by Gardner Fox
As it would destroy the civilization of the Empire?
They feasted that night on roast animal flesh and chilled kirsth. There were dances and speeches. Khyrl told how Carrick had stopped his spear in its flight and then destroyed it. The village clamored to see him demonstrate his powers, but he refused. He told the people in a little speech that he only used his powers when attacked. He was not on Slarrn to be considered a nine-day wonder but to do battle with Ylth’yl.
After his speech, Carrick noticed that the people of the kaygan looked at him with sad eyes. To them, he was already dead. Or did they think him—mad?
In the hut to which Khyrl assigned them, he said to Mai, “What worries me is, they may be right. I can stop and destroy a spear, but that is tangible. Ylth’yl is pure energy and—nothing can kill that.” Energy could be exhausted, though.
He lay awake a long time brooding.
For three weeks, Kael Carrick and Mai Valoris became a part of the kaygan life. Armed with a spear and a sharp dagger, he went hunting with Khyrl while Mai Valoris remained behind to share the chores and duties of the women. It was a pleasant time for Kael Carrick. He enjoyed the hunting and the feasting, despite the nagging worry inside him.
He ought to be hunting Ylth’yl, not the beasts of the plain and the forest. In a way, he felt that he might be wasting time. Suppose Ylth’yl had left Slarrn, had gone through the barriers into its old world? He would be too late to destroy him then. Or would these newly found powers work as well among the stars as it did in this other universe?
Carrick did not know the answers to these questions and so he worried. Mai would find him standing in the night and facing toward the city of Andraar.
“Ought I go now?” he would ask her when she came to stand beside him. “Or should I wait until Ylth’yl seeks out the kaygan of Khyrl?”
“He may never do that,” she murmured.
Ylth’yl might not even be in Slarrn, right now.
And then—
He was on a trail that twisted narrowly through a great forest. He was running at a loping stride, his dagger in its leather sheath bumping his hip, his slim metal-tipped spear an easy weight in his right hand. Khyrl had sighted a klang, a beast resembling a fallow deer, in a glade up ahead. Khyrl was a score of paces to his left, running swiftly. A sound of cracking twigs and branches told where the klang, having scented its pursuers, was fleeing madly.
Carrick waited for Khyrl to hurl his spear; his quarry was right in front of him; he could not ask for a better target. And Khyrl dropped his weapon. He stood a moment, motionless. Then he turned and began to retrace his steps.
“Khyrl! What’s wrong?”
The klang leaped to life at the sound of his voice, darting between the treeboles. Carrick forgot the beast. His skin was crawling at the sight of Khyrl.
The big chutan walked with only the whites of his eyes showing. His every moment was slow, ponderous; gone was the lithe quickness of the hunter.
Ylth’yl! The being had struck, swiftly and unexpectedly—
Carrick whirled and ran.
There would be others of the kaygan caught by the questing intelligence that was the scourge of the Llynn. Mai Valoris might be one of them. He had to make sure she was safe.
As he came in sight of the stone huts, he saw that they were empty of life. Ylth’yl had struck and taken over their minds, leading men and women and children along the path to Andraar.
“Mai! Mai!” he bellowed.
There was no answer to his call. He fled on through the village and up the far slope to the crown of a hill where he could see the great plain beyond the kaygan stretched out before him. Ah, there! Far away and moving slowly were the people of Khyrl, like little black dots in the sunlight.
Carrick went after them as might the wind.
While he ran, something touched his mind.
A coldness, a horror for which mankind had long ago invented many names and then pushed the memory of those names far down in his subconscious, brushed against his brain and recoiled. Carrick laughed to himself.
Who are you? What are you?
Carrick let the thought go unanswered in his mind. He was too intent on finding Mai Valoris. He knew that Ylth’yl would soon be back there in his brain, hunting for a handhold.
It did not take long. The coldness and the eerie revulsion came so suddenly that he stumbled and broke stride. He willed the thing out of his mind and it had to go, even as he picked up his steady pace.
