Berserker (Omnibus)

by Robert Holdstock

  Incomprehensible lights and shapes moved in the walls, appearing from the ground and vanishing upwards until they were lost in the narrow apex of the spired tower, in a confusion of colour that left Swiftaxe dizzy. He had never, in all his journeyings in the strange lands of the south, seen any such sight as this, nor any building as tall, nor any art that actually moved like these lights in the crystals.

  The girl led him across the wide expanse of floor, two small figures in the silent tower, their shadows cast in hundreds of directions and in hundreds of hues of different intensity. She said, ‘Don’t be afraid. This is one of the first buildings erected, and it remains a place of peace and consultation. There is nothing that can harm you here.’

  The Berserker said nothing, his grip on the shaft of his axe relaxing slightly, but his eyes still wide and incredulous.

  In the middle of the tower, winding down from the floor into some blue-lit cavern below, was a spiral stairway. They walked carefully down the slick stone steps, and Swiftaxe was glad to leave the whirling lights behind. But soon he felt they were climbing, though the effort of walking was not great. When they emerged from the blue tunnel into bright light again he realised, after a moment’s disorientation, that they now walked through the actual rising colours of the crystal wall, and far below was the tiny entrance to this enormous tower.

  His legs began to give way and he reached to the wall for support. He screamed as he found the wall was just an illusion, and began to topple out into the space of the tower, hundreds of feet from the crystal floor below. But something reached out for him and grasped him by the waist, and gently he was drawn back to safety, trembling and saturated with sweat.

  The girl was shaking her head. ‘Not much further. There are hidden devices that prevent such accidents. Stop being so afraid.’

  Then she swept away, her transparent gown billowing about her body, her step sprightly and familiar, different from the clumsy walk she had affected earlier. She was learning to use this illusory body!

  At length they came to a deep, well-lit cubicle, that reached back from the inner wall of the tower into some dark beyond. Backed by the glaring, changing light patterns the girl and Swiftaxe knelt on the floor before the huge stone that resided in the chamber. Carved intricately from the same sort of grey, crystalline rock that went to the making of most of the standing stones with which he was familiar, the rock stood twice the height of the Berserker, and wider round than ten men could reach. Its face was ragged, the results of wind and rain smoothing and defacing the once elaborate drawings there. But Swiftaxe recognised symbols and markings that were only found on the oldest of the stones in his country, those that harboured demons, or marked the graves of ancient giants.

  His skin crawled with fear as he waited to see whether any such being resided in this rock.

  His fear was ill founded.

  After a while the face of the rock grew dark, and Swiftaxe, staring at it, felt his mind drawn into the depths of the stone, and beyond. It was as if a hole had been carved through the very fabric of the earth, a depthless pit formed reaching beyond even the stars. Into this pit he plummeted without ever leaving his crouched position and soon he felt sensations of wind and warmth, and heard sounds unlike any forest or moorland across which he had hunted.

  The blackness seemed to clear and as he stared into the face of the giant stone he looked across the ages, to times past and times to come, and what he saw staggered him, blinded him, left him breathless with astonishment and incomprehension.

  Such devices … such peoples … such beings … such dreams!

  Swiftaxe’s mind, which itself had traversed three ages, could not cope with the things it was exposed to, and soon the Berserker slapped his hands against his eyes and screamed, ‘Enough! My senses are bursting. Enough of this!’

  The girl who knelt near him placed a hand on his shoulder, and he looked at her. His eyes were wide, he knew, wide and red-rimmed with the fear that was bursting from him. He was aware that he was trembling.

  ‘I cannot comprehend these things …’

  ‘Aye,’ said the girl, her smile as warm as a summer’s noonday. ‘You were not meant to. To try and understand the being which inhabits you would require that you not only understand these things, but could accept them without blinking, without thinking, without blushing. Do you understand? You ask us to rid you of a god. You ask something that is among the most difficult tasks in the Universe. Our comprehension of the demon in your skull is as frustrated and limited as your comprehension of these things of the future that you have seen in the oracle.’

