The Best of Leigh Brackett

by Leigh Brackett

  Ciaran looked around the circle of exhausted humans. Charcoal burners, trappers, hoop-shavers—the lean, tough, hard-bitten riffraff of the border wilderness. Even the women were tough. Ciaran began to get ideas.

  There was a man crushed up against them on the other side—the man who had hitherto been at the head of the column. He was tall and stringy like a hungry cat, and just as mean looking, hunched over his knees with his face buried in his forearms and a shag of iron-gray hair falling over his shoulders.

  Ciaran nudged him. “You don’t make any sign. Game to take a chance?”

  The shaggy head turned slightly, just enough to unveil an eye. Ciaran wished suddenly he’d kept his mouth shut. The eye was pale, almost white, with a queer unhuman look as though it saw only gods or devils, and nothing in between.

  Ciaran had met hermits before in his wanderings. He knew the signs. Normally he rather liked hermits, but this one gave him unpleasant qualms in the stomach.

  The man dragged a rusty voice up from somewhere. “We are enslaved by devils. Only the pure can overcome devils. Are you pure?”

  Ciaran managed not to choke. “As a bird in its nest,” he said. “A newly fledged bird. In fact, a bird still in the shell.”

  The cold, pale eye looked at him without blinking.

  Ciaran resisted an impulse to punch it and said, “We have a means of freeing ourselves. If enough could be free, when the time came we might rush the Kalds.”

  “Only the pure can prevail against devils.”

  Ciaran gave him a smile of beatific innocence. The scar and the missing tooth rather spoiled the effect, but his eyes made up for it in bland sweetness.

  “You shall lead us, Father,” he cooed. “With such purity as yours, we can’t fail.”

  The hermit thought about that for a moment and then said, “I will pass the word. Give me the feke.”

  Ciaran’s jaw dropped. His eyes got glassy.

  “The feke,” said the hermit patiently. “The jiggler.”

  Ciaran closed his eyes. “Mouse,” he said weakly, “give the gentleman the picklock.”

  Mouse slid it to him, a distance of about two inches. The red-haired giant took some of his weight off Ciaran. Mouse was looking slightly dazed herself.

  “Hadn’t I better do it for you?” she asked, rather pompously.

  The hermit gave her a cold glance. He bent his head and brought his hands up between his knees. His collar-mate on the other side never noticed a thing, and the hermit beat Mouse’s time by a good third.

  Ciaran laughed. He lay in Mouse’s lap and had mild hysterics. Mouse cuffed him furiously across the back of his neck, and even that didn’t stop him.

  He pulled himself up, looked through streaming eyes at Mouse’s murderous small face, and bit his knuckles to keep from screaming.

  The hermit was already quietly at work on the man next him.

  Ciaran unslung his harp. The gray Kalds hadn’t noticed anything yet. Both Mouse and the hermit were very smooth workers. Ciaran plucked out a few sonorous minor chords, and the Kalds flicked their blood-pink eyes at him, but didn’t seem to think the harp called for any action.

  Ciaran relaxed and played louder.

  Under cover of the music he explained his plan to the big red hunter, who nodded and began whispering to his other collar-mate. Ciaran began to sing.

  He gave them a lament, one of the wild dark things the Cimmerians sing at the bier of a chief and very appropriate to the occasion. The Kalds lounged, enjoying the rest. They weren’t watching for it, so they didn’t see, as Ciaran did, the breathing of the word of hope around the circle.

  Civilized people would have given the show away. But these were bordermen, as wary and self-contained as animals. It was only in their eyes that you could see anything. They got busy, under cover of their huddled bodies and long-haired, bowed-over heads, with every buckle and pin they could muster.

  Mouse and the hermit passed instructions along the line, and since they were people who were used to using their hands with skill, it seemed as though a fair number of locks might get picked. The collars were left carefully in place.

  Ciaran finished his lament and was half way through another when the Kalds decided it was time to go.

  They moved in to goad the line back into position. Ciaran’s harp crashed out suddenly in angry challenge, and the close-packed circle split into a furious confusion.

