The Collected Stories

by Earl

  In a short time we had reached the castle by a winding route, coming before the utter sheerness of its one mighty wall. There was no moat at this point, for what enemy could scale the blank stone towering a hundred feet up?

  “Why have we come here?” I inquired. “We cannot enter through solid walls.”

  For answer, the venerable priest beat a short tattoo with his wand on the stone before him, and a great oblong section of the wall sank silently into the ground. Our horses crossed over the leveled top of the sunken piece and we dismounted in a small, completely enclosed courtyard. The giant oblong of wall then arose to its place soundlessly, sealing the wall as though an integral part of it.

  The lackey, after a respectful bow, led the horses away through one portal, and Shorro-Kal shuffled slowly toward another door, beckoning me to follow. We stepped into a small room from which led many corridors to the various parts of the great Castle Oppor. The priest led the way down one and we traversed its great length, meeting not a soul.

  “Is the Castle Oppor untenanted?” I asked at last, unable to bear the utter silence.

  “Nay, Prince,” smiled Shorro-Kal. “But I have purposely chosen a deserted passageway to reach the princess’ chambers, as at present no one save certain trusted persons must know of your return. Even your own people—those faithful thousands who would weep with joy to see you—must be kept in ignorance of your presence yet for a time.”

  WE MADE our way up gloomy stairs and through dusty passageways, and my aged companion finally stopped before a wooden door and tapped on it lightly. I fretted, as there was a long wait. Then the door opened. Suddenly I felt strangely weak, why I did not know. That I was to see the Princess Alvena, I knew—and that for some reason it was to be a joyful meeting. A womanly face peered at us and lit up with joy at seeing me. This woman, a maidservant, bowed low before me and gave me the royal salute, as had Shorro-Kal and the lackey before her. Then the priest had grabbed my arm and was tugging me forward, for I seemed to be paralyzed.

  In the center of the immense, richly adorned chamber beyond the door was a couch, and from that couch strode a woman whose grace and beauty increased by the same law that governs the intensity of gravitation between celestial bodies. Then she stood before me, heavenly blue eyes moist, and my senses reeled—for I knew then that her face was dear to me, and that I loved her.

  We were in each other’s arms then, muttering broken endearments. Finally the Princess Alvena pushed me away from her gently, and looked over my body as though expecting to see me deformed. “Thank Tordok that you have come back as you left, dear lover. Despite Shorro-Kal’s repeated assurances, I secretly feared that you might suffer hurt, in mind or body. Tell me, dearest, did you discover the Great Secret which you sought in that magic land?”

  “Did I what?” I asked, frowning in perplexity.

  The princess opened her eyes wide. “The Great Secret of Deliverance! Don’t you remember——”

  She faltered, seeing the perfectly blank look in my face, and stared horrified, it seemed. “Then—then—it did do you harm! not to your body, but to your—mind!”

  I turned around to get an answer to the riddle from the old priest, but he was gone. “Princess Alvena,” I said slowly, “I don’t know what you mean. In fact, I am in a fog of doubt about everything except a few names. But one thing I know—I love you!”

  With a tremulous cry, the princess fell into my arms. “It is no matter, lover, that your mind is not yet clear. Doubtless Shorro-Kal will remedy that. But come, there is food, and you must be hungry—you who have not eaten for three years!”

  Three years! Where had I been for three years? But hunger drove speculation from my mind. I ate of tempting foods in the chambers of the princess, and said nothing as she watched me from across the small table. Somehow there was no need for words between us, and we grew happy in a blissful and mute understanding. While gradually appeasing my surprizing hunger, I feasted my eyes upon her breath-taking beauty. Of all the beautiful shades of blue I had seen before the awakening in the underground crypt, none of them could compare with the wonderful celestial blue of this princess’ eyes. And with a soft rose and cream complexion, delicate features of aristocratic mold and hair of flushed gold, her sweet face formed a honeyed complement to those tender eyes that reflected only innocence and quiet charm. But there was a sadness reflected in them that it pained me to see, once the great joy of her seeing me had died down. I reached my hand out to her in mute inquiry, my appetite appeased.