The black dots were growing larger in his eyes, to the size and shape of men and women. They walked as Khyrl had walked, heavily and like automatons. It was easy to pick out Mai Valoris. She was off to one side, a little behind the others as if she were fighting Ylth’yl with every muscle of her body.
Carrick ran to her.
When he put a hand on her arm, he found it cold as ice and hard. Ylth’yl was bringing her to him—not easily, for her brain was human and it had been eons since Ylth’yl had assumed control over a human mind—but steadily, steadily.
Her eyes slid sideways at him. Good! She was aware of his presence. “Can you hear me?” he asked. She could not nod but her lips trembled.
Carrick said softly, “Fight it, darling. I’ll be with you. I won’t let it take you.”
He tried to will Ylth’yl out of her mind but there were limits, apparently, to his abilities. He held her hand firmly with his own, aware that Ylth’yl knew he was there and was trying to dislodge his self-control but not succeeding.
From moment to moment he caught snatches of thought.
—neither okan nor man—alien, as I am myself—there is subtle twistedness to his mind that is like refraction in water—my grasp keeps slipping loose because I have not fathomed its shapings…
Carrick wondered if Ylth’yl would ever fathom the convolutions of his brain. Hannes Stryker must have done something to that as well as to his body, while he was rebuilding him. Perhaps his brain needed to be altered in order to respond to his silicate body. He did not understand; he merely accepted. They walked on through the hot sunlight.
CHAPTER TEN
THE CITY of Andraar rose from the plain where it had been built a million years before in a pile of tiered masonry. Mighty buildings, bordered with pillars and sheltered by red slate roofs, stood beside slim and graceful towers lifting spiral walls upward into sunlight. Gracefully curving ramps linked many of the buildings; at one time, quite obviously, they had been walkways. Now they stood deserted, abandoned as was the city itself by the race that had created them.
Carrick felt sadness touch him as he stared down into the city from the top of the hill beside Mai Valoris, His arm held her by main strength from following the others; he could not go on holding her, for he sensed that her lack of movement was causing pain to her muscles. He would let her go in just another moment.
He wanted a few precious seconds in which to think.
Seeing Andraar empty and desolate made him think of the Empire and its vast cities teeming with life. There were uncounted billions of men out there on those star worlds living in a fool’s paradise, completely unaware of this doom that threatened them. His brother back on the Kansas farm, that girl named Hella that had given him the statuette of Llar, the woman in the Mews who had told him Felton Pratt was dead, all would be prey to Ylth’yl when he crossed the barriers between worlds.
He loosened his arm. Mai began to walk after the others; Carrick sighed. So much depended on him, so very much. He thought, I hope you built me well, Hannes Stryker. He went after Mai, walking slowly in rhythm to her strides.
As his eyes devoured her gently moving hips, the manner of her pale yellow hair blowing in the wind, his heart keened within him for all the lovers parted in this manner by Ylth’yl. A man and a woman, their life span cut short, so many days and nights of happiness lost to them! Ah, and mothers torn from their babes, fathers from their sons, husbands from wives! Because of Ylth’yl. A cold fury began to grow in him.
And s
o as the city grew larger in his eyes the closer he came to it, the fury became a gnawing impatience. Why do you lag, Kael Carrick? Your place is in the van, up ahead of these poor okans, a buffer between them and Ylth’yl. For this you were lifted from a basket and given arms and legs and a fine strong body. You are a shield to Mai Valoris, and no shield should be behind the person it was created to protect.
He walked even faster.
Of a sudden, he lost interest in the buildings around him; beyond the backs of these people was the Temple where Ylth’yl lived; his eyes could see it now, red and gaunt, a mighty tower of crimson stone lifting upward toward the clouds. It was as Hannes Stryker had described it, blood-red and dark against the pale sky.
Carrick ran toward the tower.
Aliveness was in his blood. He was the hunting dog on the trail, the mongoose questing for the cobra, the wolf howling at sight of the caribou. I come, Ylth’yl, his mind shouted. I come, my enemy for whose destruction I was made!
