Wheel of Stars (17 page)

Not that he had been successful. Gwennan had considered him all along as one against whom she had very little chance. But was that truly so? She frowned down at the sleeping Lady Lyle. Even if Tor had summoned the monsters, so far it appeared that those were none too efficient as a weapon. They could generate fear, yes. That had worked with her, as she could not deny. But what else had he been able to do which had raised any real resistance to Lady Lyle's plans? If it was through Tor's meddling intrusions that one of the Lyles had been forced to enter renewal ahead of time, then she had taken what precaution she could against his bid for power. And the foremost weapon was apparently Gwennan herself.

The girl still did not believe she was a fair match for Tor, no. Yet, in his confronting her he had so far shown himself surprisingly inept. Her hand went to the pendant. Was
this
the ultimate protection against him, or was there indeed truth in the Lyle talk of a wheel of the stars and return of certain patterns under which Gwennan herself could flourish and stand for more than she thought?

Questions to which she might never gain any
answers. What she needed was the final solution—or what she believed to be that.
That
must lie in the last coffin of this line, nailed fast within by Tor. That much she believed he had been able to accomplish, perhaps after Lady Lyle had been forced into premature retreat.

Down to that opaque coffin Gwennan went, still fingering the pendant. Exactly what she had seen in the vision lay there. Though she did not touch it (having a healthy desire to learn more before she meddled) she leaned close to examine it. The knife or dagger looked (she could see well for each of the coffins carried a glow of light about their shells) as if it had been so affixed to the lid as to now be a part of that—not just to be picked up or pried loose.

Pried? Gwennan studied the blade carefully. Was there or was there not a slight indentation between the point of pseudo-knife and the surface of which it looked a part—a notch into which a knife point or something of like nature could be worked to use as a lever? Only she had nothing of the sort. To go back up into the house in search of such—no, the feeling of time's pressure was far too acute. She must do what she came to do and as quickly as possible—or there would be no reason for any of it—Tor would win!

Pry—the idea haunted her. At last she tried the only way she could imagine, bringing up the pendant to set its two moon horns against the surface of the coffin. Instantly a chill as intense as a freezing bolt of ice shot up her arm. The girl almost dropped her hold on the metal disc. Her fingers were already numbing, in another moment
or so she would lose all feeling in them. Quick—!

She joined her second hand to the first. The same intense cold attacked those fingers, but not before she had fitted the curve of the moon into that crack (and there was a crack there!) between the point of the dagger and the lid. With all the strength Gwennan could summon, even as the cold flowed up from her fingers, through wrists, into her forearms, she dragged the pendant towards her, seeking to use it so to break that bonding.

Not only were her numbing hands locked into action, but also she brought her mind and will to concentrate on what she would do. She was aware of a similar numbing within her head, a seeking to dampen, to defeat. Tor must be fighting, even though he lay miles away and perhaps unconscious—a part of him was tied to this struggle.

Gwennan could not hold much longer. She had no feeling in her fingers, soon those would lose their hold on the pendant. If she was so defeated, the girl believed, there would come no second chance. So she pulled and willed—

There followed a burst of sound. Perhaps she also screamed—for with that noise the pain in her hands and her head became near intolerable. Only that knife which had been welded to the coffin broke free, flew off the lid, to shatter on the floor. Gwennan staggered back, away from that line of sleepers in the boxes, until her shoulders met the wall of the chamber, supporting her so to keep her feet.

As she had seen in her first vision so the same action followed. The opaque coating on the surface of the coffin developed long cracks, shards fell away, to display the clear crystal below. For a moment or so that remained inwardly clouded still.

The cover arose to fall back in the opposite direction from where she stood. Now—yes, there was the hand appearing out of the depth, groping for a hold on the edge. Then fingers closed upon the other side. So aided and steadied the occupant drew himself up.

Gwennan gave a cry of sorrow or defeat. This was—Tor!

He did not turn his head in her direction, his eyelids lifted very slowly as he drew in deep breaths just as might one who needed to fill his lungs to their utmost capacity over and over again. Then, moving slowly and carefully he got to his feet, his slightly bronzed body (as if he had lain in a place of warm sun) was as perfect as that of any statue she had ever seen. He turned—

Their eyes met. His widened for only a fraction. It might so have taken no longer than a single breath for him to learn and understand all which had happened—to recognize her and be aware of her part in all this.

“Well done—” he said and his words echoed.

