Enchanted Pilgrimage

31

Baths had been taken, clothing washed, supper cooked and eaten. A faint stench still, at times, wafted from the direction of the vault, but other than that, everything was peaceful. The horses munched methodically at a pile of ancient hay stacked in one corner of the courtyard. The pigs continued to root here and there, but the chickens had ceased their scratching and had gone to roost.

None of the castle folk had made an appearance.

"I'm getting worried about them," said Cornwall. "Something must have happened to them."

"They're just hiding out," said Sniveley. "They made a deal they know they can't deliver on, and now they're hiding out and waiting for us to leave. They're trying to outwait us."

"You don't think," said Mary, "they can help us with the Hellhounds?"

"I never did think so," said Sniveley.

"The place still is stiff with Hounds," said Gib. "I went up on the battlements just before sunset and they were all around. Out there and waiting."

"What are we going to do?" asked Oliver. "We can't stay here forever."

"Wait and see," said Cornwall. "Something may turn up. At least we'll sleep on it."

The moon came tumbling over the eastern horizon as night settled in. Hal piled more wood on the fire and the flames leaped high. The thing they had taken from the pit prowled restlessly about the courtyard; the rest of them lounged about the fire.

"I wonder what is wrong with Tin Bucket over there," said Hal. "He seems to have something on his mind. He is jittery."

"He's getting oriented," said Gib. "He's been jerked into a new world and he's not sure he likes it."

"It's more than that," said Hal. "He acts worried to me. Do you suppose he knows something we don't?"

"If he does," said Sniveley, "I hope he keeps it to himself. We've got enough to worry about without him adding to it. Here we are, locked up in a moldering old stone heap, with the owners of it hiding in deep dungeons and Hounds knee-deep outside. They know we'll have to come out sometime, and when we do, they'll be there, with their teeth all sharpened up."

Cornwall heaved himself to his feet. "I'm going up on the wall," he said, "and see if anything is going on."

"There are stairs over to the left," Gib told him. "Watch your step. The stones are worn and slippery."

The climb was long and steep, but he finally reached the battlement. The parapet stood three feet high or so, and the stones were crumbling. When he reached out a hand to place it on the wall, a small block of stone came loose and went crashing down into the rnoat.

The ground that stretched outward from the walls was splotched with moonlight and shadow, and if there were Hounds out there, he realized they would be hard to spot. Several times it seemed he detected motion, but he could not be certain.

A chill breeze was blowing from the north and he shivered in it. And there was more than the wind, he told himself, that might cause a man to shiver. Down at the fire he could not admit his concern, but here, atop the wall, he could be honest with himself. They were caught in a trap, he knew, and at the moment there was no way to get out. It would be foolishness, he knew, to try to cut their way through. A sword, an ax, a bow (with two dozen arrows at best) were the only weapons they had. A magic sword, of course, but a very inept swordsman. An expert at the bow, but what could one bow do? A stout man with an ax, but a small man, who would go under in the first determined Hellhound rush.

Somewhere out on the darkened plain a night bird was startled into flight. It went peeping its way across the land, its wings beating desperately in the night. Something was out there to have startled it, Cornwall told himself. More than likely the entire plain was alive with watching Hounds.

The peeping went away, growing fainter and fainter as the bird blundered through the darkness; but as the peeping faded, there was a cricket chirping, a sound so small and soft that Cornwall found himself straining to hear it. As he listened, he felt a strange panic stirring in him, for it seemed to him he had heard the same sound once before. Now the cricket-chirping sound changed into another sound, not as if there were a new sound, but as if the chirping had been modified to a sort of piping. And suddenly he remembered when he had heard the sound before—on that night before they had stumbled on the battlefield.

The quavery piping swelled into a wailing, as if some frightened thing in the outer dark were crying out its heart. The wailing rose and fell and there was in it something that hinted at a certain madness—a wild and terrible music that stopped one's blood to hear.

The Dark Piper, Cornwall told himself, the Dark Piper once again.

Behind him came a tinkling sound as a small bit of stone was dislodged and went bouncing down the inside wall. He swung about and saw a little sphere of softly glowing light rising above the inner wall. He stepped back in sudden fright, his fist going to the sword hilt, and then relaxed as he realized what it was—Tin Bucket making his slow and cautious way up the slippery flight of stairs.

The creature finally gained the battlement. In the light of the risen moon his metallic body glinted, and the luminous sphere inside his head-cage sparkled in a friendly manner. Cornwall saw that Tin Bucket had sprouted arms, although arms was not quite the word. Several ropelike tentacles had grown, or had been extruded, from the holes that pierced his body.

Tin Bucket moved slowly toward him, and he backed away until he came up against the parapet and could go no farther. One of the ropelike arms reached out and draped itself across one of his shoulders with a surprisingly gentle touch. Another swept out in an arc to indicate the plain beyond the wall, then doubled back on itself, the last quarter of it forming into the shape of the letter "Z." The «Z» jerked emphatically and with impatience toward the darkness beyond the castle.

