Collected fiction, p.648
Collected Fiction, page 648
The shrieking, catlike cry came again, and the centaur’s laughter rose in crescendo to meet it. I was whirled higher in the air and pitched suddenly free. The hoofbeats swept away into the fog as I hurtled head over heels toward the screaming that was cat and human at once.
Mossy ground received me. Bruised and breathless, I rolled over twice and was somehow on my feet again, panting, wishing ardently for weapons. A lithe shape, darkly mottled, rose up in my very face, great arms outstretched and gleaming with claws like sabers.
I looked into a wild, demented face that was neither human nor feline, but much of both. Then the figure lurched upon me in an embrace like a bear or a man; I felt the cold brush of the claws past my cheek and the velvety power that poured along that slick, hard body as we grappled.
Hoofs clicked on rock and beyond the mottled shoulder I saw horned faun-heads flash jeering past, saw a flung rock hurtling by my head. The wind in the cypresses had risen to a roar—except that there was no wind. I knew it was the dryads of the trees, ready to defend their isle with falling boughs if need be. There was a hiss of seething water from somewhere nearby, where the oreads of the fountains lashed themselves into a mounting frenzy as the whole sacred isle of the goddess rose in its anger to repel me.
LOCKED in each other’s arms, the tiger-thing and I crashed struggling to the moss. I knew I must not let go of it long enough for those terrible claws to double beneath me for the disemboweling stroke, and I strained the writhing, velvety thing to me in a desperate embrace. It screamed in my very ear, a deafening, terrifying sound that ripped my nerves as the claws were striving to rip my flesh. I shivered with an involuntary spasm, felt my hold slip upon that muscular, snakelike body, felt it writhe away from me—heard the gasp of snarling, triumphant laughter in my ear.
“Jason—Jason beloved—do you hear me? Jason—come!”
The sweet, distant crying was as clear as if there were no roar of trees or shrieking of wild voices here in the forest. Effortlessly it rose above them. “Jason—Jason, come, to me!”
With a sobbing breath the tiger body relinquished mine, rolled away. I got to my feet unsteadily, stared gasping around the clearing. There was a soundless flash of motion, and the mottled body of that which had been both beast and human vanished into the fog and the trees. The fauns’ brown shaggy limbs pranced and were gone with a click of hoofs and a chatter of angry voices. The trees soughed and were silent.
“Jason—beloved—come!”
Through a silence that echoed and rang in my dazed ears I stumbled inland toward that sweet, calling voice.
There was no one in the clearing where the temple stood. No robed figures moved among the pale pillars in the fog as I went slowly up the marble steps and into the dimness within.
No priestess stood before the altar. Hecate’s tri-formed image rose shadowy in its alcove above the unlighted altar. But light there was. No fire burned where the green flames had crawled before, but a green glow still hovered at Hecate’s feet—for the Mask of Circe stood empty on the altar.
I paused involuntarily. And the Mask spoke again.
“Jason, beloved—come forward.”
The eyes were closed. The hair lay in coils and serpentine tendrils spread out upon the altar, hiding the white neck. The face was as lovely and inhuman as before, its smooth planes pale as alabaster, and glowing faintly with a greenish inward flame. Beneath the closed lids a thin line of fire glinted, as of banked embers within the Mask.
“Jason,” the red lips murmured, and when they parted, green light glowed from within where that which had been Circe still dwelt waiting for Hecate’s promise to be kept over three thousand years.
The eyes were closed, and yet in some in—definable way I knew she could see me, and perhaps see my mind and thoughts as well. I drew a long breath and said in a voice that sounded startlingly loud in this eerie silence: “Jason’s memories no longer rule me. I’m here again because I rule them now. I’m here to offer my help to Hecate if she hopes to conquer Apollo in the hour of the eclipse.” Stillness, ringing in my ears for a long moment. The Mask’s lips parted at last on a line of green fire, and the sweet, distant voice said. “What do you ask of me, Jason?”
“The Mask,” I said.