  Ciaran slung his harp over his shoulder and sprang up, shaking off the collar. All around him was the clash of chain metal on rock, the scuffle of feet, the yells and heavy breathing of angry men. The Kalds came leaping in, their wands flashing. Somebody screamed. Ciaran got a fistful of Mouse’s tunic in his left hand and started to butt through the melee. He had lost track of the hermit and the hunter.

  Then, quite suddenly, it was dark.

  Silence closed down on the gully. A black, frozen silence, with not even a sound of breathing in it. Ciaran stood still, looking up at the dark sky. He didn’t even tremble. He was beyond that.

  Black darkness, in a land of eternal light.

  Somewhere then, a woman screamed with a terrible mad strength, and hell broke loose.

  Ciaran ran. He didn’t think about where he was going, only that he had to get away. He was still gripping Mouse. Bodies thrashed and blundered and shrieked in the darkness. Twice he and Mouse were knocked kicking. It didn’t stop them.

  They broke through finally into a clear space. There began to be light again, pale and feeble at first but flickering back toward normal. They were in a broad gully kicked smooth on the bottom by the passing of many feet. They ran down it.

  After a while Mouse fell and Ciaran dropped beside her. He lay there, fighting for breath, twitching and jerking like an animal with sheer panic. He was crying a little because it was light again.

  Mouse clung to him, pressing tight as though she wanted to merge her body with his and hide it. She had begun to shake.

  “Kiri,” she whispered, over and over again. “Kiri, what was it?”

  Ciaran held her head against his shoulder and stroked it. “I don’t know, honey. But it’s all right now. It’s gone.”

  Gone. But it could come back. It had once. Maybe next time it would stay.

  Darkness, and the sudden cold.

  The legends began crawling through Ciaran’s mind. If Bas the Immortal was true, and the Stone of Destiny was true, and the Stone gave Bas power over the life and death of a world…then…?

  Maybe Bas was getting tired of the world and wanted to throw it away.

  The rational stubbornness in man that says a thing is not because it’s never been before helped Ciaran steady down. But he couldn’t kid himself that there hadn’t been darkness where no darkness had even been dreamed of before.

  He shook his head and started to pull Mouse to her feet, and then his quick ears caught the sound of someone coming toward them, running. Several someones.

  There was no place to hide. Ciaran got Mouse behind him and waited, half crouching.

  It was the hunter, with the hermit loping like a stringy cat at his heels and a third man behind them both. They all looked a little crazy, and they didn’t seem to be going to stop.

  Ciaran said, “Hey!”

  They slowed down, looking at him with queer, blank eyes. Ciaran blew up, because he had to relax somehow.

  “It’s all over now. What are you scared of? It’s gone.” He cursed them, with more feeling than fairness. “What about the Kalds? What happened back there?”

  The hunter wiped a huge hand across his red-bearded face. “Everybody went crazy,” he said thickly. “Some got killed or hurt. Some got away, like us. The rest were caught again.” He jerked his head back. “They’re coming this way. They’re hunting us. They hunt by scent, the gray beasts do.”

  “Then we’ve got to get going.” Ciaran turned around. “Mouse. You, Mousie! Snap out of it, honey. It’s all right now.”

  She shivered and choked over her breath, and
the hermit fixed them both with pale, mad eyes.

  “It was a warning,” he said. “A portent of judgment, when only the pure shall be saved.” He pointed a bony finger at Ciaran. “I told you that evil could not prevail against devils!”

  That got through to Mouse. Sense came back into her black eyes. She took a step toward the hermit and let go.

  “Don’t you call him evil—or me either! We’ve never hurt anybody yet, beyond lifting a little food or a trinket. And besides, who the hell are you to talk! Anybody as handy with a picklock as you are has had plenty of practice…”

  Mouse paused for breath, and Ciaran got a look at the hermit’s face. His stomach quivered. He tried to shut Mouse up, but she was feeling better and beginning to enjoy herself. She plunged into a detailed analysis of the hermit’s physique and heredity. She had a vivid and inventive mind.

  Ciaran finally got his hand over her mouth, taking care not to get bitten. “Nice going,” he said, “but we’ve got to get out of here. You can finish later.”