  ‘Then I am doomed …’ said Swiftaxe in despair. ‘I am doomed! Not even the greatest magicians in the earth can help me! By Taran, it has all been worthless!’

  His cry echoed through the vast tower, and seemed to be mimicked in the reverberating colour patterns in the walls of the place.

  The bear in his skull, sensing its moment of triumph the human frustration – lurched forward and took control of him.

  Eyes blazed red …

  Blood surged and the fangs of the bear became his sparkling teeth, his hands became the great, ivory tipped claws of the bear, reaching to strike at whatever came close …

  His axe swung high and rained blows upon the dark rock, causing sparks to fly and the shocking sound of impact to fill the void within the tower.

  The Berserker screamed, insensate with rage, possessed of its bizarre animal fury …

  It turned around and around, the blade of its axe hissing through the air in search of blood …

  It saw the girl, fell upon her in its frenzied wrath, and split her open with two savage and massive blows, dividing her body in half, then cutting head from shoulders and revelling in the hot stench of fluid that stained the blade.

  Calmed as abruptly as it had entered its berserk state …

  Swiftaxe opened his eyes, aware of the blood on his hands, and with vivid memories of his murderous deeds brilliant in his mind, pushed forward by the laughing, delighted god that had made him destroy his guide.

  Screaming in human anguish he stared about him, at the floor, looking for the remains of the girl.

  There were no remains, not even the slightest trace of blood save that which stuck to his fingers and arms.

  She slipped into sight again from behind the stone, worried, but half smiling. He stared at her in amazement. ‘I recall striking you into pieces.’

  ‘I am the illusion maker,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘You destroyed nothing more than an image of me. See, no trace of blood even upon your flesh.’

  His hands were clean again, the stickiness having slipped from him in the instant of her words.

  ‘This is my curse,’ he said wearily. ‘Now I face ages more of this terrible stigma, unable to control my deeds and behaviour, an unpredictable and violent animal, acting at the whim of this foul god Odin. Now I realise you cannot help me, I have no hope. No hope at all.’

  ‘But you have!’ said the girl. ‘I only said that it was the most difficult task in the universe, not that it was impossible. We Cynegesa can help you, although it will take much courage.’

  ‘How so? Courage I am not short of, but the way you say it … courage of a special kind?’

  The girl nodded. ‘First, in simplified terms, let us show you the thing which inhabits you, this thing you call Odin, this being you refer to as a god …’

  In the forty-seventh epoch of the time of the Runelord Balazacrith, the Cynegesa and all their animals, and all their properties, and all their records of their home of the past several thousand epochs were brought through the gate into the valley. Two stones were erected to mark the gate, and the anima of an Original, resurrected from the crystal tombs, was placed in each. The passing of the gate was done because the flame-ships in the south had returned with reports of the beginning of a higher form of animal in the valleys there, and it was time to obey the ancient laws.

  At this time the League of the Gatelands, u
nder the command of the Runelord Astraldee, was formed to map and study the world into which the Cynegesa had come. They were amazed to discover the remnants of a second settlement of Originals, which had been decaying for many epochs, protected from the overworld by a gate of its own. The gate had been closed by magic during the same holocaust that had apparently destroyed this extensive settlement of Cynegesa.

  The explorers had no idea at the time, but this settlement had been destroyed by the product of its own devices. Great machines littered the deserts, and crystal recorders lay exposed and decaying in the sun. In an attempt to save the knowledge and records of this branch of the people, the League of the Gatelands brought the crystals into the shade and programmed them to speak.

  Many were intact, and many more were decayed. One spoke of the arrival in this land of an ancient life form called the Wuutinathi, that had raided the city and tried to destroy the Cynegesa. The Wuutinathi had also come from a fire-land beyond the stars, and were a hideous and violent race well known to the settlers. The invader, during the first few days of the attack, had been substantially destroyed by the Cynegesa, but not before they had sucked the rudiments of magic from their minds; their own slight knowledge of the art of magic had then been turned against them, and they had been almost completely destroyed.