The piping had stopped. It had been replaced by what seemed a terrible silence. The «Z» jerked back and forth, pointed to the plain.

"You're insane," protested Cornwall. "That's the one place we aren't going."

The letter «Z» insisted.

Cornwall shook his head. "Maybe I'm reading you wrong," he said. "You may mean something else."

Another tentacle stiffened with a snap, sternly pointing backward to the stairs that led down from the wall.

"All right, all right," Cornwall told him. "Let's go down and see if we can get this straightened out."

He moved away from the parapet and went carefully down the stairs, Tin Bucket close behind him. Below him the group around the fire, seeing the two of them descending, came swiftly to their feet. Hal strode out from the fire and was waiting when they reached the courtyard.

"What is going on?" he asked. "You having trouble with our friend?"

"I don't think trouble," said Cornwall. "He tried to tell me something. I think he tried to warn us to leave the castle. And the Dark Piper was out there."

"The Dark Piper?"

"Yes, you remember him. The night before we came on the battlefield."

Hal made a shivering motion. "Let's not tell the others. Let's say nothing of the Piper. You are sure you heard him? We didn't hear him here."

"I am sure," said Cornwall. "The sound may not have carried far. But this fellow is insistent that we do something. I gather that he wants us to get going."

"We can't do that," said Hal. "We don't know what is out there. Maybe in the morning…"

Tin Bucket strode heavily forward to plant himself before the gate. A dozen tentacles snapped out of his body and straightened, standing stiffly, pointing at the gate.

"You know," said Hal, "I think he does want us to leave."

"But why?" asked Gib, coming forward and catching what Hal had said.

"Maybe he knows something we don't know," said Hal. "Seems to me, if I remember, I said that just a while ago."

"But there are Hounds out there!" gasped Mary.

"I doubt," said Oliver, "that he would want to do us harm. We hauled him from the pit and he should be grateful."

"How do you know he wanted to be taken from the pit?" asked Sniveley. "We may have done him no favor. He may be sore at us."

"I think, in any case," said Cornwall, "we should get the horses loaded and be set to raise the gate. Be ready to get out of here if anything happens."

"What do you expect to happen?" Sniveley asked.

"How should any of us know?" snapped Hal. "There may nothing happen, but we play this one by ear."

Gib and Oliver already were catching up the horses and bridling them. The others moved rapidly, getting saddles on the animals, hoisting and cinching on the packs.

Nothing happened. The horses, impatient at being hauled from the hay on which they had been feeding, stamped and tossed their heads. Tin Bucket stood quietly by the fire.

"Look at him," said Sniveley, disgusted. "He started all this ruckus and now he disregards us. He stands off by himself. He contemplates the fire. Don't tell me he expects anything to happen. He is a mischief maker, that is all he is."

"It may not be time as yet for anything to happen," Gib said, quietly. "It may not be time to go."

Then, quite suddenly, it was time to go.

The wheel of fire came rushing up from the eastern horizon. It hissed and roared, and when it reached the zenith, its roar changed to a shriek as it sideslipped and turned back, heading for the castle. The brilliance of it blotted out the moon and lighted the courtyard in a fierce glow. The stone walls of the castle reared up with every crack and cranny outlined in deep shadow by the blinding light, as if the castle were a drawing done by a heavy pencil, outlined in stark black and white.

Cornwall and Gib sprang for the wheel that raised the castle gate, Hal running swiftly to help them. The gate ratcheted slowly upward as they strained at the wheel. The circle of fire came plunging down, and the screaming and the brilliance of it seemed to fill the world to bursting. Ahead of it came a rush of blasting heat. It skimmed above the castle, barely missing the topmost turrets, then looped in the sky and started back again. The horses, loose now, were charging back and forth across the courtyard, neighing in terror. One of them stumbled and, thrown off balance, plunged through the fire, scattering smoking brands.

"The gate is high enough," said Cornwall. "Let us catch those horses."

But the horses were not about to be caught. Bunched together, screaming in panic, they were heading for the gate. Cornwall leaped for one of them, grabbing for a bridle strap. He touched it and tried to close his fingers on it, but it slipped through his grasp. The plunging forefoot of a horse caught him in the ribs and sent him spinning and falling. Bellowing in fury and disappointment, he scrambled to his feet. The horses, he saw, were hammering across the drawbridge and out onto the plain. The lashings that bound the packs on one of the saddles loosened, and the packs went flying as the horse bucked and reared to rid himself of them.

Hal was tugging at Cornwall's arm and yelling. "Let's get going. Let's get out of here."

The others were halfway across the drawbridge. Coon led them all, scampering wildly in a sidewheeling fashion, his tail held low against the ground.

