Bran Mak Morn: The Last King (27 page)

Chapter .5.

The were-woman turned swiftly as Bran approached her door. Her slant eyes widened.

�ou! And alive! And sane!� � have been into Hell and I have returned,�he growled, �hat is more, I have that which I sought.� �he Black Stone?�she cried, �ou have really stolen it? Where is it?� �o matter; but last night my stallion screamed in his stall and I heard something crunch beneath his thundering hoofs which was not wood �and there was blood on his hoofs when I came to see, and blood on the floor of the stall. And I have heard stealthy sounds in the night, and noises beneath my dirt floor, as if worms burrowed deep in the earth. They know I have stolen their Stone �have you betrayed me?� She shook her head.

� keep your secret; they do not need my word to know you. The further they have retreated from the world of men, the greater have grown their powers in other ways. Some dawn your hut will lie empty and if men dare investigate they will find nothing �except crumbling bits of earth on the dirt floor.� Bran smiled terribly.

� have not planned and toiled thus far to fall prey to the talons of the vermin of the earth. I have a word for the worms of the earth. I have their one idol �or whatever it be to them. If they strike me down in the night, they will never know what became of it. I will bargain with them.� �are you come with me and meet them in the night?�she asked.

�hunder of all gods!�he roared, �ho are you to ask me if I dare? Lead me to them, and let me bargain for a vengeance this night. The hour of retribution draws nigh. This day I saw silvered helmets and bright shields gleam across the fens �the new commander has arrived at the Tower to Trajan and Caius Camillus has marched to the Wall.� That night the king went across dark desolation of the moors with the silent were-woman. This night was thick and still as if in ancient slumber. The stars blinked redly, mere points of red struggling through the unbreathing gloom. Their gleam was dimmer than the glitter in the eyes of the woman who glided beside the king. Strange thoughts shook Bran, vague, titanic, primeval. Tonight ancestral linkings with these slumbering fens stirred in his soul and troubled him with the vague, eon-veiled shapes of monstrous dreams.

Ahead of them loomed a low range of hills, which connecting with other, further ranges, climbed at last to the mountains of Wales, far away. The woman led the way up what might have been a sheep-path, and halted before a wide black gaping cave.

� door to those you seek, oh king!�her laughter rang hateful in the gloom, �are ye enter?� His fingers closed in her tangled locks and he shook her viciously.

�sk me but once more if I dare,�he grated, �nd your head and shoulders part company! Lead on.� Her laughter was like sweet deadly venom. They passed into the cave and Bran struck flint and steel. The flicker of the tinder showed him a wide dusty cavern, on the roof of which hung clusters of bats. Lifting his torch he scanned the shadows recesses, seeing nothing but dust and emptiness.

�here are THEY?�he growled.

She beckoned him to the back of the cave and leaned against the rough wall, as if casually. But the king� keen eyes caught the motion of her hand pressing hard against a projecting ledge. He recoiled as a round black well gaped at his feet. Again her laugh slashed him like a keen silver knife. He held the torch to the opening, and saw again small worn steps leading down.

�HEY do not need those steps,�said Atla, �nce they did, before your people drove them into the darkness. But you will need them.� She thrust the torch into a nitche above the well; it shed a faint red light into the darkness below. She gestured into the well and Bran loosened his sword and stepped into the shaft. As he went down into the mystery of the darkness, the light was blotted out above him, and he thought for an instant Atla had covered the opening again. But he then realized that she was descending after him.

The descent was not long. Abruptly Bran felt his feet on a solid floor. Atla swung down beside him and stood in the dim circle of light that drifted down the shaft. Bran could not see the limits of the place into which he had come.

�his is a great cave,�said Atla, her voice seeming small and strangely brittle in the vastness, �any caves in these hills are but doors to greater caves which lie beneath. Even as a man� outer actions are but small indications of the dark caverns of thought lying behind and beneath.� And now Bran was aware of movement in the gloom. The darkness was filled with stealthly noises he knew no human foot might make. Abruptly sparks began to flash and float in the blackness, like flickering fire-flies. Closer they came until they girdled him in a wide half-moon. And beyond the first ring gleamed other sparks, a solid sea of them, fading away in the gloom until the furtherest were mere tiny pin-points of light. And Bran knew they were the eyes of the beings who had come upon him in such numbers that his mind reeled at the contemplation �and at the vastness of the cavern.