  This was as much as the ancient records of the Cynegesa had stated. The members of the League stored the crystals in their ships and then turned their attention to the gate that this settlement had built into the overworld. They thought that they would unlock the stones and send a geographical placement probe across the overworld to the gate into the Valley of the Lost, in our own green lands.

  They could not have known, for there was no way of telling, that a single surviving Wuutinathi had been trapped in the gate towards the end of the battle, locked there by magic, and left there, for the Cynegesa had not known how to deal with it.

  Had the creature decided to stay its hand as the gate was unlocked, it would have been released the sooner. As it was, as the barriers across the gate came down, the single surviving form of this horrendous life force emerged from the shadows, after an entombment of thousands of epochs.

  No record remains of its appearance, but it fled through the gate-lands, pursued by the flame-ships, but outrunning them, following their own homing devices. Before it could be stopped it had reached the Valley of the Lost, and passed through the gateway of stones, into the emerging world of man.

  The League made many attempts to retrieve the creature, but it remained hidden for many epochs until the migration of the new intelligence had spread it thin and it could inhabit their spiritual worlds, concealed in the very elements of nature that the ancient peoples of the overworld revered.

  Thus came a Wuutinathi to your land.

  Thus came Odin to your mind.

  The girl led him away from the stone, through green lit passages, warm yet murmuring with the devices in the walls that caused the wind to drift through these silent labyrinths. Their footsteps echoed loud in the deserted place, and the girl’s clothing rustled as she sometimes walked and sometimes ran. Swiftaxe followed her, cumbersome with the weight of his weapons, and the weakness of his limbs.

  His mind still spun with what he had seen and been told in the depthless void beyond the great stone. He was not sure he understood anything any more. He wanted to break the spell that bound him to his unpredictable fury, and that possibility seemed always to slip further from his grasp.

  At last they came to a small chamber, the floor piled deep with soft material into which Swiftaxe gratefully sank his body. His breathing was hard, his skin damp. The room was irradiated by an invisible source of soft light, and in that softness the girl’s features were strengthened and outlined and she became all the women in the world as the Berserker stared at her.

  She said, ‘Now you know.’

  ‘Now I know that some beast from the heavens inhabits me? That’s all well and good, but it was not the knowledge of my tormentor that concerned me, but the way to kick him out.’

  Her laughter was delightful. She leaned forward towards him, taking her weight on one hand as she brushed the damp hair from his face with the other. As her breasts fell free beneath her, hanging large and firm, Swiftaxe reached out and cupped each of them through the gossamer fabric of her robe. She drew back, her face puzzled, her breath taking that deeper tone that tells of unexpected arousal.

  ‘The power that radiates from you is incredible,’ she said, licking her lips and half smiling, perhaps a little worried by what she had sensed in that moment’s intimacy. ‘It is sexual, and it is animal, and it is almost overwhelming.’

  Swiftaxe said nothing, not sure whether she was insulting him or flattering him.

  She shook her head. ‘This is the power that you seek to evict from your body, and yet, from our studies of your race, it is the sort of power that most men would sacrifice much to gain.’

  ‘They are welcome to whatever drains from me,’ said the Berserker. ‘An excess of anything is destructive, and an excess of uncontrollable power is the most destructive excess of all.’

  The girl nodded. ‘It must be drained back into the elements of wind and thunder, the places where it came from. To possess you the Wuutinathi has accepted a tiny reduction in its own spiritual power. It will not have damaged it for it is still connected to the being, linking your own human power to that of the “god”. To drain it will be a mere irritation to the Wuutinathi, for it is now very powerful itself. It is possible, however, that you can drain more than just a fragment of its power as it sits smugly among the supernatural devices of your own world. What we have in mind for you will enable you to fight this Wuutinathi on almost equal terms, and to begin the process of its destruction so that in a thousand years or less it will be dead, and remembered only in legend.’

