by Andre Norton
Rentam was not prepared for what followed. Modic swung around, moving with the speed of a trained hand and foot warrior.
The end of that rod pointed unerringly at Rentam's middle, though the Seeker still did not lift his head.
No! Rentam's sense had never proved to be deceptive but it had to be so now ... it had to be! There was life in the other but it had dwindled down as might the last coal of a fire being fast smothered. In its place ... the guide's tongue tip sent a thrill of pain through his body, kept him pinned to the wall. There was life ending ... and nothing, nothing gathered beyond to take its place.
Yet Modic was on his knees, his head hanging forward nearly resting on his chest.
Not dead ... possessed! Other evil tales from the wild slipped into memory. The Seeker gave body room and aid to something else.... Only, when Rentam strove to touch that, to discover what had chained the River worlder to such a trap, he could not pick up anything save always the burning of the power.
Rentam jerked his body to the left as that weapon pointed in his direction. He felt the heat of a ray which burst at him. It was gone as quickly as two breaths, though Modic still held it aimed at the Betweener. Rentam saw the other's hand tighten about the band on the rod with full strength.
The shining length of his own find was ready. In its heart, flaring from the butt to the broken point, was a rich roll of color.
That twisted as if to wrench itself free but Rentam's six fingers held tight. His whole body jerked as if the artifact from the city ruin was a rope with him imprisoned in a loop. He flailed out with his other arm, striving to keep his balance, and so struck against Modic.
Whether the unexpected contact between their bodies was the reason or not, the Seeker staggered halfway around to bring up the strange weapon. That gesture was never completed, for Modic's rod, touching by chance the broken knife Rentam unconciously advanced in defense, burst, scattering fragments which melted to drip to the floor. Spots of dull dark blue fell smoking and glowing at their cores. The Seeker lurched forward, his unsteady pace close to a run, shouldering Rentam aside. The guide went after him at a speed which was nearly equal.
They came upon more skeletons. However the bones were scattered, no rack of them whole. Also they appeared as if they were more recent than those in the hallway. Another Seeker band which had reached this point before falling prey to an enemy they could not sense? Rentam
wondered.
In the center of the large chamber beyond was a bank of chairs, constructed, not of stone, but of some substance which glittered with dancing lights. Before those bubbled a pool from which arose the dread runnel of red they had companied with from without. It appeared to Rentam that small bursts of flame danced over surface just as had the black insects in the outer world.
At the entrance of the pool crouched something which was surely out of some nightmare of the damned. Rentam, gazing at it with horror was near overborne. For it might be that one of his kin, larger, mad with blood lust, stared straight into his eyes as if the mask he still wore
was transparent. The thing's mouth gaped wide and the pointed fangs within dripped glowing slime into the pool.
It was not dead. His own guide's sense told him rather it had never lived as he knew life. There was nothing at all Rentam could detect from it. While in the seats... Yes, there sat dead ... six bodies, not riven and torn, not reduced to racks of bones.. ..
These were not Betweeners, nor Seekers, nor of any race Rentam had knowledge of. What he could see of their skin (they wore wrappings which covered most of it) was a dark blue. The hands of each were spread out so the withered fingers could lie upon a series of buttons upon lap boards which perhaps kept each in his chair.
From this scene, the pool, and the long dead, there thrust upward a beam of light. Even as Rentam sighted it that beam pulsed again and again and then vanished. He drew in breath and expelled it again in a hiss which near carried away his mask. The hands of the dead had moved
. . . pressing certain of those buttons.
While the thing in the pool dropped its scaled muzzle into the slimy flood and drank--or seemed to do so. Yet that was impossible, Rentam's senses still told him there was no life here. If there had ever been it was long since gone.
Modic scrambled along the edge of the pool. His head no longer hung down but his features were twisted in such an expression of rage as Rentam had never seen.
The Seeker's mouth worked as he threw his mask into the pool, his eyes never leaving Rentam's face. Now he half turned and sprang forward to the nearest of those seats. His hands closed upon the body there and he jerked it out of its perch to the floor, catching and holding the board as the body fell. Now he seated himself where the corpse had been ... his fingers also spanning the board of buttons.
His whole body shook as he flung up his head and brayed wild laughter, his attention on the thing which had drunk and again raised its head to stare at Rentam.
"The hour is now!" Modic's voice seemed to fill the place. He might have been shouting with the full power of his lungs.
"Let that which purifies go forth and..." His finger tips played a fluttering game on the board.
"This is the hour," he repeated.
"Broken was the pattern when these died." He glanced at his dead companions.
"Some of their training lives on as was meant. They rule the world...." He leaned forward a little, spittle flicks on his lips, and yet he grinned and the wild exultation was not gone from his eyes....He nodded toward that thing on opposite bank of the pool.
