De Keradel was beside me and I wondered vaguely why I had not seen him come into the room. I had bathed, and was stark naked. He was wrapping a breechclout of white cotton around my loins. He laced sandals on my feet, and he drew my arms through the sleeves of a robe of thick fine cotton. He stood back, and I saw that he was clothed in the same white robes. There was a broad belt either of black metal or ancient wood around his middle. There was a similar cincture around his breast. They were inlaid with symbolings in silver…but who ever saw silver shift and change outline…melt from this rune into another…as these did? Around his forehead was a black chaplet of oak leaves, and from his belt swung a long black knife, a black maul, a black and oval bowl, and a black ewer…
Dahut was watching me, and I wondered why I had not seen her enter. She wore the robe of thick white cotton, but the girdle around her waist was of gold and on it the shifting symbols were red; and of red gold was the fillet that bound her hair and the bracelets upon her arms. In her hand was a golden sickle, razor-edged.
They fastened around my waist another black and silver symboled belt, and set upon my head a chaplet of the black oak leaves. De Keradel drew from his belt the maul and put it in my hand. I shrank from its touch and dropped it. He picked it up and closed my fingers around it. I tried to unclose them and could not, although the touch of the maul was loathsome. I raised the maul and looked at it. It was heavy and black with age…like the belt…like the chaplet. It was shaped all of one piece as though carved from the heart of oak; shaft in center, ends of its massive head blunt.
The mael bennique! The beater in of breasts! Heart crusher! And I knew that its blackness was less from age than from red baptisms.
My exaltation ebbed. Something deep within me was stirring, tearing at its fetters, whispering to me…whispering that it had been to stop the beating of his maul that I had gone from Carnac long and long ago to slay Dahut…that whatever else I did I must not use the maul…but also that I must go on, go on as I had in…lost Ys meet and even steep myself in this ancient evil, so that…so that…
De Keradel’s face was thrust into mine, mouth snarling, hell-fire flaming in his eyes: “You are one with us, Bearer of the Maul!”
Dahut’s hand closed around mine; her cheek touched me. The exaltation swept back; the deep revolt forgotten. But some echo of it remained. I said:
“I am one with you—but I will not wield the maul.” Dahut’s hand pressed and my fingers were loosed and I threw the thing from me.
De Keradel said, deadly: “You do as I command. Pick up the maul.”
Dahut said, sweetly, but with voice as deadly as his own: “Patience, my father. He shall bear the bowl and the ewer and do with them as is prescribed. He shall feed the fires. Unless he wields the maul of his own will, it is useless. Be patient.”
He answered her, furiously: “Once before you betrayed a father for your lover.”
She said, steadily: “And may again…and if so what can you do, my father?”
His face writhed; he half raised his arm as though to strike her. And then crept into his eyes that same fear as had shown there on the night we had met when he had spoken of Powers summoned to aid and obey, and she had added—“or to command us.”
His arm dropped. He picked up the maul, and gave to me the bowl and ewer. He said, sullenly: “Let us go.”
We went out of that room, he on one side of me and Dahut at the other. Down the stairs we went. A score of the servants were in the great hall. All wore the white robes and they held unlighted flambeaux. They sank upon their knees as we approached them. De Keradel pressed upon the wall and a section slid open, revealing wide stone steps winding down and down. Arm in arm, Dahut and de Keradel and I trod them, the servants behind us until we faced what seemed to be a wall of solid stone. Here again de Keradel pressed, and a part of the wall raised slowly and silently like a curtain.
It had masked a portal to a vast chamber hewn out of the solid rock. Through the portal stole a penetrating pungent odor, and from beyond it came the murmur of many voices. The light that filled it was dim but crystal clear—like a forest twilight. There were a hundred or more men and women facing us, and their eyes wide pupiled and blank—rapt—looking into another world. But they saw us. There were cubicles all around the cavern, and others came out of them, women who carried babies in their arms, women at whose skirts children clung. Babies and children were wide-eyed too, small faces rapt and impassive, dreaming. And men and women wore that ancient dress.