  Every fibre of Swiftaxe’s body tensed with excitement. His heart surged. His face stretched in a delighted smile and he reached out to grip the girl by her shoulders, shaking her as he cried, ‘Then I may be released! I may know peace again!’

  The girl laughed, her eyes sparkling. ‘The Wuutinathi is a primitive magician; its knowledge is stolen knowledge. Alas, our own knowledge is much decayed with time. Nevertheless, the magic of the Wuutinathi is limited, and of an elementary nature. Once you are equipped with the correct knowledge you will be able to fight it on its own terms.’

  ‘Then wait no longer! Equip me!’

  The girl settled back on her haunches and shook her head teasingly, staring Swiftaxe in his wide, excited eyes. She said quietly, ‘A part of the Wuutinathi anima is in you, held there by a spell that is bonded in a complex rune. Break the rune, or erase it, and the spell is broken, and the anima drained.’

  Swiftaxe shrugged. ‘It sounds too easy for words. This axe can erase a mountain. Erasing a rune should be child’s play.’

  ‘Put the weapon down,’ said the girl, not liking the way the huge blade waved above her head. Swiftaxe grinned apologetically and placed the axe by his side.

  He was so close … he could almost smell freedom … he was like a child, excited at the thought of a visit to another settlement … he wanted to giggle and slap his hands together … he wanted to make jokes, to hug the girl … he wanted freedom, and freedom was close, and he didn’t know what to think or how to behave in this time of his triumph.

  Then the girl said, ‘Swiftaxe … you are misunderstanding!’

  ‘How so?’

  Storm winds … the scream of dead … the sudden agonising howl of a slaughtered dog … his moment of pleasure slipped from his grasp as violently as an arm severed from the living body …

  ‘You cannot fight Odin in this time,’ she said evenly, ‘Or in this place, or in any place beyond the gate that is in this time.’

  Agony!

  Swiftaxe clenched his fists, and his teeth and his eyes and tried to swallow the sudden rising anger, the surging gorge that threatened to spill his abrupt and agonising disappo
intment in a bilious flood.

  ‘Tell me, then …’ he managed to say, trying and failing to keep the awful bitterness from his voice.

  ‘He must be fought at a time when he is closest to the overworld himself, and confident enough to become bound to a people who make constant demands upon him for help in return for their subjugation. From the glimpses I have already had of your strange past, there is only one time that is correct. The time of your first birth, the age of your first life.’

  Swiftaxe felt the blood drain from his face. ‘Then I cannot after all finish my quest now, and return to my own people, the Coritani!’

  He cried out in anger and smashed his fist to the furs beside him, jarring the room and the girl and even his own body. When he lifted his face again there were tears of rage in his eyes, and the skin of his cheeks was lined and tensed with bitterness. ‘Don’t you see? The past is dead for me. It comes to me in nightmares, unreal dreams! The real world, the world I desire to make my own when freed of this curse, is that very world beyond the gate that you now deny me! My world is a world of Romans and druids and tribes and war and despair, and I can help my people to fight those forces that strive to change them! By Taran! I have no desire to return to a nightmare, to a dark vision in my skull. I wish release from this ghost so I can live in the hills of the north again …’ Again he screamed incoherently, subverting his need to strike in anger with a cry of anger that made the girl turn white as she watched with sympathy and with concern. He said, ‘By the deep waters, is there to be no end to this? Will I never ever know peace?’

  He began to slap his open hand against the stone of the floor, loving the pain, feeling each jarring shock reach through him, easing the awful pain of disappointment. It was not finished … it would have to begin again, all over again, in another time, with another people, and another life of violence and blood lust that would leave him feared and hated even if he did manage to remove the demon from his body and mind.