The forest stirred to a breath of gusty wind.
“Back!” the girl said urgently. “Back! We have freed Pan!”
Without conscious thought Raynor thrust the talisman into his belt, turned, and, with Delphia and Eblik beside him, fled into the moonlit shadows. Above him branches tossed in a mounting wind. The wild shrieking of the pipes grew louder.
Tide of earth life—rising to a mad paean of triumph!
The wind exulted:
“Free . . . free!”
And the unseen rivers shouted: “Great Pan is free!”
CLATTERING of hoofs came from the distance. Bleating calls sounded from afar.
The girl stumbled, almost fell. Raynor gripped at her arm, pulling her upright, fighting the unreasoning terror mounting within him. The Nubian’s grim face was glistening with sweat.
“Pan, Pan is free!”
“Evohé!”
The black mouth of a cavern loomed before them. At its threshold Raynor cast a glance behind him, saw all the great forest swaying and tossing. His breath coming unevenly, he turned, following his companions into the cave.
“Shaitan!” he whispered. “What demon have I loosed on the land?” Then it was race, sprint, pound up the winding passage, up an unending flight of stone steps, through a wall that lifted at Delphia’s touch—and into a castle shaking with battle. Raynor stopped short, whipping out his sword, staring at shadows flickering in the distance.
“Cyaxares’ men,” he said. “They’ve entered.”
In the face of flesh-and-blood antagonists the prince was suddenly himself again. Delphia was already running down the corridor, blade out. Raynor and the Nubian followed.
They burst into the great hall. A ring of armed men surrounded a little group who were making their last stand before the hearth. Towering above the others Raynor saw the tangled locks and bristling beard of Kialeh, the Reaver, and beside him his lieutenant Samar. Corpses littered the floor.
“Ho!” roared the Reaver, as he caught sight of the newcomers. “You come in time! In time—to die with us!”
CHAPTER V
Cursed Be the City
GRIM laughter touched Raynor’s lips. He drove in, sheathing his sword in a brawny throat, whipped it out, steel singing. Nor were Eblik and Delphia far behind. Her blade and the Nubian’s ax wreaked deadly havoc among Cyaxares’ soldiers, who, not expecting attack from the rear, were confused.
The hall became filled with a milling, yelling throng, from which one soldier, a burly giant, emerged, shouting down the others.
“Cut them down! They’re but three!”
Then all semblance of sanity was lost in a blaze of crimson battle, swinging brands, and huge maces that crashed down, splitting skulls and spattering gray brain-stuff. Delphia kept shoulder to shoulder with Raynor, seemingly heedless of danger, her blade flicking wasplike through the air. And the prince guarded her as best he could, the sword weaving a bright maze of deadly lightnings as it whirled.
The Reaver swung, and his sword crushed a helm and bit deep into bone. He strained to tug it free—and a soldier thrust up at his throat. Samar deflected the blade with his own weapon, and that cost him his life. In that moment of inattention a driven spear smashed through corselet and jerkin and drank deep of the man’s life-blood.
Silent, he fell.
The Reaver went beserk. Yelling, he sprang over his lieutenant’s corpse and swung. For a few moments he held back his enemies—and then someone flung a shield. Instinctively Kialeh lifted his blade to parry.
The wolves leaped in to the kill.
‘Roaring, the Reaver went down, blood gushing through his shaggy beard, staining its iron-gray with red. When Raynor had time to look again, Kialeh lay a corpse on his own hearth, his head amid bright jewels that had spilled from the overturned treasure-chest.
The three stood together now, the last of the defenders—Raynor and Eblik and Delphia. The soldiers ringed them, panting for their death, yet hesitating before the menace of cold steel. None wished to be the first to die.
And, as they waited, a little silence fell. The prince heard a sound he remembered.
Dim and far away, a low roaring drifted to his ears. And the eerie shrilling of pipes . . .
It grew louder. The soldiers heard it now. They glanced at one another askance. There was something about that sound that chilled the blood.