De Keradel raised the maul and shouted to them. They answered the shout and rushed toward us, throwing themselves upon their faces as we drew near; crawling to and kissing my feet, the feet of de Keradel, the slim and sandaled feet of Dahut.
De Keradel began a chant, low voiced, vibrant—archaic. Dahut joined him, and my own throat answered…in that tongue I knew and did not know. The men and women lifted themselves to their knees. They joined, full throated, in the chant. They lifted themselves to their feet and stood swaying to its cadence. I studied them. They were gaunt-faced and old, most of them. Their garb was what I had known in ancient Carnac, but their faces were not those of Carnac’s sacrifices.
There was a glow in their breasts, over their hearts. But in too many it was dim and yellowed, flickering toward extinction. Only in the babies and the children was it clear and steady.
I said to de Keradel: “Too many are old. The fire of life is dim within them. The essence of life which feeds the wicks runs too low. We need younger sacrifices—those in whom the fire of life is strong.”
He answered: “Does it matter—so long as there is life to be eaten?”
I said, angrily: “It does matter! We must have youth. Nor are these of the old blood.”
He looked at me for the first time since I had refused to pick up the maul. There was calculation in the glowing eyes, and satisfaction and approval. He looked at Dahut, and I saw her nod to him, and she murmured: “I am right, my father…he is one with us, but…patience.”
De Keradel said: “We shall have youth—later. All we need of it. But now we must do with what we have.”
Dahut touched my hand, and pointed. At the far end of the cavern a ramp led up to another door. She said:
“Time goes—and we must do with what we have now.”
De Keradel took up the chant. We walked, the three of us, between the ranks of swaying, chanting men and women. The servants with the flambeaux fell in behind us and behind them trooped the singing sacrifices. We ascended the ramp. A door opened smoothly. We passed through it into the open air.
De Keradel stepped ahead; his chanting fuller voiced; challenging. The night was cloudy and thin wisps of fog eddied around us. We crossed a broad open stretch and entered a grove of great oaks. The oaks sighed and whispered; then their branches began to toss and their leaves soughed the chant. De Keradel raised his maul and saluted them. We passed out of the oaks.
For an instant ancient time and this time and all times reeled around me. I stopped my chanting. I said, strangled: “Carnac—but it cannot be! Carnac was then…and this is now!”
Dahut’s arm was around my shoulders; Dahut’s lips were upon mine; she whispered: “There is no then…there is no now…for us, beloved. And you are one with us.”
Yet still I stood and looked; while behind me the chanting became ever fainter, faltering and uncertain. For there was a level space before me over which great monoliths marched, not leaning nor fallen as at Carnac now, but lifting straight up, defiant, as in Carnac of old. Scores of them in avenues like the spokes of a tremendous wheel. They marched and circled to the gigantic dolmen, the Cairn, that was their heart. A crypt that was truly an Alkar-Az…greater than that which I had known in most ancient Carnac…and among and between the standing stones danced the wraiths of the fog…the fog was a huge inverted bowl covering the Cairn and the monoliths. And against the standing stones leaned shadows…the shadows of men…
Dahut’s hands touched my eyes, covered the
m. And abruptly all strangeness, all comparisons of memory, were gone. De Keradel had turned, facing the sacrifices, roaring out the chant, black maul raised high, the symbols on black belt and cincture dancing like quicksilver. I raised the bowl and ewer and roared the chant. The faltering voices gathered strength, roared out to meet us. Dahut’s lips were again on mine… “Beloved, you are one with us.”
The oaks bent and waved their boughs and shouted the chant.
The servants had lighted their flambeaux and stood like watching dogs on the fringes of the sacrifices. We entered the field of the monoliths. In front of me strode de Keradel, maul held high, raised to the Cairn as the priest raises the Host to the Altar. Dahut was beside me, singing…singing…her golden sickle uplifted. Thicker grew the walls of the great inverted bowl of the fog above and around us; and thicker grew the fog wraiths dancing among and circling the monoliths. Darker became the shadows guarding the standing stones.