He went past the foremost of the okans of Khyrl, a slender girl with long black hair blowing in the wind. Her name was Leila and she would be the wife of a strong okan warrior if she lived. It was his duty to see she stayed alive.
He came to the great bronze doors of the red tower. They stood wide, inviting all to enter. The impulse to close and bar them touched him but deep inside him he knew it made no difference. Ylth’yl could always reopen them through an extension of its titanic energies.
His foot touched a tread and firmed. Swiftly he mounted that white staircase, hungrily. His quarry lay above him. The time had come, at long last, for Kael Carrick and Ylth’yl the eternal to match strengths.
Behind him the people of Khyrl were moving past the bronze doors. Dimly he heard the inexorable shuffling of their sandaled feet as he came onto the tiled floor which stretched from the stairwell outward toward the black altar of the thing called Ylth’yl. His mind accepted the fact that the floor seemed to point toward the altar as if it were curiously tilted in an alien plane visible only to the eyes and not to any other bodily sense.
Ylth’yl towered, white and ominous. Sullen, it quivered and rippled, coruscated as if filled with angry reddish sparks deep in its whiteness. There was a susurration in the air, a whisper of tongueless voices, a panting of onrushing winds. Then Ylth’yl quieted.
It quested for him, inside his skull. Carrick felt an intense coldness. Then Ylth’yl fell away.
And—
From the whiteness above the altar came a stabbing brilliance. It lanced out at him, hit him with tangible force. He rocked backward on his heels, lost his balance and fell. There was a metallic clang when he hit the floor.
He lay there, helpless. His flesh was frozen. He was cold, cold. And yet his senses were alive. His ears could hear the shuffling of feet of the okans as they walked up the stair and toward the altar, fanning out so they covered the black and white tiles of the temple floor. Carrick tried to call to them but his tongue was a solid mass in his throat. His eyes could see them, pitiful and without hope, arms by their sides, staring straight ahead, shoulders rounded in despair.
Ah, and Mai Valoris! Yes, she was here too, a little more alive than the others—she quivered from time to time as though her muscles still fought the grip on her mind, and once he thought to hear her mewl in terror—but she was caught just as securely as any okan.
He wondered if she had seen him on the floor tiles.
Damn you, Hannes Stryker! You thought you built so well, so securely! You were nothing but a child playing at molecular genetics!
Rage was a red mist before his eyeballs. In some such manner might an early ancestor with a shaggy skin about his loins have stood before his cave dwelling, menaced by a mastodon. Snarling with hate and rage, holding a slim spear ready to throw; Carrick felt his own throat snarl.
His hand quivered and—moved.
He lifted his right arm, stretching it upward. He put his palm flat on the cold tile and pushed. Other muscles stirred in answer to the anger and the animal madness in his veins. His body lifted to a knee.
Still growling, he rose to his feet.
Kael Carrick stood with lowered head and snarled at the whiteness above the marble block. To his surprise, his body had cast off the coldness. He could move and walk about, his freedom born of the fury which had shaken the self-pity from his brain. Hannes Stryker had made him well. He had all the weapons, as a man had legs with which to run. But if a man did not will to run, his legs remained inert. A man must fight first with his heart and his mind, then the body will obey.
Carrick touched Mai Valoris with his will.
Almost he saw the barrier grow into being about her, like the shimmering of a heat haze. There was resistance—Ylth’yl did not like being forced from her brain—but he broke that with a surge of the animal anger that had been in him moments ago.
Who are you, not-man? How can you do this?
The questing coldness came again but he shook it away with impatience and walked toward Mai across the black and white tiles. He lifted a hand, put a palm on her bared shoulder and stroked it. He could feel her warmth and smiled at the responsive quiver that ran in her flesh at his touch.
He widened the barrier about the girl.
