Eric John Stark

by Leigh Brackett

  “Did you know about this?” he asked Lugh.

  “There are tales about all sorts of holes and byways underneath the city. We never took much stock in them.” He added, “That’s only one of the mistakes we made, and not the worst, either.”

  Their voices sounded dim and muted in that place, and made little furtive echoes in the side passages. They did not speak again.

  After a while Stark realized that it had been some time since they passed the last tomb-chamber. He guessed that they had now left the Quarter of the Blessed and were under the King City.

  The tunnel became a doorway into a vastly wider space. Stark held the lantern high, peering into the dim-lit obscurity. And now he understood the reason why the tunnel had been built.

  “The catacombs,” said Lugh, whispering. “The tombs of the kings of Kushat.”

  The words scattered softly away in the hollow darkness. Lugh held out his hand to Stark. “Light a candle.”

  Stark lighted him one at the stub in the lantern, and then replaced that with a fresh one. Lugh ranged ahead, looking here, looking there, his face shocked in the candle glow.

  “But they were so carefully sealed,” he said. “There are three levels, and each gallery was sealed so that no one could ever break into it….”

  “From above,” said Stark. “Where it would be noticed. That’s what they did with the talisman. Camar must have come at it from below.”

  “Oh,” said Lugh, shaken with indignation. “Oh, but see what they’ve done!”

  The kings of Kushat had been buried royally, each one carefully embalmed and sitting upright on a funerary throne, presumably wearing all the trappings of kingship and surrounded by the weapons and the wine cups, the offertory bowls and the precious ornaments suitable to his estate. The beautifully polished stone of the ceilings and walls had been carved in reliefs showing events in the lives of the rulers, who had sat stiffly all down the length of that very long, wide hall, each in his own space. The remains of hooks set into the roof showed where rich hangings had once served to separate these throne-rooms, and Stark could imagine carpets on the cold floor, and a great deal of color. There were many holes for sconces, and he thought that it must have been a fine sight here with the torches blazing and the long procession of priests and nobles and mourning women following slowly as a king was borne on his long shield to the place where he would hold court forever. At the back of each room was a rock-cut chamber, equally splendid in its own way, for the queen and other members of the royal family.

  Of all that immeasurable splendor, the tunneling thieves of Kushat had taken every crumb. Even the metal sconces had been dug out of the walls. Nothing was left, except the thrones, which were stone and immovable, and the kings themselves, who were not worth the carrying. Stripped of their robes and their armor and their jeweled insignia of office, the naked corpses shivered on their icy thrones, and the irreverent thieves had placed some of those that were still sturdy enough in antic poses. Others were broken in bits and scattered on the floor or heaped like kindling in the throne seats.

  “All this time it’s been like this,” Lugh was muttering. “All this time. And we never knew.”

  “I expect that by now Narrabhar is in much the same case,” said Stark, and added, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  He blew out Lugh’s candle and hurried on, treading once or twice on the brittle fragments of royalty.

  From the catacombs the way led straight enough, with only two side tunnels leading off to some other sources of plunder, perhaps the other catacombs Lugh had mentioned. Stark moved as fast as he dared, in a tearing rush to get out into the world again. At the same time he was calculating how long it would take Ciaran’s men to break into the tomb and follow them, and how long it would take Ciaran to think of sending patrols out around the city. In any case, the sooner he and Lugh got clear of this rathole the better.

  He came to the end of it almost before he realized it. He had been watching for daylight and there was none, or so very little of it that he did not notice it at once. It was a change in the air, a fresh clean smell that warned him. He blew out the candle, and then he was able to see ahead of him a ragged patch of darkness much less absolute than that surrounding them. He touched Lugh’s arm, enjoining caution, and moved much more slowly and carefully to the end of the tunnel.

  It opened into the bottom of a deep cleft in the rock, where the shadows were already black. Overhead he saw the sky with pale sunlight still left in it. There was no sight or sound of anything human nearby. Stark emerged from the tunnel, breathing deeply and covered suddenly with a cold sweat, as though he had just escaped some deadly peril.

