Zarsthor's Bane

10

Brixia moistened her lips with tongue tip. She felt strange—as if there was now a veil between her and the past—Who or what invaded her now, used her for a mouthpiece—or a tool? Whatever force of personality possessed her (and she could not detect the nature of the compulsion present in control) it was not born of her own will, thought, or being.

“Hatred does not last forever, no matter how hot or how deep it has run,” that other will brought the words out of her now. “If those who gave it birth are gone it dwindles and dies. But in the brilliant light of the past may lie the seeds of future glory—for those secrets rest hidden in the minds of man.” So did that presence give tongue.

Marbon stared at her. Once more he appeared fully awake, conscious, the man he once had been, might again be, coming into part life once more. This vigor which blazed up in him centered in his eyes. Those appeared cored by a ruddy spark of hunger. Brixia felt as if his demanding gaze dug and pried at her, as one might strive to hunt from its safe protection some shell dwelling creature.

“That was the thoughts of Jartar!” He hissed the name. “I know not how or why I can swear this! But Jartar—” his voice died away, there was a flush across his high cheekbones.

That which possessed Brixia spoke again. Her voice sounded different in her own ears, deeper, harsher.

“Hate dies—but while it lives it can twist and torment the unwary who summon its aid. However old the hates—even those backed by a Power can lose their strength—”

“Lord!”

Dwed’s cry, one of amazement and fear, cut across her speech. The boy had come a step or two forward from the doorway. He was no longer blank of face, rather seemed one who was but an extension of a stronger will.

Around his body twined a dark tendril loosed from the vine of mist. He struggled to throw that off, slashing furiously at it with his free hand. To no purpose, for the mist, which seemed more and more a tangible thing, clung and could not be loosened.

His face was stricken with fear as he writhed more and more vigorously against the whispy stuff. But thin as it looked it appeared well able to keep him in thrall.

“Lord!” his repeated cry was a frantic plea.

Marbon did not even turn his head to glance at his fosterling. Rather his gaze centered and narrowed upon Brixia, even as a man about to match sword against sword watches his enemy.

“Eldron, if you are here to protect the Bane,” he challenged sharply, “then I am also! I am of Zarsthor’s line—ours the ancient quarrel—if you do not sulk within your Power—then show yourself!”

“Lord!” The mist arose farther about Dwed. He was enwrapped by it save for his white and stricken face, now a mask of fear. “Lord, by your powers—save me!”

That which was still Brixia, not entirely possessed by the entity which made use of her as a vessel for other thought and emotions (Jartar’s or Eldor’s, who could tell) knew what held Dwed was surely beyond the boy’s strength to resist. That his courage had already so broken before the lord he worshipped must seem to him black defeat.

“The Bane!” Still Marbon gave no heed to his fosterling.

He strode to advance upon the girl, beat with his hand in rage against that invisible barrier between them. He even slashed the air with his knife as if he could tear that asunder as he might fabric tight stretched.

“Give me the Bane!” he shouted.

Now about his feet the mist tendrils gathered in turn, puddled and thickened. The fog drew about him, crept upward along his body. It lapped his knees, clung to his thighs but he did not seem to notice.

Only Dwed hung in the stuff as a spider’s prey is enwrapped in web, helpless, motionless. The horror on his face was stark as wavelets of the mist touched his cheeks, clung to his chin.

“The Bane!” Marbon mouthed.

Uta stood tall on her hind feet. She slapped out viciously at a tongue of the mist reaching for her. At that same moment Brixia was—emptied. She had no other word to describe that sensation of release. Something had withdrawn. She was now alone, open to whatever Marbon might use against her. Even her knife lay shattered at her feet.

Her hand closed convulsively as if she could still grip the. haft of that weapon. But what she held was the bud. And it moved! As her fingers spread flat, the flower began to open.

The dull brown outer husks split. From the heart within came that glow which had lightened her path, heartened her, during her journey through the night in the Waste.

Powers and powers, she thought frantically. Now her other hand went to that box Uta had entrusted to her, closed on it where it lay within her shirt.

Marbon stirred. His face was no longer that of the man she knew—slack or conscious either one. Could it be possible that features could writhe in that intolerable fashion—resettle into an entirely different countenance? Even if this change was only illusion, it was surely never meant for any one sane to witness. She was icy cold, now filled with such terror that she could not will herself to the slightest movement towards escape, even though Dwed now left the door open for her going.

