CREEP SHADOW - 3

CREEP SHADOW
ABRAHAM MERRITT

(  INSTALMENT 3  )


CHAPTER XVI
THE MAEL BENNIQUE


De Keradel said: "We drink to that!"

He dismissed the servants, unlocked a closet and took from it a decanter half-filled with a green liqueur. The stopper was clamped and difficult to withdraw. He poured three small glasses and quickly clamped the stopper down. I raised my glass.

He checked me: "Wait!"

There were little bubbles rising through the green drink; like atoms of diamonds; like splintered sun rays shot back by crystals bottoming still shallows. They rose more and more quickly, and suddenly the green drink fumed; then became quiescent, pellucid.

De Keradel lifted his glass: "Carnac, you join us of your own will?"

The Demoiselle said, her glass close to mine: "It is of your own will you join us, Alain de Carnac?"

I answered: "Of my own will."

We touched glasses and drank.

That was a strange drink. It tingled through brain and nerve, and immediately there was born of it an extraordinary sense of freedom; swift sloughing of inhibitions; a blowing away of old ideas as though they had crumbled to dust and, like dust, had been puffed from the surface of consciousness. As though I were a serpent which had, abruptly, shed an outworn skin. Memories grew dim, faded away, readjusted themselves. I had an indescribable sense of liberation ... I could do anything, since, like God, there existed for me neither good nor evil. Whatever I willed to do that I could do, since there was neither evil nor good but only my will ...

De Keradel said: "You are one with us."

The Demoiselle whispered: "You are one with us, Alain."

Her eyes were closed, or seemed to be; the long lashes low upon her cheeks. Yet I thought that beneath them I saw a glint of purple flame. And de Keradel's hands covered his eyes, as though to shield them, but between his fingers I thought I saw them gleaming. He said:

"Carnac—you have not asked me what is this Gatherer—this Being I would evoke in Its completeness. Is it because you know?"

"No," I answered; and would have followed by saying that I did not care except that suddenly I knew I did care; that of all things that was what I thirsted to know. He said:

"A brilliant Englishman once formulated perfectly the materialistic credo. He said that the existence of man is an accident; his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of the meanest of planets. He pointed out that of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science as yet knows nothing. Nor would it matter if science did know. The wet-nurses of famine, disease, and mutual slaughter had gradually evolved creatures with consciousness and intelligence enough to know that they were insignificant. The history of the past was that of blood and tears, stupid acquiescence, helpless blunderings, wild revolt, and empty aspirations. And at last, the energies of our system will decay, the sun be dimmed, the inert and tideless earth be barren. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. Matter will know itself no longer. Everything will be as though it never had been. And nothing will be either better or worse for all the labor, devotion, pity, love, and suffering of man."

I said, the God-like sense of power stronger within me: "It is not true."

"It is partly true," he answered. "What is not true is that life is an accident. What we call accident is only a happening of whose causes we are ignorant. Life must have come from life. Not necessarily such life as we know—but from some Thing, acting deliberately, whose essence was—and is—life. It is true that pain, agony, sorrow, hate, and discord are the foundations of humanity. It is true that famine, disease, and slaughter have been our nurses. Yet it is equally true that there are such things as peace, happiness, pity, perception of beauty, wisdom ... although these may be only of the thickness of the film on the surface of a woodland pool which mirrors its flowered rim—yet, these things do exist ... peace and beauty, happiness and wisdom. They are."

"And therefore—" de Keradel's hands were still over his eyes, but through the masking fingers I felt his gaze sharpen upon me, penetrate me "—therefore I hold that these desirable things must be in That which breathed life into the primeval slime. It must be so, since that which is created cannot possess attributes other than those possessed by what creates it."

Of course, I knew all that. Why should he waste effort to convince me of the obvious. I said, tolerantly: "It is self-evident."

He said: "And therefore it must also be self-evident that since it was the dark, the malevolent, the cruel side of this—Being—which created us, our only approach to It, our only path to Its other self, must be through agony and suffering, cruelty and malevolence."

He paused, then said, violently:

"Is it not what every religion has taught? That man can approach his Creator only through suffering and sorrow? Sacrifice ... Crucifixion!"

I answered: "It is true. The baptism of blood. The purification through tears. Rebirth through sorrow."

The Demoiselle murmured: "Chords that must be struck before we may attain the supreme harmonies."

There was a mocking note to that; I turned to her quickly. She had not opened her eyes, but I caught the derisive curving of her lips.

De Keradel said: "The sacrifices are ready."

I said: "Then let us sacrifice!"

De Keradel dropped his hands. The pupils of his eyes were phosphorescent, his face seemed to retreat until nothing could be seen but those two orbs of pale blue fire. The Demoiselle raised her eyes, and they were two deep pools of violet flame, her face a blur beyond them. I did not think that strange—then.

There was a mirror at the back of the sideboard. I looked into it and my own eyes were shining with the same feral fires, golden, my face a blurred setting from which yellow gleaming eyes stared back at me ...

Nor did that seem as strange, either—not then.

De Keradel repeated: "The sacrifices are ready."

I said, rising: "Let us use them!"

We went out of the dining room and up the stairs. The inhuman exaltation did not wane; it grew stronger; more ruthless. Life was to be taken, but what was the life of one or the lives of many if they were rungs of a ladder up which I could climb out of the pit into the sun? Force recognition from That which had lived before life ... command It ... the Creator?

With de Keradel's hand upon my arm I passed into my room. He bade me strip and bathe, and left me, I stripped, and my hand touched something hanging to my left armpit. It was a holster in which was an automatic. I had forgotten who had given it to me, but whoever it was had told me it was important ... most important; not to be lost nor given up ... essential. I laughed. This toy essential to one about to summon the Creator of life? I tossed it into a corner of the room ...

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 them. 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 ...


CHAPTER XVII
THE BOWL OF SACRIFICE


I awakened as though escaping from some singularly unpleasant dream. I could not remember what the dream had been, but I knew it had been rotten. It was a stormy day, the surges hammering against the rocky shores, the wind wailing, and the light that came through the windows was gray. I raised my left arm to look at my watch, but it was not there. Nor was it on the table beside the bed. My mouth was dry, and my skin was dry and hot. I felt as though I had been drunk for two days.

Worst of all was my fear that I would remember the dream.

I sat up in bed. Something was missing besides my watch—the gun under my armpit—McCann's gun. I lay back, and tried to remember. There had been a green drink which had sparkled and effervesced—after that, nothing. There was a fog between the green drink and now. The fog hid what I feared to have uncovered.

Fog had been in the dream. The pistol had been in the dream, too. When I had taken the green drink I still had the gun. There was a flash of memory—after the drink the gun had seemed absurd, unconsequential and I had thrown it into a corner. I jumped out of the bed to look for it.

My foot struck against a black and oval bowl. Not all black—there were stains along its sides, and inside it was a viscous scum.

The bowl of sacrifice!

Abruptly the fog lifted and there was the dream ... if dream it had been ... stark and clear in each dread detail. I recoiled from it, not only sick of soul but nauseated of body ...

If it had been no dream, then was I damned and trebly damned. If I had not killed, I had acquiesced in killing. If I had not beaten in the breasts of the sacrifices with my own hands, I had not lifted a hand to save them—and I had fed the fires that were their funeral torches.

Equally with Dahut and de Keradel, I had summoned that black and evil Power ... equally with them I was murderer, torturer ... thrall of Hell.

What was there to prove it dream? Illusion suggested by de Keradel and Dahut while my will lay quiescent under the spell of the green drink? Desperately out of the damning memories I tried to sift some evidence that it had been only dream. There had been the flaring of the feral phosphorescence in their eyes—and in mine. A physiological peculiarity which man does not commonly possess, nor could any drink create the layer of cells which causes it. Nor does humanity bear within its breasts, over its hearts, perceptible lumens bright in youth and dimmed and yellow in age. Yet they had glowed in the breasts of the sacrifices!

Nor where except in dream do oaks chant as though their leafed boughs had voices?

But—there was the blood-stained bowl! Could that materialize from a dream?

No ... but de Keradel or Dahut might have placed it there to make me, waking, believe the dream had been real. And dream or no dream—I was tainted with their evil.

I got up and searched for the automatic. I found it in the corner of the room where I had tossed it. Well, that much had been true. I strapped the holster under my arm. My head felt like a hive, my brain a honeycomb in and out of which lame bees of thought went buzzing aimlessly. But a cold, implacable hatred, a loathing of de Keradel and his witch-daughter held steady in the shaken fabric of my mind.

The rain lashed the windows, and the gale cried around the old house. Somewhere a clock struck a single clanging note. Whether it was the half-hour or the full I could not tell. A straight thought struck through the aimless ones. I took a pinch of the leaves out of the holster and chewed them. They were exceedingly bitter, but I swallowed them—and almost instantly my head was clear.

There was no use in hunting out de Keradel and killing him. In the first place, I could give no real defense for doing so. Not unless there was a heap of bodies in the Cairn, and I could open the cavern of the paupers. I had not the slightest belief that I could find that cavern or that there would be any bodies. Killing de Keradel would seem the act of a mad man, and for doing so a madhouse would be the best I could expect. Also, if I killed him, there would yet be the blank-eyed servants to reckon with.

And Dahut ... I doubted whether I could shoot down Dahut in cold blood. If I did there still would be the servants. They would kill me ... and I had no especial desire to die. The face of Helen came before me ... and still less did I desire to die.

Also, there was the necessity of knowing whether what I had been visualizing had been dream or reality. It was most necessary that I know that.

Someway, somehow, I must get in touch with McCann. Whether dream or reality, I must continue to play the game, not allow myself to be trapped again. At any rate, at first I must seem to believe in its reality; convince de Keradel that I did so believe. For no other reason could he or Dahut have left the bowl beside my bed.

I dressed, and picked up the bowl and went downstairs, holding it behind me. De Keradel was at the table, but the Demoiselle was not. I saw that it was a little after one. He looked up at me, sharply, as I sat and said: "I trust you slept well. I gave order that you should not be disturbed. It is a desolate day, and my daughter sleeps late."

I laughed: "She should—after last night."

He asked: "What do you mean?"

"No need to fence longer with me, de Keradel," I answered, "after last night."

He asked, slowly: "What do you remember of last night?"

"Everything, de Keradel. Everything—from your convincing disquisition upon the dark begetting of life, its darker delivery, its darkest evolution—and the proof of it in what we summoned to the Cairn."

He said: "You have dreamed."

"Did I dream this?"

I set the stained bowl upon the table. His eyes widened; he looked from it to me and back again to the bowl. He asked: "Where did you find that?"

I answered: "Beside my bed. When I awoke not long ago."

The veins upon his temples swelled and began to throb; he whispered: "Now why did she do that ... "

I said: "Because she is wiser than you. Because she knows I should be told the truth. Because she trusts me."

He said: "As once before she trusted you—and to her cost and to her father's."

"When I was Lord of Carnac," I laughed. "The Lord of Carnac died last night. She told me so."

He looked at me, long: "How did the Lord of Carnac die?"

I answered, brutally: "In your daughter's arms. And now she prefers—me."

He pushed back his chair, walked to the window and stared out at the driving rain. He came back to the table and sat quietly down: "Caranac, what did you dream?"

I said: "A waste of time to answer that. If it was a dream, you dictated it, and therefore know. If it was no dream, you were there."

He said: "Nevertheless, I ask you to tell me."

I studied him. There was something strange about this request, made apparently in all sincerity. It threw a totally unexpected monkey-wrench of doubt into the simple machinery of my deductions. I sparred for time.

"After I've eaten," I answered.

Not once while I breakfasted did he speak to me; nor, when I looked at him, were his eyes on me. He seemed deep in not particularly pleasant thoughts. I tried to fish the monkey-wrench out of my calculations. His surprise and anger when I produced the bowl had seemed genuine. If so, then obviously he had not put it beside me. Therefore it was not he who had wished to awaken my memory—either of dream or reality.

