Elak of Atlantis (24 page)

Afraid, yet strangely happy, as men are sometimes happy in their dreams, the prince motioned for his companions to increase their pace.

The forest gave place to a wide clearing, with shattered white stones rearing to the sky. Broken plinths and peristyles gleamed in the moonlight. A temple had once existed here. Now all was overgrown with moss and the slow-creeping lichen.

“Here,” the girl said in a low whisper. “Here.…”

In the center of a ring of fallen pillars they halted. Delphia pointed to a block of marble, on which a metal disk was inset. In a cuplike depression in the metal lay a broken bit of marble.

“The talisman,” Delphia said. “Touch it to the other.”

Silence… and the unearthly tide of hidden life swelling and ebbing all about them. Raynor took the amulet from his belt, stepped forward, fighting down his fear. He bent above the disk—touched marble shard to marble—

As iron to lodestone, the two fragments drew together. They coalesced into one. The jagged line of breakage faded and vanished.

Raynor held the talisman—complete, unbroken!

Now, quite suddenly, the vague murmurings mounted
into a roar—gay, jubilant, triumphant! The metal disk shattered into fragments. Beneath it the prince glimpsed a small carved stone, the twin of the one beneath the temple of Ahmon.

Above the unceasing roar sounded a penetrating shrill piping.

Delphia clutched at Raynor’s arm, pulled him back. Her face was chalk-white.

“The pipes!” She gasped. “Back—quickly! To see Pan is to die!”

Louder the roar mounted, and louder. In its bellow was a deep shout of alien laughter, a thunder of goblin merriment. The chuckle of the shadowed brooks was the crash of cataracts and waterfalls.

The forest stirred to a breath of gusty wind.

“Back!” the girl said urgently. “Back! We have freed Pan!”

Without conscious thought Raynor thrust the talisman into his belt, turned, and, with Delphia and Eblik beside him, fled into the moonlit shadows. Above him branches tossed in a mounting wind. The wild shrieking of the pipes grew louder.

Tide of earth life—rising to a mad paean of triumph!

A clattering of hoofs came from the distance. Bleating calls sounded from afar.

The girl stumbled, almost fell. Raynor gripped at her arm, pulling her upright, fighting the unreasoning terror mounting within him. The Nubian’s grim face was glistening with sweat.

“Pan, Pan is free!”

“Evohe!”

The black mouth of the cavern loomed before them. At its threshold Raynor cast a glance behind him, saw all the great forest swaying and tossing. His breath coming unevenly, he turned, following his companions into the cave.

“Shaitan!” he whispered. “What demon have I loosed on the land?”

Then it was race, sprint, pound up the winding
passage, up an unending flight of stone steps, through a wall that lifted at Delphia’s touch—and into a castle shaking with battle. Raynor stopped short, whipping out his sword, staring at shadows flickering in the distance.

“Cyaxares’ men,” he said. “They’ve entered.”

In the face of flesh-and-blood antagonists the prince was suddenly himself again. Delphia was already running down the corridor, blade out. Raynor and the Nubian followed.

They burst into the great hall. A ring of armed men surrounded a little group who were making their last stand before the hearth. Towering above the others Raynor saw the tangled locks and bristling beard of Kialeh, the Reaver, and beside him his lieutenant Samar. Corpses littered the floor.

“Ho!” roared the Reaver, as he caught sight of the newcomers. “You come in time! In time—to die with us!”

5. CURSED BE THE CITY

Grim laughter touched Raynor’s lips. He drove in, sheathing his sword in a brawny throat, whipped it out, steel singing. Nor were Eblik and Delphia far behind. Her blade and the Nubian’s ax wreaked deadly havoc among Cyaxares’ soldiers, who, not expecting attack from the rear, were confused.

The hall became filled with a milling, yelling throng, from which one soldier, a burly giant, emerged, shouting down the others.

“Cut them down! They’re but three!”

Then all semblance of sanity was lost in a blaze of crimson battle, swinging brands, and huge maces that crashed down, splitting skulls and spattering gray brain-stuff. Delphia kept shoulder to shoulder with Raynor, seemingly heedless of danger, her blade flickering wasplike through the air. And the prince guarded her as best he could, the sword weaving a bright maze
of deadly lightnings as it whirled.