"Look at him go," said Hal, disgusted. "That coon always was a coward."

The plain was lighted as brilliantly as if the sun had been in the sky, but the intensity of the glow from the screaming wheel of fire played funny tricks with shadows, turning the landscape into a mad dream-place.

Cornwall found that he was running without ever consciously having decided that he would run, running because the others were running, because there was nothing else to do, because running was the only thing that made any sense at all. Just ahead of him, Tin Bucket was stumping along in a heavy-footed way, and Cornwall was somewhat amused to find himself wondering, in a time like this, how the metal creature managed the running with three legs. Three, he told himself, was a terribly awkward number.

There was no sign of the horses, or of the Hellhounds, either. There would, of course, he told himself, be no Hellhounds here. They had started clearing out, undoubtedly, at the first appearance of the wheel of fire—they probably wouldn't stop running, he thought with a chuckle, for the next three days.

Suddenly, just ahead of him, the others were stumbling and falling, disappearing from his view. They ran into something, he told himself, they ran into a trap. He tried to stop his running, but even as he did, the ground disappeared from beneath his feet and he went plunging into nothingness. But only a few feet of nothingness, landing on his back with a thump that left him gasping for breath.

Sniveley, off a ways, was yelping. "That clumsy Bucket—he fell on top of me!"

"Mark," said Mary, "are you all right?" Her face came into view, bending over him.

He struggled to a sitting position. "I'm all right," he said. "What happened?"

"We fell into a ditch," said Mary.

Hal came along, crawling on his hands and knees. "We'd better hunker down and stay," he said. "We're well hidden here."

"There are a half a dozen wheels up there," said Mary.

"I don't believe," said Hal, "they are after us. They seem to be concentrating on the castle."

"The horses are gone," said Gib from somewhere in the shadow of the ditch, "and our supplies went with them. We're left here naked in the middle of the wilderness."

"They bucked off some of the packs," said Oliver. "We can salvage some supplies."

Sniveley's agonized voice rose in petulance. "Get off me, you hunk of iron. Let me up."

"I guess I better go," said Hal, "and see what's wrong with him."

Cornwall looked around. The walls of the ditch or hole, or whatever it might be, rose five feet or so above the level of its floor, helping to shelter them from the intense light of the spinning wheels of fire.

He crawled to the wall facing the castle and cautiously raised himself so he could peer out. There was, as Mary had said, more wheels now. They were spinning above the castle, which stood out against the landscape in a blaze of light. Their roaring had changed to a deep hum that seemed to shake his body and burrow deep into his head. As he watched, one of the castle's turrets toppled and fell down. The grinding crunch of falling stone could be heard distinctly over the humming of the wheels.

"There are five of them," said Mary. "Have you the least idea what they are?"

He didn't answer her, for how was one to know? Magic, he thought, then forced the answer back, remembering how Jones had scoffed at him for saying magic whenever he faced a situation he could not comprehend. Certainly something not in the memory of man, for in all the ancient writings he had read, there had been no mention of anything like this—although wait a minute, he told himself, wait just a goddamn minute—there had been something written and in a most unlikely place. In the Book of Ezekiel, chapter one. He tried to remember what had been written there and was unable to, although he realized that there was a lot more to it than simply wheels of fire. He should have, he told himself, spent less time with ancient manuscripts and more time with the Bible.

The wheels had spaced themselves in a circle just above the castle and were spinning rapidly, one following the other, closing in and moving down until it seemed there was just one great fiery, spinning circle suspended above the ancient structure. The deep hum rose to an eerie howling as the ring of fire picked up speed, contracting its diameter and steadily settling down to encompass the castle.

Towers and turrets were crumbling, and underneath the howling could be heard the grinding rumble of falling blocks of masonry. Blue lightning lanced out of the wheel of fire, and the sharp crackling of thunder hammered so hard against the ground that the landscape seemed to buck and weave.

Instinctively Cornwall threw up his arms to shield his head but, fascinated by the sight, did not duck his head. Mary was huddling close against him and off somewhere to his right, someone—Sniveley more than likely, he thought—was squealing in terror.

The air was laced with lightning bolts, etched with the brilliance of the flaming wheel, the very earth was bouncing and the noise was so intense it seemed in itself a force that held one in its grasp.

From the center of the circle of fire, a great cloud was rising, and as Cornwall watched, he realized that what he saw was the dust of shattered stone rising through the circle as smoke from a fire rises through a chimney.

Suddenly it was over. The wheel of fire rose swiftly in the air and separated into five smaller wheels of fire that shot quickly upward, swinging about to race to the east. In seconds they disappeared.

As quickly, the world resumed its silence, and all that could be heard were the clicking and crunching sounds of settling masonry, coming from the mound of shattered stone that marked the spot where the Castle of the Chaos Beast had stood.