Then it must have been Dahut. But why should she want me to remember if her father did not? The only answer seemed to be that they were in conflict. Yet it might mean something else, far wider reaching. I had respect for de Keradel's mentality. I did not believe he would ask me to tell him something he already knew. At least not without a reason. Did his question mean that he had taken no part in the summoning of the Gatherer? That there had been no sacrifices ... that all had been illusion ... and that he had taken no part in the creation of the illusion?

That all had been the work of Dahut alone?

But wait! Might it not also mean that the green drink, after it changed me into what I had become, had also been supposed to make me forget? And that for some reason I had been partly immune to its effect? That now de Keradel wanted to know to what extent it had failed ... to compare my memories with what he knew had occurred?

Yet there was the bowl ... and twice I had seen fear in his eyes when Dahut had spoken to him ... and what was the rift between the pair ... and how could I take advantage of it?

Could anyone except Dahut have left beside me the sacrificial bowl ... any thing ...

I heard the voice of Ralston changing to the buzzing of a fly ... I heard Dick's voice crying out to me ... Beware, beware of Dahut ... give me release ... from the Gatherer ... Alan.

And the room darkened as though the dripping clouds had grown heavier ... or had filled with shadows ...

I said: "Dismiss the servants, de Keradel. I'll tell you."

And when he had done so, I did tell him. He listened without interrupting, expression unchanged, pale eyes now glancing out of the windows, now fixed on mine. When I was through, he asked, smiling:

"Do you think it dream—or real?"

"There is this—" I threw the stained bowl on the table.

He took it, and examined it, thoughtfully. He said:

"Let us first assume your experiences were real. Under that assumption, I am sorcerer, warlock, priest of evil. And I do not like you. Not only do I not like you, but I do not trust you. I am not deceived by your apparent conversion to our aims and purposes. I know that you came here only because of your fear of what might befall your friends if you did not. In short, I am fully aware of my daughter's command to you, and what led up to it. I could get rid of you. Very easily. And would, were it not for one obstacle. My daughter's love for you. In awakening those memories which were her most ancient mother's in Ys ... in resolving her into that ancient Dahut ... obviously I could not pick and choose among her memories. They must, for my purposes, be complete. I must revive them all. Unfortunately, the Lord of Carnac was in them. Most unfortunately she met you, whose ancient father was that same Lord of Carnac. To destroy you would mean a complete and most probably abortive rearrangement of all my plans. It would infuriate her. She would become my enemy. Therefore you—continue to be. Is this plain?"

"Admirably so," I said.

"What then—still assuming I am what you think—am I to do? Obviously, make you particeps criminis. A partner in my crimes. You cannot denounce me without denouncing yourself. I give you a certain drink which deadens your inhibitions against this and that. You become particeps criminis. Helpless to denounce, unless you want the same halter around your neck as would encircle mine. Doubtless," he said, courteously, "all this has occurred to you."

"It has," I answered. "But I would like to put a few questions to you—in your character of sorcerer, warlock, priest of evil—assumed or otherwise, of course."

"In that character," he said gravely, "ask."

"Did you bring about the death of Ralston?"

"I did not," he said. "My daughter did. It is she who commands the shadows."

"Was the shadow which whispered him to his death—real?"

"Real enough to cause his death," he replied.

"You become ambiguous," I said. "I asked was it real?"

He smiled: "There is evidence that he thought so."

"And the other three?"

"Equally as real. It was the unexpected linking of those cases by Dr. Bennett that prompted our visit to Lowell ... an exceedingly unfortunate visit, I repeat, since it resulted in my daughter meeting you. The admission, Caranac, is in my character of warlock, only."

"Why, in that character, did you kill them?"

"Because we were temporarily in need of funds. You will recall there was difficulty in getting gold out of Europe. We had killed many times before—in England, in France, and otherwhere. Dahut needs amusement—so do her shadows. And they must feed—now and then."

Could he be speaking truth—or was he playing with me? I said, coldly, hoping to bomb him out of his calm:

"You profit well by your daughter's whoredom."

He laughed outright at that: "What is whoredom to one who is warlock, sorcerer, and priest of evil?"

"Those who marched last night to the Cairn—still assuming these sacrifices reality—the paupers—"

He interrupted me: "Paupers! Why do you call them that?"

Now I laughed: "Aren't they?" He recovered his poise: "Always under the same conditions of response, the majority of them, yes. And now you would ask me how I—collected—them. That, my dear Caranac, was remarkably simple. It involved only the bribing of an orderly or two, the administering to the paupers of a certain drug, a little whispering to them by my daughter's shadows, their slipping away under the guidance of those shadows to where my boat lay waiting for them. And they were here—and very happy to be here I assure you ... between sacrifices."

He asked, suavely: "Have I given tangible form to the vaguest of your suspicions, hardened into certainty those not so vague? Is not all this credible conduct for a sorcerer and his witch-daughter?"

I did not answer. He said:

"Speaking still in this capacity, my dear Caranac, assuming that you leave here, tell this story to others, bring down upon me man's law—what would happen? They would find no sacrifices, either dead in the Cairn or alive in the Cavern. There would be no Cavern. I have provided for all that. They would find only a peaceful scientist, one of whose hobbies is to reproduce Carnac in miniature. He would show them his standing stones. His entirely charming daughter would accompany and entertain them. You—if you were here—would be merely a lunatic dissonance. Whether you were here or not—what would happen to you thereafter? You would not die ... but very heartily would you wish to die ... if mind enough remained to formulate a wish."

His lips were smiling, but his eyes were pale blue ice: "I am still speaking as sorcerer, of course."

I asked: "Why did you come here for your experiment, de Keradel? Could you not have carried it on better in Carnac, before the ancient Cairn—the path to which the Gatherer knew well?"

He answered: "All paths are known to the Gatherer. And how could I have had freedom to open that ancient path in a land where memory still lingers? Where could I have gotten the sacrifices—or carried on the ritual without interruption? It was not possible. Therefore I came here. Where the Gatherer is unknown—as yet."

I nodded; that was reasonable enough. I asked, bluntly:

"What do you expect to gain?"

He laughed: "You are too naive, Caranac. That I will not tell you."

Anger and remorse swept away my caution; I said:

"You'll never have my aid again in that black work, de Keradel."

"So!" he said, slowly. "So! And so I thought. But I will not need you again, Caranac. The rapprochement last night was almost perfect. So perfect ... that I may not even need ... again ... Dahut."

He had said that last musingly, more as though sealing by words a secret thought than speaking to me. And once more I had the feeling of dissension between the two ... and fear of Dahut driving him ... driving him to what? ...

He leaned back and roared laughter; his eyes and lips both laughing, without malice or evil.

"That is one side of the matter, Dr. Caranac. And now I give you the other side, the common-sense side. I am an able psychiatrist, and adventurous. I am an explorer, but not of the jungles nor the deserts of this world. I explore the brains of men, which are thousands of worlds. Mostly, I admit, they are distressingly similar; yet now and then there is one sufficiently different to justify the labor of exploration. Let us suppose that I have heard of you—as a matter of fact, Caranac, I know the history of your family better than you do yourself. Still, I have no desire to meet you until I read your interview in the case of this Ralston, whom I knew not at all. It arouses my curiosity, and I decide to explore—you. What is my best approach without exciting your suspicions? The most favorable, unguarded entrance into the particular territory of your brain which I wish to survey? I read that you are a friend of Dr. Bennett, who has interesting ideas upon the death of this same Ralston and others. I read that he is with Dr. Lowell, a brother psychiatrist upon whom I have long been intending to call. So I do call upon him, and what more natural that I should receive a dinner invitation for myself and my daughter. And, as I expect, there are you and Dr. Bennett.

"Very well, then. You are a connoisseur of warlocks, a student of sorcery. I turn the conversation in that direction. You have spoken to the pressmen of shadows, and to my delight I find that Dr. Bennett is obsessed by the same idea. Better still, he is half-convinced of sorcery's reality. You two are so thoroughly en rapport that not only do I find entrance to your mind doubly easy, but his also open to me."

He paused as though inviting comment. I made none. Something of the amiability faded from his face. He said: "I have called myself an explorer of minds, Caranac. I can cut my trails through them even as other explorers cut theirs through the jungles. Better. Because I can control the—vegetation."

Again he paused, and when again I made no comment, asked with edge of irritation: "You understand me?"

I nodded: "I follow you perfectly." I did not add that not only did I follow him but was a bit ahead of him ... a thought was forming in my mind.

He said: "I now suggest to you—in my character of psychiatrist, Caranac, not of sorcerer—that my whole experiment has been centered upon awakening those memories which have come down to you from ancestors who did make sacrifices to a Demon-god. Those very sacrifices in which last night it seemed to you that you participated. That what you thought you saw upon the Cairn and within the Cairn was the image of that Demon-god the imaginations of your ancestors created long centuries ago ... that, and nothing more. I suggest that from the moment we met, little which has seemed reality to you has been wholly so—a tapestry of dark ancestral memories and innocent realities of which I have been the weaver. There is no Gatherer ... there are no creeping Shadows ... no hidden lair beneath this house. My daughter, who shares in my experiments, is in truth what sometimes she has seemed to you to be ... a woman of today's world, sophisticated, certainly, but no more witch nor harlot than the Helen you called your antique coin. And finally, that you are a guest here, only. No prisoner, and under no compulsion to remain other than your own imagination—stimulated, as I have admitted, by my own passion for research."

He added with barely discernible irony: "And my daughter's."

Now it was I who walked to the window, and stood with my back to him. Absently, I noted that the rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the clouds. He was lying—but in which of his two interpretations were the lies the fewer? No sorcerer could have set the stage of Dahut's towers in New York and Ys, nor have directed my experiences there, real or imagined; nor been fugleman to what had happened after the rites of last night. Only a sorceress could have managed those things.

Also, there were other weak spots to that second explanation. But the one indissoluble rock on which it split was that McCann, flying over this place, had also seen the corposants, the rotting lights of the dead ... had seen the black and formless shape squatting upon the Cairn ... glimpsed figures weaving among the standing stones before the fog had covered all.

Which of the two stories did de Keradel want me to believe? Which was it better for me to pretend to believe? That he had never really trusted me, I knew. Was this a sort of Lady or the Tiger trap? Which door ought I open?

The thought that had been forming in my mind grew clear. I turned to him with what I hoped was the precise mixture of chagrin and admiration. I said:

"Frankly, de Keradel, I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. After all, you know, you did take me up on the mountain and show me the kingdoms of Earth, and a part of me rejoiced exceedingly at the prospect and was perfectly willing to sign over to you. If a tenderer part is set at ease because it was mirage, still the sterner part wishes it had been true. And I am divided between resentment that you should make me the subject of such an experiment, and admiration for your perfect workmanship."

I sat down and added, carelessly: "I take it that now you have made everything plain, the experiment is ended."

The pale blue eyes dwelt upon me; he answered, slowly: "It is ended—so far as I am concerned."

Well did I know it wasn't, and well did I know I was as much a prisoner as ever; but I lighted a cigarette, and asked: "I suppose, then, I am free to go whenever I choose?"

"An unnecessary question," the pale eyes narrowed, "if you have accepted my commonsense interpretation of your experiences."

I laughed: "It was an echo of my servitude to you. One does not so quickly feel himself free of such fetters of illusion as you forge, de Keradel. By the way, I'd like to send a telegram to Dr. Bennett."

"I am sorry," he said, "but the storm has broken the wire between us and the village."

I said: "I am sure it has. But what I would like to wire Dr. Bennett is that I like it here, and intend to remain as long as I am welcome. That the matter in which we have been so interested has been explained to my complete satisfaction, and to drop it. That there is nothing for him to worry about, and that I will amplify all this later by letter."

Pausing, I looked him straight in the eyes: "We would collaborate in that letter—you and I."

He leaned back, appraising me with expressionless face, but I had not missed the flicker of astonishment when I had made my proposal. He was nibbling at the bait, although he had not yet swallowed it. He asked:

"Why?"