The Reaver swung, and his sword crushed a helm and bit deep into bone. He strained to tug it free—and a soldier thrust up at his throat. Samar deflected the blade with his own weapon, and that cost him his life. In that moment of inattention a driven spear smashed through corselet and jerkin and drank deep of the man’s life-blood.

Silent, he fell.

The Reaver went berserk. Yelling, he sprang over his lieutenant’s corpse and swung. For a few moments he held back his enemies—and then someone flung a shield. Instinctively Kialeh lifted his blade to parry.

The wolves leaped in for the kill.

Roaring, the Reaver went down, blood gushing through his shaggy beard, staining its iron-gray with red. When Raynor had time to look again, Kialeh lay a corpse on his own hearth, his head amid bright jewels that had spilled from the overturned treasure-chest.

The three stood together now, the last of the defenders—Raynor and Eblik and Delphia. The soldiers ringed them, panting for their death, yet hesitating before the menace of cold steel. None wished to be the first to die.

And, as they waited, a little silence fell. The prince heard a sound he remembered.

Dim and far away, a low roaring drifted to his ears. And the eerie shrilling of pipes….

It grew louder. The soldiers heard it now. They glanced at one another askance. There was something about that sound that chilled the blood.

It swelled to a gleeful shouting, filling all the castle. A breeze blew through the hall, tugging with elfin fingers at sweat-moist skin. It rose to a gusty blast.

In its murmur voices whispered.

“Evohe! Evohe!”

They grew louder, mad and unchecked. They exulted.

“Pan, Pan is free!”

“Gods!” a soldier cursed. “What devil’s work is this?” He swung about, sword ready.

The curtains of samite were ripped away by the shrieking wind. Deafeningly the voices exulted:

“Pan is free!”

The piping shrilled out. There came the clatter of ringing
little hoofs. The castle rocked and shuddered.

Some vague, indefinable impulse made Raynor snatch at his belt, gripping the sun-god’s talisman in bronzed fingers. From it grateful warmth seemed to flow into his flesh—and the roaring faded.

He dragged Delphia and the Nubian behind him. “Close to me! Stay close!”

The room was darkening. No—it seemed as though a cloudy veil of mist dropped before the three, guarding them. Raynor lifted the seal of Ahmon.

The fog-veils swirled. Dimly through them Raynor could see the soldiers moving swiftly, frantically, like rats caught in a trap. He tightened one arm about Delphia’s steel-armored waist.

Suddenly the hall was ice-cold. The castle shook as though gripped by Titan hands. The floor swayed beneath the prince’s feet.

The mists darkened. Through rifts he saw half-guessed figures that leaped and bounded… heard elfin hoofs clicking. Horned and shaggy-furred beings that cried jubilantly as they danced to the pipes of Pan….

Faun and dryad and satyr swung in a mad saraband beyond the shrouding mists. Faintly there came the screaming of men, half drowned in the loud shrilling.

“Evohe!” The demoniac roar thundered. “Evohe! All hail, O Pan!”

With a queer certainty Raynor knew that it was time to leave the castle—and swiftly. Already the great stone structure was shaking like a tree in a hurricane. With a word to his companions he stepped forward hesitantly, the talisman held high.

The walls of mist moved with him. Outside
the fog-walls the monstrous figures gamboled. But the soldiers of Cyaxares screamed no more.

Through a castle toppling into ruin the three sped, into the courtyard, across the drawbridge, and down the face of the Rock. Nor did they pause till they were safely in the broad plain of the valley.

“The castle!” Eblik barked, pointing. “See? It falls.”

And it was true. Down it came thundering, while clouds of ruin spurted up. Then there was only a shattered wreck on the summit of the Rock.…

Delphia caught her breath in a little sob. She murmured, “The end of the Reavers for all time. I—I lived in the castle for more than twenty years. And now it’s gone like a puff of dust before the wind.”

The walls of fog had vanished. Raynor returned the talisman to his belt. Eblik, staring up at the Rock, swallowed uneasily.

“Well, what now?” he asked.

“Back along the way we came,” the prince said. “It’s the only way out of this wilderness that I know of.”

The girl nodded. “Yes. Beyond the mountains lie deserts, save toward Sardopolis. But we have no mounts.”

“Then we’ll walk,” Eblik observed, but Raynor caught his arm and pointed.

“There! Horses—probably stampeded from the castle. And—Shaitan! There’s my gray charger. Good!”

