordswoman was holding her stride to allow him to keep pace. The ordeal of the last several days had driven even Bran Mak Morn’s iron endurance to the breaking point. But Bran realized that something more than his own exhaustion was at work here. No one-no matter how fit, how reckless-could negotiate this pitch-black labyrinth with such swift confidence, unless…

“Liuba,” Bran asked, “can you see in this darkness?”

“Yes,” she answered, as if stating the obvious, “How otherwise could I have found my way to the cavern of the Black Stone?”

“I wonder how it is that you have this gift.”

Liuba laughed easily. “Why, I was born at night, King Bran-and therefore I am a spirit of the night, as the saying runs. How can I say why my eyes pierce this darkness? Explain, rather, to me-why are some born blind, and others with vision keen as the kestrel’s? But does it trouble you?”

Bran shrugged. Unusual, but not impossible. It was commonplace that some men saw things clearly in the darkest night, where others groped blindly even when the moon was a bright circle. Liuba obviously was not one of those afflicted with nyctalopia.

“It interests me more that you seem to be able to find your way through this maze with such ease,” Bran suggested. “And that you seem well acquainted with the secret designs of the Children of the Night.”

“Why shouldn’t I have some familiarity with these burrows?” Liuba demanded. “And with the cunning plans of these vermin! I watched a day for your return, and I’ve toiled a full day since, creeping about this serpents’ den-trying to find you, then waiting for the chance to release you. You forget that I can see these turnings that are so bewildering to you. Ha! The gratitude of kings has not changed! Exactly of what do you accuse me?”

“My apologies,” murmured Bran, somewhat ashamed. In truth, there was nothing-only a vague uneasiness and a sense that something lay hidden beneath Liuba’s glib explanations. No-she had freed him; there was no sane way she could figure in the serpent-wizard’s insidious machinations. The last terrible days left him suspicious of everything.

And vacillation now could cost Morgain her only slim chance. “We waste time,” growled Bran, sensing Liuba’s unseen smile.

The passage continued ever downward, frequently crossing rock-fanged grottoes through which Liuba confidently led the way, at other times no more than a cramped tunnel bored through solid stone. Once Liuba halted, drew Bran back into the recesses of the grotto they were about to pass through. Crouched behind distorted columns of stone, they waited while a considerable party of the serpent-folk emerged from the tunnel they had been about to enter.

Bran listened to the scurrying tread of the unseen horde, as it crept past them and disappeared along the passage he and Liuba had just come down. Had they come upon this creeping horde in the narrow tunnel ahead…

“We have been fortunate thus far,” Liuba whispered, as they rose from concealment. “The hunt is concentrated along the outer levels, Ssrhythssaa does not suspect we instead crawl ever deeper into the pits of hell.”

Bran grunted, hoping Liuba’s knowledge of this maze had not played her false. They were going to be hard pressed to force their way back to the outer passages once the cordon was secured.

“They may have come from the creature’s den,” he wondered anxiously. “How much farther?”

“We draw close to the altar of the Great Old One,” Liuba told him. “There are two passages that lead to its lair. I think it less likely we will come upon the serpent-folk on the path we follow.”

“Then it’s more likely that they drag Morgain to her death through the other passage,” Bran swore. “Let’s push on-and let the vermin try to stop us at their peril!”

Almost immediately upon emerging from the narrow tunnel and into the next cavern beyond, Bran became aware of an ominous foulness that tainted the darkness. At first he assumed it was merely the reptilian stench that lingered after the wake of the horde of the serpent-folk. The two rushed on, and the mephitic air grew ever more noxious. It was a nauseating stench of corruption and decay, of an overpowering reptilian musk, of the foetid slime of the nether hells.

It was the taint of the hell-worm.

Abruptly Bran caught sight of a sickly shimmer of greyness piercing the far wall of the cavern. Liuba made straight for that nebulous smear of light, only in the total darkness of this buried cavern could it have been noticed at all. They reached the phantom patch of grey, and Bran saw that it was the mouth of another narrow tunnel, whose confines channelled a wan trickle of light from some point within.

The air within the burrow strangled them with its dense foulness. It was as if they invaded the crypt of some monstrous dragon through whose putrescent corruption the vermin yet roiled. Bran had not eaten in recent days, so that it was only bile that soured his throat.

The tunnel opened onto a narrow ledge, encircling the sheer walls of a deeper cavern whose floor dropped away a hundred feet or more below their gallery. The floor of the cavern seemed aflame with the phosphorescent substance that the serpent-folk so revered-evidently some sort of fungoid growth. A sinister altar of black stone made a dark island amidst the glistening witch-fires below. Dominating the sunken pool of hellish radiance, a circular abyss opened from the center of the cavern floor-and Bran Mak Morn knew that he looked upon one of the doorways to the hells beneath the hells of man’s puny imagining.

“The lair of the Great Old One,” Liuba explained unnecessarily. “Below is its altar on which the Children of the Night offer up such delicacies as are doomed to fall into their foul hands. The altar is empty, for now. ”

“How can we get down to it?” Bran demanded.

“A path leads around the walls of the pit,” Liuba told him. “It’s treacherous, but I think we can negotiate it. The vermin drag their sacrifices to its altar through that passage below.”

She pointed to a darkened passageway that opened from the base of the far wall, a hundred yards across from where they stood. The altar rose near the edge of the abyss, on the rim between the abyss and the tunnel mouth. This cavern could in no manner be a natural formation, Bran realized. He wondered what hideous deity and what depraved worship held ritual within this buried temple.

“What manner of devil is the Great Old One?” Bran asked in a tone of awe.

“There are hells beneath hell, and hells deeper still,” Liuba murmured. “Many are the dread secrets and elder survivals that lair in earth’s buried crypts. Pray that these crypts never be opened, King Bran! The Great Old One is one such lurker within, that Ssrhythssaa in his evil has summoned from the crypts beneath this hell.”

“Can it be slain?”

“You yourself may best judge that, Bran Mak Morn. For you have met the Great Old One on closer terms than have I.”

“Have I?” Bran knew the answer already.

“The hell-worm, you called it. At Kestrel Scaur.”

“You saw?” Bran demanded.

“I was there, King Bran,” Liuba laughed strangely. “Be certain that I was there!”

Bran frowned. That cleared up a great part of the mystery concerning the swordswoman’s knowledge of this evil plot. He had thought there was another person present that night-presumably Liuba had spied upon their encounter from the shadow of the rowans.

There remained the enigma of the woman herself’. Bran meant to penetrate the veil of Liuba’s glib evasiveness as soon as the opportunity presented. She played a game, that much was certain. Whose? “I’m going down there,” Bran decided. He was uncertain what he might find there, but if the empty altar bore some tragic evidence of Morgain’s presence… Liuba could play her game alone, for Bran Mak Morn would never return to the heather while one of the serpent-folk still hid from his vengeance in these burrows.

The spiral path that descended to the floor of the pit was narrow and precipitous-footing uncertain over the fringes of the phosphorescent fungus that lapped up the steep walls from the fiery pool below. They made the descent without mishap, clinging close to the sheer rock face as they edged along the path. The iniquitous stench grew worse, making Bran’s head swim dangerously, until his nostrils at last became inured to the foulness.

The floor of the pit was carpeted with the glowing fungus-a thin layer of palpable light that deadened their footfalls and clung eerily to their sandals. The stone beneath was smooth, and tended to slope imperceptibly toward the abyss at the center. Bran fought down the sensation that if he slipped, this shimmering carpet of slime would bear him skidding and slithering into the central abyss…

Truly they now walked on the dread threshhold of some alien hell, festering as an unclean sore for uncounted eons since closed over by the shuddering mountains of Elder Earth.