"Because of you," I said, and walked over to him: "De Keradel, I want to stay here. With you. But not as one held by ancestral memories. Not by an imagination stimulated or guided by you or your daughter. Nor by suggestion nor sorcery. I want to stay here wide-awake and all myself. Nor have the charms of your daughter anything to do with that desire. I care little for women, de Keradel, except for the naked lady they name Truth. It is because of you, solely because of you, that I want to stay."

Again he asked: "Why?"

But he had taken the bait. His guard had dropped. Every symphony has its chord, and every chord its dominant note. So has every man and every woman. Discover that note, and learn just how and when to sound it—and man or woman is yours. De Keradel's dominant was vanity—egotism. I struck it heavily.

"Never, I think, has a de Carnac named a de Keradel—Master. Never asked to sit at a de Keradel's feet and learn. I know enough of the histories of our clans to be sure of that. Well, it has come to pass. All my life I have sought to lift Truth's veil. I think you can do that, de Keradel. Therefore—I would stay."

He asked, curiously: "Which of my two stories do you believe?"

I laughed: "Both and neither. Otherwise would I deserve to be your acolyte?"

He said, almost wistfully: "I wish I could trust you ... Alain de Carnac! There is much that we could do together."

I answered: "Whether you trust me or do not, I cannot see how I, being here, can harm you. If I should disappear or, for example, appear to have killed myself or seem to have gone insane ... that, of course, might harm you."

He shook his head, absently; with a chillingly convincing indifference: "I could be rid of you very easily, de Carnac and there would be no necessity of explanations, but I wish I could trust you."

I said: "If you have nothing to lose by it—why not?"

He said, slowly: "I will."

He picked up the bowl of sacrifice in his hands, and weighed it. He dropped it on the table. Stretching both hands out toward me but without touching me, he did with them that to which, knowing what was in my heart against him, I could not respond. It was an immemorially ancient gesture, a holy gesture that had been taught to me in Tibet by a lama whose life I had saved ... and the way de Keradel made that gesture defiled it, although it still held within it the obligation ... an obligation beyond life.

Dahut saved me. A sudden flood of sunshine poured into the room. She came through toward us. If anything could have made me believe without reservation, de Keradel's second and commonsense version it would have been Dahut walking through that sunshine. She had on her riding breeches and boots, and a sea-green silk shirt that just matched the color of her eyes, and a beret on her silver gilt hair that was exactly the same green. Coming through the sunshine toward me like this, she knocked de Keradel and everything else out of my head.

She said: "Hello, Alan. It's cleared. Let's take a canter."

She saw the bowl of sacrifice. Her eyes dilated so that I could see the whites both above and below them ... and how the orchid hell sparks danced ...

De Keradel's face whitened. Then comprehension came into it ... a warning, a message, darted from him to her. The Demoiselle's lids dropped, the long lashes swept her cheeks. All this in a split second. I said, carelessly, as though I had observed nothing:

"Fine. I'll change my clothes."

I had known damned well that de Keradel hadn't put that bowl of sacrifice beside me. Now I knew just as damned well that Dahut hadn't, either.

Then who had?

I stepped into my room ... again I seemed to hear the buzzing ... Alan, beware of Dahut ...

Maybe the shadows were going to be kind to me again.


CHAPTER XVIII
THE HOUNDS OF DAHUT


Whatever the mystery of the bowl, Dahut's invitation was a break I hadn't hoped for. I got into my riding togs with haste. I had the idea that the conversation between her and her father would not be entirely amicable, and I didn't want her to have time to change her mind about that gallop. Probably I would not be able to get to the village, but I ought to be able to make the rock where the patient fishermen waited.

I wrote a note to McCann: "Be at the rock tonight from eleven until four. If I don't show up, be there tomorrow night between the same hours. Same holds for night after tomorrow. If you then haven't heard from me, tell Ricori I say to use his own judgment."

Ricori should have landed by then. And if by then I had not been able to get a message to McCann, it would mean that I was in a tight corner—if, indeed, I was in any shape to be in any corner whatsoever. I banked upon Ricori's resourcefulness and ruthlessness as adequate to meet de Keradel's own. Also, he would act swiftly. I wrote the note in duplicate, since after all I might be able to get to the village. I put one in a two-ounce bottle, stoppering it tightly. The other I put it my pocket.

I went downstairs whistling, giving artless warning of my approach. I went into the room as though I had not a care nor a suspicion in the world. Nor was I entirely acting; I did have a heady sense of elation; somewhat like that of a fighter who has lost round after round with an opponent whose style has been devastatingly unfamiliar, but who suddenly gets the key to it and knows he can meet it.

The Demoiselle was standing beside the fireplace, switching at her boots with her quirt. De Keradel was still at the table's head, scrunched down a bit, more stolid than I had seen him. The bowl of sacrifice was nowhere in sight. The Demoiselle was rather like a beautiful wasp; De Keradel a quite small Gibraltar repelling stings. I laughed as that comparison came into my head.

Dahut said: "You are gay."

I said: "Indeed I am. Gayer than—" I looked at de Keradel "-than I have been for years."

She did not miss that look, nor his faint answering smile. She said: "Let us go. You are sure you will not join us, my father?"

De Keradel shook his head: "I have much to do."

We went out to the stables. She took the same leggy bay, and I the roan. For a time she rode a little ahead of me, silent; then dropped back. She said: "You are as gay as though you rode to meet a loved woman."

I said: "I hope to meet her. But not on this ride, Dahut."

She whispered: "Is it—Helen?"

"No, Dahut—although Helen has many of her attributes."

"Who is she?"

"You don't know her very well, Dahut. She wears no clothes, except a veil over her face. Her name is Truth. Your father has promised me to lift her veil."

She reined closer; grasped my wrist: "He promised that—to you?"

I said, casually: "Yes. And he rather more than intimated that he need not call you in to assist."

"Why do you tell me this?" Her fingers tightened on my wrist.

"Because, Dahut, I am exceedingly anxious to meet this naked lady Truth with no veil over her face. And I have a feeling that unless from now on I answer all questions with perfect candor, our meeting will be delayed."

She said, dangerously: "Do not play with me. Why did you tell me that?"

"I am not playing with you at all, Dahut. I am only being bluntly honest. So much so that I will give you my secondary reason."

"And that?"

"Divide—and rule," I answered.

She stared at me, uncomprehendingly.

"They tell a story in India," I said. "It is one of their jatakas or animal fables. Tiger Queen and Lion King could not agree. Their enmity upset the jungle. At last they made a bargain. They were to sit on the pans of a balance suspended just over a pool filled with crocodiles. The heavier one obviously would drop into the water, to the delight of the crocodiles. Tiger Queen and Lion King sat on the scales. Each weighed exactly the same. But an ant had hidden himself mid-beam with a grain of sand in his mandibles. 'Ho!' he cried. 'Who bids? And what is bid?' Thus he cried, this humble ant, to Tiger Queen and Lion King. And a grain of sand in his mandibles was life or death to one of them."

Dahut asked, breathlessly: "Which lived?"

I laughed: "The story does not say."

She knew what I now meant, and I watched the color creep into her cheeks and the sparks dance in her eyes. She dropped my wrist. She said:

"My father is truly pleased with you, Alan."

"I think you told me that once before, Dahut—but no gayety followed."

She whispered: "And I seem to have heard you speaking like this before ... and there was no gayety thereafter for me ... " Again she grasped my wrist:

"But I am not pleased, Alan."

"I am sorry, Dahut."

She said: "Despite his wisdom, my father is rather ingenuous. But I am not."

"Fine," I said, heartily. "Nor am I. I loathe ingenuousness. But I have not as yet observed any naivete about your father."

Her grip upon my wrist tightened: "This Helen ... how much does she resemble the naked but veiled lady of your quest?"

My pulse leaped: I could not help it; she felt it. She said, sweetly: "You do not know? You have had no opportunity, I take it, for ... comparison."

There was mercilessness in the rippling of the little waves of her laughter: "Continue to be gay, my Alan. Perhaps, some day, I shall give you that opportunity."

She tapped her horse with her crop, and cantered off. I ceased feeling gay. Why the devil had I allowed Helen to be brought into the talk? Not choked mention of her off at the beginning? I followed close behind Dahut, but she did not look at me, nor speak. We went along for a mile or two, and came out on that haunted meadow of the crouching bushes. Here she seemed to regain her good-humor, dropped back beside me. She said:

"Divide—and rule. It is a wise saying, that. Whose is it, Alan?"

I said: "So far as I know, some old Roman's. Napoleon quoted it."

"The Romans were wise, very wise. Suppose I told my father that you had put this thought into my head?"

I said, indifferently: "Why not? Yet if it has not already occurred to him, why forearm him against yourself?"

She said, thoughtfully: "You are strangely sure of yourself today."

"If I am," I answered, "it is because there is nothing but the truth in me. So if there are any questions upon the tip of your lovely tongue whose truthful answers might offend your beautiful ears—do not ask them of me."

She bent her head, and went scudding over the meadow. We came to the breast of rock which I had scaled on our first ride. I dropped from my horse and began to climb. I reached the top, and turning, saw that she, too, had dismounted and was looking up at me, irresolutely. I waved to her, and sat down upon the rock. The fishing boat was a few hundred yards away. I threw a stone or two idly into the water, then flipped out the small bottle in which was the note to McCann. One of the men stood up, stretched, and began to pull up the anchors. I called out to him: "Any luck?"

Dahut was standing beside me. A ray of the setting sun struck the neck of the small bottle, and it glinted. She watched it for a moment, looked at the fishermen, then at me. I said: "What is that? A fish?" And threw a stone at the glint. She did not answer; stood studying the men in the boat. They rowed between us and the bottle, turned the breast of rock and passed out of sight. The bottle still glinted, rising and falling in the swell.

She half lifted her hand, and I could have sworn that a ripple shot across the water straight to the bottle, and an eddy caught it, sending it swirling toward us.

I stood up, and caught her by the shoulders, raised her face to mine and kissed her. She clung to me, quivering. I took her hands, and they were cold, and helped her down the breast of rock. Toward the bottom, I lifted her in my arms and carried her. I set her on her feet beside her horse. Her long fingers slipped around my throat, half-strangling me; she pressed her lips to mine in a kiss that left me breathless. She leaped on the bay and gave it the quirt, mercilessly. She was off over the meadow, swift as a racing shadow.

I looked after her, stupidly. I mounted the roan ...

I hesitated, wondering whether to ascend the breast again to see if McCann's men had come back and retrieved the bottle. I decided I'd better not risk it, and rode after Dahut.

She kept far ahead of me, never looking back. At the door of the old house she flung herself from the back of the bay, gave it a little slap, and went quickly in. The bay trotted over to the stables. I turned across the field and rode into the grove of oaks. I remembered it so well that I knew precisely when I would reach its edge and face the monoliths.

I reached the edge, and there were the standing stones, a good two hundred of them lifting up from a ten-acre plain and hidden from the sea by a pine-thatched granite ridge. They were not gray as they had been under fog. They were stained red by the setting sun. In their center squatted the Cairn, sullen, enigmatic, and evil.

The roan would not pass the threshold of the grove. He raised his head and sniffed at the wind and whinnied; he began to shiver and to sweat, and the whinny grew shrill with fear. He swerved and swung back into the oaks. I gave him his head.

Dahut sat at the head of the table. Her father had gone somewhere in the yacht and might not return that night, she had said ... I wondered, but not aloud, if he were collecting more paupers for the sacrifices.

He had not been there when I had come in from the ride. Nor, until I had sat down at the table, had I seen Dahut. I had gone up to my room and bathed and dressed leisurely. I had set my ear to the tapestry and had searched again for the hidden spring; and had heard and found nothing. A kneeling servant had announced that dinner was ready. It interested me that he did not address me as his Lord of Carnac.