The man fronting her flung high his arms. His face turned up to the twining, squirming snakes of fog above them. He called:

“Jartar—sle—frawa—ti!”

The mist whirled in a pattern which made one dizzy to watch. Brixia, now that Marbon’s gaze no longer held and commanded hers, closed her eyes lest she lose her senses watching the vortex of the fog. Then the fragrance of the flower wafted upward to clear her head.

What he might have called on she could not guess. But—something answered. It was here—with her—for, though she did not open her eyes to look, she was sure this new presence loomed near her—reached out—

Box and flower—she did not know why the two came together in her mind and that combination seemed right—needful. Flower and box—Do not look! What is here had come to cloud her thoughts, lessen what she might do to defend herself. There was a tugging which she must not yield to.

Once more the cry arose from her, the appeal to the only thing which seemed to promise safety in this shifting and alien world.

“Green mother, what must I do? This is no magic of my own—in these ways am I lost!”

Did she in truth cry that aloud, or was it only thought so intense that it seemed open speech, a plea made perhaps fruitlessly to a power she could not understand? Who were the gods—those great sources of power who were reputed to use men and women as tools and weapons? And did those so used have any defenses at all? Was this struggle now centering on her as battle between one alien power and another?

Open!

An order—delivered by whom—or what? The thing Marbon had summoned? If so she was indeed in danger. Brixia still kept her eyes tightly closed, tried to do the same for her mind. As the mist had made a prisoner of Dwed, so did the will she sensed strive to enmesh her—not in body but in mind.

“By what I hold,” Brixia cried aloud, “let me stand fast!”

Box and flower—

Her hands moved, bringing together the two objects she held. She could not be sure whether she acted by the commands of the Light, or the Dark. But it was done. And at the same moment she opened her eyes.

There was—

She was not in the mist curtained room of the pillar, rather she stood before the high seat in the feast hall of a keep. There were torches blazing high in the rings fastened to the stone of the walls. A cloth woven of many colors, each hue fading or deepening into the next, lay down the center of the board. And on that cloth were drinking horns of gleaming crystal, of the righ green of malachite, the warm red-brown of camelian, such a display as only the greatest of the dale lords might hope to equal.

Before each place was a platter of silver. And there were many dishes and bowls set out—some bearing patterned edges, or set with the wink of gems.

At first Brixia thought that she stood in a deserted hall and then she discovered that there was indeed a company there, but those who sat to feast were but the faintest of shadows, mere wisps so tenuous that she could not be sure which was man and which woman. It was as if that which was inert could be clearly seen, but life to her eyes was that of those shades which some dalespeople said clung to old, ill-omened places and were inimical to the living out of jealousy and despair at their own unhappy state.

Brixia cried out. She swayed, fought to move from where she stood directly before the high seat where he or she who ruled this shadow company might mark her presence in a moment. But she could not flee, no, she was fast held to face what might come.

A black flash—if light could be dark instead of white, slashed between her and the high seat, as a sword might swing to set a barrier of moving steel. Crooked and controlled, a will which was not wholly evil, yet carried with it the stigmata of the dark, was like a blow as it strove to seize upon her. It flailed at her like a harshly laid on lash. And now it seemed that the ghost shape in the high seat did indeed turn upon her visible eyes of red flame.

The shadow deepened even as Marbon’s features had appeared to move and change, grew to be more substance. It seemed to the girl that what crouched now in that high backed chair was no noble lord such as might rule this hall. Rather that which leered at her with those flame eyes, which might have been wrought from the coals of hell itself, was an outlaw, foul, the very worst of the brutes she had in the past fled, or hidden from, knowing well what would happen to her were she to fall into their hands.

Gone!

Crouched on the high seat now was a toad thing from the Waste—obscenely bloated, its toothed jaws agape, its clawed paws outstretched. A giant among its kind, fully as large and menacing as the outlaw shape it had replaced. It gabbled in distorted speech:

“Bane—the Bane!”

Box and flower—

Brixia came aware that she was pressing both of these with bruising force against her breast. Box and flower—

The toad thing winked out. Now it was the bird-woman. Her cruel bill clicked, she held high her arm wings, the talons crooked, and it would seem she was on the very point of hurling herself into the air, launching an attack on Brixia.