Now the haze stood beyond her and she was free of whatever power it was that had held her in thrall; she whirled and threw herself in his arms, sobbing hysterically. Carrick tightened his left arm at her middle but he went on with what he was doing. He gave free rein to the anger and the fury in him for he sensed that this was a source of power in him, this animalistic madness by which he could unlock the secrets of his body, of his mind.
Ylth’yl raged. It towered high above the marble altar, flailing at the air with the shimmering tentacles of its whiteness. It beat like a wind in spate at the invisible wall which was forcing it backward and away from its victims.
First Mai Valoris, then the girl with the long black hair, then two young warriors with whom Carrick had hunted. Free, they turned about them, this way and that, seeing their fellows frozen; they were bewildered and terrified.
Mai felt Carrick press her arm, tug her away from him. He could not speak. He needed all his powers of concentration for the task before him. He could only hope she would understand.
Mai cried out, “Get out, get out of here, all of you who can!” When she saw the light deep in his eyes, she knew this was what Kael Carrick wanted. She slipped away from him, caught the girl with the long black hair and tugged at her hand.
The two okans went after them.
Now Carrick was freeing others, lifting away the intangible force that held men and women and children. Mai was at the stairwell calling them with her sweet voice; they were turning toward her, moving slowly at first and then running, sobbing and laughing, toward safety and the sunlight in the streets of Andraar.
Until only one girl was left, a slim blonde youngster. She stood directly before the marble block and Carrick sensed that she was to be the first sacrifice—no, sacrifice was not quite the word—the first victim of the feasting by which Ylth’yl retained life within its whiteness.
Ylth’yl was an outlaw, a renegade of its kind, which had long ago died out of existence. Only Ylth’yl remained.
Carrick walked forward. His hate had the taste of warm brass on his tongue but it fueled the eerie powers of his body and slowly—slowly—the white mist that had formed about the blonde girl was shifting, lifting. Ylth’yl raged. Whiteness hammered at Carrick like a sledge. It pounded at his flesh, his brain, in what would have been deadly blows to an ordinary man.
Carrick held the forcefield generated by his mind and his will in perfect stasis. Ylth’yl flew against it but could not touch him. The blonde girl, released from that awesome grip, screamed and fainted.
Mai Valoris and an okan ran to lift her.
Ylth’yl ignored them to concentrate on Carrick. Who are you? the voice in his brain asked. From whence did you come? In all the worlds of Slarrn, in all the stars of
the other-universe, I have never met anyone like you. You are not-man, not-Slarrn. You are alien to them. Alike but—different.
There was a redness in the tiles at his feet. How was he able to see such color? Was it some animal sense lifted to its nth degree, sensing danger before it began? He shouted to Mai and the okan to hurry, to get the girl out of the temple before—
The floor began to buckle underfoot. Carrick felt it as a ripple of motion below him, under his soles. Ylth’yl was hurling titanic energies at the tile and wood and stone of the building to make it give like that; surely, it must be weakening itself.
From somewhere deep inside the chromosomes and protoplasms of his body, Kael Carrick struck back. He held out his hand and a purple brightness fled from his fingertips to splash against Ylth’yl, to spread and eat away at its whiteness. The alien creature writhed and twisted. It lifted high into the air. It billowed outward.
The rippling floor quieted, became motionless.
We are two chess players making moves, thought Carrick, but we are blindfolded. We do not know the powers of our opponent; and I, for one, am not at all familiar with my own. A quick attack might win the day for whoever had the wit and the perception to—
The walls came hurtling inward like thrown missiles. Carrick shifted the forcefield, held it up like an invisible shield and saw the walls split, crumble before his eyes. Mai Valoris and the Llynn were in the streets of Andraar. He must make certain of their safety first, before he began to play with the other eerie powers Hannes Stryker had given him.
His feet barely touched the white treads as he raced toward the bronze doors. He shouted, “Mai, get them out of—”
The bronze doors closed in his face. Kael Carrick never broke stride. He willed the doors to melt and they ran in great bronze droplets across the floor.