The Sword of Rhiannon

XII. The Cursed One

The darkness lifted slowly. Carse was conscious first of sounds—the suck and sigh of water close at hand, the muffled roaring of surf beyond a wall of rock. Otherwise it was still and heavy.

Light came next, a suffused soft glow. When he opened his eyes he saw high above him a rift of stars and below that was arching rock, crusted with crystalline deposits that gave back a gentle gleaming.

He was in a sea cave, a grotto floored with a pool of milky flame. As his sight cleared he saw that there was a ledge on the opposite side of the pool, with steps leading down from above. The Sea Kings stood there with shackled Ywain and Boghaz and the chief men of the Swimmers and the Sky Folk. All watched him and none spoke.

Carse found that he was bound upright to a thin spire of rock, quite alone.

Emer stood before him, waist deep in the pool. The black pearl gleamed between her breasts, and the bright water ran like a spilling of diamonds from her hair. In her hands she held a great rough jewel, dull gray in color and cloudy as though it slept.

When she saw that his eyes were open she said clearly, “Come, oh my masters! It is time.”

A regretful sigh murmured through the grotto. The surface of the pool was disturbed with a trembling of phosphorescence and the waters parted smoothly as three shapes swam slowly to Emer’s side. They were the heads of three Swimmers, white with age.

Their eyes were the most awful things that Carse had ever seen. For they were young with an alien sort of youth that was not of the body and in them was a wisdom and a strength that frightened him.

He strained against his bonds, still half dazed from Ironbeard’s blow, and he heard above him a rustling as of great birds roused from slumber.

Looking up he saw on the shadowy ledges three brooding figures, the old, old eagles of the Sky Folk with tired wings, and in their faces too was the light of wisdom divorced from flesh.

He found his tongue then. He raged and struggled to be free and his voice had a hollow empty sound in the quiet vault and they did not answer and his bonds were tight.

He realized at last that it was no use. He leaned breathless and shaken, against the spire of rock.

A harsh cracked whisper came then from the ledge above. “Little sister—lift up the stone of thought.”

Emer raised the cloudy jewel in her hands.

It was an eery thing to watch. Carse did not understand at first. Then he saw that as the eyes of Emer and the Wise Ones grew dim and veiled the cloudy gray of the Jewel cleared and brightened.

It seemed that all of the power of their minds was pouring into the focal point of the crystal, blending through it into one strong beam. And he felt the pressure of those gathered minds upon his own mind!

Carse sensed dimly what they were doing. The thoughts of the conscious mind were a tiny electric pulsation through the neurones. That electric pulse could be dampened, neutralized, by a stronger counter-impulse such as they were focusing on him through that electro-sensitive crystal.

They themselves could not know the basic science behind their attack upon his mind! These Halflings, strong in extra-sensory powers, had perhaps long ago discovered that the crystals could focus their minds together and had used the discovery without ever knowing its scientific basis.

“But I can hold them off,” Carse whispered thickly to himself. “I can hold them all off!”

It enraged him, that calm impersonal beating down of his mind. He fought it with all the force within him but it was not enough.

And then, as before when he had faced the singing stars of the Dhuvian, some force in him that did not seem his own came to aid him.

It built a barrier against the Wise Ones and held it, held it until Carse moaned in agony. Sweat ran down his face and his body writhed and he knew dimly that he was going to die, that he couldn’t stand any more.

His mind was like a closed room that is suddenly burst open by contending winds that turn over the piled-up memories and shake the dusty dreams and reveal everything, even in the darkest corners.

All except one. One place where the shadow was solid and impenetrable, and would not be dispersed.

The jewel blazed between Emer’s hands. And there was a stillness like the silence in the spaces between the stars.

Emer’s voice rang clear across it.

“Rhiannon, speak!”

The dark shadow that Carse felt laired in his mind quivered, stirred but gave no other sign. He felt that it waited and watched.

The silence pulsed. Across the pool, the watchers on the ledge moved uneasily.

Boghaz’ voice came querulously. “It is madness! How can this barbarian be the Cursed One of long ago?”

But Emer paid no heed and the jewel in her hand blazed higher and higher.

“The Wise Ones have strength, Rhiannon! They can break this man’s mind. They will break it unless you speak!”

And savagely triumphant now, “What will you do then? Creep into another man’s brain and body? You cannot, Rhiannon! For you would have done so ere now if you could!”