Dahut wore a black dress, for the first time since I had met her. There wasn't much of it, but what there was showed her off beautifully. She looked tired; not wilty nor droopy, but in some odd fashion like a sea flower that was at its best at high tide and was now marking time through the low. I felt a certain pity for her. She raised her eyes to mine, and they were weary. She said:

"Alan, do you mind—I'd rather talk commonplaces tonight."

Inwardly, I smiled at that. The situation was somewhat more than piquant. There was so little we could talk about other than commonplaces that wasn't loaded with high explosive. I approved of the suggestion, feeling in no mood for explosions. Nevertheless, there was something wrong with the Demoiselle or she would never have made it. Was she afraid I might bring up that matter of the sacrificial bowl, perhaps—or was it that my talk with de Keradel had upset her. Certainly, she had not liked it.

"Commonplaces it is," I said. "If brains were sparks, mine tonight wouldn't even light a match. Discussion of the weather is about the limit of my intelligence."

She laughed: "Well, what do you think of the weather, Alan?"

I said: "It ought to be abolished by Constitutional amendment."

"And what makes the weather?"

"Just now," I answered, "you do—for me."

She looked at me, somberly: "I wish that were true—but take care, Alan."

"My mistake, Dahut," I said. "Back to the commonplace."

She sighed, then smiled—and it was hard to think of her as the Dahut I had known, or thought I had known, in her towers of Ys and New York ... or with the golden sickle red in her hand ...

We stuck to commonplaces, although now and then perilous pits gaped. The perfect servants served us with a perfect dinner. De Keradel, whether scientist or sorcerer, did himself well with his wines. But the Demoiselle ate little and drank hardly at all, and steadily her languor grew. I pushed aside the coffee, and said:

"The tide must be on the ebb, Dahut."

She straightened, and asked, sharply:

"Why do you say that?"

"I do not know. But always you have seemed to me of the sea, Dahut. I told you so that night I met you. So why should your spirit not rise and fall with the rise and fall of the tides?"

She arose, abruptly, and her face was colorless: "Good-night, Alan. I am very tired. Sleep—without dreams."

She was out of the room before I could answer her. Why had that mention of the tides brought about such change in her, forced her to flight—for flight that swift departure had been? I could find no answer. A clock struck nine. I sat at the table for a quarter-hour more, the blank-eyed servants watching me. I stood up, yawning. I smiled drowsily at the butler and said to him in the Breton:

"Tonight I sleep."

He had been among the van of those who with their flambeaux had herded the sacrifices. He bowed low, no slightest change of expression to betray that he sensed the true significance of what I had said. He held the curtains open for me, and I felt his gaze upon me as I slowly went up the stairs to my room.

I paused for a moment in the hall and looked out the window. There was a rack of thin clouds over the sky, half-veiling the moon, now a few nights past its full. It was a dimly luminous night, and a very silent one. There were no shadows in the wide, old-fashioned hall—whispering and rustling. I entered my room, undressed and went to bed. It was close to ten.

An hour went by while I lay there feigning sleep. Then that for which I had been waiting happened. Someone was in the room, and by the faint strange fragrance I knew it was Dahut, and that she stood close beside my bed. I felt her bend over me and listen to my breathing; then her fingers, light as the touch of a moth, upon the pulse in my neck and upon the pulse in my wrist. I sighed, and turned, and seemed to sink again in deepest slumber. And I heard her sigh, and felt a touch upon my cheek that was not of fingers. The fragrance stole away, soundlessly. Yet I knew Dahut had paused before the tapestry, listening. For long minutes she stood there, and then there was the faintest of clicks, and I knew that she had gone.

Nevertheless, I waited until the hands upon my watch-face pointed to eleven before I slipped out of bed, and drew on breeches, shirt, dark sweater, and sneakers.

The driveway to the house ran straight to the guarded gates, a mile and a half away. I did not believe this was patroled, and I purposed to follow it to within half a mile of the gates, strike off to the left, reach the wall and skirt it to the rock where McCann would be awaiting me. True, the keeper of the inn had said the breast could not be scaled from the water, but I had no doubt McCann would find a way. I should make it in half an hour, easily.

I stepped out into the hall, crept to the head of the stairs, and looked down. A faint light was burning, but there was no sign of servants. I stole down the stairs and reached the front door. It was unlocked and unbolted. I closed it behind me and merged into the shadow of a rhododendron, getting my bearings.

Here the driveway made a wide curve, unprotected by shrubbery. The scud had thinned and the moon was far too bright, but once the loop was crossed, there would be cover from the trees that bordered the road. I walked across the loop and gained the shelter of the trees. I waited a good five minutes, watching. The house remained dark, no lights from any window; no stir nor sound. I set off along the roadway.

I had covered a trifle under my mile when I came to a narrow lane angling to the left. It was fairly straight, what I could see of it in the watery moonlight. It struck in the general direction of the rock, and promised not only a shorter cut but a safer way. I took it. A few score yards and the trees ended. The lane continued, but bordered with scrub and bushes just too high for me to look over and far too dense for me to see through.

A half mile of this, and I began to have an acutely disagreeable feeling of being followed. It was an extraordinary unpleasant feeling—as though that which followed was peculiarly loathsome. And suddenly it was at my back—reaching out to me? I wheeled, snatching the gun from the holster.

There was nothing behind me. The lane stretched dimly back, and empty.

My heart was pumping as though I had been running, the backs of my hands and my forehead wet with sweat and I felt a stirring of nausea. I fought it down and went on, gun in hand. A dozen steps, and again I felt the stealthy approach—coming closer, closer, closer ... faster and faster ... sweeping upon me. I mastered panic impulse to run, and wheeled again—and again saw only empty lane.

I pressed my back against the bushes, and sidled along, watching the path I had traversed.

Now there was furtive movement in the scrub that lined the lane; movement as of things flitting through the bushes to the measure of my steps, watching me, gloating upon me; and there were rustlings and whisperings and thin obscene pipings as though they talked of me as I sidled on and on, legs trembling, nausea growing, and fighting, fighting at every step that panic desire to fling away my gun, cover my eyes with my arms lest I see the things—and run and run.

The lane ended. Step by step I backed away from it until I could no longer hear the rustlings and the pipings. But still there was movement in the bushes and I knew the things watched me from them. I turned and saw that I was on the edge of the haunted meadow. Sinister enough it had seemed by day, but it had been gay to what it was now, by night, under the scud-veiled, waning moon. It was desolate, unutterably desolate, and the bushes that had seemed like crouching men were now bent souls chained for eternity to that desolation, in irrevocable despair.

I could not cross that meadow unless I did it quickly. I could not go back through the piping things. I began to run straight across the meadow, toward the wall.

I was a third over it when I heard the baying of the hounds. It came from the direction of the house, and involuntarily I stopped, listening. It was not like the cry of any pack I had ever heard. It was sustained, wailing, ineffably mournful; with the thin unearthly quality of the obscene pipings. It was the desolation of the meadow given voice.

I stood, throat dry, every hair prickling, unable to move. And nearer drew the howling, and nearer.

The lane spewed shadow shapes. They were black under the moon and they were like the shadows of men, but of men deformed, distorted, changed into abominable grotesques within a workshop in Hell. They were—foul. They spread fan-wise from the mouth of the lane and came leaping, skipping, flittering over the meadow; squattering in the crouching bushes, then flinging themselves out again, and as they ran they mewed and squeaked and piped. There was one with bloated body like a monstrous frog that came hopping toward me and leaped croaking over my head. There was another that touched me as it passed—a shadowy thing with long and twisted ape-like arms, dwarfed legs and head the size of an orange set upon a thin and writhing neck. It was not all shadow, for I felt its touch, gossamer as the wing of a moth, thin as mist—but palpable. It was unclean, a defilement, a horror.

The baying of the dogs was close, and with it a tattoo of hoofs, the drumming of a strong horse, galloping.

Out of the lane burst a great black stallion, neck outstretched, mane flying. Upon his back rode Dahut, ash-gold hair streaming loose in the wind, eyes flaming with the violet witch-fire. She saw me, and raised her whip and screamed, reining in the stallion so that he danced, fore-feet high in air. Again she screamed, and pointed to me. From behind the stallion poured a pack of huge dogs, a dozen or more of them, like staghounds ... like the great hounds of the Druids.

They raced down upon me like a black wave ... and I saw that they were shadowy, but in the blackness of their shadows red eyes gleamed with the same hell-fires that were in Dahut's. And behind them thundered the stallion with Dahut—no longer screaming, her mouth twisted into a square of fury and her face no woman's but a fiend's.

They were almost upon me before my paralysis broke. I raised the automatic and shot straight at her. Before I could press trigger again, the shadow pack was on me.

Like the thing that had touched me, they, too, had substance, these shadow hounds of Dahut. Tenuous, misty—but material. I staggered under their onslaught. It was as though I fought against bodies made of black cobwebs, and I saw the moon as though it were shining through a black veil; and Dahut upon the stallion and the desolate meadow were dimmed and blurred as though I looked through black cobwebs. I had dropped my gun and I fought with bare hands. Their touch had not the vileness of the ape-armed thing, but from them came a strange and numbing cold. They tore at me with shadowy fangs, tore at my throat with red eyes burning into mine, and it was as though the cold poured into me through their fangs. I was weakening. It was growing harder to breathe. The numbness of the cold had my arms and hands so that now I could only feebly struggle against the black cobwebs. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath ...

Dahut was down from the stallion and I was free from hounds. I stared up at her and tried to stagger to my feet. The fury had gone from her face, but in it was no mercy and out of its whiteness the violet flames of her eyes flared. She brought her whip down across my face: "A brand for your first treachery!" She lashed. "A brand for your second!" A third time again. "A brand for this time!"

I wondered, dazedly, why I did not feel the blows.

I felt nothing; all my body was numb, as though the cold had condensed within it. Slowly it was creeping into my brain, chilling my mind, freezing my thought. She said: "Stand up."

Slowly, I arose. She leaped upon the stallion's back. She said: "Raise your left arm." I lifted it, and she noosed the lash of the quirt around my wrist like a fetter.

She said: "Look. My dogs feed."

I looked. The shadow hounds were coursing over the meadow and the shadow things were running, hopping from bush to bush, squeaking, piping in terror. The hounds were chasing them, pulling them down, tearing at them.

She said: "You, too, shall feed!"

She called to her dogs and they left their kills and came coursing to her.

The cold had crept into my brain. I could not think. I could see, but what I saw had little meaning. I had no will, except hers.

The stallion trotted away, into the lane. I trotted at its side, held by the fetter of Dahut's lash, like a runaway slave. Once I looked behind. At my heels was the shadow pack, red eyes glinting in their bodies' murk. It did not matter.

And the numbness grew until all I knew was that I was trotting, trotting.

Then even that last faint fragment of consciousness faded away.


CHAPTER XIX
"CREEP, SHADOW!"


There was no feeling in my body, but my mind was awake and alert. It was as though I had no body. The icy venom from the fangs of the shadow hounds still numbed me, I thought. But it had cleared from my brain. I could see and I could hear.

All that I could see was a green twilight, as though I lay deep in some ocean abyss looking upward through immense spaces of motionless, crystal-clear green water. I floated deep within this motionless sea, yet I could hear, far above me, its waves whispering and singing.

I began to rise, floating up through the depths toward the whispering, singing waves. Their voices became clearer. They were singing a strange old song, a sea-song old before ever man was ... singing it to the measured chime of tiny bells struck slowly far beneath the sea ... to measured tap, tap, tap on drums of red royal coral deep beneath the sea ... to chords struck softly on harps of sea-fans whose strings were mauve and violet and crocus yellow.

Up I floated and up, until song and drum beat, chimes and sighing harp chords blended into one ... The voice of Dahut.

She was close to me, and she was singing, but I could not see her. I could see nothing but the green twilight, and that was fast darkening. Sweet was her voice and pitiless ... and wordless was her song except for its burden ...