The altar was an ominous hexagonal slab of basalt, ten feet across, and perilously close to the lip of the abyss. Bran tried not to think of the unnumbered victims who had lain bound and helpless on this black island in a lake of flaming verdigris, waiting for a shape beyond mad nightmare to crawl forth from its buried lair…

Bits of shattered bone lay strewn about the altar, made sinister excrescences beneath the enveloping carpet of glowing mould. Streamers of dried slime like foetid icicles stretched from the altar to the floor, and to the black abyss beyond. The basalt itself had absorbed certain stains that would yet taint its surface when the earth fell into the dead sun and even the mad dreams of the gods were cold dust.

“The Great Old One has not feasted here for some days,” observed Liuba. She gestured toward a fragment half covered with the encroaching fungus. It was a hobnailed Roman sandal, with the decaying bit of a Roman foot still secured within the rotting leather straps. “The hell-worm does not feast so daintily that there would not be traces.”

Bran felt a deadly sickness lift from his heart. “I think you’re right,” he decided, giving up the morbid scrutiny of the altar stone. “We’re in time.”

He risked a closer inspection of the yawning abyss. Even from the vantage of the gallery, it had seemed bottomless. The miasma that clogged his nostrils was exuded from the black circle. No sound reached his hearing from whatever laired in the depths beneath. Bran wished the pit were indeed bottomless, for he knew there was nothing he and Liuba could do against the horror he had glimpsed reared against the stars that night.

The black depths, the foetid breath, made him suddenly lightheaded. Warily Bran retreated from the edge of the abyss.

“We need some concealment,” he meditated. “Some covert from whence we can waylay the serpent-folk when they bring Morgain to this pit of hell.”

“On the ledge above?” Liuba suggested.

“It would be impossible to strike quickly from up there,” Bran countered. “Or to come upon them unawares. What about this lower entrance?”

“It pierces directly through solid rock for more than a mile,” Liuba told him. “Which is why I brought us up by the less direct path. If we encounter nothing in the tunnel, there is a cavern beyond.”

Bran shook his head. “Too far from the altar. They might bring Morgain from above. Is there no place we can hide on the floor of this hole?”

“I see nothing,” Liuba said, her tone implying she cared little for the prospect of staying there.

“Then it must be from the ledge above,” Bran concluded.

“You are relying wholly on the assumption the vermin will bring Morgain here,” Liuba pointed out. “We don’t even know that she lives.”

“If you have a better plan, spit it out!” Bran snapped. “I have nothing more to go on than this, I’ll not blame you if you’d rather not throw your life away in this desperate ploy. I’ve said from the start this is a personal blood-feud.”

Liubas eyes narrowed. “Some day you’ll try my temper beyond recall, King Bran! We have a pact, you and I.”

Bran swallowed his anger, knowing it was only from frustration that he snarled at his only ally in this hellish realm.

“I apologize,” he stated. “If you’re intent on seeing this to an end, I’ve another proposal-one of considerable danger for you.”

“I would scarce describe my present situation as one of ease,” Liuba scoffed. “Go on.”

“I think we should split up,” Bran continued. “And since you seem so adept at finding your way through this maze, you’ll have to be the one who runs the added risk.”

His tone held misgivings. Liuba cursed and assured him, “Of course I’m the one to go, if the other must remain here! What could you accomplish by getting lost in the dark!”

Bran held his temper. “I’ll remain here on the chance that they’ll bring Morgain to the hell-worm, as Ssrhythssaa commanded. If they come before you return, I’ll do what I can. In the interim, your task will be to spy them out-to seek evidence of Morgain’s fate. Report to me what you discover, and we’ll act on it. If there is nothing to report, return here as best you can from time to time. It is barely possible that Morgain may have won free, in which event we’ll try to follow her success.”

“More likely that she’s lost herself someplace where even these serpent-spawn cannot find her,” Liuba suggested grimly. “How long will you wait here?”

“As long as is necessary,” vowed Bran. “I’ll wait along the ledge there. I see a fall of broken rock that will offer concealment from any who chance to pass through, and I doubt their search will include this pit. You’ll be taking most of the risks.”

“That’s my worry,” Liuba snorted. “These vermin are nothing to me.”

“If possible, Liuba,” Bran put forth hesitantly, “it would be useful if you could secure us Roman armor and weapons. So outfitted, I think we would escape casual discovery-and more to the point, it would enable us to descend boldly to the floor of the pit, should the hellspawn appear with Morgain.”

“It shouldn’t be diffcult to lay in wait for stragglers,” Liuba pondered. “But making away with a cartload of equipage presents a problem. Well, then, I shall do whatever I can.”

***

After the girl departed, Bran felt a sudden loneliness. Enigmatic, hot-tempered-nonetheless Liuba in his eyes embodied all the savage courage of the Pictish race. Without her companionship, it was heavily borne upon him how utterly alone he was in this lost realm of ancient evil. Whatever the outcome, Bran hoped he would not have been the cause of her death.

A low ridge of fallen rock afforded scant shelter from anyone entering onto the gallery, barring a careful search of the entire ledge. Bran stretched out behind this covert and forced himself to wait. It was torture to lie here, doing nothing, thinking of Morgain’s plight. Action of any sort would be infinitely preferable, but Bran knew he could do no more than this-wait here for Morgain until he had reason to do otherwise.

Despite the discomfort of his cramped position and his proximity to the hell-worm’s burrow, Bran found that he was nodding. It had been hours since he last slept-and fatigue sapped his strength. The Pict decided it would be wise to catch such sleep as he could. He would need all his strength and more in the hours to come, and Bran’s savage reflexes were such that any faint stirring within this pit of hell would snap him to instant alertness.

Sleep came to him quickly-deep slumber that soothed the ravages of his ordeal. Here on the brink of hell’s abyss, Bran knew less troubled slumber than any in recent months.

And in his slumber he dreamed he came upon old Gonar…

The wizard’s face was strained with exhaustion and concern. “Bran!” he cried. “So you yet live! I’ve tried to reach you for more than two days.”

“I’m here, old one,” Bran told him. He had spoken with the tattooed wizard on other nights through the portals of dream-once in Eboracum when Gonar pleaded in vain for him to abandon his ill-starred search for a Door to Those Below.

“Where are you, Wolf of the Heather?” Gonar begged, his voice and apparition dimming. “Are you truly in the realm of the living? I see your face only vaguely. It seems to me you lie within the cold flames of hell.”

“I wait in the lair of the hell-worm for Morgain, old one,” Bran said in dream. “Has my sister returned to the world of heather and sky?”

“Not so, Bran,” Gonar told him. “Naught has been known of either of you these three days since you left us here in Baal-dor. Your people clamour after you, King Bran. Come back to us. The Romans gather in force in the South to march against us. Pictdom calls for its king.”

“I’ll not return until I have Morgain safe beside me,” Bran vowed. “My people spoke against me only days ago. Why should I heed them when they now cry out to me?”

“You are king, Bran Mak Morn. It is a fate you cannot cast away with the doffing of your iron crown. They are your people, and your life belongs to Pictdom.”

“I shall return to my people if it is within my power,” Bran swore. “But I shall not return alone. I return to the heather with Morgain, or there shall be an end to this curse I have brought upon the line of Mak Morn.”

“Bran! Come back to us…” Gonar’s voice trailed off. His image vanished as a shadow in the deepening twilight. Bran slept soundly again.