The green glow mounted and veiled the tri-formed goddess. The Mask faded and was gone, hidden by that eerie light. After a time a voice came again, not quite Circe’s, and not quite a voice, but ringing unmistakably in my mind.
It said, “The Mask is useless without the priestess, son of Jason. You know that.”
I nodded. “Yes, I do know that. But if I asked for the priestess too—to mend a vow I broke long ago—”
“You were frightened of me then,” the voice whispered. “Your face was white whenever you stood before Hecate’s altar. Now you have found courage somewhere.”
“Or knowledge,” I said. “Jason believed in gods. I do not.”
THERE was a pause. Then, very strangely, something like laughter.
“Son of Jason who betrayed me—I do not believe in gods either. But I do believe in certain other things, such as vengeance!” Now the soundless voice hardened.
“So. I can speak to you without words because you have been close to Hecate, in your memories. But I can do no more than that. Without a priestess to give me vital energy, I cannot leave my own place and help you. The Circe is old—too old to give me that strength. If I drew upon her, she would die.
“Nevertheless there may be a way. If you can force or trick Apollo into going to the secret place where I dwell, I can war with him. Matters do not stand as they did three thousand years ago, son of Jason. But since you will keep your vow this time—you say—then you may have the Mask. For I am tired of strife. If this ends in my own destruction, I do not care much. But it should end now.”
The glow brightened.
“Phrontis tricked you. When will the eclipse begin?”
“Not for two days.” I said, but my throat dried as I said it. Two days!
“Phrontis lied to you. The eclipse begins—now. Phrontis holds Cyane, who is unprotected; he holds her for a supreme sacrifice, if need be, to make Apollo turn his dark face away from Helios. As for you—three biremes wait half a league away from Aeaea, to seize you and take the Mask—and destroy it. The crew of the ship that brought you here has similar orders.”
I said. “If I could dodge them, get to Helios somehow—”
“There is only one road that will get you there in time. That way lies through my world, a world beyond this one as this is beyond your own. Now—”
The green flames washed out from the alcove. They touched me—rippled beyond me. I was caught in the emerald glow.
I saw a shadow—shadow of Circe—shadow of the Mask.
The old priestess stood beside me, wearing the Mask.
And then the light tightened about us like a net, lifted us, bore us away . . .
“See with my eyes.”
The light veils shifted, parted . . .
“Hear with my ears.”
I heard the shrieking of wind, the creak of cordage, the booming of sails . . .
“Hate with my hate!”
The three biremes of Helios tacked on the dark sea, their golden splendor dimmed. A shadow crept across the purple sky. Stars were gleaming wanly, stars that never shone on earth.
They passed and were gone. I smelled the hot, sweet reek of blood, heard the bellowing of oxen, saw the flash of the golden knives as they slit shaggy throats.
Helios!
The golden city wailed its terror to the darkening sky! Slowly, slowly, across the blazing disc of the sun there crept an arc of darkness. It thickened. And Helios faded, dimmed, its bright luster paling as the eclipse marched across the sun’s face.
A balustrade protruding from the clifflike towers of the temple. Panyr stood there, his horned head thrown back, his beard jutting stiffly forward, while the goat-yellow eyes searched the sky.
“Jason!” he called to me.
The vision passed. My sight swept on, into the heart of the temple, into enormous vaulted rooms thronged with worshippers, filled with the wail of prayers and the smell of blood.
Into a chamber I had not seen before, I. went. It was walled with black. A single shaft of pure white light blazed down on an altar, where lay a figure completely shrouded by a golden cloth.
Against the wall a circle of light stood, a quarter darkened now, a lambent sun, darkening with eclipse as the sun above Helios was darkened.
Priests of Apollo stood about the altar, masked with the golden disc that concealed their features. One of them held a knife, but he hesitated, glancing again and again at the pseudo-sun upon the wall. I thought: Phrontis will not kill Cyane unless all else fails, unless Apollo of the Eclipse comes to Helios. For Cyane, heir to the Mask of Circe, is the supreme sacrifice that might appease the sun god.
The other priests chanted, and from some distant place came the chant of a great multitude in strophe and answering antistrophe.