Across the pool Ironbeard said hoarsely, “I do not like this!”

But Emer went mercilessly on and now her voice seemed the only thing in Carse’s universe—relentless, terrible.

“The man’s mind is cracking, Rhiannon. A minute-more—a minute more and your only instrument becomes a helpless idiot. Speak now, if you would save him!”

Her voice rang and echoed from the vaulting rock of the cavern and the jewel in her hands was a living flame of force.

Carse felt the agony that convulsed that crouching shadow in his mind—agony of doubt, of fear—

And then suddenly that dark shadow seemed to explode through all Carse’s brain and body, to possess him utterly in every atom. And he heard his own voice, alien in tone and timbre, shouting, “Let the man’s mind live! I will speak!”

The thunderous echoes of that terrible cry died slowly and in the pregnant hush that followed Emer gave back one step and then another, as though her very flesh recoiled.

The jewel in her hands dimmed suddenly. Fiery ripples broke and fled as the Swimmers shrank away and the wings of the Sky Folk clashed against the rock. In the eyes of all of them was the light of realization and of fear.

From the rigid figures that watched across the water, from Rold and the Sea Kings, came a shivering sign that was a name.

“Rhiannon! The Cursed One!”

It came to Carse that even Emer, who had dared to force into the open the hidden thing she had sensed in his mind, was afraid of the thing now that she had evoked it.

And he, Matthew Carse, was afraid. He had known fear before. But even the terror he had felt when he faced the Dhuvian was as nothing to this blind shuddering agony.

Dreams, illusions, the figments of an obsessed mind—he had tried to believe that that was what these hints of strangeness were. But not now. Not now! He knew the truth and it was a terrible thing to know.

“It proves nothing!” Boghaz was wailing insistently. “You have hypnotized him, made him admit the impossible.”

“It is Rhiannon,” whispered one of the Swimmers. She raised her white-furred shoulders from the water, her ancient hands lifted. “It is Rhiannon in the stranger’s body.”

And then, in a chilling cry, “Kill the man before the Cursed One uses him to destroy us all!”

A hellish clamor broke instantly from the echoing walls as an ancient dread screamed from human and Halfling throats.

“Kill him! Kill!”

Carse, helpless himself but one in feeling with the dark thing within him, felt that dark one’s wild anxiety. He heard the ringing voice that was not his own shouting out above the clamor.

“Wait! You are afraid because I am Rhiannon! But I have not come back to harm you!”

“Why have you come back then?” whispered Emer.

She was looking into Carse’s face. And by her dilated eyes Carse knew that his face must be strange and awful to look upon.

Through Carse’s lips, Rhiannon answered, “I have come to redeem my sin—I swear it!”

Emer’s white, shaken face flashed burning hate. “Oh, father of lies! Rhiannon, who brought evil on our world by giving the Serpent power, who was condemned and punished for his crime—Rhiannon, the Cursed One, turned saint!”

She laughed, a bitter laughter born of hate and fear, that was picked up by the Swimmers and the Sky Folk.

“For your own sake you must believe me!” raged the voice of Rhiannon. “Will you not even listen?”

Carse felt the passion of the dark being who had used him in this unholy fashion. He was one with that alien heart that was violent and bitter and yet lonely—lonely as no other could understand the word.

“Listen to Rhiannon?” cried Emer. “Did the Quiru listen long ago? They judged you for your sin!”

“Will you deny me the chance to redeem myself?” The Cursed One’s tone was almost pleading. “Can you not understand that this man Carse is my only chance to undo what I did?”

His voice rushed on, urgent, eager. “For an age, I lay fixed and frozen in an imprisonment that not even the pride of Rhiannon could withstand. I realized my sin. I wished to undo it but could not.

“Then into my tomb and prison from outside came this man Carse. I fitted the immaterial electric web of my mind into his brain. I could not dominate him, for his brain was alien and different. But I could influence him a little and I thought that I could act through him.

“For his body was not bound in that place. In him my mind at least could leave it. And in him I left it, not daring to let even him know that I was within his brain.

“I thought that through him I might find a way to crush the Serpent whom I raised from the dust to my sorrow long ago.”

Rold’s shaking voice cut across the passionate pleading that came from Carse’s lips. There was a wild look on the Khond’s face. “Emer, let the Cursed One speak no longer! Lift the spell of your minds from the man!”

