by Jack Mann
And Gees, with only a decade or two of knowledge, had set himself against this being, this maker of shadows . . .
After two years of association with Gees, Miss Brandon had faith in his ability and strength of will. But he had gone alone against one who controlled abnormal powers. She discounted Kyrle, whom she had seen for a few minutes: an average young man, not a bad sort, but quite useless ranged against MacMorn, who would blind him with illusions as easily as he had Betty. No, Gees went to his battle alone.
Suddenly she frowned. Suppose MacMorn had meant him to follow to Brachmornalachan, get entangled in the web of shadows, and held until it was too late to save Helen —
CHAPTER XIX
Satan’s pact
So Kyrle had gone, either of his own accord or by compulsion. Gees reflected, it was no great loss; the completeness with which Kyrle had yielded to the influence of the scent, his response to MacMorn’s cordiality, and his intermittent forgetfulness of their purpose in coming, proved him of little use. As to where he had gone or been taken, it might be only a few feet away; whatever sounds he might make would be inaudible, since the room was so far soundproofed that even the roar of the gale went unheard.
A dozen times or more Gees tried the door, but it remained immovable. He tested the floor and walls, but could find no hidden spring. Then, seated on one of the divans, he realized that he had a headache. The effect of that crimson drink, probably.
That self in him which had talked in and understood the language he had never heard before he entered this house, the self which had almost yielded to MacMorn’s promptings, lost its hold on him. He felt that if MacMorn invited him to strike him now, he would, and powerfully, too.
Yet there was the hour and more which he had lost. Aided by the effect of the scent and the crimson drink, MacMorn had hypnotized him, and what suggestions the man had planted in his mind during the period of complete control were outside his knowledge. He must keep watch on himself, suppress any abnormal impulse.
Meanwhile he was a prisoner, and MacMorn had won the first round. By his watch, it was just noon; there were six and a half hours or thereabouts to go before new moon.
In what form would the Maiden present herself when, at the crowning moment of the ritual which MacMorn must observe to summon her, she became visible to human eyes? Rhea, Astarte, Isis, Tanit — they were all one. Kore, or that earlier and more terrible Unnamed, who brooded over such blood-washed altars as the black stone he had lately seen?
Futile questionings, these. He was a prisoner.
Had MacMorn told truth or lied when he said that he had no need of Helen Aylener, because the dark-eyed girl in the green and silver room was the life he meant to blend to his own? Or was Helen a prisoner somewhere in this house? MacMorn had spoken with every appearance of sincerity but he was holding Gees until search would be useless.
It came back to Gees that MacMorn, after leaving him and Kyrle, had reappeared from somewhere while he, Gees, had been attempting to reopen the door. Whatever MacMorn’s powers might be, he was human enough, incapable of de-materialization, and therefore there must be some other means of ingress to the room.
With this, Gees set to work to examine all the walls. He tapped and tested and passed his hands over them vainly, until retreating to the middle of the room to consider where MacMorn had been standing after his startling entry, he noticed that about three feet of the shelf at the back was clear of glassware, and damned himself for not observing it before.
At a light push, the bare section of the shelf swung outward and took with it a door in the paneling of the room, revealing a practical and modern fitted lavatory, white-tiled from its plain, smoothstone floor to the ceiling of black wood.
The lines of cement between the tiles were unbroken everywhere, as Gees found on inspecting them. Faint though the available light was, it was enough to determine that there was no possibility of a join, no means of entry except that on which the section of shelf was fixed. After an examination as thorough as it was futile, Gees gave it up and got rid of the last of his headache by splashing double handfuls of water over his face from the basin.
Ten minutes to one, now. He began to feel hungry. There were plenty of drinks on the shelf, but he let them alone for the one drink MacMorn had mixed for him was quite enough.
Time dragged on. He tried the door again and found it as immovable as before.
He would not believe that Helen’s disappearance was in no way connected with MacMorn; the object in keeping him, Gees, here was plain enough. For, if she disappeared completely, nobody (except Margaret Aylener) would believe the fantastic story by which he would account for the girl’s vanishing. Let him, Gees, remain prisoned in this room until tomorrow morning, and MacMorn could laugh at any story he might tell.
Then Gees remembered the weatherworn inscription on the gateway stone — the symbol of Kore. For her entry, or for that of the Unnamed from whose rites the cult of Kore had developed, all doors must be opened. Whether opened for a minute or an hour, Gees did not know: little record remained of these old mysteries: even the nature of the visions shown to the devotees at comparatively modern Eleusis was unknown now.
MacMorn, of course, must know it all, or else he would not attempt what he had virtually owned as his intent. But, at the time of the moon’s new birth, the culmination of MacMorn’s purpose, there was a chance —
If he could keep his wits about him, take advantage of the open doors, he might yet save either Helen Aylener or that dark beauty he had seen, and by defeating MacMorn release the shadows now bound in a state as drear and desolate as the fields of asphodel.
Yes, there was still a chance.