Illusions? The girl could not be sure. For as each appeared it was as solid, seemingly as substantial as the seat in which it sat or squatted. Box and flower—

Now—now it was Dwed! Still enwrapped in the mist he lay limply rather than sat in the high seat. All was hidden save a portion of his face. He raised his head weakly, looked at her with eyes which were dulled with horror and yet held in them a desperate plea:

“Bane—” The single word was a tortured whisper which echoed hollowly all through that hall.

Then—he was gone. In his place Uta—Uta firmly visible but in the grip of a monster shadow thing, twisting, fighting vainly to free herself ever as the misshapen paws netted tight about her furred throat to squeeze all life from her.

“Bane!” the cat squawked.

As had the others Uta vanished. For a long moment the high seat seemed empty. Then—no more shadow—here was a man as visible and as real as Marbon had been when he fronted her in the bubble room.

He wore mail, not the silken robe of a feaster, and a helmet overshadowed his face.

“Marbon!” Brixia near spoke that name aloud and then she saw that this was not the stricken Lord of Eggarsdale, though there was surely some close kin line linking them one to the other. But on this man’s face a harsh and arrogant pride had set an unbreakable seal. And there was a twist about his lips as if he bit upon something sour and unpalatable which poisoned any pleasure of this feasting.

Like their lord the others ranged there became the clearer. Nor were they all, Brixia realized with a shiver, of the human kind. There was a lady robed in the green of new spring leaves who sat upon the right hand of the lord. But her flowing hair was as delicately and freshly green as the gown which she wore, and her face, beautiful as it was, was not that of a human woman. On the other seat, to the lord’s left, a cat’s head arose not so far above the level of the table. In color it might have been Uta but Brixia believed, could she see it better, this strange feline would have been half again as large.

There were others—a young man wearing a helm on which the crest was a rearing horse, and whose face had an unhuman cast—not as pronounced as that of the green woman, but unmistakable. There was another woman plainly robed in cloth the color of steel, girdled with metal plates each of which was centered by a milk-white gem. Her hair, as white as those gems, was braided about her head so that it itself formed a crown of presence. And her calm face held strength and assurance. Yet there was about her some of the feeling that she was apart from this company, an onlooker at what might pass here, and yet not a partaker in any action. On her breast rested an intricately fashioned pendant of the same white stones. And Brixia felt that served its owner for as powerful a weapon as any war blade.

At the far end of the table, where the other feasters appeared to have withdrawn a little to give them room (as if they were not entirely welcome), were two others. Brixia, seeing them clearly, caught her breath.

That grotesque and attenuated creature who had been served by birds—This was not quite her double. The half female figure was more rounded, closer to that of a woman, though unclothed save for the feathers. Also the avian creature wore a gemmed belt. While more jewels sparked from a wide collar-like necklace. But that she was of the same breed as the Waste creature there could be no doubt.

Next to her squatted one of the Toads—save there was a closer, near blasphemous link between this monstrosity and—a man? Brixia loathed the thought, yet she could not escape it as her gaze, in spite of all her efforts, were drawn to the creature.

Its eyes glittered with malice and she could guess that, though it appeared to be here in acceptance if not in friendship, it liked its present company no more than the company welcomed it.

It would seem that Brixia’s own presence aroused no interest in the feasters. Not one pair of eyes sought her out in surprise, nor even appeared to rest on her long enough to recognize that she was not truly of them. What purpose had brought her here she did not understand. Then—

She no longer stood helplessly fixed before the high seat. After a moment of startlement she realized that she now, by some feat of power (or the will of that which had sent her here) appeared to hang in the air above the feasters, in a manner which enlarged her view of the whole hall and those in it.

The high chair of the lord faced, as was still the dales custom in any keep of pretension, the great double outer door of the hall itself. Now, with a crash which brought instant silence to the mumurs which Brixia had been able to hear only as a faint sighing of sound, that portal not only burst open, but the two leaves were sent flying back to slam against the wall. It was as if a thunder clap had been wrested out of some summer storm to resound through the hall.

Within the cavernous opening of the door (for that portal might well have admitted without difficulty near a full company of fighting men in marching order) there stood a single man. As the lord of the hall he was not dressed for feasting, but also wore mail and a helmet. While thrown back on his shoulders was a cloak lying in folds as if he had tossed it so impatiently to free his arms for some meeting of swords.

Yet the blade which he wore was still in its scabbard and he held no weapon. No weapon save the hate which was naked in his face. And Brixia who had near called “Marbon” upon her first sighting of the hall lord, was now almost convinced that she would make no mistake in giving that name in truth to this newcomer.