And the sacrifices were circling the monoliths, dancing around them in the ancient measures as though hand in hand with the fog wraiths. The servants had quenched their torches, for now the corposants had begun to glimmer over the standing stones. The witch lights. The lamps of the dead. Faintly at first, but growing ever stronger. Glimmering, shifting orbs of gray phosphorescence of the grayness of the dead. Decaying lights, and putrescent.
And now I stood before the great Cairn. I looked into its vault; empty; untenanted—as yet. Louder was the chanting as the sacrifices danced between and around the monoliths. Coming ever closer. And more lividly gleamed the corposants, lighting the path of the Gatherer.
The chanting muted, became a prayer, an invocation. The sacrifices pressed upon me, swaying, murmuring, rapt eyes intent upon the Cairn…and seeing—what?
There were three stones close to the entrance to the chamber of the Cairn. The middle one was a slab of granite, longer than a tall man, and at about where the shoulders of a man lying upon it would be there was a rounded ridge of stone like a pillow. It was stained—like the maul; and the stains ran down its sides. At its left was another stone, lower, squat, hollowed shallowly and channeled at its lower end as though to let some, liquid escape from it. And at the right of the long slab was a more deeply hollowed stone black with fire.
There was a curious numbness creeping through me; a queer sense of detachment as though a part of me, and the most vital part, were stepping aside to watch some play in which another and less important self was to be an actor. At the same time, that lesser part knew perfectly well what it had to do. Two of the white-robed servants handed me small bunches of twigs, small bundles of leaves, and two black bowls in which were yellow crystals and lumps of resinous gum. With the twigs I built the fire on the blackened altar as the ancient rites prescribed…well did I remember how the priests of Ys had made that fire before the Alkar-Az at Carnac…
I struck the flint, and as the twigs blazed I cast on them leaves and crystals and gums. The strangely scented smoke arose and wound around us and then went streaming into the Cairn as though sucked by a strong draft.
Dahut glided past me. There was a woman close by with a child in her arms. Dahut drew the child from her, unresisting, and glided back to the squat altar. Through the smoke I caught the flash of the golden sickle, and then de Keradel took the black bowl and ewer from me. He set them beneath the gutter of the squat altar. He gave them to me, and they were filled…
I dipped my fingers into the bowl and sprinkled what filled it over the threshold of the Cairn. I took the ewer and poured what it held from side to side of that threshold. I went back to the altar of the fire and fed it from red hands.
Now de Keradel was standing at the squat altar. He raised a small body in his arms, and cast it into the Cairn. Dahut was beside him, rigid, golden sickle upraised—but the sickle was no longer golden. It was red…like my hands…
The smoke from the sacred fire swirled between and around us.
De Keradel cried a word—and the chant of the prayer ended. A man shambled from the sacrifices, eyes wide and unwinking, face rapt. De Keradel caught him by the shoulders, and instantly two of the servants threw themselves upon this man, tore off his clothing and pressed him naked down upon the stone. His head fell behind the stone pillow—his chest strained over it. Swiftly de Keradel pressed upon a spot on the neck, and over the heart, and under the thighs. The sacrifice lay limp upon the slab…and de Keradel began to beat upon the naked lifted breast with the black maul. Slowly at first…then faster and faster…harder…to the ancient prescribed rhythm.
There was a shrilling of agony from the man on the stone. As though fed by it, the corposants flared wanly. They pulsed and waned. The sacrifice was silent, and I knew that de Keradel had pressed fingers against his throat…the agony of the sacrifice must not be articulate since agony that is voiceless is hardest to bear, and therefore most acceptable to the Gatherer…
The maul crashed down in the last stroke, splintering ribs and crushing heart. The smoke from the fire was swirling into the Cairn. De Keradel had raised the body of the sacrifice from the slab…held it high over his head…
He hurled it into the Cairn, while fast upon its fall came the thud of a smaller body, hurled after it…
From the hands of Dahut! And they were stained red and dripping—like my own.