In an ordinary-looking, comfortably-furnished bedroom on the upper floor of the house, Kyrle lay on the bed while MacMorn stood looking out from the window with his back to the room. Being in the front of the house, he looked down on the loch and saw how the force of the gale splashed waves on the lee bank and tore at the thatch of a house already partly unroofed, one of the cottages near the post office.
Even some of the solid peat turves were dislodged from the stacks, for this was such a wind as Brachmornalachan, sheltered by its surrounding hills, had not known for many a year. MacMorn smiled his pleasure as he looked across at The Rowans, and saw a bough of the mountain ash tree in front of the house hanging broken, swinging as gusts struck it. If only the wind would last until it had crashed all four of those trees to earth!
Margaret Aylener was on her way here — he knew it — but she would not attempt the drive from the station, thirty miles across unsheltered country, on such a day as this. She was growing old, past the time of enterprise and endurance, and for her there was no renewal of vitality, no barrier against the weakening thrusts of the years. He would not grow old!
Through all the lives he had lived, he had never grown old.
A sound of movement reached him, and he turned to stand beside the bed, looking down at Kyrle.
“You feel better now, I hope?” he asked with kindly solicitude.
“Much better,” Kyrle answered, and slowly raised himself on his elbow. “I can’t think what it was made me turn faint like that. Was it you who carried me up here? I don’t remember clearly.”
“It was Partha, my man,” MacMorn told him. “I felt — there is more air in this room than the one you were in. I felt you would recover more quickly here, and Partha brought you up.”
“That’s a quaint old name. It was good of you to take so much trouble over me. But I think I’m steady enough on my feet now to go back to Gees — Mr. Green, I mean. I ought to go, too. He will be wondering what has become of me, if I don’t.”
“He will,” MacMorn agreed, with an irony that was lost on the younger man. “But I am not sure — let me see your eyes, will you?”
Kyrle leaned up still more and looked into the black eyes, and they took and held him, bound him to MacMorns will, while his own eyes grew fixed and staring, all in the space of a minute.
At MacMorn’s bidding he lay back on the pillow, and now the black eyes were directly over his own, gazing down at him, compelling, unescapable.
MacMorn spoke slowly, evenly. “Sleep. Sleep soundly, know nothing except what I tell you. Do you know that you must obey me, that there is no one thing you may do unless I order it?”
“I know,” Kyrle answered, and his tone told MacMorn even more surely than the words that he was completely controlled.
MacMorn reached down a forefinger and with it closed the eyes unable to avert their gaze from his own. He spoke again.
“Sleep, and forget all things until all doors are opened, when you will waken and wait for my order. You will obey any order I give you. You will give and do what I order, and at my word will give your life.”
Breathing quietly, apparently lost in sleep, Kyrle made no response.
“Tell me, you will give your life if I order it,” MacMorn repeated, speaking with quiet, confident insistence. “Give it where I will.”
“If you order it, I will give my life where you will,” Kyrle said tonelessly, and scarcely moving his lips.
“Now sleep, to waken only when all doors are opened,” MacMorn bade. “Then, you will waken, and will not leave this room until I bid you leave it. Obey only me. Sleep and forget all things, now.”
For a few minutes he sat over the still figure, watching it unblinkingly, by his presence and will strengthening his hold. Then, satisfied that he had bound Kyrle in chains from which there was no escape, he went out from the room and, closing its door, descended to the corridor that ringed in the inner, wooden wall of the house.
There he opened another door by a touch, and entered the room of green and silver.
The woman stood in the center of the room, where the light was least, so that she was little more than a column of green shot with silver against the blackness of the farther wall, with the whiteness of her face an indistinctness above the column as she stood faced toward the door. MacMorn made an odd, swift gesture with his fingers, and she sat down on one of the divans and interlaced her slender fingers before her knees.
Thus she sat silent for a time, gazing up at him, while he looked down at her steadily.
“You remember the circle and the altar?” he asked at last.
“Could I forget them?” she asked in turn, in a tone which declared that the memory was one she had no wish to waken.
“We will speak in the old tongue,” MacMorn said, “for you will need to speak it, soon.” And, changing into the language of which he spoke, that of the dark men who had raised the stones in old time, he went on. “When you saw the altar last, you paid a great price, for nothing. But now, I come to you to offer. Equality with me, life as I live, and there will be no price for you to pay. I bring you this as a gift, in return for all you have done — and been.”
“That is a dark saying,” she told him, also speaking the tongue of the dark men — quite easily, in his presence and under his influence, for, as the color of her eyes and hair told, she was of the dark men’s begetting. “For there is always a price that must be paid.”
“Paid,” he echoed, “at the turn of the moon today, and it shall be the younger of these two men. I have him in hold, promised to give his life where I will and when I will. A new life, for you.”
Fear looked up at him. “There would be an accounting,” she said. “If that were done, how would I — or you — escape, after?”
“The Duoine Sidhe leave nothing, no trace,” he answered coolly. “If he is not anywhere, except for a shadow that comes and goes as I command, there can be no accounting. You think, I know, of the man you saw. But I tell you, when he goes out from this place tomorrow, you need have no fear of him. I will make him so that his word has as little power as that of the shadows who can no more make themselves heard by human ears.”