It swelled to a gleeful shouting, filling all the castle. A breeze blew through the hall, tugging with elfin fingers at sweat-moist skin. It rose to a gusty blast.
In its murmur voices whispered.
“Evohé! Evohé!”
They grew louder, mad and unchecked. They exulted.
“Pan, Pan is free!”
“Gods!” a soldier cursed. “What devil’s work is this?” He swung about, sword ready.
The curtains of samite were ripped away by the shrieking wind. Deafeningly the voices exulted:
“Pan is freer
The piping shrilled out. There came the clatter of ringing little hoofs. The castle rocked and shuddered.
Some vague, indefinable impulse made Raynor snatch at his belt, gripping the sun-god’s talisman in bronzed fingers. From it a grateful warmth seemed to flow into his flesh—and the roaring faded.
He dragged Delphia and the Nubian behind him. “Close to me! Stay close!”
The room was darkening. No—it seemed as though a cloudy veil of mist dropped before the three, guarding them. Raynor lifted the seal of Ahmon.
The fog-veils swirled. Dimly through them Raynor could see the soldiers moving swiftly, frantically, like rats caught in a trap. He tightened one arm about Delphia’s steel-armored waist.
Suddenly the hall was ice-cold. The castle shook as though gripped by Titan hands. The floor swayed beneath the prince’s feet.
The mists darkened. Through rifts he saw half-guessed figures that leaped and bounded . . . heard elfin hoofs clicking. Horned and shaggy-furred beings that cried jubilantly as they danced to the pipes of Pan . . .
Faun and dryad and satyr swung in a mad saraband beyond the shrouding mists. Faintly there came the screaming of men, half drowned in the loud shrilling.
“Evohé!” the demoniac rout thundered. “Evohé! All hail, O Pan!”
With a queer certainty Raynor knew that it was time to leave the castle—and swiftly. Already the great stone structure was shaking like a tree in a hurricane. With a word to his companions he stepped forward hesitantly, the talisman held high.
The walls of mist moved with him. Outside the fog-walls the monstrous figures gamboled. But the soldiers of Cyaxares screamed no more.
Through a castle toppling into ruin the three sped, into the courtyard, across the drawbridge, and down the face of the Rock. Nor did they pause till they were safely in the broad plain of the valley.
“The castle!” Eblik barked, pointing. “See? It falls.”
And it was true. Down it came thundering, while clouds of ruin spurted up. Then there was only a shattered wreck on the summit of the Rock . . .
Delphia caught her breath in a little sob. She murmured, “The end of the Reavers for all time. I—I lived in the castle for more than twenty years. And now it’s gone like a puff of dust before the wind.”
The walls of fog had vanished. Raynor returned the talisman to his belt. Eblik, staring up at the Rock, swallowed uneasily.
“Well, what now?” he asked.
“Back along the way we came,” the prince said. “It’s the only way out of this wilderness that I know of.” The girl nodded. “Yes. Beyond the mountains lie deserts, save toward Sardopolis. But we have no mounts.”
“Then we’ll walk,” Eblik observed, but Raynor caught his arm and pointed.
“There! Horses—probably stampeded from the castle. And—Shaitan! There’s my gray charger. “Good!”
So, presently, the three rode toward Sardopolis, conscious of a weird dim throbbing that seemed to pulse in the air all about them.
AT dawn they
topped a ridge and saw before them the plain. All three reined in their mounts, staring. Beneath them lay the city—but changed!
It was a ruin.
Doom had come to Sardopolis in the night. The mighty towers and battlements had fallen, and huge gaps were opened in the walls. Of the king’s palace nothing was left but a single tower, from which, ironically, the wyvern banner flew. As they watched, that pinnacle, too, swayed and tottered and fell, and the scarlet wyvern drifted down into the dust of Sardopolis.
On fallen towers and peristyles distant figures moved, with odd, ungainly boundings. Quickly Raynor turned his eyes away. But he could not shut his ears to the distant crying of pipes, gay and pagan, yet with a faintly mournful undertone.
“Pan has returned to his first altar,” Delphia said quietly. “We had best not loiter here.”