The girl slid along the wall away from him. So it had not been Lady Lyle's game which she had played after all—but Tor's. He had brought her here through some trickery to free him! Though—she was sickly bewildered—she
had
seen him carried away. When, an hour, two hours ago? He

had been unconscious—Then how could he awaken in the guardian's own place? Hallucination—or was she caught in another of those visions meant to deceive and bewilder her? They had played with her, the two of them! She knew dull anger—only strength to fight had gone out of her.

“Tor—” She repeated his name in sullen resentment of her own folly.

“Tor—?” He shook his head. “Not the half-blood—not yet—”

She had no idea of his meaning. What was he going to do with her now, since she was undoubtedly of no more use to him? Would he call in his otherworld things and let them make an end?

“You are afraid—you are—” He shook his head before he smiled and held out his hand to her. “Kinswoman—such fears are unworthy in you.”

“I don't know what you are talking about,” Gwennan burst forth, her despair and anger giving her strength to flare up for perhaps the last time. “You are Tor Lyle. But I do not understand what happened—you were injured in the fire—and now you are here. I—I turned you loose—I thought I was doing as I should—”

He nodded, took a step or two towards her. She pushed farther away. Then her will broke and she turned and ran for the stairway, stumbling, pulling herself up it. She wanted nothing but to get away. The failure had been so great, so devastating to her, that she was reduced to nothing but a raw desire to set it behind her. She had been used, over and over again. All her belief in herself
was wrung out of her.

There was the crack of the door she had wedged open. She rammed her hands into it, dragged and tugged. The sheer force of her fear and anger gave her the strength to send the sliding panel back so that she fell forward into the dark room beyond. For a moment she lay there sobbing dryly. Then, because she had so little strength left in her, Gwennan began to crawl, drawing herself along by her fingers hooked in the rug on the floor, pushing feebly with her feet—wanting nothing but to be free of this house.

Hands fell on her shoulders, gripped tight. In spite of her feeble struggles she was pulled up to stand, leaning back against another behind her and whom she could not see, but who she knew. There was no escape now, perhaps there had never been any from the first morning when they had met by the standing stones. She could fight no longer.

“I am not Tor—”

His voice came close to her ear as his breath stirred wisps of hair which had worked free from under the edge of her cap.

“You shall see—”

He swung her up as if she was of no weight at all, carried her swiftly to the next chamber where furniture loomed darkly against the walls and she knew that she was once more in the dining room where Lady Lyle had once sat enthroned. It was to that same chair this stranger brought her now, settling her within it. She struggled for self-possession, for the energy to (once his hold was off her) get away. But it was as if she had been bound with cords and she suspected that his will made that so.

Even in the dark his body was visible, he seemed to glow faintly as had the stones—not with their white light, rather with a faint haze of gold. She watched him wordlessly as he went to the doorway again and passed through, leaving her alone.

Gwennan was cold. Her body shook still with that chill which had crept up through her hands, her wrists, her arms, during her labor to open the casket. Her teeth chattered in spite of her struggle for control. Within her boots her feet
were as numb now as the upper part of her body—she might be congealing into ice.

There was no sound through the shadowed house. Only on her breast the pendant glowed. Somehow she managed to break the hold of her icy, stiff fingers on the arms of the tall backed chair—the hold which kept her where she was, not suffering her to slide to the floor as a boneless heap. With an effort Gwennan brought her two hands together, cupping the pendant between them.

The silence was not that of death—of an end; it was rather one of anticipation, a pause before action. She realized that slowly by the aid of that other awareness. Her hands were warming, life was returning to her. However, there had come no added strength with that life, rather her sense of being a prisoner grew the stronger. A prisoner to another’s will—to fulfill a commitment she had never made—not consciously.

She could only fight for control of her inner will, as her body responded to the power enclosed in that piece of alien metal. Her breath came in deep, long inhalations equalling those the awakening Guardian had taken before he moved into action. As her frantic beating heart slowed, the warmth spread through her, Gwennan listened.

Nothing to be heard, not even the faint stir of air. There lingered an odor of the smoke. In this chamber she could not see a window. Long pieces of tapestry were drawn over those. Candles—on the table—on one of the tall chests—but she did not have the strength to rise and light those.

Gwennan shifted in the chair, transferred her hold on the pendant to one hand, with the other tried to push herself up. Light at last! Her head snapped around so she could gaze squarely at the glimmer growing brighter at the doorway through which her captor (for she must consider him so) had vanished.

The light did not sharpen—rather remained a diffused radiance. Then he entered—that other Tor. He held his right hand outstretched. In the cupped palm rested a sphere, twin to that which had already given her windows on strange places, shown her at last his place of rest.

