Nela, at the sound of Jaron’s voice, tried to sit up, but fell back, bumping her head and groaning. Ennu stirred her foot with his own, asking: “Did you come for the Fire Globe, Queen Nela?”
“You betrayer of oaths, I am here because I said I would be here, and for no other reason. Now unbind us, and speak with us decently, or those who wait for me will ride—every man of Harn and of Dorn that is able—will kill every living thing found near this temple. You know that, yet you have attacked us! How great a fool can you be, Ennu?”
The sorcerer laughed, not unpleasantly, but somewhat like a raven caws when stealing from another raven.
“You both name me fool, which ill becomes your present situation. Since you will both be dead with the coming of morning’s first light—why not meet your death gracefully, instead of with lies and ugly words upon your lips. Have you no respect for the priest of the Black God?”
“Have you no respect for your given word, Ennu? Besides, you know well the Fire Globe is the symbol and vessel of Cyre, and than her there is no mightier God or Goddess Do you not fear her anger?”
“You should have thought of that, before you plotted to steal the Globe. You see where your deed has brought you!”
NELA DID NOT answer, perhaps thinking that the Black God and this servant of his had gained ground through her own stupidity as to the way of the Gods with men.
His deep hoarse voice went on above them, unheeding them as he stared at some vision he alone saw now:
“It is only through the traitorous act of servant that one God can obtain power over another God or Goddess. You have been of use in that way, Nela, and for that I may contrive to let you live. But we need victims for the Black God’s hunger, and this companion of yours—chosen, I have no doubt, Nela—because of his comely body and handsome face? He must die, for that very vigor you admire in him makes him acceptable to the sacrifice.”
Ennu stood, his eyes running over Nela’s near-naked body in a way that made anger rise in a flame through Jaron’s bound limbs, rise and choke him with a red pounding in his veins. Then Ennu turned away, calling out some strange words to several figures hovering just beyond Jaron’s sight.
Nela looked despairingly at Jaron. A heavy black stubble covered his strongly boned jaw, strangely contrasting with the bronze hair that was only a shade darker than his tanned skin. A crescent scar on the black growth of stubble showed now plainly, the three lines of white cicatrice that ran down the line of the jaw and across his neck stood out by contrast, making a strange pattern of white against the black. His amber eyes glowed with a fierce light; a shiver of awe, as at a caged lion, ran down Nela’s back pleasantly. Certainly, even in his desperate plight, this was a man after her heart.
He caught her glance. “By the seven Hells of Zur, Nela—only the Gods can save us, now. I counted on our ability to avoid their attention, long enough to get near the Globe. For, when near it, one can summon Cyre to step through the barriers and unleash her power. But we failed . . .”
“If one had only some knowledge of grammarie, Jaron, it would be the place to use it. Have you never picked up even one potent spell from the Wizards? You are widely traveled, one would think . . .”
“There are several reasons, Nela, why an active and normal man like myself shuns all wizardry. It is known to sap the strength. All contact with the world of Gods seems to bleed away the life force somewhat, by slow degrees. Too, the Wizards are a close-mouthed set interlinked by ancient compacts. One has to serve long years, indoors, to become even an acolyte of the first mysteries. Men like myself shun it, we have no overmastering desire for dark wisdom and hidden secrets for which we would barter our very life-blood. Some things, it is true, I have learned.”
Their talk was interrupted by the coming of four black robed Blue Men, their faces unpainted, evidently disciples and followers of Ennu. They approached and lifted Nela by her bonds, carrying her out of the chamber and into a small side opening, so low they stooped their tall ominous height as they departed. Jaron groaned despairingly, then bellowed:
“I’ll have your life’s blood if you harm a hair on her head! You duped sons of perdition, you lean lickspittle lackeys of that accursed priest of the foulest pits inmate. By Omnu’s forked beard, have a care . . .” then he ceased, feeling completely powerless and somehow foolishly futile, his words throwing back in his face the sound of his own folly.