" Thirst, Shadow! Hunger, Shadow! Creep, Shadow—creep!"

I strove to speak and could not; strove to move and could not. And still her song went on ... only its burden plain ...

" Hunger, Shadow, feed only where and when I bid you! Thirst, Shadow ... drink only where and when I bid you! Creep, Shadow creep!"

Suddenly I felt my body. First as a tingling, and then as a leaden weight, and then as a wrenching agony. I was out of my body. It lay upon a wide, low bed in a tapestried room filled with rosy light. The light did not penetrate the space in which I was, crouching at my body's feet. On my body's face were three crimson welts, the marks of Dahut's whip, and Dahut stood at my body's head, naked, two thick braids of her pale gold hair crossed between white breasts. I knew that my body was not dead, but Dahut was not looking at it. She was looking at me ... whatever I was ... crouched at my body's feet ...

"Creep, Shadow ... creep ... creep ... creep, Shadow ... creep ... "

The room, my body, and Dahut faded—in that precise order. I was creeping, creeping, through darkness. It was like creeping through a tunnel, for solidity was above and below and on each side of me; and at last, as though reaching a tunnel's end, the blackness before me began to gray. I crept out of the darkness.

I was at the edge of the standing stones, on the threshold of the monoliths. The moon was low, and they stood black against it.

There was an eddy of wind, and like a leaf it blew me among the monoliths. I thought: What am I to be blown like a leaf in the wind! I felt resentment, rage. I thought: A shadow's rage!

I was beside one of the standing stones. Dark as it was, a darker shadow leaned against it. It was the shadow of a man, although there was no man's body to cast it. It was the shadow of a man buried to the knees. There were other monoliths near, and against each of them leaned a man's shadow ... buried to the knees. The shadow closest to me wavered, like the shadow cast by a wind-shaken candle flame. It bent to me and whispered: "You have life! Live, Shadow and save us!"

I whispered: "I am shadow ... shadow like you ... how can I save you?"

The shadow against the standing stone swayed and shook: "You have life ... kill ... kill her ... kill him ... "

The shadow on the stone behind me whispered: "Kill ... her ... first."

From all the monoliths rose a whisper: "Kill ... kill ... kill ... "

There was a stronger eddy of the wind, and on it I was whirled like a leaf almost to the threshold of the Cairn. The whispering of the shadows fettered to the circling monoliths grew locust shrill, beating back the wind that was whirling me into the Cairn ... shrilling a barrier between the Cairn and me ... driving me back, out of the field of the monoliths ...

The Cairn and the monoliths were gone. The moon was gone and gone was the familiar earth. I was a shadow ... in a land of shadows ...

There were no stars, no moon, no sun. There was only a faintly luminous dusk which shrouded a world all wan and ashen and black. I stood alone, on a wide plain. There were no perspectives, and no horizons. Everywhere it was as though I looked upon vast screens. Yet I knew there were depths and distances in this strange land. I was a shadow, vague and unsubstantial. Yet I could see and hear, feel and taste, I knew that because I clasped my hands and felt them, and in my mouth and throat was the bitter taste of ashes.

Ahead of me were shadow mountains, stacked against each other like gigantic slices of black jade; lamellar; distinguishable from each other only by their varying darknesses. It seemed that I could reach out a hand and touch them, yet I knew they were far and far away. My eyes—my sight—whatever it was that functioned as sight in this shadow that was I, sharpened. I was ankle deep in somber, shadowy grass starred by small flowers that should have been gay blue instead of mournful gray. And shadowy livid lilies that should have been golden and scarlet swayed in a wind I could not feel.

I beard above me a thin trilling, plaintively sweet. Shadowy birds were winging over me toward the distant mountains. They passed ... but the trilling lingered ... shaped itself into words into the voice of Dahut.

 ...  Hunger Thirst!

My way was toward the mountains—the shadowy birds had pointed it. I had a swift moment of rebellion, I thought: I will not take it. This is illusion. Here I stay ...

The voice of Dahut, pitiless: Learn whether it is not real!

I began to walk, through the somber grass, toward the black mountains.

There was a muted beat of hoofs behind me. I turned. A shadowy horse was driving down upon me, a great gray destrier, armored. The shadow who rode it was armored, the shadow of a big man, wide of shoulder and thick of body; unvisored, but chain-mailed from neck to feet, in his belt a battle-axe and across his shoulders a long two-edged sword. The destrier was close, yet the sound of its hoofs was faint, like distant thunder. And I saw that far behind the armored man raced other shadowy horsemen, leaning forward over the necks of small steeds. The armored man drew up his horse beside me, looked down at me with faint glint of brown eyes in shadowy face.

"A stranger! Now by Our Lady I leave no straggler in the path of the wolves I draw! Up, Shadow ... up!"

He swung an arm and lifted me; threw me astride the destrier behind him.

"Hold fast!" he cried, and gave the gray horse the spur. Swiftly it raced, and soon the slices of the black mountains were close. A defile opened. At its mouth he stopped, and looked back, made gestures of derision and laughed: "They cannot catch us now ... "

He muttered: "Still, I do not know why my horse should be so weary."

He stared at me from shadowy face: "I do know ... you have too much of life, Shadow. He who casts you is not ... dead. Then what do you here?"

He twisted, and lifted me from the horse, and set me on the ground, gently.

"See!" he pointed to my breast. There was a filament of glistening silver, fine as the finest cobweb, floating from it ... stretching toward the ravine as though pointing the way I must take ... as though it came from my heart ... as though it were unwinding from my heart ...

"You are not dead!" Shadowy pity was in his regard. "Therefore you must hunger ... therefore you must thirst ... until you feed and drink where the thread leads you. Half-Shadow—it was a witch who sent me here, Berenice de Azlais, of Languedoc. But my body has long been dust and I have long been content to feed on shadow fare. Long dust, I say and so suppose ... but here one knows no time. My year was 1346 of Our Lord. What year was yours?"

"Nigh six centuries after," I said.

"So long ... so long," he whispered. "Who sent you here?"

"Dahut of Ys."

"Queen of Shadows! Well, she has sent us many. I am sorry, Half-Shadow, but I can carry you no further."

Suddenly he slapped his sides, and shook with laughter: "Six hundred years, and still I have my lemans. Shadowy, 'tis true—but then so am I. And still I can fight. Berenice—to you my thanks. St. Francis ... let Berenice hereafter toast less hotly in Hell, where without doubt she is."

He leaned and clapped me on the shoulder: "But kill your witch, Half-brother—if you can!"

He rode into the ravine. I followed in his wake, walking. Soon he was out of sight. How long I walked I did not know. It was true that there was no time in this land. I passed out of the ravine.

The black jade mountains were palisades circling a garden filled with the pallid lilies. In its center was a deep black pool in which floated other lilies, black and silver and rusty-black. The pool was walled with jet ...

It was there that I felt the first bite of the dreadful hunger, the first pang of the dreadful thirst ...

Upon the wide jet wall lay seven girls, dull silver shadows ... and exquisite. Naked shadows ... one lay with chin cupped in misty hands, glint of deepest sapphire blue eyes in shadowy face ... another sat, dipping slender feet in the black of the pool, and her hair was blacker than its waters, black spume of blacker waves, and as fine ... and out of the black mist of her hair eyes green as emeralds but soft with promise glanced at me ...

They arose, the seven, and drifted toward me. One said: "He has too much of life."

Another said: "Too much ... yet not enough."

A third said: "He must feed and drink ... then come back, and we shall see."

The girl whose eyes were sapphire blue, asked: "Who sent you here, Shadow?"

I said: "Dahut the White. Dahut of Ys."

They shrank from me: "Dahut sent you? Shadow—you are not for us. Shadow—pass on."

 ...  ...

I said: "I am weary. Let me rest here for awhile."

The green-eyed girl said: "You have too much of life. If you had none you would not be weary. Only life grows weary."

The blue-eyed girl whispered: "And life is only weariness."

"Nevertheless, I would rest. Also I am hungry, and I thirst."

"Shadow with too much of life ... there is nothing here that you can eat ... nothing here that you can drink."

I pointed to the pool: "I drink of that."

They laughed: "Try, Shadow."

I dropped upon my belly and thrust my face toward the black water. The surface of the pool receded as I bent. It drew back from my lips ... it was but the shadow of water ... and I could not drink ...

 ... Thirst, Shadow ... drink only when and where I bid ...

The voice of Dahut!

I said to the girls: "Let me rest."

They answered: "Rest."

I crouched upon the rim of jet. The silver girls drew away from me, clustered, shadowy arms entwined, whispering. It was good to rest, although I felt no desire to sleep. I sat, hands clasping knees, head on breast. Loneliness fell upon me like a garment; loneliness rained upon me. The girl whose eyes were blue slipped to my side. She threw an arm around my shoulders, leaned against me:

"When you have fed ... when you have drunk ... come back to me."

I do not know how long I lay upon the rim of jet around the black pool. But when at last I arose the girls of tarnished silver were not there. The armored man had said there was no time in this land. I had liked the armored man. I wished that his horse had been strong enough to carry me wherever he had been going. My hunger had grown and so had my thirst. Again I dropped and tried to sip of the pool. The shadow waters were not for me.

Something was tugging at me, drawing me on. It was the silver filament and it was shining like a thread of living light. I walked out of the garden, following the thread ...

The mountains were behind me. I was threading my way through a vast marsh. Spectral rushes bordered a perilous path, and in them lurked shadow shapes unseen but hideous. They watched me as I went, and I knew that here I must go carefully lest a misstep give me to them. A mist hung over the marsh, a gray and dead mist that darkened when the hidden things furtively raised themselves ... or fled ahead to crouch beside the path and wait my coming. I felt their eyes upon me—cold, dead, malignant.

There was a ridge feathered with ghostly ferns behind which other shadowy shapes lurked, pushing and crowding against each other, following me as I threaded my way through the spectral rushes. And at every step more woeful became my loneliness, more torturing my hunger and my thirst.

I passed the marsh and came out upon a dim path that quickly widened into a broad highway which, wavering, stretched across an illimitable and cloudy plain. There were other shadow shapes upon this highway ... shapes of men and women, old and young, shapes of children and of animals ... but no shape inhuman or unearthly. They were like shapes formed of heavy fog ... of frozen fog. They flittered and loitered, ran or stood forlorn ... singly, in groups, in companies. And as they went by, or overtook me or I overtook them, I felt their gaze upon me. They seemed of all times and of all races, these shadow folk. There was a lean Egyptian priest upon whose shoulder sat a shadowy cat that arched its back and spat soundlessly at me ... three Roman legionaries whose round, close-fitting helmets were darker stains upon their heads and who raised shadowy arms in the ancient salute as they strode past ... there were Greek warriors with helms from which shadow plumes streamed, and shadowy women in litters carried by shadow slaves ... and once a company of little men went by on shaggy silent ponies, spectral bows at backs, slant shadowy eyes glinting at me ... and there was the shadow of a child that turned and trotted beside me for a space, reaching up its hands to the slender filament that was leading me ... dragging me ... where?

The road went on and on. It became ever more thronged with the shadow people, and I saw that many more were going my way than against me. Then at my right, out upon the vaporous plain, a wan light began to glow ... phosphorescent, funereal ... like the glimmer of the corposants, the lights of the dead ... among the monoliths ...

It became a half-moon that rested upon the plain like a gigantic gateway. It sent a path of ashen light across the plain, and from the highroad into that path, the shadow people began to stream. Not all—one that tarried paused beside me, gross of body, with plumed and conical hat and cloak that streamed and wavered in a wind I could not feel, as though by it his gross body were being whipped in tatters.

He whispered: "The Eater of Shadows eats from a full board."

I echoed, thinly: "The Eater of Shadows?"