“By all hell, I agree,” the Nubian grunted, digging his heels into his steed’s flanks. “Where now, Raynor?”
“Westward, I think, to the Sea of Shadows. There are cities on its shore, and galleys to take us to a haven. Unless—” He turned questioning eyes on Delphia.
She laughed, a little bitterly. “I cannot stay here. The land is sunk back into the pit. Pan rules. I go with you.”
The three rode to the west. They skirted, but did not enter, a small grove where a man lay in agony. It was Cyaxares, a figure so dreadfully mangled that only sheer will kept him alive. His face was a bloody mask. The once-rich garments were tattered and filthy. He saw the three riders, and raised his voice in a weak cry which the wind drowned.
Beside the king a slim, youthful figure lounged, leaning idly against an oak-trunk. It was Necho.
“Call louder, Cyaxares,” he said. “With a horse under you, you can reach the Sea of Shadows. And if you succeed in doing that, you will yet live for many years.”
Again the king cried out. The wind took his voice and shredded it to impotent fragments.
Necho laughed softly. “Too late, now. They are gone.”
CYAXARES let his battered head drop, his beard trailing in the dirt. Through shredded lips he muttered, “if I reach the Sea of Shadows . . . I live.”
“True. But if you do not, you die.
And then—” Low laughter shook the other.
Groaning, the king dragged himself forward. Necho followed.
“A good horse can reach the Sea of Shadows in three days. If you walk swiftly, you may reach it in six. But you must hurry. Why do you not rise, my Cyaxares?”
The king spat out bitter oaths. In agony he pulled himself forward, leaving a trail of blood on the grass . . . blood that dripped unceasingly from the twin raw stumps just above his ankles.
“The stone that fell upon you was sharp. Cyaxares, was it not?” Necho mocked. “But hurry! You have little time. There are mountains to climb and rivers to cross . . .”
So, in the trail of Raynor and Eblik and Delphia, crept the dying king, hearing fainter and ever fainter the triumphant pipes of Pan from Sardopolis. And presently, patient as the silent Necho, a vulture dipped against the blue and took up the pursuit, the beat of its wings distinctly audible in the heavy, stagnant silence . . .
And Raynor and Delphia and Eblik rode onward toward the sea . . .
BELLS OF HORROR
The Ancient God, Zu-che-quon, Enemy of the Sun, of Darkness, Is Awakened!
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light;
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight;
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
—Swinburne.
A GREAT deal of curiosity has been aroused by the strange affair of the lost bells of Mission San Xavier. Many have wondered why, when the bells were discovered after remaining hidden for over a hundred and fifty years, they were almost immediately smashed and the fragments buried secretly. In view of the legends of the remarkable tone and quality of the bells, a number of musicians have written angry letters asking why, at least, they were not rung before their destruction and a permanent record made of their music.
As a matter of fact, the bells were rung, and the cataclysmic thing that happened at that time was the direct reason for their destruction. And when those evil bells were shrieking out their mad summons in the unprecedented blackness that shrouded San Xavier, it was only the quick action of one man that saved the world—yes, I do not hesitate to say it—from chaos and doom.
As secretary of the California Historical Society, I was in a position to witness the entire affair almost from its inception. I was not present, of course, when the bells were unearthed, but Arthur Todd, the president of the society, telephoned me at my home in Los Angeles soon after that ill-fated discovery.
He was almost too excited to speak coherently. “We’ve found them!” he kept shouting. “The bells, Ross! Found them last night, back in the Pinos Range. It’s the most remarkable discovery since—since the Rosetta Stone!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, groping in a fog of drowsiness. The call had brought me from my warm bed.
“The San Xavier bells, of course,” he explained jubilantly. “I’ve seen them myself. Just where Junipero Serra buried them in 1775. A hiker found a cave in the Pinos, and explored it—and there was a rotting wooden cross at the end, with carving on it. I brought—”
“What did the carving say?” I broke in.
“Eh? Oh—just a minute, I have it here. Listen: ‘Let no man hang the evil bells of the Mutsunes which lie buried here, lest the terror of the night rise again in Nueva California. The Mutsunes, you know, were supposed to have had a hand in casting the bells.”