SHORTLY after their departure, the great doors at the far end of the big chamber were thrown wide, and the horde who had been dancing and drinking about the fires outside came pouring in. They brought the odor of sweat, the oppressive and lustful atmosphere of the orgy—of the spirit Jaron had sensed brooding above that temple in the forest. Jaron looked at the rows of eyes gleaming animal-like, filling the whole vast space. Eyes avid and waiting for the cream of the night’s entertainment. There was no emotion but the avidity for some great sensation which he knew his own death was to provide.
The same dark-robed men who had taken Nela now came and lifted Jaron, grunting a little with the weight of him, and bore him to the very foot of the great brooding stone statue of Megale. They threw him ungently onto the long stone altar, fastened thongs about his wrists and ankles, took off the wrappings of rope, slashing with careless jerks of the curved daggers in their hands.
Meanwhile several drummers had taken their places along the left; a brazier of blazing coals to left and right gave a red flickering light to which their palms on the drums seemed to keep time, a monotonous rub-a-dub without meaning. Slim young girls stood in a row before the drummers, blew wide-mouthed flutes in a high, keening melody to which the drummers seemed to pay no attention, engaged in a gradual increasing thunder-making of their own.
Above the dark brooding stone figure of Megale, Jaron sensed that same brooding waiting presence he had noted above the clearing outside. This must be the mind of the Black God,, waiting his time of sacrifice, Jaron decided.
Ennu glided forward, his face rapt with an evil exaltation. He strewed powders over each of the two big braziers, which gave off a bright blue flame and an odor of a weirdly ex citing nature. A grey-blue smoke-mist gathered in a cloud about the whole scene. What was that odor? It was familiar, yet elusive of exact definition. Could it be the little used Fenil, that most desired and most feared drug which gave direct and instant ability to peer beyond the barrier and into the very home of the Gods? And why was it familiar to him?
Slowly the cloud of blue smoke thickened, curdling darkly, lowering heavier, descending now in a slow sinking wavering thickness of increasing darkness—the line of naked Blue Women posturing between himself and the faces of the waiting warriors parted left and right, giving short sharp cries of a weird, ecstatic intonation, then formed again between himself and the dark stone figure of the ancient, nigh forgotten Megale. Once these Blue Men had worshipped her, seemed now to have perverted and directed the rituals toward their Black God.
The cloud of smoke was nearly black now, descending swiftly. He could scarce make out the rythmically jerking bodies of the women or the eager grinning faces of the squatting warriors.
Far off he heard a single scream, high and piercing. He strained every muscle against the heavy leather thongs. That was the voice of Nela! But the sound trailed off into seeming vast distance, the figures of the avid priestesses about him seemed to waver into transparence and gradually disappear altogether.
HE TURNED his head left and right—gigantic and weird shapes loomed now where had been before only the webbed dark walls of the old temple; overhead a strange dark sky stretched into infinity. Starless, yet not black—this was not earth’s sky as he knew it!
The incantation and ritual had given him to that dark cloud, drawing—drawing upon his body! He still felt this drawing, a sense of traveling that was not traveling, but a change! This world of blue and grey shadows, these vast and ancient shapes that were somehow strangely alive—and there, directly above him, the amorphous and utterly hideous shape that
he recognized from the many drawings and depictions he had seen of the thing—the Black God himself!
Jaron did not speak. A great wonder he had never wholly believed had come to pass. He had been drawn into the world inhabited only by the undying Gods!
But it seemed he was not to enjoy the hospitality of the place for long. The powerful tentacles of the black round that was Ennu’s patron God—picked him up, the thongs that had bound him were here non-existant. Jaron struggled mightily against the vast strength in those black arms.
The thing—Jaron sensed its utter dense being, its completely animal nature! Why, it was only a hunger and a will to be fed—It bore him swiftly to its faceless upper body. As it pressed Jaron against the rubbery surface, he felt the strength flow out of him. The thing was feeding on him, yet no bones were broken, no blood flowed—it just drew steadily at the life of him. The strength ran out of him, weakness came, dimly, he watched the ugly shape that was death itself helpless to even struggle.