  She started to heel his shins, and then quite suddenly she stopped and stiffened up under his hands. She was looking at the hermit. Ciaran looked, too. His insides knotted, froze, and began to do tricks.

  The hermit said quietly, “You are finished now.” His pale eyes held them, and there was nothing human about his gaze, or the cold calm of his voice.

  “You are evil. You are thieves—and I know, for I was a thief myself. You have the filth of the world on you, and no wish to clean it off.”

  He moved toward them. It was hardly a step, hardly more than an inclination of the body, but Ciaran gave back before it.

  “I killed a man. I took a life in sin and anger, and now I have made my peace. You have not. You will not. And if need comes, I can kill again—without remorse.”

  He could, too. There was nothing ludicrous about him now. He was stating simple fact, and the dignity of him was awesome. Ciaran scowled down at the dust.

  “Hell,” he said, “we’re sorry, Father. Mouse has a quick tongue, and we’ve both had a bad scare. She didn’t mean it. We respect any man’s conscience.”

  There was a cold, hard silence, and then the third man cried out with a sort of subdued fury:

  “Let’s go! Do you want to get caught again?”

  He was a gnarled, knotty, powerful little man, beginning to grizzle but not to slow down. He wore a kilt of skins. His hide was dark and tough as leather, his hazel eyes set in nests of wrinkles.

  The hunter, who had been hearing nothing but noises going back and forth over his head, turned and led off down the gully. The others followed, still not speaking.

  Ciaran was thinking, He’s crazy. He’s clear off his head—and of all the things we didn’t need, a crazy hermit heads the list!

  There was a cold spot between his shoulders that wouldn’t go away even when he started sweating with exertion.

  The gully was evidently a main trail to Somewhere. There were many signs of recent passage by a lot of people, including an occasional body kicked off to the side and left to dry.

  The little knotty man, who was a trapper named Ram, examined the bodies with a terrible stony look in his eyes.

  “My wife and my first son,” he said briefly. “The gray beasts took them while I was gone.”

  He turned grimly away.

  Ciaran was glad when the bodies proved to be the wrong ones.

  Ram and the big red hunter took turns scaling the cleft walls for a look. Mouse said something about taking to the face of the Plains where they wouldn’t be hemmed in. They looked at her grimly.

  “The gray beasts are up there,” they said. “Flanking us. If we go up, they’ll only take us and chain us again.”

  Ciaran’s heart took a big, staggering jump. “In other words, they’re herding us. We’re going the way they want us to, so they don’t bother to round us up.”

  The hunter nodded professionally. “Is a good plan.”

  “Oh, fine!” snarled Ciaran. “What I want to know is, is there any way out?”

  The hunter shrugged.

  “I’m going on anyway,” said Ram. “My wife and son…”

  Ciaran thought about the Stone of Destiny, and was rather glad there was no decision to make.

  They went on, at an easy jog trot. By bits and pieces Ciaran built up the picture—raiding gangs of Kalds coming quietly onto isolated border villages, combing the brush and the forest for stragglers. Where they took the humans, or why, nobody could guess.

  The red hunter froze to a dead stop. The others crouched behind him, instinctively holding their breath.

  The hunter whispered, “People. Many of them.” His flat palm made an emphatic move for quiet.

  Small cold prickles flared across Ciaran’s skin. He found Mouse’s hand in his and squeezed it. Suddenly, with no more voice than the sigh of a breeze through bracken, the hermit laughed.

  “Judgment,” he whispered. “Great things moving.” His pale eyes were fey. “Doom and destruction, a shadow across the world, a darkness and a dying.”

  He looked at them one by one, and threw his head back, laughing without sound, the stringy cords working in his throat.

  “And of all of you, I alone have no fear!”

  They went on, slowly, moving without sound in small shapeless puddles of shadow thrown by the floating sunballs. Ciaran found himself almost in the lead, beside the hunter.

  They edged around a jog in the cleft wall. About ten feet ahead of them the cleft floor plunged underground, through a low opening shored with heavy timbers.

  There were two Kalds lounging in front of it, watching their wands flash in the light.

  The five humans stopped. The Kalds came toward them, almost lazily, running rough gray tongues over their shiny teeth. Their blood-pink eyes were bright with pleasure.