  “What is it, beloved,” I asked when she dropped her gaze, “that puts the grave light of sorrow in your eyes, when there should only be joy that we are reunited again?”

  “You should well know,” she responded. “It is the heavy yoke that the Miskovites have been to our people for ten years. They came but yesterday to exact their usual tribute—the best of our crops and three of our fairest maids. Oh, Dahrin, have you forgotten everything?”

  She ended with a reproachful cry, for I had frowned blankly.

  “Come,” she cried then, “come with me out on the castle wall and I will explain what used to bring the flush of righteous rage to your face—before you left.”

  A STAIRCASE took us to a corridor that opened to the uppermost parts of the castle, and we strode to the abutment walls, looking out over the land from an archer’s cubbyhole. Whether it was morning or afternoon I could not tell, for the sky was of the same uniform shrouded cast it had always been since I had known it. And as I turned my eyes in all directions, I saw nothing of the horizon, but only the uncanny ultramarine mists that seemed to rest on the land like a curse.

  “What is this indigo mist, Alvena, that hangs so heavy over Jorentia?” I asked, sweeping my arm around.

  “It is the evil sorcery of the Miskovites,” she replied solemnly. “And it has blotted out the sun for ten long years. If but your memory were not clouded, you would recall that this land was once a place of sunshine and peace and happiness.”

  “Something of that I do recall!” I said reflectively. “I seem to recall also that we were a populous race, spreading over a great kingdom, and that you, or someone like you, was our—our ruler!”

  The princess looked at me strangely. “My mother!—she who was queen of Jorentia for seven years after my father, the king, died; and who herself departed this life when I was but a girl. Her untimely death was brought on by the falling of the magical curse of the Miskovites, which split our happy kingdom asunder, and—made us slaves!”

  “Then you,” I supplemented, “are queen of Jorentia, by right of heritage.” A hurt look came into Alvena’s eyes. “I, who should be queen indeed, am no more than a princess for whom there is no throne. And you, Dahrin, who should become king, are but the lord of Castle Oppor, vassal deputy to the Miskovites.” Involuntary anger surged through me. “These Miskovites—tell me how they hold us in bondage.”

  “Oh, Dahrin, your poor mind!” Alvena sobbed. Then she took hold of herself and spoke tonelessly, bitterly:

  “It was ten years ago that the Miskovites, failing in the attempt to conquer us in war, visited upon Jorentia an evil curse, produced by their black-souled sorcerers, for which they sold themselves to the devil. This ghastly blue pall, which has hidden the sun for a decade, descended upon us without warning. It not only has thinned our crops and thus brought famine to us so that our numbers have been halved, but it has also split the kingdom of Jorentia in twain. Beyond that thick blue wall of magic to the west”—she pointed to where the indigo mists were almost black in their intensity—“lie friends and loved ones whom we have not seen for ten years!”

  “The barrier cannot be crossed?” I queried, incredulously.

  “Those who try meet death,” answered Alvena simply. “The black magic of the Miskovites is great. And then, our numbers depleted by starvation, our land bisected, the formerly weaker enemy poured upon us with its armies and conquered us. Doubtless the other half of our people have been also subjugated. At present
we obey their dictates. From me they took the throne. From my people they take every season a third measure of our crops. Worst of all, they come once a month to pick out three of the fairest maids from the whole land. What evil fate visits them, we can only guess; they never come back from Miskovia. And to keep us weakened in strength, they take with them also as many of our strongest young men as they deem necessary—to become slaves, for soldiers they would not become for the hated Miskovites. That, Dahrin, is our tale of woe.”