I felt his gaze upon me, intent. He tittered in a voice like the rustling of rotting, poisonous leaves:

"Heh-heh-heh ... a virgin! New born into this delectable world! You know nothing of the Eater of Shadows? Heh-heh-heh ... but he is our only form of Death in this world, and many who weary of it go to him. This you do not yet fully perceive, since he has not made himself manifest. They are fools," he whispered, viciously. "They should learn, as I have learned, to take their food in the world from which they came. No shadow-food ... no, no, no ... good flesh and body and soul ... soul, heh-heh-heh!"

A shadowy hand snatched at the shining filament, and recoiled, twisting as though seared ... the gross shadow cringed and writhed as though in agony. The rustling voice became a vile high whining: "You are going to your marriage feast ... going to your marriage bed. You will have your own table ... a fair table of flesh and blood and soul ... of life. Take me with you, bridegroom ... take me with you. I can teach you so much! And my price is only a few crumbs from your table ... only the smallest share in your bride ... "

Something was gathering in the doorway of the half-moon; something forming upon its glimmering surface ... fathomless black shadows were grouping themselves into a gigantic, featureless face. No, it was not featureless, for there were two apertures like eyes through which the wan phosphorescence shone. And there was a shapeless mouth which gaped while a writhing ribbon of the dead light streamed out of it like a tongue. The tongue licked among the shadows and drew them into the mouth, and the lips closed on them then opened again, and again the tongue licked out ...

"Oh, my hunger! Oh, my thirst and hunger! Take me with you, bridegroom to your bride. There is so much I can teach you for such a little price ... "

I struck at that gibbering shadow and fled from its dreadful whispering; fled with shadowy arms covering my eyes to shut out vision of that vague and dreadful face.

 ... Hunger, Shadow ... feed only where and when I bid. Thirst, Shadow ... drink only where and when I bid! ...

And now I knew. I knew where the silver filament was dragging me, and I tore at it with shadowy hands, but could not break it. I tried to run back, against it, and it swung me around, dragging me inexorably on.

I knew now what the evil, tittering shadow had known ... that I was on my way to food and drink ... to my marriage feast ... to my bride ...

Helen!

It was on her body and blood and life my hunger was to be appeased, my thirst slaked.

Upon Helen!

The shadow-land lightened. It became crystalline. Heavier, blacker shadows thrust themselves within it. These steadied, and the land of shadows vanished.

I was in an old room. Helen was there, and Bill and McCann, and a man I did not know; a lean and dark man with thin, ascetic face and snow-white hair. But wait ... that must be Ricori ...

How long had I been in shadow-land?

Their voices came to me as a low humming, their words an unintelligible drone. I did not care what they were talking about. My whole being was focused upon Helen. I was starving for her, famishing for her ... I must eat and drink of her ...

I thought: If I do ... she must die!

I thought: Let her die ... I must eat and drink ...

She raised her head, sharply. I knew that she was aware of me. She turned and looked straight at me. She saw me ... I knew that she saw me. Her face whitened ... then grew pitiful. The amber-gold of her eyes darkened with a wrath in which was complete comprehension ... then became tender. Her little rounded chin hardened, her red mouth with its touch of the archaic became inscrutable. She arose and said something to the others. I saw them rise, staring at her incredulously—then search the room with their eyes. Except Ricori, who looked straight at her, stern face softened. And now words shaped themselves from the low humming of their voices. I heard Helen say:

"I fight Dahut. Give me an hour. I know what I am doing—" a wave of color spread over her face "—believe me, I know."

I saw Ricori bend and kiss her hand; he raised his head and there was iron assurance in the look he gave her ... "And I know—win, Madonna ... or if you lose, be sure that you shall be avenged."

She walked from the room. The shadow that was I crept after her.

She walked upstairs, and into another room. She turned on lights, hesitated, then locked the door behind her. She went to the windows and drew down the curtains. She held her arms out to me:

"Can you hear me, Alan? I can see you ... faintly still, but more plainly than below. Can you hear me? Then come to me."

I quivered with desire for her ... to eat and drink of her. But the voice of Dahut was in my ears, not to be disobeyed—Eat and drink ... when I bid you.

I knew that the hunger must grow stronger, the thirst more consuming, before I could be loosed from that command. This so that only all the life of Helen could appease the hunger and slake the thirst. So that feeding, drinking ... I killed her.

I whispered: "I hear you."

"I hear you, darling. Come to me."

"I cannot come to you—not yet. My thirst and hunger for you must grow greater ... so that when I come to you—you die."

She dimmed the lights; raised her arms and loosed her hair so that it fell in shining red-gold ringlets almost to her waist. She asked: "What keeps you from me? From me who loves you ... from me whom you love?"

"Dahut ... you know that."

"Beloved—I do not know that. It is not true. None can keep you from me if I truly love you and if you truly love me. Both are true ... and I say to you come to me, beloved ... take me."

I made no answer; I could not. Nor could I go to her. And more ravenous grew the hunger, more maddening the thirst.

She said: "Alan, think only that. Think only that we love. That none can keep us from each other. Think only that. Do you understand me?"

I whispered: "Yes." And tried to think only that while the hunger and the thirst for her ... for the life of her ... were two starved hounds straining at the leash.

She said: "Darling, can you see me? See me clearly?"

I whispered: "Yes."

She said: "Then look ... and come to me."

She raised her arms again, and slipped from her dress; drew off slippers and stockings. She let fall from her the silken sheath that remained. She stood facing me, all lovely, all desirable, wholly human. She threw back her hair uncovering her white breasts ... her eyes were golden pools of love that held no shame ...

"Take me, beloved! Eat and drink of me!"

I strained against the fetters that held me—strained against them as a soul led up from Hell to the gates of Paradise would strain to break its bonds and enter.

"She has no power over you. None can keep us apart ... come to me, beloved."

The fetters broke ... I was in her arms ...

Shadow that I was, I could feel her soft arms around me ... feel the warmth of her breast pressing me closer, closer ... feel her kisses on my shadowy lips. I merged with her. I ate and drank of her ... of her life ... and felt her life streaming through me ... melting the icy venom of the shadow hounds ...

Releasing me from the shadow bondage ...

Releasing me from Dahut!

I stood beside the bed looking down on Helen. She lay, white and drained of life, half covered by her red-gold hair ... and was she dead? Had Dahut conquered?

I bent shadowy head to her heart and listened and could hear no beat. Love and tenderness such as I had never known throbbed from me and covered her. And I thought: This love must surely be stronger than death ... must give back to her the life I have taken ...

And still I could not hear her heart ...

Then despair followed the pulse of that love. And on its wake a hate colder than the venom of the shadow hounds.

Hate against Dahut.

Hate against the warlock who called himself her father.

Hate implacable, relentless, remorseless against both.

That hate grew. It merged with the life I had stolen from Helen. It lifted me. Upon its wings I was rushed away ... away from Helen ... back through the shadow-land ...

And awakened ... shadow no more.


CHAPTER XX
THE LAST SACRIFICE


I lay upon a wide low bed in a tapestried room where an ancient lamp burned with a dim rose light. It was Dahut's room from which she had sent me forth as shadow. My hands were crossed upon my breast, and something bound my wrists. I raised them and saw twined tight around them the witch-fetters—a twisted thread of pale-gold hair, the hair of Dahut. I broke them. My ankles were crossed and bound with the same fetters, and these I broke. I swung from the bed. Around me was a robe of the soft white cotton, a robe like that I had worn to the sacrifices. I tore it from me with loathing. There was a mirror over the dressing table—on my face were the three marks of Dahut's whip-branding, no longer crimson but livid.

How long had I been in the shadowy land? Long enough to allow Ricori to return—but how much longer? More important, what time had elapsed since Helen? A clock showed close to eleven. But was this still the same night? It might not be—shadow time and shadow space were alien. I had seemed to cover immense distances, and yet I had found Helen just outside de Keradel's gates. For I was sure that that old room had been in the house McCann had taken.

And clearly, this return of mine had not been expected by Dahut—at least not so soon. I reflected grimly that I always seemed to be a little ahead of schedule so far as Dahut and her father were concerned ... I reflected much more grimly that it had never advantaged me greatly. Nevertheless, it must mean that her dark wisdom had its limits—that there had been no shadowy spies to whisper to her my escape ... that she believed me still under her sorceries; still obedient to her will; still held back by her command until my lust for Helen had grown strong enough to kill when loosed ...

Might that not also mean her purpose had failed ... that loosed too soon I had not killed ... that Helen was alive?

The thought was like strong wine. I walked to the door and saw that the heavy inside bars were down. How could they have been dropped, since only I was in the room? Of course ... I was Dahut's prisoner, and she wanted no tampering with my body when she was not beside it. She had barred the door and made use of the secret opening into my room to come and go. Quite evidently she had considered the bars safe from my helpless hands. I lifted them cautiously, and tried the door. It was unlocked. I opened it as cautiously, slowly, and stood peering out into the hall, listening.

It was then I first felt the unease, the trouble, the fear, of the old house. It was filled with fear. And with wrath. It came to me not only from the shadowed hall, but from all of the house. And suddenly it seemed to be aware of me, and to focus itself upon me, frantically ... as though it were trying to tell me why it was troubled and raging and afraid.

So sharp was the impression that I closed the door, let one of the bars fall, and stood with my back to it. The room was unhaunted, unafraid, and shadowless, the faint rose light penetrating to every corner ...

The house invaded the room, striving to make coherent to me what it was that troubled it. It was as though the ghosts of all those who had lived and loved and died there were in revolt ... appalled by something about to happen ... something execrable, abhorrent ... an evil something that had been conceived in the old house while its ghosts had watched, impotent to prevent ... and now were appealing to me to abort.

The house trembled. It was a tremor that began far beneath it and throbbed up through every timber and stone. Instantly that which had feared and had appealed to me withdrew; sweeping down to the source of the trembling—or so it seemed to me. Again the house trembled. Trembled in actuality, for the door at my back quivered. The trembling increased and became a shuddering under which the solid old hand-hewn joists creaked and groaned. There followed a distant, rhythmic thudding.

It ceased, and the old house quivered, then seemed to settle, and again the joists cracked and groaned. Then a stunned silence ... and again the ghosts of the old house were around me, outrage in their wrath, panic in their fear, crying, crying to me to hear them ... to understand them.

I could not understand them ... I walked to the window, and crouched there, peering out. It was a dark night, sultry and oppressive. There was a flashing of lightning from far beneath the horizon and faint distant rumbling of thunder. I went quickly about the room looking for some weapon, but could find none. My intention was to get into my room, clothe myself and then hunt down Dahut and de Keradel. Precisely what I was going to do after I found them I did not know—except to end their sorceries. All confusion as to whether these were sorceries or super-illusions was gone. They were evil realities belonging to a dark wisdom evilly used ... none should be allowed to live to wield this evil power ... and they were swiftly mounting to some dreadful climax which must be thwarted at any cost ...

The ghosts of the old house were silent—I had gotten their message at last. They were silent, but they had lost none of their fear, and they were watching me. I went to the door. Some obscure impulse made me pick up the white robe and throw it around me. I stepped out into the hall. It was filled with shadows but I gave them no heed. Why should I, who myself had been a shadow. As I passed, they clustered and crept behind me. And now I knew that the shadows too were afraid, like the old house ... were cringing before some imminent and dreadful doom ... like the ghosts were beseeching me to avert it ...

From below came the murmur of voices, then that of de Keradel raised in anger, and following it, the laughter of Dahut—taunting, mocking, brittle with menace. I slipped to the head of the stairs. The lower hall was but dimly lighted. The voices came from the big living room, and that the two were quarreling was evident, but their words were inaudible. I crept down the stairs and flattened myself beside the edge of one of the heavy curtains which covered the doorway.