  “There is a path,” said Lugh, pointing to a narrow thread that slanted up the side of the cleft.

  They climbed it, coming out at length in a sheltered place among the rocks where the plain sloped upward from Kushat. Here, for thousands of years, thief and merchant had met to bargain over the furniture of kings and rich men and the golden hair-pins of their wives. Now Stark and Lugh looked out between the rocks and saw the black smoke rising from the city, and heard the voices, thin and distant down the wind. Lugh’s chin quivered like a child’s.

  “The Festival Stones lie there,” he said, and led off at an abrupt trot.

  Stark turned to follow him. And high above him on his right hand, so close now that he could hear the huge whistling of the wind in its stony throat, was the Gates of Death.

  XI

  The Festival Stones, a broken ring of cyclopean blocks, stood alone on a great space below the pass, a space so flat and smooth that Stark knew it must have been levelled artificially. And he knew that whatever the original purpose of the stones might have been, it had nothing to do with sun-worship. He recognized them, with a lifting of the hair at the back of his neck, as soon as he could see them clearly. They were the foundation courses of a tower like the one in which Camar had died. The rest of the structure, apparently shaken down in some ancient cataclysm, lay tumbled over the rock, the cut stones so worn now by time and frost and the gnawing wind that they had lost their precise shapes and might have been only a casual scattering of boulders.

  The circle was full of people, and more were coming, straggling in little bands across the plain from Kushat. They were, on the whole, quiet, but it was a bitter, angry quiet. From time to time an eddy of the wind brought a taint of smoke from the city.

  Lugh looked around, estimating the numbers and the ratio of women and children to men. “Not much of an army,” he muttered.

  “It will have to do,” Stark said. He moved through the huddled groups, searching for Thanis, and he was beginning to get panicky when he saw her. She was helping some other women patch up the wounded, her face pulled into a deep frown of weariness and concentration. He called her name. She started and then ran to him and threw her arms around him. She did not say anything, but he felt the tightness of her grip and the way she trembled, and he held her until she drew a long unsteady breath and stood away from him, half smiling. She began to unbuckle the belt from around her waist, as though she could not get rid of it fast enough.

  “Here, you can have this back,” she said. “It’s too big for me.”

  Stark took it and put it on, feeling a great number of eyes watching him. “Where’s Balin?”

  “Out with some others, rounding up refugees. Some got away that were not from our Quarter, and he thought they might be useful.”

  “Every man helps.” He smiled briefly. “Yes, even him.” Thanis was looking at Lugh in a way that should have felled him on the spot. Lugh bore it patiently, without resentment, and presently Thanis shrugged and dropped her gaze.

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “We’re all here together, now.”

  Stark said, “Yes.” He put his hands on the boss of Camar’s belt and turned and looked at the people who were gathered there inside the gr
eat circle of stone. He looked up at the pass high above them, with the long rays of the sun touching the icy rocks to flame so that it burned as it had when he first saw it, with the sullen fires of hell, and it seemed to him that the wind that blew down from it carried a hint of strangeness that plucked at his nerves. He remembered with a sudden and shocking vividness how the talisman had glowed between his hands, and how from somewhere far away the tiny unhuman voices had spoken.

  He clenched his hands firmly around the boss and walked to the center of the ring, where a kind of altar had been made by piling together some of the fallen stones. He stood on this and called to the people, and while they came closer to hear him he watched the smoke rise up from Kushat and thought of Ciaran and the lash and the dark axe, and hardly at all of night-black hair and white skin and a beautiful woman’s face.

  He said aloud to the people, “Most of you know that the talisman of Ban Cruach was stolen by a thief named Camar.”

  They did, and said so, and many of them cursed his name. And some others said, in an ugly mood, “Who are you, outlander, to be talking about the talisman?”

  Two of the men that Stark had seen in the taverns on the night before the attack climbed up on the altar beside him. “Balin vouches for him,” they said. “And he has something to say that you would do well to listen to.” They sat down on the top of the altar, their knives bare in their hands.

