The Sword of Rhiannon

VIII. The Thing in the Dark

Ywain’s level gaze fastened on Carse. “He knows the secret of the Tomb, Scyld. He must know it if he had the sword.”

She paused and when she spoke again her words were almost inaudible, like the voicing of an inner thought.

“A dangerous secret. So dangerous that I almost wish…”

She broke off short, as though she had already said too much. Did she glance quickly at the inner door?

In her old imperious tone she said to Carse, “One more chance, slave. Where is the Tomb of Rhiannon?”

Carse shook his head. “I know nothing,” he said and gripped Boghaz’ shoulder to steady himself. Little crimson droplets had trickled down to dye the rug under his feet. Ywain’s face seemed far away.

Scyld said hoarsely, “Give him to me, Highness.”

“No. He’s too far gone for your methods now. I don’t want him killed yet. I must—take thought to this.”

She frowned, looking from Carse to Boghaz and back again.

“They object to rowing, I believe. Very well. Take the third man off their oar. Let these two work it without help all night. And tell Callus to lay the lash on the fat one twice in every glass, five strokes.”

Boghaz wailed. “Highness, I implore you! I would tell if I could but I know nothing. I swear it!”

She shrugged. “Perhaps not. In that case you will wish to persuade your comrade to talk.”

She turned again to Scyld. “Tell Callus also to douse the tall one with sea water, as often as he needs it.” Her white teeth glinted. “It has a healing property.”

Scyld laughed.

Ywain motioned him to go. “See that they’re kept at it but on no account is either one to die. When they’re ready to talk bring them to me.”

Scyld saluted and marched his prisoners back again to the rowers’ pit. Jaxart was taken off the oar and the endless nightmare of the dark hours continued for Carse.

Boghaz was crushed and trembling. He screamed mightily as he took his five strokes and then moaned in Carse’s ear, “I wish I’d never seen your bloody sword! She’ll take us to Caer Dhu—and the gods have mercy on us.”

Carse bared his teeth in what might have been a grin. “You talked differently in Jekkara.”

“I was a free man then and the Dhuvians were far away.”

Carse felt some deep and buried nerve contract at the mention of that name. He said in an odd voice, “Boghaz, what was that smell in the cabin?”

“Smell? I noticed none.”

“Strange,” Carse thought, “when it drove me nearly mad. Or perhaps I’m mad already.”

“Jaxart was right, Boghaz. There is someone hidden there, in the inner cabin.”

With some irritation Boghaz said, “Ywain’s wantoning is nothing to me.”

They labored in silence for a while. Then Carse asked abruptly, “Who are the Dhuvians?”

Boghaz stared at him. “Where do you really come from, man?”

“As I told you—from far beyond Shun.”

“It must have been from far indeed if you haven’t heard of Caer Dhu and the Serpent!”

Then Boghaz shrugged his fat shoulders as he labored. “You’re playing some deep game of your own, I suppose. All this pretended ignorance—but I don’t mind playing that game with you.”

He went on, “You know at least that since long ago there have been human peoples on our world and also the not-quite-human peoples, the Halflings. Of the humans the great Quiru, who are gone, were the greatest. They had so much science and wisdom that they’re still revered as superhuman.

“But there were also the Halflings—the races who are manlike but not descended of the same blood. The Swimmers, who sprang from the sea-creatures, and the Sky Folk, who came from the winged things—and the Dhuvians, who are from the serpent.”

A cold breath swept through Carse. Why was it that all this which he heard for the first time seemed so familiar to him?

Certainly he had never heard before this story of ancient Martian evolution, of intrinsically alien stocks evolving into superficially similar pseudo human peoples. He had not heard it before—or had he?

“Crafty and wise as the snake that fathered them were the Dhuvians always,” Boghaz was continuing. “So crafty that they prevailed on Rhiannon of the Quiru to teach them some of his science.

“Some but not all! Yet what they learned was enough that they could make their black city of Caer Dhu impregnable and could occasionally intervene with their scientific weapons so as to make their Sark allies the dominant human nation.”

“And that was Rhiannon’s sin?” Carse said.

“Aye, that was the Cursed One’s sin for in his pride he had defied the other Quiru, who counseled him not to teach the Dhuvians such powers. For that sin the other Quiru condemned Rhiannon and entombed him in a hidden place before they left our world. At least so says the legend.”