THROUGH his weakness, through the repellence that had seemed to replace the very soul of him—through all his body—shot suddenly a fiery glory of blue and green and orange! A voice sounded in his head, the voice of Cyre!
Jaron felt himself fall, weakly he tried to land on his feet, but only fell sprawling and lay like a dead man.
His eyes rolled; he had fallen on his back. Above him two titanic forces, two beings beyond his understanding—were locked in a strange battle.
The fiery orange and shimmering greens of Cyre wove a pattern of lightning strokes that struck and struck again at a great and evil blackness that slowly retreated into itself, driven back and back.
Strength came feebly back into his limbs. Jaron sat up.
“Gods cannot kill each other, Jaron. This world of ours is governed by laws wholly different from your own. You must help Cyre this night, for our existence is interlocked with the mental life of the men of your earth. Do you understand?”
“I must help you, yes. What am I to do?”
“Our existence is a creation of many ages of belief. There is a sporing, a flow of energy, from the minds of men, which creates and nourishes us. In this level of existence, life depends on a continued supply of this unseen product of men’s thoughts, You can destroy the Black God if you will do as I command, implicity obeying me.”
Jaron looked at the radiant being that was Cyre. Her form was womanlike, yet strangely vast and mysterious here, not like the image of her he had seen in the throne room of the palace at Dorn. Her body was a radiant pillar of shimmering fires, and over it was a cloak of brilliant shifting greens that moved and writhed with a life of its own.
From under this cloak she produced a shining length of radiance, woven fibres that gleamed and moved in her long inhuman hands. This she tossed to Jaron, and as it struck his body, an ecstatic stimulation flowed from its surface into his limbs. Strength mounted exultantly in him—a strength not like his own steady pulse of life, but one that was leaping and inexhaustible. This was something of her own life-strength she was giving him, Jaron sensed. And as he drew the weirdly lovely fabric about his shoulders, belting it about his waist, his mind became swiftly more and more acute. He felt the terrific strain that lay between the threat of the Black God and the resisting strength of Cyre.
“I can only hold him thus for a short time. I cannot really harm him, his roots are deep in the minds and bodies of the Blue men who serve him. You must go back to the old Temple of Megale, and there by your work convince the Blue Men that the Black God is but a trick of Ennu’s and does not really have any power or existence except by Ennu’s wizardry. Your presence after you have been given to the Black God will prove to them that he lies about the nature of the Black God. If they believe you, the roots of the Black God’s strength will suddenly wither and die—and my will then will become supreme here and in your world. My Fire Globe is an instrument designed by me to focus and use these unseen and little known roots of Goa-life. And with the Black God weakened—I may destroy him. Now go, and my cloak will give you strength to do what must be done.”
A sudden flood of the shimmering green light enveloped Jaron; he felt again that traveling that was only a change—and once more he found himself upon the long dark stone of the ancient altar to a forgotten Goddess. The thongs that had bound him lay idly across the stone, his previous dematerialization had left his bonds fall out of position.
Jaron leaped to his feet upon the stone altar, holding his arms aloft in a sudden relief and triumph over the hideous threat of death that had so nearly absorbed him.
Ennu still stood with his hands over the brazier just as before. The line of women behind the altar still stood frozen in the same lewd postures—no time seemed to have elapsed!
QUITE suddenly time seemed to take a grip. In front of Jaron’s eyes, women went on with the lewd dance, Ennu’s hands came back from the fires’ glow and darted to his waist to tug out a dagger.
A prolonged sigh from the waiting warriors mounted into a cry of disbelief—one had returned from the place-of-no-return! Their expression, repeated on each fierce face—was one of stupefied and unbelieving surprise.
Jaron laughed, a great booming sound of triumph, of wild elation. He pointed to the far dark archway. There the blue and orange and green glimmerings of the Fire Globe grew stronger even as he pointed.
Though the open archway the globe floated, touched for an instant the floor—then ascended to the dark roof. It hung there in a splendor blinding to the eyes. Then it slowly descended to hang again just between and above the heads of Jaron and Ennu.