He gave them to me, and they were filled…
There was a buzzing within the Cairn, like hundreds of carrion flies. Over the Cairn the fog blackened. A formless shadow dropped through the fog and gathered over the Cairn. It had no shape, and it had no place in space. It darkened the fog and it squatted upon the Cairn—yet I knew that it was but a part of Something that extended to the rim of the galaxy of which our world is a mote, our sun a spark…and beyond the rim of the galaxy…beyond the universe…beyond, where there is no such thing as space.
It squatted upon the Cairn, but it did not enter.
Again the golden sickle flashed in the hand of Dahut; and again de Keradel filled the ewer and the bowl and gave them to me. And again, numbly, I walked through the smoke of the altar fire and sprinkled the red drops from the bowl into the Cairn, and poured the red contents of the ewer from side to side of its threshold.
De Keradel held up the black maul, and cried out once more. A woman came out of the sacrifices, an old woman, wrinkled and trembling. The acolytes of de Keradel stripped her, and he threw her upon the stone…and swung the black maul down upon her withered breasts…and again and again…
And he swung her body up and out and through the portal of the Cairn…and others came running to him…and them he slew with the black maul…no longer black but dripping crimson…and hurled them into the Cairn…
The squatting darkness on the Cairn was no longer there. It had seeped through the great stones that roofed it, but still its shadow stained the fog reaching up and up like a black Pillar. The chamber of the Cairn was thick with the Blackness. And the smoke from the altar fire no longer clothed Dahut and de Keradel and me, but streamed straight through into the Cairn.
The buzzing ceased, all sound died everywhere, a silence that was like the silence of space before ever a sun was born took its place. All movement ceased. Even the drifting fog wraiths were motionless.
But I knew that the formless darkness within the Cairn was aware of me. Was aware of me and weighing me with a thousand eyes. I felt its awareness, malignant—crueler beyond measurement than even human cruelty. Its awareness streamed out and flicked over me like tiny tentacles…like black butterflies testing me with their antennae.
I was not afraid.
Now the buzzing began again within the Cairn, rising higher and higher until it became a faint, sustained whispering.
De Keradel was kneeling at the threshold, listening. Beside him stood Dahut, listening…sickle in hand…sickle no longer golden but red…
There was a child upon the squat altar, crying—not yet dead…
Abruptly the Cairn was empty…the fog above it empty of the shadow
…the Gatherer gone.
I was marching back between the standing stones, Dahut and de Keradel beside me. There were no corposants over the monoliths. The flambeaux flared in the hands of the servants. Behind us, chanting and swaying, danced those who were left of the sacrifices. We passed through the oaks, and they were silent. The curious numbness still held me, and I felt no horror of what I had seen or of what I had done.
The house was before me. It was strange how its outlines wavered…how misty and unsubstantial they seemed…
And now I was in my own room. The numbness that had deadened all emotional reactions during the evocation of the Gatherer was slowly giving way to something else not yet defined, not yet strong enough to be known. The exaltation which had followed the green drink ebbed and flowed in steadily decreasing waves. I had an overpowering sense of unreality—I moved, unreal, among unreal things. What had become of my robe of white? I remembered that de Keradel had stripped it from me but where and when I could not think. And my hands were clean—no longer red with blood…the blood of…
Dahut was with me, feet bare, white skin gleaming through a silken shift that held no concealment. The violet fires still flickered faintly in her eyes. She put her arms around my neck, drew my face down to hers, set her mouth on mine. She whispered: “Alan…I have forgotten Alain de Carnac…he has paid for what he did, and he is dying…it is you, Alan—you that I love…”
I held her in my arms, and within them I felt the Lord of Carnac die. But I, Alan Caranac, was not yet awake.
My arms closed tighter around her…there was the fragrance of some secret flower of the sea about her…and there was the sweetness of new-learned or long-forgotten evil in her kisses…
The A. Merritt Megapack Page 194