Since there was no interruption, and his exhaustion had taxed the limits of even his endurance-Bran slept for several hours. Nonetheless, the slight tread of running feet on bare stone-a sound so light most men of civilization could not have heard it even had they concentrated-was a tocsin that jerked the Pict into instant wakefulness.

Bran gripped his sword and watched the passageway beyond the ledge-down which the faint sounds grew louder. Someone ran toward him. One person alone.

Liuba burst from the tunnel, dashed recklessly toward his concealment. It seemed to Bran that she must be pursued, but a look at her face stabbed him with a deeper fear.

“What is it!” he demanded sharply, seeing that she made no attempt at stealth.

“Morgain!” Liuba gasped. “Your gamble has failed! Ssrhythssaa has taken her to the altar of the Black Stone!”

23

CONSTELLATION

The cavern of the Black Stone was no longer deserted. The outflung walls were awash with the hordes of the Children of the Night, packed into the temple of their alien god-thing as feasting maggots outflow the confines of a corrupt skull.

Skulls blazed with uncanny luminescence, a cairn of cold flame that limned an eerie nimbus for the hexahedral crystal of elder evil that crowned the pyramid. Two of the iron cages had been placed in the hellish glow of the altar. Neither were the cages deserted any longer.

Morgain stood against the bars of one cage. She felt a macabre sense of dйjа vu that might have been amusing had it not the elements of recurrent nightmare. Stripped naked, the girl stoically returned the stare of unnumbered pairs of glowing yellow eyes-musing, with the part of her mind that held out against the waves of mindless terror, that it was as if she stood nude amidst the cloudless sky of stars. The maidens of the constellations must feel this way-although she was not a maiden, and neither was this the heavens.

In the other cage coiled a mammoth serpent whose pallid scales turned a ghostly reflection of the scintillant fire of the altar. Snared in some hidden den beneath the earth, the serpent had never known the touch of the sun. Thick as a man’s thigh and twenty feet in length, the reptile stirred anxiously in the unaccustomed glare of light, its black tongue flickering in a long caress of the iron bars.

The precisely formed ranks of several hundreds of Claudius Nero’s legionaries were islands of order in the chaotic hordes of the serpent-folk. Stiffened to attention, the half-humans with their Roman armor filled a section of the crowded cavern. Beneath stolen helmets, their inhuman faces were turned toward the altar of the Black Stone and to the pair of cages that stood in the circle of lambent verdigris.

Claudius Nero clenched his pointed jaw and tried not to look at the face of Morgain. His angry eyes sought Atla beside him, and death made an amber flame.

“It wasn’t me!” Atla whispered, her face tight with fear. “He already knew.”

Probably true, Nero realized. According to his men, the wrathful serpent-wizard had stormed into the praetorium well before Atla could have told him of Morgain’s presence in the legate’s chambers. Nonetheless, in his helpless rage, Nero let the witch suffer his vengeful glare.

The two of them stood before the iron cages, in the fore of the thousands who gathered about the altar of the Black Stone. Their attitude was anxious, as was the aspect of the legionaries-that of errant children awaiting the stern whim of the master.

His flowing robes a web of gauzy color, Ssrhythssaa poised before the altar. The quick flicker of his tongue over his double-fanged jaws mimicked the caged serpent. The demon-mask visage somehow conveyed the wizard’s deadly wrath-and gloating knowledge of total power.

Speaking the hissing sibilants of the serpent-folk, Ssrhythssaa harangued the ophidian multitude. Outlined in the eerie radiance of the altar of skulls, the ancient serpent-wizard stood evil and implacable as the arch-demon in the flames of hell.

The demonic shrilling of the Worms of the Earth echoed his angry tirade. Morgain could not understand a syllable of it. From the cringing stance of Claudius Nero and Atla, she sensed the object of the wizard’s anger.

Their fall from the wizard’s favor, Morgain realized, did in no way bode well of her own fate. She still shuddered at the memory of Ssrhythssaa’s sudden appearance within the camp of Legio IX Infernalis, of being pulled through the winding passages by the dwarfish serpent-folk, thrown once more into an iron cage in the cavern of the Black Stone. Then the assembly of the People of the Dark and their slaves. She did not like to speculate as to why Ssrhythssaa had summoned them.

Ssrhythssaa turned to the assembled legionaries now and began to address them in Latin-whether for their better understanding or to impress upon them their degraded position, Morgain could not guess. Her command of Latin was a haphazard thing, Nero had spoken to her in Pictish for the main, but Morgain could follow as much of the wizard’s speech as sufficed to bear out her worst fears.

Claudius Nero had no difficulty in understanding.

“It grieves me to be confronted with the realization that those who serve me are fools,” Ssrhythssaa hissed. “Incompetent fools who are unable to execute the simplest of tasks. A band of Pictish savages is allowed to creep into my realm without detection-to break open the cell of their king and slaughter my vaunted legionaries without raising the alarm-and to remain at large despite hours of fruitless search. It is only to be expected. Did not this human girl escape without any help other than the stupidity of certain of you-and wander unchallenged until by the barest chance she was recaptured?

“Stupidity. Incompetence. It is enough to try my patience with you. But now there comes to my hearing the insidious whisper of treachery and sedition! You, Claudius Nero! Had you asked me for this girl for your plaything, I might have granted your whim. But my grace is not sufficient for you, it seems. You lie to me, seek to keep the Pictish wench by stealth!

“Fool! Did you think to outwit me! You, who cannot carry through the simplest commands! Did you think I would not learn of your deceit! And of your treasonous whining against the People of the Dark! Your traitorous disavowal of my absolute power over your apish race!

“Do not dare to think I will not break you, Claudius Nero! Your importance is not so great in my eyes that I cannot replace you with a less arrogant slave of your herd!”

Ssrhythssaa smiled his pointed ophidian smile-gloating over the legate’s fear, savouring the knowledge that Nero hated him with all his soul, and dared not so much as lift his eyes to his master’s sneering smile.

In that moment Morgain almost found it in her heart to pity Claudius Nero.

“I shall be merciful,” Ssrhythssaa went on. “Merciful this once. I am, after all, aware of your pitiful limitations. Yet I think it wise to remind you of the powers that I command. It may encourage better performance of your duties-and strict obedience! Never let it be forgotten-the power of the Black Stone, that it is your duty and your fate to serve!”

Turning again to the cairn of skulls, Ssrhythssaa reverently lifted the Black Stone from its dread altar. The wizard raised the sinister crystal on high. Obscene hisses of adulation resounded from the assembled horde.

Ssrhythssaa carefully turned the hexahedron in his taloned hands and gazed at the sixty dagger-shaped characters etched into one six-sided face. Then, reversing the black crystal, he considered the sixty similar cuneiform glyphs on the hexagonal face opposite.

The wizard spoke in tones of awe-the dread secret of the Black Stone.

“Here are carven the elder cantrips by which life can be reduced to the primordial slime from which life evolved-the dread phrases by which the serpent can be compelled to assume the shape of man-and by which man can be compelled to put on the flesh of the reptile!”

Ssrhythssaa turned to his caged captive. “Do you understand, girl? Would you see the dissolution of the proud barrier between your racial origins and those of the People of the Dark? Will you experience in full measure the power of the Black Stone?”

The wizard raised his voice, shouting in Pictish the words he hoped might lure Bran Mak Morn from hiding, if the Pict were within hearing.

“A small portion of this power I shall control to destroy the soul of Bran Mak Morn-but you, his sister, shall be destroyed body and soul through the full power of the Black Stone!”

Again the wizard raised the hexagonal face with its cuneiform characters to his eyes. In harsh and sibilant cries, Ssrhythssaa began to chant the obscene syllables that it seemed no living throat could utter. A hush descended over the vast cavern. Ssrhythssaa’s loathsome incantation echoed eerily into the vaulted darkness.