"How go things with you, oh, Farguel? Yes, you are dead and gone but the treasure you gave us still does its duty. See this one of your kin ... he knows not even now what he has found ... the root of that which had made a desert of blooming land. Dead!" He pounded his hand on the
arm of the chair in which he sat.
"We died too soon!" Again his face twisted in that horrifying way, as much of a mask as the one he had flung from him.
"We will it not!" He pulled at his under robe as if it had begun to choke him.
"Dead, we shall take with us a dead world. Come, brothern from the outer stars. We shall move even as we have planned, for that one," he looked to Rentam, "shall be food for Farguel. So fed life will return ... is that not so? Have not I, Thebar, returned in the body of this
rover ... little by little he became me ... first as a whisper of treasure, and, when he had taken that, a stronger vision and a stronger. Until he saw himself a conqueror and a king!
And he had heard of this guide who knew the desert so well and would provide him with the means of coming.... Ah, brothern, rejoice that I was strong, that though I was what men called dead, I was not, only abiding deep within another body waiting.
"Did I not grow the stronger even as the chosen one began to come nearer? Did I not bid him send those fool beasts who followed him ahead that they might be harvested? Yes, the doing was mine ... and now I shall be even as he who once wore this body ... Lord of the world ... a world!"
Again he screeched with laughter, and now he beckoned to Rentam "Come here, Betweener... look at Farguel who is what our voice called from the swamp!" He gestured to the thing which drank.
"Once all you and your kin were as he. That day shall come again. For it is my will and desire, and only what I wish shall ever more happen here. Look you ... and die!"
Rentam had seen men before who came raving from the wasteland.
This talk of bodies and of kingdoms yet to come ... those were only the dreams of a broken-headed man. Yet when he watched the sureness of Modic's fingers on the board he had taken from the dead there was something in the man as well as in this place which no Betweener had
ever mentioned, which no legend enshrined from other years. Who were those from the past who Modic called upon? And this thing which had now lifted its head again from the deep red flood and stood, its jaws dripping red? The thing which had no life, or never had had, but which moved even as he w
atched, teetering a little with its forepaws near into the flood.
Farguel, Modic had named it. There was no such name in Betweener clans nor did any of his kin walk upon all fours. That huge head swung a little toward him, the mouth gaped as if the thing could wish him to it for feasting.
But there was something wrong with that mouth! Great fore fangs promised death ... in the strange light they changed in color with waves of blue, green, yellow, red running up and down. Yes, he could see now ... one of these was missing. Without conscious thought Rentam swung up the broken knife he had brought out of the ruins, comparing that to the dread fangs which the creature wore. It was certainly the truth ... what he had must be a fang ... but from what jaw had it been taken? This beast? Surely it depended too much on luck for that to be the truth and Rentam's kind were suspicious of such a thing as luck.
"SSaaa .. ." The sound was a hissing mighty enough to be from the throat of a king serpent himself, another traveler's tale the core of which perhaps to be found here. Rentam blinked and blinked again.
That thing was changing form before his eyes. In the desert wind devils could raise whole phantom cities to delude a traveler.
Yet never had they called her a Betweener. Guides were immune to that troubling of sight.
The legs of the thing were being drawn back into its bloated body. It now rested its belly flat.
"No!" Where Modic had sat voicing insane laughter, he now arose in the chair, clasping the board before him, his fingers thudding home with force on the buttons.
"Farguel!" he screamed at the hunched shape of that thing.
"Farguel, down with you to the battle even as we set together in thoughts of what must be done.
Was it not I, Thebar, who drew you from the swamp to this city, who delivered to you those who were as the beasts, only food to nourish you? Remember, once you fought before and there were those who did not run and scream and strive to hide against that which allowed no hiding. Farguel, this two-legged meat standing here is such a one as those who drove you back, who starved you of food and drink, who made you what you are ... for I think, Farguel, you are no longer the death hunter you were when we sealed our bargain. Kill this one, Farguel, and prove that you are again great and awesome, so that those sent to bear you down shall themselves die between your fangs. Kill, Farguel!"
Surely this thing, for all its alteration of shape, was not alive as he sensed life! Rentam watched it coil its serpent shape and lift high that head now losing all resemblance to his own. It opened wide its mouth and a broken line of fangs was fully bared. Not alive, not alive... Rentam held to that thought with all his strength of will.
Yet he could not judge whether it would answer Modic's order or not. His right hand still held in sight the fang, while the fingers of the other moved, writing on the air an unseen pattern. He had believed that such learning was a legend mumbled over by the old ones of the clans, and when he had been set to learning all that finger play he had done so believing it was only a part of his training.
The great head halted in its reach across the flood. Rentam felt a blow on his shoulder hard enough to numb his arm and near send him sprawling forward into the stream. Modic's board of control lay but inches away on the very lip of the pool.
"Farguel, strike ... there is no way he can ..."