“By that you mean — ?” She did not end it, but looked up at him as she sat, knowing she need not complete the question.
“Not as a shadow,” he said, “for if he too were not anywhere there would be an accounting. No, but with his will so bound that he is subject to shadows, his strength given to them, all that he may say derided, and with that the gift to you will be safely given.”
“That is a very dark saying,” she said somberly.
“He set himself to pull me down,” MacMorn retorted harshly. “He has knowledge — how much, I do not know, but he has knowledge that he sets against mine. I offered him equality with me, but he refused. I would have no pity on him. Now, I make the offer to you as I made it to him, and if you accept it he must go out as I say, powerless to harm either you or me. Stand beside me when the new moon is born, and take back such a price as you paid — for me.”
She brooded over the proposal awhile, and looked up at him again.
“It is too great a risk,” she said. “I wish, but it is too great a risk, and — too great — a price.”
“That man?” Incredulity sounded in the question. “You have seen him only for a moment! You have not so much as heard him speak!”
“I have both seen and heard him, before today,” she said. “Also, for years after that other birth of a new moon when I paid a price for nothing, I was afraid there might be question. No. It is too great a risk, and I will not take your reward, Gamel MacMorn.”
“Think,” he urged softly, temptingly. “To be as I am, kin to the Duoine Sidhe, having no fear of time and its power over common men, storing knowledge of things hidden from of old, growing in power life by life and, greatest of all for a woman, adding beauty to beauty — ”
“No!” The interruption was a cry, as if she were afraid to hear more of what he would offer. “I will not!”
“The choice is with you,” he said, and his disappointment was evident in his voice. “I can offer, but you only among living people I cannot compel. But I ask — because of the life I hold as part of mine, because of all that has been between us two, I ask your aid.”
She looked up at him questioningly.
“The man you saw,” he said in explanation. “The other, the younger one — this is the second time I have made him drink and then controlled him. He is asleep until the doors are opened, completely under control, and then he will give life itself if I order it — ”
“He will not give it — I said I would not!” she exclaimed.
“That is finished — you have made decision, I know. But this other — even when I persuaded him to drink and then dominated him, there was something of him that would not submit, something that escaped me. I saw it when I brought him here to you. Something in him that fought, remained unconquered — I hastened him away from you lest he should see with his own eyes, instead of with the sight I gave him.”
“Can I fight what Gamel MacMorn cannot conquer?” she asked derisively, and her clasped fingers about her knees tightened on each other.
“For a time,” he answered the question seriously, “with the scent and the crimson drink as aids, you can bind him. Because of the opening doors he must be bound. While I prepare, as all must be prepared before the fires are lighted round the altar — I cannot remain with him to hold him bound. But for you, there is a way.”
“Tell me the way,” she bade.
Minutes later, she laughed and said: “Yes, I understand.”
“And agree? You will do as I ask?”
“You are great, Gamel MacMorn, a great one among the dark men who were my fathers too. I will do all you ask.”
“I have told Partha — he will do the rest. You have only to wait until this man comes to you, and take him back into the scent. I have many things to do before the fires are lighted round the altar — ”
Abruptly, realizing how little time remained to him for those things, he left her. As she sat alone, waiting, she smiled to herself.
CHAPTER XX
when all doors open
Half past one. Gees put the watch to his ear, and listened to its healthy ticking. Time passed so slowly in this prisoned
inaction that he feared the watch had stopped.
Beelzebub. MacMorn had said it was a name not to be spoken lightly in this house. The road to Winchester and the swarm of flies. Beelzebub, the Carthaginian god of flies.
“Damn you, Beelzebub,” Gees said softly.
The commination was useless, though, as he realized. Beelzebub wouldn’t care, for he was already damned.
At a thought Gees got up from the divan, took a strong, two-bladed knife from his pocket, and opened the larger blade. He picked up one of the stools and examined it from all points, turned it upside down, and tried the wood with his knife-blade.
But it was useless for his purpose, and he put it down again. Looking all round the room, he eyed the shelf on which the bottles and glasses stood, and then went to one end and tried it with the knife blade. Although of hard, old oak, as a sliver revealed, it was not so hard as the stool. He had no compunction over damaging it; given assurance of his own and Kyrle’s and Helen’s safety, he would cheerfully have set fire to the place.
Working carefully along the grain of the wood with the knife, he pared off the end of the shelf a lath about four inches long, and rather less than half an inch thick, with which he went back to a divan and, seating himself, cut the lath into unequal lengths.
He trimmed both pieces carefully, after which he took the raincoat which he had laid over a stool near the door on first entering this room, and by the aid of the knife’s small blade got out a strong thread about a yard in length. He laid the shorter of his two pieces of oaken lath crosswise to the longer one, and bound them together with the thread, winding it tightly and finishing off with a few half-hitches. Then he looked at the result of his work as it lay in his hand, a neatly-made cross.
“It can’t do any harm, and it may do good,” he observed to himself, and then sat up, suddenly alert. The scent he had smelled before was beginning to fill the room again. There was no mistaking its heady fragrance.