So, presently, the three rode toward Sardopolis, conscious of a weird dim throbbing that seemed to pulse in the air all about them.

At dawn they topped a ridge and saw before them the plain. All three reined in their mounts, staring. Beneath them lay the city—but changed!

It was a ruin.

Doom had come to Sardopolis in the night. The mighty towers and battlements had fallen, and huge gaps were opened in the walls. Of the king’s palace nothing was left but a single tower, from which, ironically, the wyvern banner flew. As they watched, that pinnacle, too, swayed and tottered and fell and
the scarlet wyvern drifted down into the dust of Sardopolis.

On fallen towers and peristyles distant figures moved, with odd, ungainly bounding. Quickly Raynor turned his eyes away. But he could not shut his ears to the distant crying of pipes, gay and pagan, yet with a faintly mournful undertone.

“Pan has returned to his first altar,” Delphia said quietly. “We had best not loiter here.”

“By all hell, I agree,” the Nubian grunted, digging his heels into his steed’s flanks.

“Where now, Raynor?”

“Westward, I think, to the Sea of Shadows. There are cities on its shore, and galleys to take us to haven. Unless—” He turned questioning eyes on Delphia.

She laughed, a little bitterly. “I cannot stay here. The land is sunk back into the pit. Pan rules. I go with you.”

The three rode to the west. They skirted, but did not enter, a small grove where a man lay in agony. It was Cyaxares, a figure so dreadfully mangled that only sheer will kept him alive. His face was a bloody mask. The once-rich garments were tattered and filthy. He saw the three riders, and raised his voice in a weak cry which the wind drowned.

Beside the king a slim, youthful figure lounged, leaning idly against an oak-trunk. It was Necho.

“Call louder, Cyaxares,” he said. “With a horse under you, you can reach the Sea of Shadows. And if you succeed in doing that, you will yet live for many years.”

Again the king cried out. The wind took his voice and shredded it to impotent fragments.

Necho laughed softly. “Too late, now. They are gone.”

Cyaxares let his battered head drop, his beard trailing in the dirt. Through shredded lips he muttered, “If I reach the Sea of Shadows… I live.”

“True. But if you do not, you die. And then—” Low laughter shook the other.

Groaning, the king dragged
himself forward. Necho followed.

“A good horse can reach the Sea of Shadows in three days. If you walk swiftly, you may reach it in six. But you best hurry. Why do you not rise, my Cyaxares?”

The king spat out bitter oaths. In agony he pulled himself forward, leaving a trail of blood on the grass… blood that dripped unceasingly from the twin raw stumps just above his ankles.

“The stone that fell upon you was sharp, Cyaxares, was it not?” Necho mocked. “But hurry! You have little time. There are mountains to climb and rivers to cross.…”

So, in the trail of Raynor and Eblik and Delphia, crept the dying king, hearing fainter and ever fainter the triumphant pipes of Pan from Sardopolis. And presently, patient as the silent Necho, a vulture dipped against the blue and took up the pursuit, the beat of its wings distinctly audible in the heavy, stagnant silence.…

And Raynor and Delphia and Eblik rode onward toward the sea.…

Hearken, 0 King, while I tell of high dooms and valorous men in the dim mists of long-past aeons—aye, long and long ago, ere Nineveh and Tyre were born and ruled and crumbled to the dust. In the lusty youth of the world Imperial Gobi, Cradle of Mankind, was a land of beauty and of wonder and of black evil beyond imagination. And of Imperial Gobi, mistress of the Asian Seas, nothing now remains but a broken shard, a scattered stone that once crowned an obelisk—nothing is left but a thin high wailing in the wind, a crying that mourns for lost glories. Hearken again, 0 King, while I tell you of my vision and my dream.…

—The tale of Sakhmet the Damned

1. THE SIGN OF THE MIRROR

For six hours the archer had lain dying in the great oak’s shadow. The attackers had not troubled to strip him of his battered armor—poor stuff compared to their own forged mail, glittering with brilliant gems. They had ridden off with their loot, leaving the wounded archer among the corpses of his companions.
He had lost much blood,
and now, staring into the afternoon dimness of the forest, he knew death was coming swiftly.

Parched lips gaped as the man gasped for breath. Once more he tried to crawl to where a goatskin canteen lay upon the glossy, motionless flank of a fallen war-horse. And again he failed. Sighing, he relaxed, his fevered cheek against the cool earth.