Madwand (Illustrated) (10 page)

Another voice took up the words. Pol watched, fascinated, as the object moved and shifted its appearance. The lumpy base seemed more and more to be the knuckles of three folded fingers, the single upright a forefinger extended, a small, low prominence on its other side the joint of a bent thumb. Of course . . . It had been a hand all along. Why hadn’t he noticed sooner?

The voice moved nearer. The hand was indeed stirring, turning in his direction. The finger began to dip, slowly.

His breathing ceased and a sense of awe came over him as it continued to descend toward him. The narrowing distance between them was filled with power. Unaccountably, his right shoulder and arm began to tingle.

The finger, large enough to crush him, reached—gently, delicately—and brushed very lightly against his right shoulder.

He almost collapsed, not from any weight but from the feelings which invaded him at that moment. He steadied himself as the source of the words came even nearer. The finger was retreating now, moving back toward its upright position.

The tingling continued in his arm and shoulder, to be succeeded first by a dull ache and then by a numbness when it came his turn to speak the words. The cavern returned, however, and the hand became once again a stalactite upon a rough rock.

The words went full circle, they meditated in silence for a spell and Larick then motioned them to follow him through an opening in the wall behind the rock upon which he stood.

Pol moved slowly, awkwardly, puzzled by the dead weight which hung at his right side. He reached across and seized his right biceps with his left hand.

His upper arm felt swollen, immense; it was tight against the cloth of his sleeve.

He ran his hand down his arm. The entire limb seemed suddenly grown oversize. Also, it was uniformly diminished in sensitivity. With great effort, however, he found that he could move it. When he lowered his eyes, he discovered that his hand—still normal in appearance and feeling—hung far lower than usual, in the vicinity of his knee. He felt for the power of his dragonmark, but it, too, seemed to have been numbed. Then he recalled Larick’s words on the matter of transformations this night—that they should be accepted without distress and not be permitted to interfere with the business at hand. Nevertheless, he glanced surreptitiously at the others, to see whether he could detect any malformations. The few he was able to view before entering the tunnel did not exhibit any gross impairments. And no one seemed to notice his own.

They walked. The way was level, straight and sufficiently wide. The illumination persisted. They passed through an empty chamber without halting—where it seemed that a high-pitched musical tone was being constantly sounded, just beyond the bounds of audibility—and they continued until another grotto opened before them.

Here they entered. It was a rounded chamber with a curved roof, almost bubble-like in appearance. Larick spaced them about a rock formation resembling a cauldron, near its center. Again, a chanting commenced and again Pol knew the oceanic feeling, the detachment he had experienced at the other stations, though here it was mixed with something of depression, sadness. His left arm acquired the tingling sensation at this point, and when his turn had come and passed and all was done it resembled the right exactly in its transformation.

This time he accepted the change with less distress, as part of the total experience. The others must be undergoing similar experiences, he decided. He followed them to a well-like depression across the way, discovering as he did that sensation, mobility and control were returning to his arms.

He watched the others. A knotted rope fastened about a nearby rock hung down into the hole. One by one, the candidates took hold and climbed down it, vanishing into the darkness. When his turn came he did likewise, with great ease, pleased with the enormous strength which now resided in his arms and shoulders.

In the yellow-blue cavern to which they descended the now-familiar ritual formation was established and the rite carried out about a large, spherical crystal set upon a pedestal. Before it was concluded, Pol’s left hand felt as if he had dipped it in boiling water. He gave no outward evidence of this, not even looking down upon it, until after this phase, too, was completed and Larick led them out through an opening in the wall to the left.

The hand still throbbed, but the sensation of heat had vanished. When he viewed it, he saw that it had grown massive, purplish, scaly; the nails were thick, dark, triangular, hooked, at the ends of long, powerful-looking digits which reached almost to his ankle. The robe he wore concealed much of the change within its folds, its long, wide sleeves. Still . . . He looked about again. None of the other candidates seemed to have noticed his discomfort. Again, he forced the thought of it away. He trekked after the others along a broad, level tunnel, his gait somewhat disturbed, as if by overbalancing and compensation.

A sword hung from a chain midway between floor and roof at the near end of the next chamber. This, in its turn, became the object of their meditation, swinging and glinting redly as the words circled it. The visions which swam through his mind at this, as at the previous station, barely registered themselves on his consciousness, as the feeling of the power of his new limbs came to occupy his awareness with the burning pang in his right hand—this time a thing of masochistic pleasure to him. He spoke the words in a ringing voice and did not even look down, already knowing what he would see.

When it was over, he turned and joined the line filing out through another opening and into a downward-slanting tunnel, moving now as if within a dream, his actions determined by some a-logical pattern he could feel about him, no longer wondering whether the others’ notions of personal transformation coincided with his own.

The way was steep; sweet odors rose up it. The walls were a living net of pale fire. The floor sparkled, almost moistly. They continued downward for a long while, coming at last to a small chamber into which they were crowded about a simple, unadorned cube of stone. The place was strewn with flowers, accounting for the odor he had detected on the way down. Here he found the smell almost sickly sweet in its intensity. When the words were spoken in these close quarters they hurt his ears. He felt excessively warm and became very conscious of the beating of his heart. A wave of dizziness passed over him, but he knew that even if he fainted there was no place to fall, so closely were they packed together. Later, he believed that he had actually succumbed to unconsciousness briefly, for there was a gap in his memory up until he found himself speaking. It seemed that there had been another vision, one which had partly numbed his senses. He could not recall the details. His heart was beating rapidly now, with an unusually heavy throbbing. He became peripherally aware that the candidates who stood at either hand were removed a greater distance from him than they had been the last time he had been aware of their presence. The aroma of the flowers had diminished sharply, or else he had become accustomed to it.