Now that he faced his foes, Bran knew no fear. He felt the waves of terrible menace emanating from them, the grisly hatred, the inhuman threat to body, mind and soul. Being of an incredibly ancient race himself, he more fully realized the horror of his position than a Briton or a Roman would have been able to do, but he did not fear. His blood raced fiercely, but it was the hot excitement of the hazard, not the drive of terror.

�hey know you have the Stone, oh king,�said Atla, and though he knew she feared, though he felt her physical efforts to control her trembling limbs, there was no quiver of fright in her voice, �ou are in deadly peril; they know you of old �oh, they remember the days when their ancestors were men! I cannot save you; both of us will die as no human has died for ten centuries. You have stolen their Stone �and you are a Pict.� Bran laughed and at the savagery in his laughter, the closing ring of fire shrank back. Drawing his sword with a rasp of steel, he set his back against what he hoped was a solid stone wall. Facing the glittering eyes, with his sword gripped in his right hand and his dirk in his left, he laughed as a blood-hungry wolf snarls.

�ye,�he ground, � am a Pict, a son of those warriors who drove your ancestors before them like chaff before the storm! My people flooded the land with your blood, and heaped high your skulls for a sacrifice to the Moon-woman! You who fled of old before my race, dare ye now snarl at your master? Roll on me like a flood, now, if ye dare! Before your viper fangs drink my life, I will reap your multitudes like ripened barley, of your severed heads will I build a tower and of your mangled corpses will I rear up a wall! Dogs of the dark, vermin of Hell, worms of the earth, rush in and try my steel! When Death finds me in this dark cavern, your living will howl for the scores of your dead and your Black Stone will be lost to you forever �for only I know where it is hidden and not all the tortures of all the Hells can wring the secret from my lips!� Then followed a tense silence; Bran faced the fire-lit darkness, tensed like a wolf at bay, waiting the charge; at his side the woman cowered, her eyes a-blaze. Then from the silent ring that hovered beyond the torch-light, sounded a vague abhorrent murmur. Bran, prepared as he was for anything, started. Gods, was THAT the speech of creatures which had once been called men?

Atla straightened, listening intently. From her lips came the same hideous soft sibilances, and Bran, though he had already known the grisly secret of her being, knew that never again could he touch her save with soul-shaking loathing.

She turned to him, a strange smile showing her red lips dimly in the ghostly light.

�hey fear you, oh king! By the black secrets of R�yeh, who are you that Hell itself quails before you? It is not your steel they fear, but you yourself by the stark ferocity of your soul have driven unused fear into their strange minds. And they will buy back the Black Stone at any price.� �ood,�Bran sheathed his weapons, �hey shall promise not to molest you because of your part in this night� work. And,�his voice hummed like the purr of a hunting tiger, �hey shall deliver into my hands Titus Sulla, governor of Ebbracum, now commander of the Tower of Trajan. This they can do �how I know not. But I know that it the old days, when my people warred with these Children of the Night, babes disappeared from guarded huts and none saw the stealers come and go. Do they understand?� Again rose the low frightful sounds and Bran, who feared not their wrath, shuddered at their voice.

�hey understand,�said Atla, �ring the Black Stone to Dagon� Ring tomorrow night when the earth is veiled with the blackness that fore-runs the dawn. Lay the Stone on the atlar. There they will bring Titus Sulla to you. Trust them; they have not interfered in human affairs for many a century, but they will keep their word.� Bran nodded and turning climbed up the stair with Atla behind him. At the top he turned and looked down once more. As far as he could see floated a glittering ocean of yellow eyes, upturned. But the owners of those eyes kept carefully beyond the dim circle of torch-light and of their bodies he could see nothing. Their low hissing speech floated up to him, and he shuddered as his imagination visualized, not a throng of biped creatures, but a swarming swaying myriad of serpents, gazing up at him with their glittering unwinking eyes.

He swung into the upper cave and Atla swung the blocking stone in place. It fitted with uncanny precision; Bran was unable to discern any crack in the apparently solid floor of the cavern. Atla made a motion to extinguish the torch but the king stayed here.

�eep it so,�he growled, �ntil we are out of the cave; we might tread on an adder in the dark.� Atla� sweetly hateful laughter rose maddeningly in the flickering gloom.

Chapter .6.