Slowly, carefully shaping each alien phrase, the serpent-wizard intoned each of the sixty characters.

In its cage, the pallid serpent hissed in inexpressible anguish-threw its great coils in convulsing loops. The iron bars shuddered with the fantastic spasms of its tortured coils. Then a last shudder, and abruptly the huge snake lay still.

The limp coils collapsed, foreshortened. The albino scales dissolved Like flakes of ice; sinew and flesh melted from the hoops of sagging bone. Then the elements blurred, mingled in an elongated puddle of glistening slime upon the bottom of the cage.

Ssrhythssaa’s hellish incantation continued phrase by relentless phrase.

The quivering blob of primordial ooze began to draw inward upon itself. Like some obscene amoeboid creature, it began to thrust out sudden projections of its substance. The slime gathered itself together, assumed hideously recognizable contours. Flashes of bone took shape, covered over with a crawling tide of flesh. Blood pulsed through newly formed arteries; skin clothed the bare muscles and sinews.

There appeared legs, arms, torso, head. A sudden throb of life shuddered through its breast.

Ssrhythssaa intoned the final phrase.

From the floor of the cage, a living creature stirred, slowly came to its feet, grasping at the bars to steady itself on its unfamiliar limbs. The eyes glared in ophidian cunning, but every other outward appearance was that of a human girl.

Morgain stared in dread wonder at her own image. That which had been a serpent returned her stare, flicked its tongue over its lips.

Madness hovered very near.

“I wonder how Bran Mak Morn will receive his sister when again they meet,” Ssrhythssaa chittered with inhuman laughter. “Its soul is still that of a serpent. The reunion may be something of a trial for the king of Pictdom.”

The wizard regarded Morgain balefully. “It may be that you shall observe that reunion, Morgain. But I think your brother will not be quick to recognize you. I wonder how you will speak to him-for I think Bran Mak Morn will have little liking for his sister’s fond embrace!”

Morgain looked away from the Black Stone and its exultant priest-and cursed the fete that spared her from drowning. There was no escape from the ultimate degradation and horror that would engulf her now. Even if Bran were here, there was nothing he could do against this serpent-horde, against this alien sorcery.

Utter hopelessness chilled her heart. Turning from the Black Stone, her haunted gaze fell upon Claudius Nero. The swaggering legate, who cringed like a whipped slave before the ancient wizard’s power, blanched with deeper shame as the girl’s imploring eyes focused with a look of scorn on his bowed face.

Now Ssrhythssaa ghoulishly rotated the hexahedron in his hand, paused to laugh at the girl’s abject horror-and studied the sixty glyphs etched upon this opposite face of the Black Stone.

Ssrhythssaa’s loathsome voice intoned the first of the phrases of abomination.

Morgain screamed-a shuddering, convulsing cry of ultimate revulsion and fear.

Ssrhythssaa paused to savour her hopeless terror.

With a movement as swift as it was sudden, Claudius Nero drew his shortsword, made a quick lunge forward, hacking savagely. The wizard’s attention was concentrated on the Black Stone and its victim. Nero’s sword made a sound like an axe on rotted wood, and the astonishment of Ssrhythssaa’s face was the most vivid expression its demon’s mask had ever registered.

Nero struck again, in the fraction of a second, before the serpent-wizard had even begun to crumple under the first blow. Ssrhythssaa jerked like some broken thing, spun about-his pointed jaws gaping in stunned rage from the steel that split his bony chest. Nero’s third quick stroke clove the elongated skull like a dry gourd.

The Black Stone slipped from nerveless fingers, struck the cavern floor with a crash that resounded throughout the burrows of hell. Ssrhythssaa fell with a dry rustle of silk and disjointed bone.

Claudius Nero stood over the broken form of his master, strange blood oozing from the edge of his sword.

For a long moment the tableau held.

Then, as the outraged cries of the serpent-folk hissed like a rising wind, Nero spurned the butchered corpse with his sandalled foot-raised his sword on high.

“Soldiers of Legio IX!” the legate shouted, drowning out the hissing surge of wrath. “The tyrant lies dead! No more shall we, men of Roman blood, be slaves to this race of degenerate weaklings!

“I have slain their master! Now let us together slay his minions! Death to the Worms of the Earth!”

At the death of Ssrhythssaa, the shock of seeing one of their race cut him down with cold steel-the smouldering hatreds flamed to incandescence. They were Romans by descent-that proud remembrance was their cult-not slaves to these reptilian dwarfs.

“Death to the serpent-folk!” the cry echoed bloodthirstily. “Hail, Nero! Death to the Worms of the Earth!”

In close ranks the legionaries marched forward. They were but a few hundred-Ssrhythssaa had summoned only a fraction of their number for this demonstration of power. The serpent-folk were gathered here in their thousands. But they were a naked horde; only a few carried the flint weapons their degenerate race had all but forgotten to use. The legionaries were well armed and trained in close combat.

His legionaries rallied to the cry of rebellion, rushed to their legate’s position-then marched in disciplined ranks into the serpent-horde. Shields came up; short Roman swords chopped down.

“Death to the Worms of the Earth!”

Then slaughter-hellish slaughter beneath the Roman blades in the half-human fists of Nero’s legionaries.

For a space, the serpent-horde almost threw them back-through sheer press of their clawing bodies. But the wave of ophidian wrath broke upon the locked shields and hacking swords of Legion IX In-femalis. These were the warriors who had defeated a camp of Roman legionaries. For all their numbers, the Children of the Night were little more than a weaponless pack of dwarfish vermin, now without a leader. And each stunted body that smashed to the stone beneath the relentless blades was another broken link in the shackles of fear and taboo that had bound the progeny of the Ninth.

For decades the hordes of the serpent-folk had held power over the tiny, helpless band of part-human slaves. Even as the ranks of the legion had swelled, the tradition of subservience-and Ssrhythssaas dread powers-had kept the shackles upon the necks of the descendants of the Ninth. But in a blast of fury, Claudius Nero had done the unthinkable-had slain Ssrhythssaa with common steel. Now the puny brethren of the ancient wizard could die the same way.

Ignored in the crush of the fighting, Morgain huddled in the center of her cage-safe from any thrusting blades. The shock of that first phrase left her stunned and sick with horror. In that brief instant something unclean had seemed to embrace every pore of her body in tentacles of iniquitous foulness, to seek to wrench apart her screaming flesh with irresistible strength. That obscene contact had broken the instant it began, with the gory cessation of the wizard’s spell. That fleeting brush with the coils of alien horror left Morgain too shaken to care about the battle that washed past her iron island.

The door of her cage resounded at a blow. Morgain lifted her ashen-face to stare at the figure in Roman armor who beat against the bars.

24

RIP TIDE

The run through the darkness to the cavern of the Black Stone was one of the most harrowing moments in Bran Mak Morn’s memory.

He knew with an urgency that bordered on panic that he must hurry-a sense that only deepened as Liuba tersely made her chilling report as they dashed along the rising passages. But no amount of desperate energy could overcome the impenetrable darkness that choked these burrows. Blindly Bran followed Liuba’s unseen lead, stumbling and blundering in his frantic haste to reach his sister in time.

In time to do what, Bran had no idea. Liuba told him that the cavern was filling with the hordes of the serpent-folk and the ranks of the legionaries-that Morgain waited in a cage before the altar of the Black Stone for whatever evil Ssrhythssaa intended. It seemed to the Pict that he could do no more than let Morgain face her doom with the howls of the slaughtered serpent-folk singing her dirge-and the knowledge that her brother had not abandoned her here on the threshold of hell.