  Stark went on. “I was a friend of Camar. He died on his way here, to return that which he had taken. Because I owed him a debt, I finished the journey for him.”

  He opened the boss, and took from it the bit of crystal wrapped in silk.

  “Most of you knew, or guessed, that the so-called talisman in the shrine was only a piece of glass put there by the nobles to hide the loss.” He waited until the angry growl had quieted, and then he held up his hands, with the crystal cupped between them. And he said, “Look now at this.”

  He laid back the covering of silk. The level sunlight struck against the crystal, and it seemed to draw the light, to feed on it, to suck it down and down into its many facets until each one glowed with a separate radiance. Stark caught his breath sharply and held himself rigid, watching the crystal brighten into a small sun between his hands. It was warm now. It dazzled his eyes.

  And the voices spoke. In his ear. Over his shoulder. Close, immediate, just beyond…just beyond…

  “Stark!”

  It was Balin’s voice. The sound of it broke through the other voices and shocked him back into the sane world. He caught a brief reeling glimpse of the people staring, their eyes stretched and their mouths gone slack with awe, and he realized that they were looking at him as much as they were at the talisman. He closed his hands over it, shutting off the radiance but not the warmth, and huddled the silk wrapping over it and hid it again in the boss, and all the time Balin was pushing through the crowd toward him. In the background where Balin had left them, was a party of refugees, and Stark recognized Rogain among them.

  Balin stood at the foot of the altar, looking up. “Stark, there are riders coming from Kushat.”

  “Well,” said Stark. “Then we had best be moving.” He bent down, still dazed and acting more by instinct than by conscious thought, and gave Balin a hand up beside him. “You know Balin,” he said to the people. “Hear him speak.”

  Balin said, “Stark and I will take the talisman through the Gates of Death, and see what power we can find there to drive the tribesmen out of Kushat. Let everyone who wishes follow us.”

  He sprang down from the altar, with Stark behind him. They started for the opening in the ring of stones. A tremendous cry went up, a confusion of cries, and the whole untidy crowd began to coalesce and form itself into a solid hand. Someone shouted, “Ban Cruach!” like a war cry, and others took it up. Lugh appeared at Stark’s elbow, yelling, “The talisman! Follow the talisman!” The people began to pour out of the circle. Stark gave Lugh the lantern and candles he had brought from the tunnel.

  “Lead on ahead,” he said. “The first place you come to that can be fortified and held by the number of men we have—get about it. Even the children can haul stones.”

  “I would like to go with him,” said someone at his shoulder. It was Rogain. The day had worn hard on him. He was wounded and beaten, and his scholar’s hands were stained with blood. But he stood proudly and gave Stark look for look without apology or comment. Stark nodded, and he went to join Lugh, walking stiffly, with his head up.

  “There’s a good man,” Stark said. “A pity he wasn’t a better general.” He began to shout to the people. “Let the women and the young ones go first. The men stay behind—we may have to fight. Balin, keep them moving there. Hurry on now. Hurry on!”

  In the reddening light of late afternoon the men and women and children streamed upward toward the pass, where the fires burned brighter as the sun sank. Stark and Balin were the last to leave the circle. They looked back toward Kushat and Stark could see the riders, a company of fifty or more picking its way over the frost-wracked and gullied surface of the plain. In the forefront was a figure in dark mail.

  “Can that be Ciaran leading them?” asked Balin, astonished.

  “Why not?” asked Stark.

  “But she has barely taken the city. Any other chieftain…”

  “…would be baying after loot and women. She has no use for either. All that concerns her is her ambition.”

  They followed on up the naked slope, and Stark thought that it was a measure of Ciaran’s power that she could find fifty men willing to leave the plundering of Kushat. Probably they were clan chiefs whose men were bound to give them their share in any case. Or perhaps the lure of the talisman was great enough to draw them.

  Balin said hesitantly, “Stark…when you stood there with the talisman in your hands, just before I called your name…”

  “Yes?”