It was not long before sunset when Bran came again to the reed-grown marge of Dagon�-Mere. Casting cloak and sword-belt on the ground, he stripped himself to his short learthern breeches. Then gripping his naked dirk in his teeth, he went into the water with the smooth ease of a diving seal. Swimming strongly he gained the center of the small lake, and there, turning he drove himself downward. The mere was deeper than he had thought. It seemed he would never reach the bottom and when he did his groping hands failed to find what he sought. A roaring in his ears warned him and he swam to the surface. Gulping deep of the refreshing air, he dived again, and again his quest was fruitless. A third time he sought the depths, and this time his groping hands met a familiar object in the silt of the bottom. Grasping it, he swam up to the surface.

The Stone was not particularly bulky but it was heavy. He swam leisurely and suddenly was aware of a curious stir in the waters about him, which was not caused by his own exertions. Glancing over his shoulders he distinctly saw a swirl on the surface as if some object had dived under. Holding the Stone under one arm he shifted his dirk to his hand, and treading water with his feet, thrust his face below the surface and tried to pierce the blue depths with his eyes. Below and behind him he glimpsed a vast dim bulk that floated after him like a shadow. It seemed to be approaching him and he again took his dirk between his teeth and swam faster �not frightened, but wary. His feet struck the shallows and he waded up on the shelving shore. Looking back he saw the waters swirl again and then subside. He shook his head, swearing. He had discounted the ancient legend which made Dagon� Mere the lair of a nameless water-monster, but now he instinctively felt that he had narrowly escaped death in some form. The time-worn myths of the land were taking form and coming to life before his eyes. What primeval shape lurked below the surface of that treacherous mere, Bran could not guess, but that it was some horrific form he knew from his indistinct glimpse. The fenmen had good reason for shunning Dagon� Mere, after all.

Bran donned his garments, mounted the black stallion and rode across the fen in the desolate crimson of the sunset� after-glow, with the Black Stone wrapped in his cloak. He rode, not to his hut, but to the west, in the direction of the Tower of Trajan and the Ring of Dagon. As he covered the miles that lay between, night fell and the red stars winked out. Midnight passed him in the moonless night and still Bran rode on. His heart was hot for his meeting with Titus Sulla. Atla had supposed he wished to torture the Roman. No such thought was in Bran� mind. He intended giving the military governor a chance with weapons �with Bran� own sword he should face the Pictish king� dirk and live or die according to his prowess. And though Sulla was famed throughout the provinces as a swordsman, Bran felt no doubt as to the outcome.

Dagon� Ring lay some distance from the Tower �a sullen circle of tall gaunt stones planted upright, with a rough-hewn stone altar in the center. The Romans looked on these menhirs with aversion; they thought the Druids had reared them; but the Celts supposed Bran� people, the Picts, had builded them �and Bran well knew who reared those grim stones in lost ages, though why, he but dimly guessed.

The king did not ride straight to the Ring. He was consumed with curiosity as to how his grim allies intended carrying out their promise; that they could snatch Titus Sulla from the very midst of his men, he felt sure, and he believed he knew how they would do it, but he was not sure. He felt the gnawings of a strange misgiving, as if he had tampered with powers of unknown breadth and depth, and had loosed forces which he could not control.

Some instinct prompted him to ride toward the Tower. He knew he was near; but for the thick darkness he could have plainly seen its stark outline tusking the horizon. Even now he should be able to make it out dimly �an obscure, shuddersome premonition shook him and he spurred the stallion into a swift canter.

Now the the Tower leaped into view with startling suddeness �and Bran literally staggered in his saddle as if from a physical impact, so stunning was the surprize of what met his gaze. There was the impregnable Tower of Trajan �aye, but impregnable no longer! Bran� astounded gaze rested on a gigantic pile of ruins �of shattered stone and crumbled granite, from which jutted the jagged and splintered ends of broken beams. At one corner of the tumbled heap one tower rose out of the waste of crumpled masonry, and it leaned drunkenly, as if its foundations had been half-cut away. Bran dismounted and walked forward, dazed by bewilderment. The moat was filled in places by fallen stones and broken pieces of mortared wall. He crossed over and came among the ruins. Where, he knew, only a few hours before, the flags had resounded to the martial tread of iron-clad feet, and the walls had echoed to the clang of shields and the blast of the loud-throated trumpet, a horrific silence reigned.