“Here!” Liuba skidded to a halt, clutching Bran’s shoulder as he bounded past her. “Earlier I dragged these two back behind this niche-thinking I would bring their weapons and accoutrements to you after I had made closer reconnaissance of these vermin. It may be that we can make good use of them now.” Impatiently Bran knelt where the swordswoman drew him aside. Cold flesh met his questing fingers. Two of the legionaries lay dead in this covert. Liuba had carried out her mission well.

“No time for that now!” Bran grunted.

Liuba checked him. “It may buy time for us later-unless you’re bent on throwing away your life long before you can reach Morgain. The cavern of the Black Stone is aswarm with the vermin. In Roman guise we might pass through them to where our blades may slay to better purpose.”

Bran cursed the delay, but Liuba’s reasoning carried weight. Swiftly they stripped the two corpses, drew cuirass and apron over their shirts of mail. Bran touched a faint trickle of blood along a dead throat, felt a slight wound there. Liuba must have garrotted her victims, Bran decided, to keep from besotting their gear with the betraying stigma of gore.

In the darkness, Liuba’s deft hands assisted him with the unfamiliar fastenings, so that the change was quickly effected. Bran knew they could never pass close inspection, but in the milling throng they might escape immediate notice. The helmets and bulky armor imparted considerable anonymity, and the rectangular shields afforded another barrier to detection.

No one challenged them as they continued their gruelling dash for the cavern of the Black Stone. Bran wondered at this good luck, until after a desperate interval of plunging through the stygian maze under the added burden of the Roman armor, they at last burst into the cavern of the Black Stone. Surely every one of the crawling race of vermin had congregated here in the vast buried fane of their alien god-thing.

Morgain’s soul-tearing scream had echoed down the last section of passageway, spurring Bran to headlong rush for the lambent tentacles of light that crept from the cavern beyond. They gained the cavern just as Claudius Nero turned firom the broken corpse of Ssrhythssaa to hurl his legionaries against the outraged serpent-folk.

Instantly the two Picts were embroiled in a howling battle. Bran had only the half-formed realization that Legio IX Infernalis had turned against their dwarfish masters-that their Roman gear now branded the two of them as enemies in the minds of the serpent-folk-then the quicksand of hissing fangs and clawing hands was dragging them down.

Only the feet that Bran and Liuba had burst into the cavern with every anticipation of sudden combat saved them in that first explosive contact. In the thick press Bran found the deadly use of the unfamiliar Roman weapons-the rectangular scutum both a defense and a smashing bludgeon, the short-bladed gladius perfectly suited for close quarters.

Back to back they stood, a tiny island of death in the tossing sea of stunted bodies. The Roman gladius rose and fell-brutal chopping strokes swung from shoulder or a twist of the wrist. Demonic feces spat at them; taloned fingers tore at their shields. A slash, a chop. Crimson cloven skulls spattered brain, dismembered limbs spouted blood.

Before they had crept upon Bran Mak Morn from the dark, had leapt upon his unprotected back. Now the hell-fire of the altar of skulls showed him where to strike each deadly blow, and the angel of death at his back wielded her gladius in a flashing curtain of steel.

Then the mass of clawing bodies thinned, broke away from them and into the passages beyond. Advancing irresistibly upon them was a column of the legionaries-driving the serpent-folk before them in a measured tread of death. Fleeing across the cavern, the Children of the Night left their dead in broken heaps about the two Picts.

Bran touched Liuba’s shoulder as they paused for breath, warning her to keep her features covered. The advancing legionaries pushed past them without a second glance, intent on the retreating hordes of the serpent-folk. The mass of bodies encircling Bran and Liuba was ample proof that here were two of their comrades who had been cut off from the rest, who slumped in exhaustion now that they were given respite.

The legionaries had been positioned close to the altar of skulls, Ssrhythssaa had meant to demonstrate the power of the Black Stone to overawe his arrogant slaves. When the sudden battle erupted, the storm of steel centered upon the altar-then spread out from there as the legionaries swept the serpent-folk before them. At the periphery of the cavern, the battle now raged. The stone was strewn with hacked and bleeding dwarfish bodies, and now and again a dead legionary sprawled beneath a pile of reptilian corpses.

Forgotten in the fury of battle, the iron cages stood out from the spreading sea of carnage. As the fighting carried past them, Bran made his way hurriedly to where his sister was imprisoned. There were none to pay a second glance at the gore-streaked pair of legionaries.

Bran found Morgain standing in the first of the cages, seemingly unmoved by the slaughter that roiled about her cell. “Morgain!” Bran called, reaching her at last.

The girl came to the bars, as he reached out to her. Her eyes held a strange expression, Bran thought-then remembered she might not recognize him in this Roman harness.

“Morgain! It’s Bran!”

Her tongue flickered nervously over her lips. He reached through the bars for her. Her slim fingers gripped his arm with icy strength. The girl gave a low hiss, sank her teeth into his forearm.

Bran yelled, tearing his arm away from her suddenly feral grip. Blood streamed from ripping nails and teeth. “Morgain!” he gasped.

The girl flung herself against the bars, hissing angrily. Her fingers clawed for him. The expression of her face was no more human than the obscene hisses that bubbled from her throat.

“Morgain!” Bran groaned, remembering Titus Sulla. “What have they…?”

“Here!” Liuba shouted from the other cage.

Bran whirled, saw the naked thing that huddled on the floor of the second cell-her face buried in hands, hair spilled like a trailing veil. Her skin was mottled with livid bruises and crossing welts-not, as Bran first thought, from the reptilian stigma of the serpent-folk.

The skin of the girl whose long arms clawed to reach him was white and perfect. Bran remembered Morgain’s flogged body hanging in the cage. This skin had never known the lash.

In sick horror, Bran reeled away from the creature with Morgain’s image-flung himself against the door of the other cage. “Morgain!” he called, shaking the bars.

Veiled by the cascade of hair, her face raised to him. “Bran!” she gasped, after a pause for recognition to dawn. “Bran! Is it really you!”

Under the circumstances, the question might well be asked of anyone here.

“Morgain!” Bran breathed in relief. “Are you all right! Mother of the Moon! I thought…”

“The sorcery of the Black Stone!” Morgain explained, following Bran’s gesture of revulsion. “I was to be next-but Nero sent the wizard to a deeper hell instead!”

Bran fumbled with the cell door. Explanations could come later. “Well need a key-unless we can force this!” he told Liuba.

“Who’s… she?” Morgain wondered, seeing that Bran had a companion. “I think the wizard had the key.”

“A friend, Liuba-see if the key’s on Ssrrhythssaa’s body!” Bran snapped, turning from the cage.

Their presence had drawn attention.

Atla-who had sought shelter amidst the ranks of the legionaries from the chaos of battle-now slunk away from the retreating tide of slaughter. She was uncertain of Claudius Nero’s temper, and thought it wise to steal away while the legate was occupied with consolidating his victory. As the witch crept past the altar of skulls, the two legionaries who stood beside Morgain’s cell attracted her suspicion: the girl seemed too joyous at their presence. Atla came closer to learn why this was-just as Bran and Liuba turned around.

Atla stared in astonishment. “You!” the witch shouted. “But you were dead!”

“Not quite!” Bran snarled. “But you will be, witch!” He lunged for her, sword slashing downward. Atla yelled and leapt away, swift as a striking serpent. Bran’s swordpoint tugged at her gown as she writhed away.