  I burned with hot anger at the recital of atrocities practised by the tyrannical enemy. “Yes, I remember those things now, and I recall also that we staged a futile resistance once; there was much heroic fighting on our part; there was confusion——”

  I hesitated, lost in vague doubt as to the rest, and the princess continued for me:

  “And there was utter defeat for you and your brave men, Dahrin. I swooned away when I heard that you had all been killed; for not a week before we had made lovers’ vows, you and I. Then I was brought before a bed, and there you lay, nearly dead from loss of blood. I nursed you tenderly, and with the help of Shorro-Kal’s blessed magic, we fanned the spark of life yet left in you. Then it was, after you had recovered, that Shorro-Kal suggested sending you on the Great Quest of Deliverance, more especially as the Miskovites wanted your head for your part in the rebellion.”

  “And then——?” I prompted.

  “Why, then, Shorro-Kal weaved his necromantic spell over your body, and sent your spirit in search of the Deliverance.”

  The princess turned her large eyes upon me. “You have been gone three long years, beloved Dahrin. You have come back—not as you left!”

  “Alvena, I do not know what you mean! I——” But now the princess was staring horrified down on the landscape below. I followed her eye and saw a group of horsemen approaching the castle, having just emerged from the concealing blue fog to the west.

  “The Miskovites!” gasped Alvena. “For what purpose can they be here, when but yesterday——”

  My teeth clicked together involuntarily at sight of the hated enemy, and my right hand automatically darted for a sword-hilt that was not there. The party clattered up to the huge front portcullis, and I heard, a moment later, the screech of drawbridge chains.

  I went mad then, it seemed, in an anger that had its roots in past memories. Hurling curses upon the Miskovites, I whirled from the bastion rampart and ran in furious rage toward the stairs that led below. Down these I fairly flew, only vaguely aware that the Princess Alvena was following me and begging me to stay and not run headlong into danger. All I knew at the moment was that the hated Miskovites were upon us, and that I wanted nothing more than to confront them and fight. Having gained the princess’ chambers, I raced by instinct toward a doorway leading to the frontal part of the castle. Swinging it open savagely, I found myself face to face with Shorro-Kal, who, panting, had evidently at that moment arrived from the lower halls.

  At sight of him I hesitated, and he read my purpose at a glance, by the livid fury in my face. Then I stepped forward, intending to brush past him, but his hand, with a surprizing strength for one so old and weak, clutched at my arm.

  “Let me go, good Father,” I fairly shouted. “I have business below.”

  “Nay, Prince Dahrin.” His hand remained firm on my arm. “Below you must not go!”

  Our eyes met, his sparkling strangely, and suddenly my madness left me, and I stepped back obediently. At the same moment the princess flew up and threw her arms around me.

  “Dahrin, beloved. You would have walked to your death!” she panted, a look of mingled fear and relief in her eyes. Then she turned to Shorro-Kal:

  “What have they come for this time?”

  THE old priest eyed me in silence for a moment. Then, reassured that I had full command of myself, he spoke: “They have come—oh, the utter atrocity of it!—for ten more of our ablest-bodied youths!”

  The Princess Alvena gasped and paled. Such was her tender heart, and her love for her people—a heritage from Jorentia’s long line of beneficent monarchs—that the news hurt her as much as though they had been her own brothers or children.

  “Tordok have mercy on us!” she cried despairingly. “When will this tyrannical yoke be lifted?”

  As for myself, I think I growled in anger, so that Shorro-Kal again clutched my arm.

  “Have no fear,” I said then. “I will not do anything against your will. But I feel I should be fighting the thrice-damned enemy, instead of moaning our fate up here in a woman’s boudoir.”

  Shorro-Kal shook his head sadly. “You do not understand, brave Prince. The Miskovites are too many and too strong for us. Once before you and a band of courageous martyrs attempted to beat them back, with results you may, or may not, remember.”

  At my nod, he continued: “Remembering that, perhaps you also recall that, after long and careful deliberation, it was planned to try another way of ending the heart-breaking tyranny. Your spirit, under the influence of a powerful enchantment, was sent to another world——”

  As the old priest paused mysteriously, I urged impatiently: “Go on, tell me all. Too long have you kept me in a fog of ignorance about the whole matter.”