He was clothed now—Tor’s clothing—and it made him look even more like the one she feared. Still, when she gazed up into his face, there was a difference. The gem bright eyes were as far seeing but they were now half closed—forming shields for what lay behind them. There was no sly mockery about his mouth as he smiled at her. His lift and curve of lip was like that of Lady Lyle, meant to—charm—entice—? Gwennan settled farther back in her chair.

“We have little time,” he broke the silence. “Doors are opened which must be closed. However, only he who summons can also dismiss—”

“You—” the girl had to moisten her lips with tongue tip before she spoke.

“No.” He seated himself in the chair at her right and laid his hand on the table so that globe was between them, flowering like a small bit of sun. “There is Tor—Look!”

She could not have resisted that order any
more than in this moment she could have arisen to leave the room. There was the familiar swirling of haze within the globe he supported and her eyes centered on it. That took form—a form—

On a cot lay a man, his shoulders and arms swathed in a thick green covering—a treatment for burns. His eyes were closed but his head turned from side to side as if something within him sought escape.

“Call him!” That was a command. Again there was nothing Gwennan could do to stiffen her will so she need not obey. She was forced forward, there might have been a vast compelling hand set to her back, pushing her so.

“Call him!” The command did not ring loudly, but it was one she could not evade.

“Tor—” At first that name came as a ragged whisper. Then she spoke it more loudly as if she did indeed stand beside the injured man demanding him to return to consciousness.

His eyes did not open, but his movements became more restless. Where he was she could not tell, but she thought perhaps he was still in the village—that they had not yet transported him to the hospital for treatment.

“Tor—!”

He did open his eyes now. They were dull, unseeing—

“Tor!” For the third and last time Gwennan called. Then the haze arose, the picture was gone. The ball moved from the hollow of the hand which held it, rolled out upon the table—though it did not lose its glow.

“He will come—” There was assurance in the voice of the one who sat beside her.

“How can he?” Gwennan had command of herself again enough to ask. “He’s hurt—burned—they’ll stop him—”

That other shook his head. “It is laid upon him—no one can stop him. Come—” This time the summons was for her, and not Tor. He held out the same hand which had cupped the globe, making no move towards picking that up once again.

She found that, without thinking, her fingers had reached out, to be enfolded by his. There was an instant flow of strength and vitality borne by the touching of their flesh—an in-flow to her. She remembered how Ortha had watched the Voice weave the Power into that which comforted and brought peace. Did she want such comfort, such peace? A small part of her cried out against taking anything which was not of her world. However, she had gone too far down that other path, been drawn into a slate which was now removed from all she had been and done.

He drew her up from the chair and she discovered that she had lost all weakness and gnawing fear which had ridden her for so long. Then, hand in hand, they went through the house, not towards that front portal, but the back way by which she had come so secretly in the dark.

When they stood together in the courtyard outside Gwennan discovered that in some unknown fashion her eyes had adjusted to the dark—that she could see much which had been hidden before. See—hear—smell—!

That which had followed her to the wall gate no longer battered nor screamed, still it waited beyond. More than one of those alien things lingered outside.

“He is coming—” The earlier promise was stated as fact by her companion.

“What can he do—?” she dared to ask.

“What he must,” was the answer. “The calling was his—so now he must also face that which was called. For every action there is a summation. One faces that willingly—or unwillingly.”

“Who—who are you?” She had had to accept that he was not Tor. But who or what he was she felt she must know.

“I am he who has the Duty. I am he who must wait—”

Evasive enough, but she dared not at present try to learn more. She was as much in awe of him as Ortha had been of the Arm in ages past. Tor possessed powers beyond her reckoning, she had always guessed that. But this man (if he were man at all) was greater by far.

There was an absolute stillness when he finished speaking—a stillness which waited—as the house behind her waited. Gwennan strained to hear even the smallest sound which hinted that the end of that waiting was nearer.

A grunting growl—so deep and menacing — broke that silence. Gwennan started. The clasp on her hand tightened.

“It is time—”

He who stood with her went forward, confidently, as though there was nothing which could touch him. She, too, was so drawn along, matching
her steps to his. They were at the gate of the courtyard. His other hand pointed. That barrier swung inward and they stood waiting until the force of that swing thumped it against the inner wall.

Her night sight held, but now she wished it had not. That milling, monstrous crew before them were much the same as had accompanied the hunter in the green-lit land. Here was he of the owl’s head, and the arm-wings, the wolf-man, the haired creature—and others—such a splotch of evil and the Dark as she had never faced, even in the worst of her nightmares.