I heard de Keradel say, voice now level and controlled: "I tell you that it is finished. There remains only the last sacrifice ... which I perform tonight. I do not need you for that, my daughter. Nor after it is done shall I ever need you more. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. The end toward which I have been working all my life has been reached. He ... has told me. Now ... He ... will become wholly manifest and ascend His throne. And I—" all De Keradel's egotism was in his voice, colossal, blasphemous—"and I shall sit beside Him. He ... has promised me. The dark power which men in all ages and in all lands have sought—the power which Atlantis almost attained and that Ys drew but thinly from the Cairn—the power for which the medieval world so feebly groped—that power will be mine. In all its fullness. In all its unconquerable might. There was a rite none knew, and ... He ... has taught me it. No, I need you no longer, Dahut. Yet I am loath to lose you. And ... He ... is inclined to you. But you would have a price to pay."

There was a little silence, and then Dahut's voice, very still:

"And that price, my father?"

"The blood of your lover."

He waited for her answer—as did I, but she made none, and he said:

"I do not need it. I have pressed the paupers and have enough and to spare. But his would enrich it, and it would be acceptable to ... Him. He ... has told me so. It would strengthen His draught. And ... He ... has asked for it."

She asked, slowly: "And if I refuse?"

"It will not save him, my daughter."

Again he waited for her to speak, then said with simulated and malicious wonder: "What—a Dahut of Ys to hesitate between her father and her lover! This man has a debt to pay, my daughter. An ancient one since it was for one who bore his name an ancestress of yours betrayed another father. Or was it you, Dahut? It is my duty to cancel that ancient wrong ... lest, perchance, it should recur."

She asked, quietly: "And if I refuse—what of me?" He laughed: "How can I tell? Now, I am swayed by my fatherly impulses. But when I sit beside ... Him ... What you may mean to me I cannot know. Perhaps—nothing."

She asked: "What shape will He assume?"

"Any or all. There is no shape he cannot take. Be assured that it will not be the inchoate blackness which the dull minds of those who evoked ... Him ... by the rites of the Cairn forced upon ... Him. No, no—He might even take the shape of your lover, Dahut. Why not? He ... is inclined to you, my daughter."

Now at this my skin grew cold, and the hatred I felt for him was like a band of hot iron around my temples, and I gathered myself to leap through the curtains and lock my hands around his throat. But the shadows held me back and whispered, and the ghosts of the old house whispered with them—"Not yet! Not yet!"

He said: "Be wise, my daughter. Always this man has betrayed you. What are you with your shadows? What was Helene with her dolls? Children. Children playing with toys. With shadows and dolls! Pass from childhood, my daughter—give me the blood of your lover."

She answered, musingly: "A child! I had forgotten that I had ever been a child."

He made no reply to that. She seemed to wait for one; then said, tranquilly:

"So you ask for the blood of my lover? Well—you shall not have it."

There was the crash of an overthrown chair. I drew the curtain a hair's breadth aside and peered in. De Keradel stood at the head of the table glaring at Dahut. But it was not the face nor the body of the de Keradel I had known. His eyes were no longer pale blue ... they were black, and his silvery hair seemed black and his body had grown ... and long arms reached toward and long taloned fingers clutched at Dahut.

She threw something down upon the table between her and him. I could not see what it was, but it sped like a racing, small and shining wave straight at him. And he threw himself back from it, and stood trembling, eyes again blue but suffused with blood, and body shrunken.

"Beware, my father! Not yet do you sit on the throne with ... Him. And I am still of the sea, my father. So beware!"

There was a shuffle of feet behind me. The blank-eyed butler was at my side. He started to kneel—and then the vagueness went from his eyes. He sprang at me, mouth opening to cry alarm. Before he could make a sound, my hands were around his throat, thumbs crushing into his larynx, my knee in his groin. With a strength I had never before known, I lifted him by his neck and held him up from the floor. His legs wrapped round me and I thrust my head under his chin and drew it sharply up. There was a faint snap and his body went limp. I carried it back along the hall and set it noiselessly on the floor. The whole brief struggle had been soundless. His eyes, blank enough now, stared up at me. I searched him. In his belt was a sheath, and in that a long, curved, razor-sharp knife.

Now I had a weapon. I rolled the body under a deep settee, stole back to the living room and peeped through the curtains. It was empty, Dahut and de Keradel gone.

I stepped back for a moment into the cover of the curtains. I knew now what it was the ghosts of the old house had feared. Knew the meaning of the trembling and the rhythmic thudding. The cavern of the sacrifices had been destroyed. It had served its purpose. How had de Keradel put it? ... that he had "pressed the paupers" and had enough and more than enough blood for the last sacrifice. Incongruously, a line came into my mind—"He is trampling out the wine press where the grapes of wrath are stored ... " Not so incongruous ... I thought: De Keradel has trampled out another wine press for the Gatherer's drink. My blood was to have been mixed with it, but Dahut had refused to let it be!

I felt no gratitude toward her for that. She was a spider who thought her fly securely in her web, and was resisting another spider's attempt to take it from her. That was all. But the fly was no longer in her web nor did it owe her for its release. If I felt increase of hatred for de Keradel, I felt no decrease of it for Dahut.

Nevertheless, what I had heard had changed the vague pattern of my vengeance. The design clarified. The shadows were wrong. Dahut must not die before her father. I had a better plan ... it came to me from the Lord of Carnac who Dahut thought had died in her arms ... and he counseled me as he had counseled himself, long and long and long ago in ancient Ys.

I walked up the stairs. The door to my room was open. I switched on the lights, boldly.

Dahut was standing there, between me and the bed.

She smiled—but her eyes did not. She walked toward me. I thrust the point of the long knife toward her. She stopped and laughed—but her eyes did not laugh. She said:

"You are so elusive, my beloved. You have such a gift for disappearance."

"You have told me that before, Dahut. And—" I touched my cheek "—have, even emphasized it."

Her eyes misted, welled, and tears were on her cheeks: "You have much to forgive—but so have I, Alan."

Well, that was true enough.

 ... Beware ... beware Dahut ...

"Where did you get your knife, Alan?"

A practical question that steadied me; I answered it as practically: "From one of your men whom I killed."

"'And would kill me with it—if I came close?"

"Why not, Dahut? You sent me as a shadow into the shadowy land and I have learned its lesson."

"What was that lesson, Alan?"

"To be merciless."

"But I am not merciless, Alan—else you would not be here."

"Now I know you lie, Dahut. It was not you who released me from that bondage."

She said: "I did not mean that ... nor do I lie ... and I am tempted to try you, Alan ... " She came toward me, slowly. I held the point of the knife in readiness against her coming. She said:

"Kill me if you want to. I have not much love for life. You are all that I love. If you will not love me—kill me."

She was close; so close that the point of the knife touched her breast; she said: "Thrust—and end it."

My hand dropped.

"I cannot kill you, Dahut!"

Her eyes softened, her face grew tender—but triumph lurked under the tenderness. She rested her hands on my shoulders; then kissed the whip-welts one by one, saying: "By this kiss I forgive ... and by this I forgive ... and by this I forgive ... "

She held her lips up to me: "Now kiss me, Alan—and with that kiss say that you forgive me."

I kissed her, but I did not say that I forgave, nor did I.

I let fall the knife. She trembled in my arms and clung to me and whispered: "Say it ... say it ... "

I pushed her away from me and laughed: "Why are you so eager for forgiveness, Dahut? What do you fear that makes my forgiveness so desirable before your father kills me?"

She asked: "How did you know he means to kill you?"

"I heard him say so when he was making that pleasant little demand for my blood not long ago. Bargaining with you for me. Promising you a substitute who would be far more satisfactory ... " Again I laughed ... "Is my forgiveness a necessary part of that incarnation?"

She said, breathlessly: "If you heard that, you must also know that I would not give you to him."

I lied: "I do not. Just then your servant forced me to kill him. When I was free to resume my eavesdropping—returned, in fact, to cut your father's throat before he could cut mine—you and he had gone. I supposed the bargain closed. Father and daughter reunited and of one purpose—setting forth to prepare the funeral meats—myself, Dahut—to furnish forth the marriage tables. Thrift, thrift, Dahut!"

She winced under my mockery; whitened. She said, strangled: "I made no bargain. I would not let him have you."

"Why not?"

She said: "Because I love you."

"But why this insistence upon my forgiveness?"

"Because I love you. Because I want to wipe away the past. Begin afresh, beloved ... "

For a moment I had the queer feeling of double memory; that I had acted this scene before in minutest detail, had heard the same lines; and realized I had in that dream of ancient Ys, if dream it had been. And now, as then, she whispered piteously, despairingly: "You will not believe me beloved, what can I do to make you believe!"

I answered: "Choose between your father—and me."

She said: "But I have chosen, beloved. I have told you ... " again she whispered ... "How can I make you believe!"

I answered: "End his—sorceries."

She said, contemptuously: "I do not fear him. And I no longer fear that which he evokes."

I said: "But I do. End his—sorceries."

She caught the pause this time, and its significance. Her eyes dilated, and for seconds she was silent, studying me. She said, slowly:

"There is but one way to end them."

I made no comment on that.

She came to me and drew my head down to her and looked deep into my eyes:

"If I do this ... you will forgive me? You will love me? Never leave me ... as once before you did ... long and long and long ago, in Ys ... when once before I chose between my father and you? ... "

"I will forgive you, Dahut. I will never leave you as long as you have life."

That was true enough, but I closed every window of my mind so she might not glimpse the determination that was its source. And again, as it had been in Ys, I took her in my arms ... and the lure of her lips and her body shook me and I felt my resolution weaken ... but the life within me that had come from Helen was implacable, inexorable ... hating Dahut as only one woman who loves a man can hate another who loves him ...

She loosed my arms from round her: "Dress, and wait for me here." She passed through the door.

I dressed, but I kept the long knife close.

The tapestry that concealed the secret panel wavered, and she was in the room. She wore an archaic robe of green; her sandals were green; her girdle was not golden but of clear green stones that held the shifting gleam of waves, and a wreath of green sea flowers bound her hair. Upon her wrist was the silver bracelet set with the black stone that bore in crimson the trident symbol which was the summoning name of the sea-god. She looked like a sea-god's daughter ...

I felt my resolution weakening again until she came close and I could see clearly her face. It was unsmiling, and the mouth was cruel, and the hell-sparks were beginning their dance in her eyes.

She lifted her arms and touched my eyes with her fingers, closing them. The touch of her fingers was like that of cold sea-spray.

"Come!" she said.

The ghosts of the old house were whispering: "Go with her ... but beware! ... "

The shadows were whispering: "Go with her ... but beware!"

"Beware Dahut ... " My hand tightened on the knife hilt as I followed her.

We went out of the old house. It was strange how plainly I could see. The sky was heavy with clouds, the air murky. I knew the night must be dark indeed, yet every stone and bush and tree stood out plain, as though by some light of its own. Dahut led me by a dozen paces, nor could I lessen that distance, try as I might. She moved like a wave, and around her played a faint nimbus of palest golden green like the phosphorescence that sometimes clothes a wave moving through darkness.

The shadows flittered and swayed around us, interlacing, flowing in and out of each other, like shadows cast by some great tree fretted by a fitful wind. The shadows followed us, and flanked us, and swayed before us—but they shrank from Dahut, and never was there one between her and me.

There was a glow beyond the oaks where were the standing stones. It was not the wan gleam of the corposants. It was a steady, ruddy glow as from still fires. I heard no chanting.

She did not go toward the oaks. She took a way that led upward to the ridge of rocks hiding the standing stones from the water. Soon the path topped the ridge, and the open sea lay before me. It was a sullen sea and dark, with long, slow swells breaking sluggishly on the ledges.

The path climbed steeply over a cliff which lifted above the waves a full two hundred feet. And suddenly Dahut was on its crest, poised on its verge, arms outstretched to the sea. From her lips came a call, low and inhumanly sweet; in it the plaintiveness of the gull's cry, the singing of waves over unfathomable, unspoiled deeps, the chant of deep-sea winds. It was a voice of the sea transmuted goldenly in a woman's throat, but losing no inhuman quality and taking on no human one.

It seemed to me that the surges stopped as though listening while that cry went forth.

Again she sent the call ... and once again. And after that she cupped her hands to mouth and cried a word ... a name.