“Lift the spell!” echoed Ironbeard hoarsely.

“Yes,” whispered Emer. “Yes.”

Once again the jewel was raised and now the Wise Ones gathered all their strength, spurred by the terror that was on them. The electro-sensitive crystal blazed and it seemed to Carse like bale-fire searing his mind. For Rhiannon fought against it, fought with the desperation of madness.

“You must listen! You must believe!”

“No!” said Emer. “Be silent! Release the man or he will die!”

One last wild protest, broken short by the iron purpose of the Wise Ones. A moment of hesitation—a stab of pain too deep for human understanding—and then the barrier was gone.

The alien presence, the unholy sharing of the flesh, were gone and the mind of Matthew Carse closed over the shadow and hid it. The voice of Rhiannon was stilled.

Like a dead man Carse sagged against his bonds. The light went out of the crystal. Emer let her hands fall. Her head bent forward so that her bright hair veiled her face and the Wise Ones covered their faces also and remained motionless. The Sea Kings, Ywain, even Boghaz, were held speechless, like men who have narrowly escaped destruction and only realized later how close death has come.

Carse moaned once. For a long time that and his harsh gasping breath were the only sounds.

Then Emer said, “The man must die.”

There was nothing in her now but weariness and a grim truth. Carse heard dimly Rold’s heavy answer.

“Aye. There is no other way.”

Boghaz would have spoken but they silenced him.

Carse said thickly, “It isn’t true. Such things can’t be.”

Emer raised her head and looked at him. Her attitude had changed. She seemed to have no fear of Carse himself only pity for him.

“Yet you know that it is true.”

Carse was silent. He knew.

“You have done no wrong, stranger,” she said. “In your mind I saw many things that are strange to me, much that I cannot understand, but there was no evil there. Yet Rhiannon lives in you and we dare not let him live.”

“But he can’t control me!” Carse made an effort to stand, lifting his head so that he should be heard, for his voice was drained of strength like his body.

“You heard him admit that himself. He cannot dominate me. My will is my own.”

Ywain said slowly, “What of S’San, and the sword? It was not the mind of Carse the barbarian that controlled you then.”

“He cannot master you,” said Emer, “except when the barriers of your own mind weaken under stress. Great fear or pain or weariness—perhaps even the unconsciousness of sleep or wine—might give the Cursed One his chance and then it would be too late.”

Rold said, “We dare not take the risk.”

“But I can give you the secret of Rhiannon’s Tomb!” cried Carse.

He saw that thought begin to work in their minds and he went on, the ghastly unfairness of the whole thing acting as a spur.

“Do you call this justice, you men of Khondor who cry out against the Sarks? Will you condemn me when you know I’m innocent? Are you such cowards that you’ll doom your people to live forever under the dragon’s claws because of a shadow out of the past?

“Let me lead you to the Tomb. Let me give you victory. That will prove I have no part with Rhiannon!”

Boghaz’ mouth fell open in horror. “No, Carse, no! Don’t give it to them!”

Rold shouted, “Silence!”

Ironbeard laughed grimly. “Let the Cursed One lay his hands upon his weapons? That would be madness indeed!”

“Very well,” said Carse. “Let Rold go. I’ll map the way for him. Keep me here. Guard me. That should be safe enough. You can kill me swiftly if Rhiannon takes control of me.”

He caught them with that. The only thing greater than their hate and dread of the Cursed One was their burning desire for the legendary weapons of power that might in time mean victory and freedom for Khondor.

They pondered, doubtful, hesitating. But he knew their decision even before Rold turned and said, “We accept, Carse. It would be safer to slay you out of hand but—we need those weapons.”

Carse felt the cold presence of imminent death withdraw a little. He warned, “It won’t be easy. The Tomb is near Jekkara.”

Ironbeard asked, “What of Ywain?”

“Death and at once!” said Thorn of Tarak harshly.

Ywain stood silent, looking at them all with cool, careless unconcern.

But Emer interposed. “Rold goes into danger. Until he returns safely let Ywain be kept in case we need a hostage for him.”

It was only now that Carse saw Boghaz in the shadows, shaking his head in misery, tears running down his fat cheeks.

“He gives them a secret worth a kingdom!” wailed Boghaz. “I have been robbed!”