  Ciaran groaned. “This is it. Shall we be brave, or just smart?”

  The hunter cocked his huge fists. And then Ram let go a queer animal moan. He shoved past Ciaran and went to his knees beside something Ciaran hadn’t noticed before.

  A woman lay awkwardly against the base of the cliff. She was brown and stringy and not very young, with a plain, good face. A squat, thick-shouldered boy sprawled almost on top of her. There was a livid burn on the back of his neck. They were both dead.

  Ciaran thought probably the woman had dropped from exhaustion, and the kid had died fighting to save her. He felt sick.

  Ram put a hand on each of their faces. His own was stony and quite blank. After the first cry he didn’t make a sound.

  He got up and went for the Kald nearest to him.

  3

  He did it like an animal, quick and without thinking. The Kald was quick, too. It jabbed the wand at Ram, but the little brown man was coming so fast that it didn’t stop him. He must have died in mid-leap, but his body knocked the Kald over and bore him down.

  Ciaran followed him in a swift cat leap.

  He heard the hunter grunting and snarling somewhere behind him, and the thudding of bare feet being very busy. He lost sight of the other Kald. He lost sight of everything but a muscular gray arm that was trying to pull a jewel-tipped wand from under Ram’s corpse. There was a terrible stink of burned flesh.

  Ciaran grabbed the gray wrist. He didn’t bother with it, or the arm. He slid his grip up to the fingers, got his other hand beside it, and started wrenching.

  Bone cracked and split. Ciaran worked desperately, from the thumb and the little finger. Flesh tore. Splinters of gray bone came through. Ciaran’s hands slipped in the blood. The gray beast opened its mouth, but no sound came. Ciaran decided then the things were dumb. It was human enough to sweat.

  Ciaran grabbed the wand.

  A gray paw, the other one, came clawing for his throat around the bulk of Ram’s shoulders. He flicked it with the wand. It went away, and Ciaran speared the jewel tip down hard against the Kald’s throat

  After a while Mouse’s voice came to him from somewhere. “It’s do
ne, Kiri. No use overcooking it.”

  It smelled done, all right. Ciaran got up. He looked at the wand in his hand, holding it away off. He whistled.

  Mouse said, “Stop admiring yourself and get going. The hunter says he can hear chains.”

  Ciaran looked around. The other Kald lay on the ground. Its neck seemed to be broken. The body of the squat, dark boy lay on top of it. The hunter said:

  “He didn’t feel the wand. I think he’d be glad to be a club for killing one of them, if he knew it.”

  Ciaran said, “Yeah.” He looked at Mouse. She seemed perfectly healthy. “Aren’t women supposed to faint at things like this?”

  She snorted. “I was born in the Thieves’ Quarter. We used to roll skulls instead of pennies. They weren’t so scarce.”

  “I think,” said Ciaran, “the next time I get married I’ll ask more questions. Let’s go.”

  They went down the ramp leading under the Forbidden Plains. The hunter led, like a wary beast. Ciaran brought up the rear. They both carried the stolen wands.

  The hermit hadn’t spoken a word, or moved a hand to help.

  It was fairly dark there underground, but not cold. In fact, it was hotter than outside, and got worse as they went down. Ciaran could hear a sound like a hundred armorers beating on shields. Only louder. There was a feeling of a lot of people moving around but not talking much, and an occasional crash or metallic screaming that Ciaran didn’t have any explanation for. He found himself not liking it.

  They went a fairish way on an easy down-slope, and then the light got brighter. The hunter whispered, “Careful!” and slowed down. They drifted like four ghosts through an archway into a glow of clear bluish light.

  They stood on a narrow ledge. Just here it was hand-smoothed, but on both sides it ran in nature-eroded roughness into a jumble of stalactites and wind-galleries. Above the ledge, in near darkness, was the high roof arch, and straight ahead, there was just space. Eventually, a long way off, Ciaran made out a wall of rock.

  Below there was a pit. It was roughly barrel-shaped. It was deep. It was so deep that Ciaran had to crane over the edge to see bottom. Brilliant blue-white flares made it brighter than daylight about two-thirds of the way up the barrel.