“But the Dhuvians themselves are no mere legend?”

“They are not, damn them,” Boghaz muttered. “They are the reason all free men hate the Sarks, who hold evil alliance with the Serpent.”

They were interrupted by the broken-winged slave, Lorn. He had been sent to dip up a bucket of sea water and now appeared with it.

The winged man spoke and even now his voice had music in it. “This will be painful, stranger. Bear it if you can—it will help you.” He raised the bucket. Glowing water spilled out, covering Carse’s body with a bright sheath.

Carse knew why Ywain had smiled. Whatever chemical gave the sea its phosphorescence might be healing but the curse was worse than the wounds. The corrosive agony seemed to eat the flesh from his bones.

The night wore on and after a while Carse felt the pain grow less. His weals no longer bled and the water began to refresh him. To his own surprise he saw the second dawn break over the White Sea.

Soon after sunrise a cry came down from the masthead. The Black Banks lay ahead.

Through the oar port Carse saw a welter of broken water that stretched for miles. Reefs and shoals, with here and there black jagged fangs of rock showing through the foam. “They’re not going to try to run that mess?” he exclaimed.

“It’s the shortest route to Sark,” Boghaz said. “As for running the Banks—why do you suppose every Sark galley carries captive Swimmers?”

“I’ve wondered.”

“You’ll soon see.”

Ywain came on deck and Scyld joined her. They did not look down at the two haggard scarecrows sweating at the oar.

Boghaz instantly wailed piteously. “Mercy, Highness!”

Ywain paid no attention. She ordered Scyld, “Slow the beat and send the Swimmers out.”

Naram and Shallah were unshackled and ran forward. Metal harnesses were locked to their bodies. Long wire lines ran from these harnesses to ringbolts in the forecastle deck.

The two Swimmers dived fearlessly into the foaming waters. The wire lines tautened and Carse glimpsed the heads of the two bobbing like corks as they swam smoothly ahead of the galley into the roaring Banks.

“You see?” said Boghaz. “They feel out the channel. They can guide a ship through anything.”

To the slow beat of the drum the black galley forged into the broken water.

Ywain stood, hair flying in the breeze and hauberk shining, by the man at the tiller. She and Scyld peered closely ahead. The rough waters shook along the keel with a hiss and a snarl and once an oar splintered on a rock but they crept on safely.

It was a long slow weary passage. The sun rose toward the zenith. There was an aching tension aboard the galley.

Carse only dimly heard the roar of breakers as he and Boghaz labored at their oar. The fat Valkisian was groaning ceaselessly now. Carse’s arms felt like lead, his brain seemed clamped in steel.

At last the galley found smooth water, shot clear of the Banks. Their dull thunder came now from astern. The Swimmers were hauled back in.

Ywain glanced down into the oar pit for the first time, at the staggering slaves.

“Give them a brief rest,” she rapped. “The wind should rise soon.”

Her eyes swung to Carse and Boghaz. “And, Scyld, I’ll see those two again now.”

Carse watched Scyld cross the deck and come down the ladder. He felt a sick apprehension.

He did not want to go up to that cabin again. He did not want to see again that door with its mocking crack nor smell that sickly evil smell.

But he and Boghaz were again unshackled and herded aft, and there was nothing he could do.

The door swung shut behind them. Scyld, Ywain behind the carved table, the sword of Rhiannon gleaming before her. The tainted air and the low door of the bulkhead, not quite closed—not quite.

Ywain spoke. “You’ve had the first taste of what I can do to you. Do you want the second? Or will you tell me the location of Rhiannon’s Tomb and what you found there?”

Carse answered tonelessly. “I told you before that I don’t know.”

He was not looking at Ywain. That inner door fascinated him, held his gaze. Somewhere, far at the back of his mind, something stirred and woke. A prescience, a hate, a horror that he could not understand.

But he understood well enough that this was the climax, the end. A deep shudder ran through him, an involuntary tightening of nerves.

“What is it that I do not know but can somehow almost remember?”

Ywain leaned forward. “You’re strong. You pride yourself on that. You feel that you can stand physical punishment, perhaps more than I would dare to give you. I think you could. But there are other ways. Quicker, surer ways and even a strong man has no defense against them.”

She followed the line of his gaze to the inner door. “Perhaps,” she said softly, “you can guess what I mean.”