  But the venerable magician, instead of answering directly, consulted a bit of parchment that he took from his robe. “Nay, my son. Time shortens, and you must now go back to that land in which your spirit has sojourned for so long. It is important that we keep the rapport between you and that other land intact. But when you next return, you will be told all.”

  The old priest then motioned the princess back, and in another moment was waving his curious wand before my face. Even as I turned to Alvena to say goodbye, a tenuous fog of spectrum blue—those indigos and ultramarines I knew so well—dissolved out of the air, and thickened rapidly. There was a long sensation of drifting in the shimmering veils of cerulean mists—or perhaps it was but an instant—and then——

  Yes, back to my room in the big city, with incongruous tin-pan music drumming into my ears from the radio, and nothing more mysterious around me than worn furniture and calcimined walls.

  This, the third of my eery “blue” dreams, each a continuation of the former like the chapters of a book, has placed my mind in a quandary. It is but a dream. I have told myself that a hundred times. What else could it be? Surely it is nonsense to suppose that the events I seemed to go through were actual—in another world!

  The first two times I dreamed of Jorentia, I was able to scoff lightly at their significance, despite the uncanny vividness with which the dreams visited me. But now . . . [deletion.—EANDO.]

  AUGUST 22nd—It is but two nights ago that I stared at the hypnotic sapphire in my fob and found myself transported to Castle Oppor, either in a dream or—not in a dream. Last evening I came home from the office worn in spirit and body. It was miserable, trying to do my work, with my every thought revolving around Castle Oppor and everything in it. Yet—despite what I might call a craving to try again the experiment with the sapphire—I resisted, and went to a sleepless bed instead. Today was still more ragged, so that even my fellow workers noticed it and told me to take an afternoon off, as I was obviously ill.

  Tonight, all resolves shattered, I again fastened my eyes to the queer bubbles in the crystal heart of the sapphire. That was two hours ago.

  Awakening after another of those mysterious transitions through azure clouds, I found myself in that curious state of being two persons—and yet one. In Jorentia, I had, it seemed, the full memory of George Borland, but my action and thought were primarily under the dominance of that mysterious Prince Dahrin, with whom I was somehow closely associated.

  But this fourth revival in that other land was not as the first three had been, for I opened my eyes upon walls I immediately knew to be those of Castle Oppor’s lowermost chambers. Furthermore, I awoke with my mind and memory wholly cleared so that I remembered without any obscuring my entire previous life as a prince of Jorentia. O
nly one thing remained hazy to my understanding—the strange journey which my spirit had undertaken to an alien world.

  With my new-found cognizance, I immediately recognized the room in which I lay as part of the private chambers of Shorro-Kal, the last and greatest of Jorentia’s magicians. Situated in what had been dungeons in ages past, these gloomy spaces were now the scene of the exorcism and necromantic rites of Shorro-Kal, whose art was the magic lore of Jorentia’s many powerful sorcerers of the past.

  I turned my head when the last wisps of blueness had cleared away, and saw the priest of magic seated before a huge desk, thumbing gravely through one of many ancient books of thaumaturgic lore piled thereon. Some sixth sense seemed to tell him I was conscious, and he turned to me with a bow and the deferential salute that he had always used to me.

  “You have returned quickly, noble Prince, from the other world,” were his first words.

  I smiled. “At your bidding, of course.”

  “Nay,” returned the aged magician, to my astonishment. “I could send you at will to the other world, but calling you back—that was not within my power. It rested solely with the will of that being with whom you were identified.”

  “You mean that it rested with that other—with my own—with my other—oh, Shorro-Kal, I am bewitched! You say that other person sent me back at will, and yet I am that other person!”

  The venerable savant of sorcery nodded sagely. “Small wonder that you feel you are still enthralled in magic, for you have become so closely identified with the mind in that other world that truly perhaps you are one!”