The Pict swore. Given his own blade instead of this Roman gladius, and the witch would have been split from shoulder to thigh. Ada darted away, screaming an alarm. Wrathfully Bran plunged after her, mad for revenge. Atla fled for her life; the unfamiliar armor sloweckthe Pict’s pursuit. Pulling away, the witch sped across the cavern.

Bran cOrsed, started to hurl his sword at her back-thought better of it. This was no time to risk losing his weapon, even for vengeance. With Atla’s outcry, every lost second would count against their chances. “Bran! Come on!” Liuba called after him.

The Pict gave up his pursuit and turned back to the center of the cavern. Bran shouted jubilantly. Liuba had gotten the door open and was inside, helping Morgain from the cage.

“Your friend is a picklock,” Morgain laughed unsteadily.

Angry shouts rose above the din of distant battle. In the chaotic fighting that spread out into the cavern’s recesses and outer passages, no one had yet given thought to the figures about the glowing cairn of skulls. That situation was changing now.

“Atla has raised the alarm, and the meat’s on fire!” Bran growled. “We’ll have to make a run for it, before Nero can regroup his men!”

“I can find a way out,” Liuba said, “but we’ll have to cut a path through both factions.”

She handed her Roman gladius and scutum to Morgain. “Try these, and welcome. I’ll fight with my own good blade from here. I’ve had sufficient of masquerading in Roman harness. Would there were time to gird you in this tiresome cuirass and apron, for I see you have more need than I.”

“Which way?” Bran demanded. In the distance, he could see a few of the legionaries turning toward them uncertainly.

“This passage-I think!” Liuba told him. Clapping her helmet on Morgain’s head, she drew her own long, slightly curved sword, and made for a passage to their right-her unbraided fall of hair swishing at her back like the tail of an angry panther.

“Between us, Morgain!” Bran started after her.

The shield was too heavy for her, and put a strain on her cracked ribs, but Morgain hung onto it grimly out of pride. Bran had playfully gone over the rudiments of swordplay with her in mock combat, and there seemed no especial art to wielding the Roman blade. Morgain rather thought she could give an account for herself.

The fighting had moved beyond the passageway Liuba selected. Corpses littered the floor, making footing uncertain as they again plunged into darkness. The swords of the legionaries were taking a heavy toll of the serpent-folk, judging from the dead.

They moved swiftly through the darkness. Whether or not Liuba really knew the way, Bran had no means of knowing. He had been unconscious when the serpent-folk dragged him to the cavern of the Black Stone, and in the unbroken darkness he might have walked through the great hall of Baal-dor without knowing where he was.

“Stand clear!” Liuba warned from ahead of them.

Bran heard a sudden angry hissing of reptilian voices, then the cleaner whisper of slashing steel. Bleats of pain, and the soft, grating smack of cleaving flesh and bone. Unseen bodies flopped across the stones of the passageway-then frighted voices receded into the blackness.

“Vermin!” Liuba spat. “There’s no fight to them, once they realize they can’t strike by stealth! Nero’s legionaries will massacre any who don’t flee fast enough!”

On they ran, relying on Liuba’s uncanny sight to give them warning of any other such ambushes. It galled Bran to be so dependent on the swordswoman, but there was no altemaive. Whether or not Liuba knew where she was leading them, at least she could see. Remembering how the serpent-folk had crept upon him in the dark, Bran smiled wolfishly at the terror these vermin must have known when Liuba’s deadly blade turned their intended ambush into a gory shambles.

“Torches coming!” Liuba warned.

Already Bran could see the flickering greyness moving toward them-then the bright flame of the torches as those who carried them entered the grotto from a side passage. Legionaries-no one else would carry torches-cutting them off from the direction Liuba was taking them.

“Tall odds,” Liuba murmured. “Twelve or more.”

“Can we let them pass?” Bran demanded.

But now there were shouts echoing from the passageway they had just quitted. Bran glanced back, saw the light of more torches. Many torches.

“That’ll be Claudius Nero,” Bran guessed. The legate had organized pursuit.

Liuba cursed. “We’ve got to get past! The burrow we crawled down from Kestrel Scaur leads off from the passage at the end of this cavern!”

Bran guessed that this small cavern must have been one of those along whose wall he had blindly groped his way when first he invaded this stygian labyrinth. “Nero will overtake us if we wait any longer,” he decided. “Well have to cut through these others-and quickly.”

“As you say,” Liuba agreed and started for the torches.

Ironically, Liubas night-piercing vision was keener than that of the legionaries with the torches and, when the inhuman warriors did see them, the motley array of Roman accoutrements made for momentary confusion.

Liuba’s blade sang a song that ended their confusion-and ended life for the first two of their number. An instant later Bran hit them from another quarter, and a third legionary died with a startled expression.

Shouting in their strangely distorted Latin, the others met their attack. Steel rang against steel, slammed against shield. In that first clash of steel, Bran was recognized. The legionaries’ excited shouts drew instant response from those who followed the three fugitives.

If the legionaries were concerned with taking the Picts alive, they failed to show it. Bran heard Claudius Nero’s voice shout in command. Behind them the legate’s soldiers came at a headlong rush. They were fast running out of time.

Morgain flung up her shield awkwardly, caught a slashing blade on the bronze rim. Confident of his kill, her assailant pressed on recklessly. Morgain stabbed her point full into his grinning face, felt the blade skid across bone and crunch through eye socket. The soldier crumpled, and Morgain found that killing was no difficult feat.

Bran fought frantically, trying to hold the soldiers away from Morgain. Steel rang against his scutum, slipped past his guard to slash through cuirass. The link-mail saved him time and again as he battled against several opponents at once. The Pict’s gladius ran red with half-human gore. Another legionary died howling, and another. Beside him Liubas long sword flickered like harnessed lightning, taking a scarlet toll of the soldiers.

A deadly whirlwind of ringing steel: then the last legionary was down, and the three stood breathless and bloody over the dead.

Behind them, the first of Nero’s band were almost on them. Bran snatched up a fallen torch. They could run faster by its light, Morgain dropped her heavy scutum and caught up another brand.

“Hurry!” Liuba urged. “There’s barely time!”

Bran cursed, skidded to a halt. They had just run out of time-and out of luck.

The passage toward which they ran was filled with torches.

“Nero behind! A larger party ahead!” Bran swore. “We’re caught between a hundred soldiers!”

Liuba’s eyes flamed as she looked back at the pursuing soldiers. “Too close! Nothing for us but to make a stand!”

Turning, Liuba considered the scatter of torches that wavered toward them from their only avenue of escape. Incredibly, she laughed.

“Ho, Picts!” Liuba shouted. “To us quickly-if you’ll save your king!”

And the darkness ahead echoed with the war cries of the Men of the Heather. In seconds the cavern was filled with Pictish warriors, flaring torches, and the cry: “Mak Morn! Mak Morn! Mak Morn!”

“Grom!” Bran seized the grizzled warrior who led the rush. “You’re a welcome sight, old war-dog! How came you here?”

The gnarled warrior cracked Bran’s ribs in a jubilant hug. “Gonar said that you were lost in hell and would never return. So we came to bring you back! Gonar said there must be a Door at Kestrel Scaur-we found it, and a hundred of us crawled through to mass here. These vermin don’t trouble to guard their burrows.”

The fore of the two bands collided in the cavern center. Torches flared and fell spinning through the darkness. Steel and flesh strove in deafening clamour. Whether their enemies were true Romans or halfhuman demons meant nothing to the Picts. They had come to kill.

Bran whirled to join those who had swept past him. Already the fighting was all but over. Claudius Nero had pursued with thirty or forty legionaries-expecting to encounter nothing more than fleeing packs of the serpent-folk in overtaking the three fugitives. The sudden appearance of a superior force of Picts was more than the legate cared to take on.