Ennu gave a terrible cry of rage. He flung a handful of the strange blue powder upon the surface of the Globe. It sputtered there for an instant. Then the blue cloud of smoke ascended wearily, in a thin spiral. The blue flame of it went out—deadened by some quality of the Globe fires.
Jaron shouted—“Men, warriors, women of the Blue horde! Listen to me! This black God that your false wizard Ennu has been foisting upon you—is no God at all! A God cannot die! Just now I saw him die at the hands of his own Cyre, Goddess of the Fire Globe! The Black God disappeared before her strength as a wisp of smoke! For—he was but a conjured apparition of this Ennu’s creation and no true God at all! Ennu has lied to you!”
For an instant their anger at his words struggled with the slow fire of disbelief that swept their minds. Had this man not just returned from the land of the Gods? Had they not seen him given to their own Black God—and yet return unharmed? How then could his own words be anything but true words?
Ennu, quite aware of Jaron’s intent and the possibilities inherent in his destruction of the Blue hordes belief in the Black God cried out: “Oh my followers, this man but seeks to trick you into unbelief, so your own feared God will desert your unbelieving selves and leave you at the mercy of Cyre—who is not at all the Goddess of the Blue Men. Do not listen to this trickery . . .”
But his words were drowned in a roar of anger from the warriors who were tugging out swords and clubs and the short curved knives of their bush-work!
Jaron was not sure toward whom their anger was directed until a thrown knife grazed Ennu’s shoulder and spun hissing into the surface of the Fire Globe, disappearing there as a globule of shining, melting metal.
ENNU spun in a fierce-eyed mental concentration, his hands smooth and unhurried as he muttered a spell. He flung down upon the floor the Charm of the Seven Sisters.
From each of the tiny hideous dried heads a quick flame wisped upward, grew with blinding rapidity into a shape! And there stood facing the Blue warriors seven malevolent Demonesses, their long scaled bodies red as fire, their talons darting in and out of their clawed hands as a cat’s claws reaching!
Their wide and capable mouths gaped in hungry snarls Those who had seen the seven sisters in action before began to crush backward upon the forward pushing mob of warriors. Those who were ignorant pushed close—were seized, raked, disemboweled and flung smoking to the floor there before t
hem all!
Jaron held his nose to keep out the vile smell of burning brimstone, of charnelhouse and of grave that swept from the bodies of the seven deadly sisters. Then he realized that this was no time to stand idly by—but better to put out of commission such a potent sorcerer before worse followed.
Jaron leaped half across the space between himself and the still busily muttering, gyrating sorcerer. He had only his two empty hands to attack Ennu—hardly the thing, but perhaps sorcerers were better killed by hand than by steel!
Ennu tugged loose his silver mace, flung it to the floor in front of Jaron. From it spread out a web of fiery little dartings, and among that web of fiery streamers a shape began to form.
It was a vast worm’s head opening a bone-ridged maw big enough to engulf three Jarons—its body stretching out of sight into some dimension known only to wizards and their peers.
In Jaron’s head the singing vibrance of Cyre’s voice sounded— “Kick the mace toward the foul Ennu, ‘twill turn the work against the worker—” and Jaron sidled, ducked the reaching thick head of the worm, with his foot kicking the deadly little mace toward Ennu.
As Ennu sprang aside to avoid the flying mace, Jaron was on him, his hands reached and closed till his fingers locked about the bony sinewed neck.
But there was now a fiery flood of strength pouring through this Wizard from some unearthly source, and try as he might Jaron could only cling, but hot harm him. Ennu, not trying to fight as men fight, but wrapped wholly in his own weird methods of magic, tugged open a scrip at his belt, took out another powder, green in color—and flung a handful toward the Fire Globe.
As the powder struck the Globe Jaron heard a terrifying, heart-rending scream, the scream of a Goddess in agony—in some way that evil sorcerer had struck at her through the Globe that was her instrument.
Even as he heard her scream, the weakness swept again through Jaron’s body as it had when the Black God drained him, the cloak that had clung about his back with an ecstatically strengthening life of its own—fell limp!
The 47th Golden Age of Science Fiction Page 10