Then came the voice of Hecate: “There is no door in Helios for us to enter. It is too late.”
And Circe’s voice, mingled with that of the old priestess.
“There is a way, Mother. The ancient temple to you beyond the gates. That altar still stands.”
“Yet the gates of Helios are too strong.”
“Call your people! And let Hecate break the walls!”
CHAPTER XII
Battling Beasts
DIMLY I had a glimpse of Panyr on his balcony, under the darkening sky. He seemed to be listening. Then suddenly he brought up a ram’s horn to his lips and sent shout after brazen shout echoing from its mouth.
Summoning—what?
Panyr’s horn called. But I thought that Hecate, too, was voicing a command, and her voice reached ears that the faun’s horn could not. The air grew darker. But the temple torches flamed brighter and brighter as the eclipse swept softly across the land. The golden city was fading—never, I thought, to shine bright again beneath Apollo’s sun!
The summons of Panyr roared forth. The call of Hecate shrilled across the crags and forests. From cavern and grove, from their woodland lairs around Helios, on swift-racing feet, the centaur-people of Hecate galloped down on the golden city! Now the earth was solid beneath me again. The green fires shuddered, sank, and were gone. I stood with the old priestess in the midst of a moss-covered circle of rounded stones, on a forested hillside. One verdigrised boulder, larger than the others, was in the center of the circle, and on this the emerald flame still hovered.
Through the Mask the Circe spoke to me. “Circe’s old altar, without worshippers now, but still a door she can open from one world to the next.”
Nor was this magic either, I told myself firmly, trying to keep a sane grip on reality in the midst of this nightmare rising like a storm about me. A—a machine, not necessarily a complicated affair of levers and pistons and vacuum tubes, but one of the simplest—a block of radioactive material buried in the altar stone, perhaps a source of power, or an anchor to hold Hecate here. But the cold logic of science faded before this rout out of ancient legend. The oak boughs above us swayed and whispered in the gathering dark. The sun was half eclipsed now. And all about us was low, inhuman laughter, the clattering of hoofs, the flat, alien stare of beast-eyes.
Trembling down the wind came the crying of Panyr’s horn. The Mask of Circe turned to me. The Circe gestured, called a command. I was seized in huge arms and tossed upon the broad back of a centaur.
Again the Circe shrilled an order.
The beast-army stirred into motion like an enormous pool sweeping down under the drag of a current pulling it into a single channel. Now the boughs flashed past above me. I saw gnarled hands reaching up, ripping improvised clubs from the oaks as we swept beneath. The insane beast-laughter shouted.
Darker, darker grew the air as the eclipse rushed relentlessly across the sun.
A sword-hilt was thrust into my grip. It was too heavy to be wielded except two-handed. I tried desperately to keep my seat and hold the sword at the same time. Some of the centaurs, I saw, had weapons like mine, but others held things like sickles, bright-bladed, and most of them had ripped their own cudgels from the trees.
We burst from the forest and thundered down a long slope. Far distant lay the sea, with the dimmed golden ships of Helios riding beyond the marble quay. Alien stars flamed across the black sky. Helios lay beneath us.
The inhuman roaring of the centaurs mingled with the thunderous beat of their hoofs as the horde avalanched down on Apollo’s citadel!
WE SWUNG across a broad, paved road and swept past it through fields of flax that lay silver as a shining lake in our path; The wind shifted, bringing to our ears the wailing of the city’s people. And clown the channels of air shouted Panyr’s trumpet, mindless and wordless as the voice of Pan himself, a summons that stirred raging fires deep within my blood, ancient, primal fires waking to life as the faun sounded his summons.
Jason, son of Aeson, give me your strength!
From somewhere, from the lost memories of Jason or from the faun’s horn, strength came, perhaps flowing into me from that monstrous beast-body I gripped between my knees. The musky, hot reek of the herd stung my nostrils. A cold wind began to blow from the sea, and the wailing cry of Helios was drowned by the centaurs’ roaring.
No longer sun-bright, no longer blazing with supernal brilliance, Helios couched dark and immobile under the black sky.