The torches of Nero’s men hesitated, then retreated-leaving the cavern to the Picts.

“Shall we chase them down?” exulted Grom wolfishly.

“No!” Bran warned. “Call them back! Nero will lead us too long a chase-and he has a legion to bring against us once he has time to regroup. Let’s get out of here-before our luck changes!

“Morgain, let’s go find you something to wear!”

25

LEGION FROM HELL

“Hear it, milord? The sound comes from below.” Bran Mak Morn grunted, listening intently. “How long has this been going on?”

The squat sentry, who had summoned him to the wall, pressed his lips in thought. “I came on post before sunset,” he mused. “But it was about sunset when I first noticed it. I wasn’t sure what it was, but when it got louder I thought I’d better tell someone.”

He added, “It’s gotten louder since.”

Bran scowled. The vibration was more clearly felt through the soles of his sandals, rather than actually heard. It was a constant scraping, grinding rumble-Bran thought of the grating of millstones-and it came from far below the walls of Baal-dor.

“I think we’d best pull back from this section of the wall,” Bran cold him. “See to it.”

The other hastened to relay the command, and Bran stood a moment in thought. Baal-dor was built on a knoll of solid rock. He remembered the Tower of Trajan-and the broken walls of the Roman camp. Bran shivered. No more could he think of the earth beneath his feet as solid rock.

Grimly the king of Pictdom paced the walls of his citadel. The night winds rippled his wolfskin cloak, and the crescent moon touched with silver his shirt of mail and sword scabbard, evoked a rubrous glow from the strange gem of his iron crown.

Old Gonar had returned the crown with a mordant smile. “None other came to claim it, Wolf of the Heather. You’ll find that kingship is not so easily cast away.”

That was yestereve. Food and rest and a bath in a chill Highland pool had done much to restore Bran Mak Morn to full strength, since crawling forth from the barrow beneath Kestrel Scaur and into the warm brilliance of the westering sun of the previous day. The heather had been a wonder to look upon once again.

The vibration beneath the wall drew his thoughts back to those who burrowed below. So Claudius Nero had chosen to strike swiftly. Bran had expected the move.

With Ssrhythssaa dead, Nero would have met little resistance from the serpent-folk. The serpent-wizard had plotted to his own downfall. Once the halfhumans were effectively armed, it was only a matter of choosing the moment before the legion turned on its masters. If any of the People of the Dark yet lived, they would have had to flee far to escape the massacre.

Based on what Morgain had told him, Bran knew that Claudius Nero had massed a potent fighting force in Legio IX Infernalis. Freed of Ssrhythssaa’s tyranny, Nero no longer had to deal with the Picts in terms of potential allies. Instead, Nero could carry out his obsession with his Roman heritage-so that he would not only view Bran Mak Morn as a danger to his schemes, but he would also seek to avenge the massacre of eighty years ago.

Nero would bring his legion against Pictdom-it was only a question of when. Bran, whose army was reduced to only a few thousand by the attrition after the abortive raid ten days previous, had not expected to wait long for Nero’s attack.

Liuba had ridden to rally the Pictish settlements immediately upon emerging from the burrows of the serpent-folk. Bran had heard no more from her since yesterday. He hoped the strange swordswoman was meeting with better success than the others he had sent out. A few warriors had trudged into Baal-dor by this sunset, but it would be days before he could gather significant reinforcements.

The scraping beneath his feet told him he would not be granted those days.

Gonar joined him on the wall, listened thoughtfully to the sounds from below. “They’ll undermine this section of the wall, mount a charge for the breach along the slopes here,” he mused, echoing Bran’s own reasoning. “Tunneling up to us through solid rock. I wonder what burrows beneath us here. Could Nero have spared sufficient of the Children of the Night to do his bidding?”

“Perhaps,” Bran answered. “But I’m afraid it’s something far worse that gnaws its way into Baal-dor.”

“The hell-worm?” Gonar pondered. “Can any but Ssrhythssaa control the monster?”

“We’ll know soon enough,” Bran told him. “Nero has the Black Stone. It may be he and Atla have some understanding of its powers.”

Bran studied his defenses. Even if the wall were breached, his men could still hurl back those who rushed up the slopes beyond. But the arrows and swords of the Picts would avail little against the hell-worm, judging from the brief glimpse Bran had had of the leviathan. Heavy siege engines might be able to hurl missiles that would be more than as a cloud of gnats to the monster. Bran had only a pair of scorpions to pit against the thing.

An hour dragged past. And another. The grinding vibrations from below were strong enough to rattle a sword blade laid flat on the wall.

Bran withdrew his men from the entire section of the wall. In the darkness, those in the watchtowers had as good a view of the forward slopes as was possible. At full alert, the Picts moved restlessly along the walls or milled about the area below. The relentless sound of burrowing strained everyone’s nerves to the breaking point.

Then word came up to Bran Mak Morn from those on point. A considerable body of troops moving up the strath on Baal-dor. Men in Roman armor. They marched behind the eagle standard. They were not Romans.

Claudius Nero marched by moonlight.

Bran gave urgent commands to those who manned the wall. A thin mist drifted from the rivers below, cloaking those who advanced along the strath. Otherwise the night was clear, and the crescent moon would show the archers their targets as the enemy climbed the forward slope.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the imminent battle, Bran Mak Morn found he was thinking of Liuba. He wondered what luck she had in raising the scattered clans, whether she would return tomorrow to find Baal-dor a raven-haunted ruin as was the Roman camp. Bran wished he had her deadly blade to aid him now, wished for her companionship in this hour. Bleakly he realized he still knew almost nothing at all about this enigmatic woman. He prayed to have the chance to know her better.

Another report. Nero had halted near the foot of the slope. His men were forming attack units. No torches from below-the moonlight was sufficient for Nero’s soldiers. Under the veil of mist, the legion waited.

They would not have to wait long. A sudden crash from the evacuated section of the wall. Under the constant vibration from below, several yards of the dry stone revetment let go, crumpled inward with an avalanche of packed earth and rock from the rampart.

Those nearest murmured anxiously, shuffled farther away.

More rock clattered down. Bran could see loose stones dancing across the rampart from the transmitted vibrations. Now the massive blocks of the original foundation seemed to shift from the beds they had settled into lost centuries ago.

But the undermined wall did not collapse upon itself.

An incredible explosive wrenching from below, then the night erupted, and the proud wall of Baal-dor burst apart from the horror leagues of rock could not contain.

Great fragments of earth and crushed rock were flung scores of feet into the night skies. The menhir-sized blocks of the cyclopean foundation bounded end for end across the enclosure, crushing those who had no chance to run. A fifty foot section of rampart and wall rose in ten thousand broken shards into the night, seemed to hover in an insane slow-motion before leisurely raining back to earth-a deadly hail that swept the nearby ramparts of defenders.

Rearing out of the crater it had blasted forth from the earth-its head towering a hundred feet to blot out the stars, its nether coils still hidden within the rock it had burrowed through like soft mud… the hell-worm.

Bran at last got a clear look at the Great Old One, and the Pict was glad the moon was but a crescent. He had expected a giant serpent, but this abomination from the pits beneath hell no more resembled a serpent than a narwhal is kin to trout. It resembled nothing that had ever walked or crawled or swam upon the surface of the earth. Even in the monstrous past of Elder Earth, when alien horrors descended from beyond the stars to wage their unimaginable wars with other shambling shapes of cosmic dread, such blasphemies of demented creation as the hell-worm was a survival never left their crypts beneath the cellars of hell. Miles from the sun, creation took place first within the earth, as pockets of decay fester beneath the unblemished surface.