“I know,” I said into the transmitter. “Their shamans were supposed to have put a magic spell on them.”
“I’m—I’m wondering about that,” Todd said. “There have been some very unusual things happening up here. I’ve only got two of the bells out of the cave. There’s another, you know, but the Mexicans won’t go in the cave any more. They say—well, they’re afraid of something. But I’ll get that bell if I have to dig it up myself.”
“Want me to come up there?”
“If you will,” Todd said eagerly. “I’m phoning from a cabin in Coyote Canyon. I left Denton—my assistant—in charge. Suppose I send a boy down to San Xavier to guide you to the cave?”
“All right,” I assented. “Send him to the Xavier Hotel. I’ll be there in a few hours.”
SAN XAVIER is perhaps a hundred miles from Los Angeles. I raced along the coast and within two hours I had reached the little mission town, hemmed in by the Pinos Range, drowsing sleepily on the edge of the Pacific. I found my guide at the hotel, but he was oddly reluctant to return to Todd’s camp.
“I can tell you how to go, Senor. You will not get lost.” The boy’s dark face was unnaturally pale beneath its heavy tan, and there was a lurking disquiet in his brown eyes. “I don’t want to go back—”
I jingled some coins. “It’s not as bad as all that, is it?” I asked. “Afraid of the dark?”
He flinched. “Si, the—the dark—it’s very dark in that cave, Senor.”
The upshot was that I had to go alone, trusting to his directions and my own ability in the open.
Dawn was breaking as I started up the canyon trail, but it was a strangely dark dawn. The sky was not overcast, but it held a curious gloom. I have seen such oppressively dark days during dust storms, but the air seemed clear enough. And it was very cold, although even from my height I could see no fog on the Pacific.
I kept on climbing. Presently I found myself threading the gloomy, chill recesses of Coyote Canyon. I shivered with cold. The sky was a dull, leaden color, and I found myself breathing heavily. In good physical condition, the climb had tired me unduly.
Yet I was not physically tired—it was rather an aching, oppressive lethargy of mind. My eyes were watering, and I found myself shu
tting them occasionally to relieve the strain. I wished the sun would come over the top of the mountain.
Then I saw something extraordinary—and horrible. It was a toad—gray, fat, ugly. It was squatting beside a rock at the side of the trail, rubbing itself against the rough stone. One eye was turned toward me—or, rather, the place where the eye should have been. There was no eye—there was only a slimy little hollow.
The toad moved its ungainly body back and forth, sawing its head against the rock. It kept uttering harsh little croaks of pain—and in a moment it had withdrawn from the stone and was dragging itself across the trail at my feet.
I stood looking at the stone, nauseated. The gray surface of rock was bedaubed with whitish streaks of fetor, and the shredded bits of the toad’s eye. Apparently the toad had deliberately ground out its protruding eyes against the rock.
It crept out of sight beneath a bush, leaving a track of slime in the dust of the trail. I involuntarily shut my eyes and rubbed them—and suddenly jerked down my hands, startled at the roughness with which my fists had been digging into my eye-sockets. Lancing pain shot through my temples. Remembering the itching, burning sensation in my eyes, I shuddered a little. Had the same sort of torture caused the toad deliberately to blind itself? My God!
I RAN on up the trail. Presently I passed a cabin—probably the one from which Todd had telephoned, for I saw wires running from the roof to a tall pine. I knocked at the door. No answer. I continued my ascent.
Suddenly there came an agonized scream, knife-edged and shrill, and the rapid thudding of footsteps. I stopped, listening. Someone was running down the trail toward me—and behind him I could hear others racing, shouting as they ran. Around a bend in the trail a man came plunging.
He was a Mexican, and his black-stubbled face was set in lines of terror and agony. His mouth was open in a square of agony, and insane screams burst horribly from his throat.
But it wasn’t that that sent me staggering back out of his path, cold sweat bursting out on my body.
Collected Fiction Page 82