He lowered his head as he finished speaking and saw that his robe was torn. Then he became aware of the enormous breadth of his shoulders, the barrel-like girth of his chest. No wonder his garment was rent. How could this be an illusion? He glanced at the nearest candidates. Wrapped in their own meditations, none of them seemed to be paying him any heed.

Slowly, he raised his right hand. He reached inside through the torn place, groped about until he located an opening in his own garments which lay beneath. His heavy fingers explored below them, encountering a tough, hard, bumpy surface. He explored further. From navel to neck, it felt as if he were covered with scales. He withdrew his hand and let it fell. When he looked up again, he saw that Larick was staring at him. The man looked away immediately.

When they departed the room, it was as if they followed a continuation of the tunnel which had brought them to that place, still slanting downward, headed in the same direction. He controlled his breathing carefully as they walked, for its sounds came heavy and stertorous when he drew deep breaths.

There came a cooling for which he was grateful, as they continued down the long shaft. The next chamber was much larger than the one they had quitted, its floor of a greenish stone. A heavy oil lamp was suspended by chains from its roof, and its flames waved as the words were spoken.

This time it was his left leg. The moment that the tingling began he knew what was to follow. When it finally came, he almost collapsed. The leg seemed to have grown much longer and heavier than the right one. He was almost completely unbalanced and had to keep that knee bent and the other straight. But, if anything, the dream quality he was experiencing was enhanced by this phase of the ritual progress. As they turned and he lurched his way along a mercifully level tunnel, visions, like objectified free associations, were everywhere. He could not place his hand against the swimming wall for support without seeming to touch some beast-face or a woman’s breast, a flower or the feathers of a bird.

In this frame of mind, he was not even certain what he saw in the next chamber. That it was large and scented, he was aware. The images seemed everywhere dense. Zodiacal beasts moved in procession before him. If he fixed his eyes upon one, it dissolved into an entirely new series of forms. After a time, he gave up. He almost welcomed the tightening and the warmth in his right leg when it came, for his balance was finally restored when that one matched the other.

His mind a chaotic jumble now, he departed with the others, moving surely and swiftly down another long steep way.

They came at last into a very dark chamber where stalactite and stalagmite were joined to form a towering silver pillar about which Larick led and placed them. Pol’s mind cleared momentarily, and he wondered what had actually been happening and for how long the ceremony had been going on. The images were dispersed. There was only the shining pillar here, lovely and bright. With his elongated reach, he felt that he could almost extend his arms and embrace it. The thing seemed to reflect power. He felt some sort of stability returning. He raised his massive hands and stared at them. Where had he seen their like before? He adjusted his vision for the second sight, but they remained unchanged when this occurred.

He let his hands fall as the memory came to him. They were like the hands of those demonic creatures he had seen in his dreams of the land beyond the Gate. What could this mean? Why were they being objectified in this fashion during this ritual of a supposedly beneficial nature? Was this truly the sort of transformation of which Larick had spoken, or was he undergoing something else?

He raised a hand to his face, ran his fingertips across his features. They seemed unchanged, yet—

He was seized by an abdominal cramp which bent him partway forward. Involuntarily, he clutched at his midsection. In that instant, Larick began speaking again, yet another sequence of the words. He felt the pressure of his belt and unfastened it. He heard the sound of cloth tearing beneath his robe. When the pains had passed, he was aware of a widening in the pelvic area, a spreading of his hips. It was difficult when he attempted to stand fully upright. His spine now seemed to possess a curvature which bore him forward so that his hands rested upon the ground. His feet began to ache.

Then it did not matter. The moment of full rationality passed, and he was caught up in another sequence of visions and feelings of power. It seemed that a very long time had passed. His mind drifted through the repetitions and his own part in them. When they moved again, he followed, slouched far forward, oblivious and ignored.

Larick led them to an opening in the floor through which the top of a ladder protruded. He motioned for them to follow after and proceeded to descend it.

Pol waited until all of the others had gone down before beginning his own clumsy descent.

The ladder creaked beneath him and one rung came loose. But he clutched its sides tightly and kept going. It was a long descent, finally taking him directly into the midst of the others, who stood within a circle drawn upon the floor of this chamber. He noted that two of the other candidates had collapsed and that Larick was kneeling, massaging the chest of one of them.

He jumped down the final few feet and waited. The man on whom Larick had been working moaned after a time and sat up. Larick immediately moved to the other—a small, red-haired man, whose teeth seemed tightly locked together—and listened for a heartbeat. Apparently there was none, for he abandoned that one immediately and returned to the other. After several minutes, he helped that other to his feet and checked the red-haired man again. The second form remained still. Larick shook his head and rose, leaving the man where he had fallen. He motioned the others into a formation around himself, then raised both hands.

Pol’s feet began to ache as the power was raised within the circle. The pain grew so severe that he had to tear off his boots seconds later. He held them beneath his arm inside the robe as the ritual progressed. He dimly recalled that this was the final stage of the initiation. Everything would be over soon and he could go somewhere and sleep . . .