The Great Old One was somewhat like a giant serpent and somewhat like a monstrous slug. Long and limbless, it crawled forward on a silver trail of slime. Bran guessed it was at least two hundred feet in length and almost twenty feet thick at its broadest-it was impossible to judge because the monster seemed to have no more skeleton than a worm, and its rubbery bulk seemed to stretch and hump upon itself. Eyes there were none, nor any recognizable organs of perception. Countless fleshy tentacles and palpi of unguessable nature surrounded its great circular maw, giving it something of the aspect of a sea anemone. Bran saw that certain of these tentacles were armed with adamantine claws, some with rows of rasp-fanged suckers. Further, it seemed to be able to issue long, whip-like tentacles from its head at will, much as a snail thrusts forth its horns.

A great shout echoed from the mist below. And the ordered ranks of Legio IX Infernalis marched forward against the sundered wall of Baal-dor.

Slowly, as if confused by the starlight whose constellations had so shifted since the age of its birth, the Great Old One lowered its actinian head and oozed forth from its burrow. Its cable-like tentacles flickered in the manner of a serpent’s tongue toward the retreating Picts. A score of bodies lay crushed by falling debris. Fleshy palpi gripped and tore. The hell-worm feasted.

Bran’s driving leadership overmastered total panic by the thinnest of margins. Bawling commands, he sought to direct his men’s attention to the advancing legion-its menace all but forgotten in the hell-worms dread attack.

Arrows by the score sank feather-deep into the creature’s rubbery flesh. The hell-worm gave no discoverable response to the tiny shafts. A few daring warriors flung themselves against its sides, hewing with swords and spears. The slower ones were crushed beneath the creature’s unfeeling bulk, or torn to pieces by the darting tentacles, stuffed screaming into its grinding maw.

Mindlessly seeking its prey, the feasting maw swung after the retreating Picts. Either through blind hunger or the guidance of whatever powers commanded it, the hell-worm would have the walls stripped bare of all defenders in the space of a few minutes.

Then, from where Bran had ordered them trained on this section of wall, the two scorpions slammed their tails vengefully. Twin trails of flame arced from the catapults, and fire spilled across the night.

Bran’s desperate hope to halt the monster from the sunless abyss, a leviathan against which their arrows and blades were less than pinpricks-fire.

At Gonar’s direction they had prepared great bales of tinder, soaked with melted pitch and nitre. Ignited and flung from the scorpions’ slings, the fireballs flared to incandescence in their flight-bursting into countless clinging fragments of flame when they struck the hell-worm.

This time the nightmare shape reared in silent agony. Sputtering flame ate into its pallid flesh. The air filled with a yet more nauseating stench of charring corruption. Rubbery tentacles lashed at the clinging gobbets of burning pitch, drew back in baffled pain.

As quickly as their crew could remind, the scorpions lashed out again. Another direct hit, the other fireball burst upon the torn earth beneath the monster’s contorted bulk.

Emboldened by the creature’s agony, Picts darted close to hurl buckets of oil onto the convulsing coils. Men were ground into the dirt, flung a hundred feet through the air-but blotches of yellow flame licked across the slime-coated flesh. Another fireball burst against the monster.

Legion From The Shadows 229

In mortal agony, the hell-worm was deadlier than ever. Striking aimlessly, its diamond-rasped maw chewed off great hunks of rampart; its writhing tentacles tore men into tatters. Fire burned across its flesh in a dozen places, and its throes of agony shattered a tower from the wall, crushed scores of fleeing Picts.

They rushed upon it undaunted-flinging more oil, slashing with useless blades. The field of this nightmarish struggle between man and elder horror was ablaze from a score of fires, littered with smashed and torn bodies. Inconceivably huge, the hell-worm could not be killed. But the etching flames tormented it-perhaps terrified it, if the mindless leviathan could understand fear.

By chance-or had the enraged monster sought to snap at its enemy?-a fireball struck the monster full in the writhing mass of its actinian head. The earth shook under its colossal convulsions, as the creature flung its head about in insane agony-only fanning the pitch-nitre mixture to greater heat. Smouldering lengths of palpi rained down on the milling attackers.

It was enough. Whatever commands had directed the hell-worm to the surface world, that power failed now. Trailing yellow flame and great clouds of reeking smoke, the hell-worm turned away from the Picts and their fires. In frenzied spasms it crawled back to the ruined wall, plunged its smouldering head into the gaping crater-and dragged its charred coils back down its slime-festooned burrow to earth’s secret abysses.

The Picts howled in triumph. Dying or only singed, the Great Old One had been driven away by apish savages with mankind’s oldest weapon. Scores of their comrades lay dead. It had been a costly victory.

It was about to prove too costly.

Advancing under ineffectual fire-it was impossible for the archers along the walls to concentrate on their duty while the hell-worm ravened in their midst-the legionaries had gained the earthworks. No sooner had the hell-worm dragged itself into its burrow than the van of Legio IX was streaming through the breach in the wall.

Bran Mak Morn whirled from bellowing frantic orders to the distracted defenders-only now remembering that steel can kill as surely as hell-worm’s coils. From behind him, shouts and clamour of combat resounded from within Baal-dor.

Bran swore. Nero’s men could never have staged an assault from that quarter. The cliffs fell in a sheer wall to the river far below.

A runner dashed toward him from that unseen melee. “Milord!” the man blurted. “They’re springing up out of the earth! From some sort of tunnel they’ve mined beneath the wall of the ruined tower! Romans with snake-heads! Hundreds of them!”

Bran’s heart went cold. He had committed all but a skeleton force to this quarter of the citadel. And Nero had come upon him from the rear through the passage no amount of searching had uncovered since the night of Morgain’s abduction.

“Grom!” he ordered rapidly. “Take my personal guard! Destroy these burrowing vermin, and seal off their rats hole!”

“Milord Bran!” Grom protested. “What of you…?”

“Do as I say!” Bran snarled. “And hurry! They’ll butcher the women and children! I’ll stay here to try to hold the wall! Get moving, damn you!”

He turned to the black-robed sorceror, who carried no weapon other than his ashen quarterstaff “Gonar, go back with them. There’s nothing for you to do here. See to Morgain! If Baal-dor falls, don’t let them take her!”

Ignoring further protest, the Pictish king dashed for the breach. He had counted on his personal guard as a reserve unit to counter such a thrust as this against the wall’s harried defenders, but the attack from the hidden tunnel demanded priority. If Nero carried this second front, he would have the Picts in a vise.

Already the situation on the wall seemed hopeless. While the Picts battled the hell-worm, Claudius Nero had carried the ditches and earthworks almost without resistance. Too late the defenders concentrated their arrows on the armored tide. Moving under upraised shields, the legionaries toiled past the earthworks and through the sundered wall.

Bran passed word to his captains to continue to enfilade the legionaries as they struggled through the system of ditches-hoping to slacken the stream that poured into the breach-then rushed to take personal command of the defense there.

Snarling chaos engulfed Bran Mak Morn at the breached wall. Legionaries crowded through-slowed in part by the jumble of broken stone and the reeking mouth of the hell-worm’s burrow. Vicious hand-to-hand combat surged and ebbed. It was impossible for archers to distinguish friend from enemy in this, and ordered tactics were useless in the crush.

Bran yelled encouragement to the defenders and threw himself into the affray. The beleaguered Picts took new heart, seeing that their king fought beside them. The legionaries recognized the Pictish king, redoubled their efforts in an attempt to slay the leader of their enemies.