We thundered past titan gates, closed now, but higher than six men’s height. We swept up to the wall itself towering far above our heads, and now we could not see into the city. But we could hear. We could hear chanting.
“Turn thy face from us, great Apollo.
“Turn the terror of thy “dark face from Helios!
“Walk not in our streets, nor stoop above our temple . . .”
“Come not to us, Apollo, in the Hour of thine Eclipse!”
The centaurs had halted. A hundred feet away loomed the golden walls. I looked for the Circe—saw her, no longer riding a centaur, but walking—walking steadily toward the city.
I tried to swing one leg free to dismount, but a powerful arm came back to halt me.
“Wait,” the centaur said, thickly in his beast-voice. “Wait.”
“Circe!” I called.
She did not look back. Suddenly I knew what she meant to do. Only Hecate’s power could unlock Helios to us now, and the old priestess could not summon forth the goddess, and live.
It was growing darker, darker. The centaurs stirred uneasily, their voices fell silent. I could see only a white shadow moving away from us in the gloom. But about the Masked head a lambent greenness played.
Ceaselessly the faun’s horn cried from darkened Helios. Then it too fell silent. There was only the cry of that wailing chant:
“Turn thy face from Helios, O dark Apollo!”
Circe’s white shadow flung out its arms. And now in the silence, above the crying from the temple, a thin sound began to shrill. Higher and higher it rose, pitched closer and closer to the margin of perception, and then higher still. It was a sound as no mortal throat could form, but I knew from whose throat it came—Circe’s white inhuman throat, Circe’s red mouth.
The sound tore at my nerves and shuddered in my bones. It was no human voice—that voice of Hecate!
The golden walls shimmered with sudden motion in the gloom. I saw the same shudder run over them that was moving in my bones. But more violently and still more violently.
A lance of dark lightning seemed to leap across the gold. A crack appeared in the walls of Helios. Another black bolt shot out to cross it, and then another. The high walls of Apollo’s city were shaking, crumbling away.
And still the voice shrilled on.
From base to top of the wall a thick black serpent seemed to run. There was low thunder groaning below the keening of that unearthly supersonic voice. Vibration, I thought. No magic, simply vibration. It can break glasses or bring down bridges if you find the tonic chord. And I remembered Jericho!
With a long, low, rumbling crash the wall crumbled. Billows of golden dust rolled up in clouds.
A centaur thundered forward and stooped in full gallop to sweep the Circe up in his arms. She lay motionless, the Mask’s black curls streaming in the dimness.
THE crashing of the wall subsided into diminishing rumbles like sullen thunder. The centaurs began to move toward the wall. But it was a barrier no longer. Riven from base to top, it opened a wide gate for us now to pass into the golden city.
The crying of the faun’s horn summoned us through the gap. We stampeded in a wild, shouting surge through the wall and into a street filled with wailing throngs, but their bodies made no barrier for the centaurs’ murderous hoofs. I saw the dulled glimmer of golden armor. The soldiers of Helios, filling the street, marched toward us in orderly ranks, phalanx upon phalanx.
Well-disciplined, these men, but what armor could withstand the bone-cracking smashes of the centaurs’ hoofs?
Unceasingly the knotted cudgels smashed down. Unceasingly the scythes of the centaurs mowed a red harvest and reaped—death. The great swords swung like monstrous flails among the armored guards. And the creatures fought as horses fight, rearing, kicking, crushing in cuirass and helmet with savage, half-mindless fury.
We fought not without our own losses. The golden swords swung too, and I heard the wild, high beast-screams of hamstrung centaurs going down in a struggling heap among half a dozen soldiers, fighting furiously to the last stroke of a Helios sword.
But my own mount fought unscathed. And from his back I fought too, blind and breathless, seeing nothing but the next helmed face to swing at and the next soldier that went down—and the man beyond him stepping forward into his place.
Until at last we were on the temple steps, surging up irresistibly against the golden hordes that barred our path. But now it was fighting in the dark. Overhead only a steady, lambent ring marked the sun’s corona.