Yet there was utter confidence in the way that he whom she had freed went forward with the same firm steps. Those creatures from Outside drew back, forming a lane. Down that open space the Guardian led Gwennan.

That calm which had flooded into her from his first touch held. She knew rather than saw that the creatures drew in again behind them, to follow. Yet they did not menace, nor did they utter any more sounds.

Through the massive growth of the garden the two made their way. Gwennan had a sudden guess as to their goal—the stones! It could only be the stones! Where her adventure had begun there also it must end. There was more than one wheel which turned in its own time.

There was no wall to be climbed now. The snow lay unmarked as they came through the wood along a path, hearing the rustle of the monsters padding at their backs, smelling always the foulness which was the mark of those spawned by the Dark.

The stones were alive. From their crowns arose those flaming wicks of light Gwennan had seen once before. It was straight towards those beacons that she was being led. The darkness of the night was on the wane, the greyness of before dawn arched up the sky.

Side by side they came to the mound. Snowdrifts arose about their legs, nearly to their knees, yet they walked steadily, as if those white banks were nothing, giving away as easily as water. Up the mound they climbed—came to stop only at the foot of the great stone.

On that was clearly visible all those markings she had half-known were there—having been hidden both by time, and the forgotten art of those who had wrought them. Gwennan understood that she could read them if she willed, that to her now there could be no more secrets. Still she did not try. There was too much expectancy in the air—too much excitement stirring in her. Something was about to happen which would be not of her old world and which, in her half-awakened state, she shrank from, yet half welcomed, aware that it must be accepted.

The two turned at the foot of the tall stone, looking steadily towards the lane. Between them and the field wall was the snow—a brilliantly white carpet—the very purity of it making it shine. Sound again, low growls, twitterings, a coughing thick and foul. Those who had followed them flowed about the base of the mount not setting foot upon its rise, but gathering in around the sides to also face the lane.

Gwennan nearly flinched from full sight of some of those abnormalities that crouched, shuffled,
sat, or stood, waiting. Here were gathered things like the visions of men of the past who had attempted to draw upon the darkest side of imagination, summoning up their personal devils or monsters. The worst was that all these dark distortions were mingled with the human, so that one might see what man could become when sinking to the lowest within himself.

Movement on the lane brought the creatures creeping inward. A wolf-man bounded forward, nearer to the wall, throwing up his narrow head and widening his jaws as if to howl. Still no sound issued forth—unless it was one too high for human ears.

He who walked down the lane wove from side to side, stumbled and wavered, yet kept always on his feet, though his head fell forward, chin near against his breast, as if he did not watch where he went but rather was drawn by that he could not resist. At the wall he fell as he strove to climb, and was several moments floundering in the snow before he unsteadily arose again.

Tor—coming in answer to her summons. How he had eluded those who had cared for him Gwennan could not understand. He moved so clumsily it was plain he was weak, probably in pain, still he came. The wolf-man moved beside him, its stance that of a hound waiting for orders, but Tor never raised his own head nor looked to the thing which matched his march towards the stones.

The creatures opened a way, even as they had outside the gate for Gwennan and that other, leaving an open space at the foot of the mound. In
that Tor staggered to a halt, stood swaying, his arms hanging loose, his burns visible beneath the dressings. Now his head came up at last and his eyes—those dead eyes, gazed to the two above him.

His lips writhed into a snarl as pronounced as any on the animal-man face of the thing who crouched close at his feet. Life began to flow into him. There was a fire which was not of the kind which had seared his flesh—rather it burned inside him. Upon that he drew deeply and willingly.

“I have come—” His voice was not weak, nor strained, nor even touched with pain, rather it was a challenge.

“You have come—” Gwennan’s companion returned.

“I am of the Blood—” Again there was pride in that, force. He no longer wavered, his back was straight. He bore dreadful burns but they seemed no more to him at that moment than clothing he could take from his body and throw away.

“You are of the Blood—” For the second time there was acknowledgment.

“I command—” Tor raised his arm. There was a guttural answer from those things crouched about him. Their red coals of eyes swung to the two above, they waited only for the gesture or the word which would send them bounding up to destroy.

“
I
command—” The hand which had held Gwennan’s for so long, instilling in her warmth and serenity, loosened itself from hers. He moved from her side, passed between the two shorter stones, began to descend.

The girl would have cried out, tried to restrain him, but she knew that would be no use. This was between the two of them, those who looked so much alike that they could have been the same man reflected from one to the other, had it not been for Tor’s visible injuries.

Tor’s eyes were only on the one who approached. The beasts shifted about hungrily. Still whatever held them in check was still in force.