He did not advance at once into the hall but waited, as if he must have some invitaton, or at least recognition, from the man in the high seat. While he so stood quietly, surveying the company at large, there was an ingathering of followers behind him.

It was if he were a man standing amid a company of children. For these who stepped forward to flank him, massed in place at his back, were of the size to make him seem a giant. Yet they had the seeming, not of the children whose size they aped, rather of being well matured and perhaps even of some unusual age.

They did not have the stocky bodies of dwarves, but were slender and well shaped. Only their small hands, their finely featured faces, were uncovered. For the rest they wore a mail which had the pearling of the interior of a shell, made in small plates which overlapped. While their helmets were unmistakably either giant shells, or else faithfully fashioned in that pattern.

“Greeting, kinsman—”

It was the lord of the hall who broke the uneasy silence that had fallen upon the echoing of the door crash. He was smiling a little, but it was an unpleasant smile with a gloating in the curve of his lips.

The man at the door met him eye to eye. He wore no smile, rather there was that in faint lines about his nostrils and his lips which said that only with great effort did he hold his emotions under tight rein. Nor did he come any farther into the hall.

“You did not signify that you intended to honor us with your presence,” continued the lord. “But there is always room for a kinsman in Kathal—”

“Such room as is in An-Yak?” for the first time the newcomer spoke. His voice was low but Brixia had an odd sense that she could feel within herself the strain he was under to keep his rage in bonds.

“A strange question, kinsman. What may you mean by it? Have you and your water people then some trouble lying upon you?”

The man at the door laughed. “A proper question, Eldor! Trouble you ask? And why must you ask that? Surely with your eyes and ears, your readers of the wind, and listeners to the grass, the birds, all else able to bear rumor or report the truth, you already know what has happened.”

The lord shook his head. “You credit me with many powers, Lord Zarsthor. Had I but a fraction of such I need question no man—”

“Then why do so?” snapped Zarsthor. “Trouble—yes, we know trouble. It is the kind which comes from ill wishing, from the meddling with forces which darken a man to touch upon. I have not such great reach as you can muster, Eldor, still have I heard of certain Callings, of bargains, and trysts, and stirrings in strange place. They speak to me of a Bane—”

Another silence fell as he said that last word—such a silence as was more potent than a battle cry shouted aloud. There was not even a stir among the company. They might have been frozen, each one, into instant and lasting immobility.

It was the woman of the white gems who broke that silence.

“You speak in anger, Lord Zarsthor—a hasty speech cannot be recalled for even one word.”

For the first time his eyes flickered away from Eldor, touched upon the woman, and were instantly back upon the lord, as if he needed to keep him ever in sight for a very necessary reason of his own. He spoke respectfully but he did not look at her again as he so answered:

“Your grace, I am angry, yes. But a man can be angered by truth and so armored against injustice, and creeping evil. My friends have also certain powers. There has been a Bane laid upon me, upon An-Yak—I am willing to swear this on oath at your very altar, under the fullness of your moon!”

Now the woman turned her head and looked directly at Eldor.

“It has been said that there is a Bane raised against a lord and his land. To this there must be an answer—”

Elder’s smile grew wider. “Do not trouble yourself, your grace. Is it not true that what lies between kinsman and kinsman are private things, resting alone on them?”

Now it was the youth wearing the horse-topped helm who broke in. Under the shadow of his elaborate helmet his dark brows drew close in a deep frown.

“Between kin and kin no one but a sworn liegeman may raise his voice, such is in truth the custom, Lord Eldor. But a Bane is not such a light thing as to be used without due consideration. I have been asking myself since we gathered here why certain ones have been honored among us for the first time.” He nodded and that inclination of his head clearly indicated both the toad creature and the avian woman at the other end of the table.

Now there was a low murmur, which seemed to Brixia to be mainly one of assent, spreading from one to the next among the other guests. Yet neither the bird-woman nor the Toad—if their features could indeed register any real emotion—seemed to show either surprise or irritation at being so singled out.

The green haired lady’s voice, as light and delicate as a breeze rustling among river reeds, followed fast upon that spreading murmur:

“Lord Eldor, unmeet as it is for guests to make such comments, yet so is this land now arrayed, one power fronting against the next, that it might be wise for you to forget the lack of proper courtesy and answer—”