Modic was out of the seat, had sunk to his knees as he still held one arm over the chair and was manifestly trying to draw himself up again.
Rentam watched the creature closely. Its head stretched even higher, supported by a long neck. The open mouth displayed the loss of a front fang.
"Farguel..." Modic's voice was harsh but faint as if that of the dead. Rentam fell back a step as he sensed what was happening to the Seeker. Life was receding. No, now, returned again in a wave with a desperate surge. Was Modic making a supreme effort against another force? "SSaaa..." hissing from the beast. Then a singsong of words from Modic. Only those words were not in any language that the guide could understand, drilled though as he was in the three major languages and numerous dialects of Between and River lands. There was an authority in that chant. Instinctively Rentam reached for the knife he did not wear. The Seeker huddled again in the chair, his features strangely bloated as if he put on another type of mask.
Whatever he said was addressed, not to Rentam, but to the thing by the stream. Modic raised his hands jerkily and outspread them again as if the button board still rested on his knees. Then, seeming to understand dimly that that was gone, he voiced a wailing cry, such a sound as Rentam had never heard before, but the peril of which he could taste with his flickering tongue.
Modic did not face the guide but, at that moment, Rentam's body throbbed as if that sound reached within him to the very bones, took command of him, flesh and blood. The head of the creature begun to swing again. Rentam, in spite of his struggle to command himself, moved toward the lip of the pool. Also ... his feet no longer obeyed his will, instead they carried him forward.
Though the Betweeners no longer owned any god or goddess, they still believed in a force for good and one for evil. The Speakers had told of old days when certain strong people, both male and female, reached such heights of control that they could command even stones to move. Those were of yesteryear and few believed their like might even have lived. Rather most Betweeners said inwardly that such were but creatures of legends cast into words by early Speakers to give the clans some fear of the unknown and thus limit their wandering.
"Essar, Roqued, Alsa..." To drown out Modic's call or summons without words Rentam roared full throatedly those names of great bravery and supreme command. He bent his mind toward the battle with raw fear, worked for the control of his body. To that purpose he repeated the roll of Sacred Dead in a battle song. The serpent thing was moving. It drew back its head, tensed muscles, and then ... Like a journey staff used as a lance, the head flashed toward Rentam . By the thickness of a bavard leaf only did it miss seizing upon him.
Modic shrilled that cry a second time. The sound got inside Rentam's head to cause a new kind of pain.
"Essar!" he shouted back, or did he?
Was it true that he was answered, or merely that the tone and pitch of his voice cut through the sound spell Modic was weaving? Rentam might never know. Anymore than he could tell why and how the warmth in the broken length of colored fang ran up his arm, through him, banishing
Modic's influence. Out of the far beginnings of his kind shot a thought that at first was a dim shadow, like a fear in night time, to set him moving.
"Alsa ..." he said to himself. Modic was being answered by another effort of the serpent creature. Its head launched out a second time across the stream which divided them. The open jaws hung poised above him, ready to seize. Rentam braced himself.
Though the thing was near enough now that it could breathe upon him, there was no breath ... but a faint odor he had smelled many time before, Lacseed oil such as filled any lamp.
The jaws closed in as Rentam waited. His hand swung up. He thrust the butt end of the rod he had found into that open hollow in the jaw. It settled there, fastened tightly, now a part of the dreadful set of fangs.
Then .. . there was a flash of orange and green, followed by streams of light. The snakey head rose high. It twisted. Something shaped like a door broken open in its side. One of the weighty feet snapped off.
The scent of oil was throat thickening as the creature threw itself backward, heaving and twisting violently. A shudder and the fearsome head broke loose to fly through the air and smash against one of the chairs of the dead. Bits of wire and small fragments of metal erupted out of the headless body.
That floundered forward into the stream. For a moment or two the water boiled up about it in a mighty sweep of the current. One of the great talons fl airing outward caught upon the board of buttons which Modic had fingered. As the mutilated thing dropped, it drew that with it. There followed a flash so bright that Rentam cupped his hands-over smarting eyes, able to see
nothing but the scarlet light. But he heard. This was no more wailing encouragement from the Seeker, rather explosions or giant crashs such as might come from the fall of a rock or of a great tree.
Another odor filled the stagnant air. Rentam pressed the mask dizzily. What he smelled, what his tongue tasted was oil burning, but with that other stenches he could not name. He rubbed his eyes. The second lid there may have saved him from total blindness for he could see, hazily, yet enough to witness what had followed the destruction of the serpent-headed thing.
You could not say it was dead, for his senses still assured him that it had never lived. But the great head had rolled along the edge of the pool. Steam or mist arose from that sickeningly, making him flick his tongue back behind tight lips. A dark smoke rolled along the passage which carried the flood out of the pool. There were flames within that, burning with the same violent colors as had painted the sky when the first of the city's weapons had been launched.