Carse’s face was empty now of all expression. The musky smell was heavy as smoke in his throat. He felt it coil and writhe inside him, filling his lungs, stealing into his blood. Poisonously subtle, cruel, cold with a primal coldness. He swayed on his feet but his fixed stare did not waver.

He said hoarsely, “I can guess.”

“Good. Speak now and that door need not open.”

Carse laughed, a low, harsh sound. His eyes were clouded and strange.

“Why should I speak? You would only destroy me later to keep the secret safe.”

He stepped forward. He knew that he moved. He knew that he spoke though the sound of his own voice was vague in his ears.

But there was a dark confusion in him. The veins of his temples stood out like knotted cords, and the blood throbbed in his brain. Pressure, as of something bursting, breaking its bonds, tearing itself free.

He did not know why he stepped forward, toward that door. He did not know why he cried out in a tone that was not his, “Open then, Child of the Snake!”

Boghaz let out a wailing shriek and crouched down in a corner, hiding his face. Ywain started up, astonished and suddenly pale. The door swung slowly back.

There was nothing behind it but darkness and a shadow. A shadow cloaked and hooded and so crouched in the lightless cabin that it was no more than the ghost of a shadow.

But it was there. And the man Carse, caught fast in the trap of his strange fate, recognized it for what it was.

It was fear, the ancient evil thing that crept among the grasses in the beginning, apart from life but watching it with eyes of cold wisdom, laughing its silent laughter, giving nothing but the bitter death.

It was the Serpent.

The primal ape in Carse wanted to run, to hide away. Every cell of his flesh recoiled, every instinct warned him.

But he did not run and there was an anger in him that grew until it blotted out the fear, blotted out Ywain and the others, everything but the wish to destroy utterly the creature crouching beyond the light.

His own anger—or something greater? Something born of a shame and an agony that he could never know?

A voice spoke to him out of the darkness, soft and sibilant.

“You have willed it. Let it be so.”

There was utter silence in the cabin. Scyld had recoiled. Even Ywain had drawn back to the end of the table. The cowering Boghaz hardly breathed.

The shadow had stirred with a slight, dry rustle. A spot of subdued brilliance had appeared, held by unseen hands—a brilliance that shed no glow around it. It seemed to Carse like a ring of little stars, incredibly distant.

The stars began to move, to circle their hidden orbit, to spin faster and faster until they became a wheel, peculiarly blurred. From them now came a thin high note, a crystal song that was like infinity, without beginning and end.

A song, a call, attuned to his hearing alone? Or was it his hearing? He could not tell. Perhaps he heard it with his flesh instead, with every quivering nerve. The others, Ywain and Scyld and Boghaz, seemed unaffected.

Carse felt a coldness stealing over him. It was as though those tiny singing stars called to him across the universe, charming him out into the deeps of space where the empty cosmos sucked him dry of warmth and life.

His muscles loosened. He felt his sinews melt and flow away on the icy tide. He felt his brain dissolving.

He went slowly to his knees. The little stars sang on and on. He understood them now. They were asking him a question. He knew that when he answered he could sleep. He would not wake again but that did not matter. He was afraid now but if he slept he would forget his fear.

Fear—fear! The old, old racial terror that haunts the soul, the dread that slides in the quiet dark—

In sleep and death he could forget that fear. He need only answer that hypnotic whispered question.

“Where is the Tomb?”

Answer. Speak. But something still chained his tongue. The red flame of anger still flickered in him, fighting the brilliance of the singing stars.

He struggled but the star-song was too strong. He heard his dry lips slowly speaking. “The Tomb, the place of Rhiannon…”

“Rhiannon! Dark Father who taught you power, thou spawn of the serpent’s egg!”

The name rang in him like a battle cry. His rage soared up. The smoky jewel in the hilt of the sword on the table seemed suddenly to call to his hand. He leaped and grasped its hilt.

Ywain sprang forward with a startled cry but was too late.

The great jewel seemed to blaze, to catch up the power of the singing, shining stars and hurl it back.

The crystal song keened and broke. The brilliance faded. He had shattered the strange hypnosis.

Blood flowed again into Carse’s veins. The sword felt alive in his hands. He shouted the name Rhiannon and plunged forward into the dark.

He heard a hissing scream as his long blade went home to the heart of the shadow.