  “Your face was strange. It was like the face of a madman—or a god.”

  “Something spoke to me,” Stark said.

  Balin looked at him, startled, and Stark shook his head. “Something. Voices. But I seemed to know that they were there, beyond the pass.”

  “Ah,” said Balin, and his eyes were bright. “Then we may hope to find help there as Ban Cruach did.”

  “The gods know,” Stark said. “For an instant, just before you spoke, I thought I understood…”

  He broke off, shivering involuntarily. “Time enough for that when we’re through the pass.” He glanced back at the riders. “They’re gaining.”

  “And look there,” said Balin. “Beyond the Festival Stones.”

  Tribesmen had appeared on the plain as though out of nowhere. Stark nodded. “I was expecting them. They came after us through the tunnel.” They had seen the people going up into the pass, and they began to run. They were closer, but the mounted men were faster. Stark judged that both groups would reach the pass at about the same time, and that that time would be much sooner than he wanted it.

  “What shall we do?” Balin asked.

  “Be ready for a rear-guard action, but keep ahead of them if we can.” They ran up the slope, urging the men to go faster, driving them on. The Iower parts of the plain were lost now where the dusk flowed over them. In the high places there was still light, and it shone into the pass so that the people seemed to move in a bath of blood. Stark thought how small they looked under those vast sheer cliffs, and how quickly they vanished into the narrow jaws of the Gates of Death. He left Balin and pushed on, past the line of march, in a fever to see the place before the daylight left it altogether.

  It was an evil place, a crack in the mountain wall with towering sides that leaned together overhead, a thousand feet or more, and the wind came viciously through it. Stark hated it. He hated it as an aborigine, sensing the unknown and unnatural and cringing from it. And he hated it as a rational man, because it was a death-trap.


  Balin had said that this was a place of grinding rockfalls, and that at least was no myth. The floor of the pass was heaped with detritus, and Stark, who knew his mountains well, having grown up where all the world was mountain, could look up at the looming sides and see where the rock was rotten and treacherous, ready to crash down at the slightest disturbance. He caught up to Lugh and Rogain and cautioned them to be careful. They sent his word back along the line and went on.

  Stark stayed where he was, standing aside on a pile of boulders and looking up at the cliffs.

  The people hurried by him, burdened women, older children carrying younger ones who were too tired now to walk, the men with some of the wild zeal sweated out of them by the climb. Finally Balin came and saw him and stopped.

  “They’re close behind us, Stark. Hadn’t we better prepare to fight?”

  “I think,” said Stark, looking upward, “there’s a better way. Get me a spear.” Balin took one from one of the men. Stark laid it by. He stripped off Camar’s belt and gave it to Balin, along with every other thing that he could spare, and then rigged a thong to hold the spear across his back. While he did this he told Balin what he had in mind.

  Balin squinted up at the cliffs and shuddered. “I won’t even offer to help you.”

  “Don’t,” said Stark feelingly. “Just keep them moving on. I want everyone clear, around the bend there.” He pointed ahead to where the pass turned around a jutting shoulder. “Do we have any slingers?”

  “A few, I think. They came with Rogain and some others.”

  “Station them there, behind the shoulder. Keep them well out of sight.”

  Balin nodded, muttering something about the gods lending Stark strength. He ran on.

  Stark went across the floor of the pass and began to climb up the cliff.

  The aborigines had taught him how to climb, and he had spent the years of his boyhood clinging to rocks with his fingers and toes and the pores of his naked skin, slithering up and down on his belly like the lizards he hunted. It was a skill he had never lost, any more than he had ever forgotten how to breathe, because for so long the two functions had been interdependent. He found now that the going was easier than he had thought. The rock was tougher than it had looked from below, and its inward slope was greater. He had picked his place carefully, where the rock was sound and the holds did not crumble under his hands and feet. He swarmed up fairly quickly, toward a narrow ledge that angled across the cliff face. The daylight was fading much faster than he could climb, receding upward ahead of him as the sun went lower, but he thought that he would have all he needed. The thing that he was shortest on was time.