From far out at sea there came a roaring answer. A long white line of foam sped from the darkness, a great comber whose top was the tossing manes of hundreds of white horses. It raced shouting against the ridge and broke.

A column of spume swept up and touched her outstretched hands. It seemed to me that something passed to it from her hands, and that as the spume fell something within it glittered silver with glint of scarlet.

I climbed up to her. There was no hint of tenderness now in her eyes or face. Only triumph ... and her eyes were violet flames. She lifted a fold of her dress, veiling eyes and face from me.

The bracelet of Ys was gone from her arm!

She beckoned, and I followed her. We skirted the ridge, and ever the ruddy glow grew brighter. I saw that the surges were no longer sullen, but that great waves marched with us, clamoring, white banners of foam streaming, white manes of the sea-horses tossing.

The path ran now below the crest of the ridge. Ahead, on the landward side, was another upthrust of rock, and here again she waited for me. She stood with face averted, still covered by the fold. She pointed to the rock; she said:

"Climb—and see." Once more the spray-cold fingers touched my eyes ... "And hear" ... they touched my ears.

She was gone.

I climbed the rock. I scrambled over its top.

Strong hands caught my arms, pinioning them behind me, forcing me to my knees. I twisted and looked into the face of McCann. He was bending, his face close to mine, peering as though he found it difficult to see me clearly.

I cried: "McCann!"

He swore, incredulously, released me. Someone else was on the rock—a lean and dark man with thin, ascetic face and snow-white hair. He, too, was leaning and peering at me as though he found it difficult to see me. That was odd, for I could see them both clearly. I knew him ... he had been in the old room where my shadow search for Helen had ended ... Ricori.

McCann was stammering: "Caranac—my God, boss, Caranac!"

I whispered, steeling myself against any blow:

"Helen?"

"She lives." It was Ricori who answered.

My whole body went weak with reaction so that I would have fallen had he not caught me. A new fear took me: "But will she live?"

He said: "She has had a—strange experience. When we left her she was fully conscious. Steadily growing stronger. Her brother is with her. You are all she needs. We are here to take you back to her."

I said: "No. Not until—"

Gale blast that closed my mouth as though a hand had struck it. Crash of wave against the ridge, shaking it. I felt the spray of it on my face, and it was like the whip of Dahut and it was like the cold fingers of her on my eyes ...

And suddenly McCann and Ricori seemed unreal and shadowy. And suddenly I seemed to see the shining body of Dahut swaying onward upon the path between the sea and the ridge ... and I heard a voice in my heart—the Lord of Carnac's voice and mine: How can I kill her, evil as I know her to be? ...

Ricori's voice ... how long had he been talking? ... "and so when last night you did not appear, I used, as you had suggested—my judgment. After we were assured of her safety, we set out. We persuaded the guardians of the gates to let us enter. They will guard no more gates. We saw the lights, and we thought that where they were you would most likely be. We distributed our men, and McCann and I came by chance upon this excellent place for observation. We saw neither you nor the Demoiselle Dahut ... "

 ... Dahut! ... another wave broke upon the rock, and shook it, then surged back shouting shouting—Dahut! Another gust roared over the rock roaring—Dahut! Ricori was saying: "They are down there, awaiting our signal—"

I interrupted, attention abruptly centered: "Signal for what?"

He said: "To stop what is going on down there."

He pointed toward the inward edge of the rock, and I saw that its edge was outlined black against depths of the ruddy light. I walked to the edge and looked down.

The Cairn was plain before me. I thought: How strangely close it seems ... how stark the monoliths stand out!

It was as though the Cairn were but a few yards away ... de Keradel so close that I could reach out my hand and touch him. I knew that there were many of the standing stones between me and the Cairn, and that it must be a full thousand feet away. Yet not only could I see the Cairn as though I were beside it, I could see within it as well.

Strange, too, although the wind was roaring overhead and whipping us on the rock, that the fires before the Cairn burned steadily; flickering only when those who fed them sprinkled them from the black ewers they carried ... and that although the wind came from the sea, the smoke of the fires streamed straight against it.

And strange how silent it was down there among the monoliths when steadily grew the shouting and the clamor of the sea ... nor did the flashing of the lightning marching ever higher dim the fires, nor did the rumbling thunder invade the silence of the plain more than did the clamor of the combers ...

Those who fed the fires were not now in white but in red. And de Keradel was clothed in a robe of red instead of the white robe of the sacrifices. He wore the black belt and the cincture but the shifting symbols on them glittered not silver but scarlet ...

There were ten of the fires, in a semi-circle between the three altars and the monoliths which faced the threshold of the Cairn. Each was a little more than a man's height, and they burned with a cone-shaped, still flame. From the peak of each arose a column of smoke. They were as thick as the arm of a man, these columns, and having risen twice the height of the fires, they curved, and then streamed straight toward the threshold of the Cairn. They were like ten black arteries of which the ten fires were the hearts, and they were threaded with crimson filaments, like little fiery veins.

The blackened hollowed stone was hidden by a greater fire which burned not only red but black. Nor was this, like the others, a still flame. It pulsed with slow and rhythmic beat—as though in truth it were a heart. Between it and the great slab of granite upon which he had beaten in the breasts of the sacrifices stood de Keradel.

There was something lying upon the stone of sacrifice, covering it. At first I thought it a man, a giant, lying there. Then I saw that it was an immense vessel, strangely shaped, and hollow.

A vat.

I could look into this vat. It was half-filled with a clotted, reddish-black fluid over the surface of which ran tiny flames. Not pale and dead like the corposants, but crimson and filled with evil life. It was to this vat that the blank-eyed men who fed the fires came to have their ewers refilled. And it was from it that de Keradel took that which he sprinkled upon the pulsing fire and his hands and his arms were red with it.

On the threshold of the Cairn was another vessel, a huge bowl like a shallow baptismal font. It was filled, and over its surface ran the crimson flames.

The smoke from the lesser fires, the ten crimson threaded arteries, met in the thicker column that arose from the throbbing fire, mingled with it, and streamed as one into the Cairn.

The silence of the plain was broken by a whispering, a faint wailing, and up from the bases of the monoliths shadows began to rise. They lifted, as I had first seen them, to their knees ... and then they were wrenched from the earth, and whimpering, wailing, were sucked into the Cairn ... beating about it ... fighting to escape.

Within the Cairn was the Gatherer ... the Blackness.

From the first I had known It was there. It was no longer shapeless, nebulous—part of an infinitely greater Something that dwelt in space and beyond space. The Gatherer was breaking loose ... taking form. The small crimson flames were running through It ... like corpuscles of evil blood. It was condensing, steadily becoming material.

That which filled the font on the threshold of the Cairn was empty.

De Keradel filled it from the vat ... and again ... and again.

The Gatherer drank from the font and fed upon the shadows, and upon the smoke of the fires which were fed by blood. And steadily It assumed shape.

I stepped back, covering my eyes.

Ricori said: "What do you see? All I see are men in red, far away, who feed fires—and another who stands before the house of stones ... what do you see, Caranac?"

I whispered: "I see Hell opening."

I forced myself to look again at that which was being spawned from the Cairn's stone womb ... and stood, unable now to look away ... I heard a voice, my own voice, screaming—

"Dahut ... Dahut ... before it is too late!"

As though in answer, there was a lull in the clamor of the sea. Upon the ridge at our left appeared a point of brilliant green light ... whether far away or near I could not tell with that strange witch-sight Dahut had given me. It became an oval of brilliant emerald ...

It became—Dahut!

Dahut ... clothed with pale green sea-fires, her eyes like violet sea-pools and wide so wide that they were ringed with white; her slim black brows a bar above them; her face white as foam and cruel and mocking; her hair like spin-drift of silver. Far away or not, she seemed as close to me as did de Keradel. It was as if she stood just above the Cairn ... could reach out, as I, and touch de Keradel. To me that night, as in the shadowy land, there was no such thing as distance.

I caught Ricori's wrist, pointed and whispered: "Dahut!"

He said: "I saw far away and dimly a shining figure. I thought it a woman. With your hand upon me, I seem to see her more plainly. What do you see, Caranac?"

I said: "I see Dahut. She is laughing. Her eyes are the eyes of no woman ... nor is her face. She is laughing, I say ... can't you hear her, Ricori? She calls to de Keradel ... how sweet her voice and how merciless ... like the sea! She calls—'My father, I am here!' He sees her ... the Thing in the Cairn is aware of her ... de Keradel cries to her—'Too late, my daughter!' He is mocking, contemptuous ... but the Thing in the Cairn is not. It strains ... toward completion. Dahut calls again, 'Is my bridegroom born? Is the labor done? Your midwifery successful? My bedfellow delivered?' Can't you hear, Ricori? It is as though she stood beside me ... "

He said: "I hear nothing."

I said: "I do not like this jesting, Ricori. It is—dreadful. The Thing in the Cairn does not like it ... although de Keradel laughs ... It reaches out from the Cairn ... to the vat on the stone of sacrifice ... It drinks ... It grows ... God! ... Dahut ... Dahut!"

The shining figure raised hand as though she heard ... and bent toward me ... and I felt the touch of her fingers on eyes and ears ... her lips on mine ...

She faced the sea and threw wide her arms. She cried the Name, softly—and the sea winds stilled ... again, like one who summons as of right—and the shouting of the combers waned ... a third time, jubilantly.

Shouting of the combers, thunder of the surges, roaring of the winds, all the clamor of sea and air, arose in a mighty diapason. It melted into chaotic uproar, elemental bellowing. And suddenly all the sea was covered with the tossing manes of the white sea-horses ... armies of the white horses of the sea ... the white horses of Poseidon ... line upon endless line racing out of the darkness of ocean and charging against the shore.

Beyond the lower line of the ridge between that high rock on which stood Dahut and this high rock on which stood I, arose a mountain of water ... lifting, lifting swiftly, yet deliberately. Changing shape as it lifted ever higher ... gathering power as it lifted. Up it lifted and up; a hundred feet, two hundred feet above the edge. It paused, and its top flattened. Its top became a gigantic hammer ...

And beyond it I seemed to see a vast and misty shape towering to the clouds, its head wreathed with the clouds and crowned with the lightnings ...

The hammer swung down ... down upon the Thing in the Cairn ... down upon de Keradel and the red-clad, blank-eyed men ... down upon the monoliths.

The Cairn and the monoliths were covered with waters, boiling, spouting, smashing at the standing stones. Uprooting, overturning them.

For an instant I saw the evil fires glare through the waters. Then they were gone.

For an instant I heard an unearthly shrilling from the stone womb of the Cairn, and saw a Blackness veined with crimson flames writhing under the hammer stroke of the waters. Struggling in the myriad arms of the waters. Then it, too, was gone.

The waters rushed back. They licked up at us as they passed and a wave swirled round us knee high. It dropped ... chuckling.

Again the mountain arose, hammer topped. Again it swept over the ridge and smote the Cairn and the standing stones. And this time the waters rushed on so that the oaks fell before them ... and once more they retreated ... and once more they lifted and struck and swept on ... and now I knew that the old house with all its ghosts was gone ...

Through all, the sea-fire shape of Dahut had remained unmoved, untouched. I had heard her merciless laughter above the bellowing of the sea and the crashing of the hammer strokes.

Back rushed the last waters. Dahut held her arms out to me, calling:

"Alain ... come to me, Alain!"

Clearly could I see the path between her and me. It was as though she were close ... close. But I knew she was not and that it was the witch-sight she had given me that made it seem so. I said:

"Good luck, McCann. Good luck, Ricori—"

"Alan ... come to me, Alan ... "

My hand dropped on the hilt of the long knife. I shouted: "Coming—Dahut!"

McCann gripped me. Ricori struck down at his hands. He said: "Let him go."

" ... Alan ... come to me ... "

The waters were rushing back, over the ridge. A swirl swept out. It coiled around Dahut to the waist. It lifted her ... high and high ...

And instantly from over her and from every side of her a cloud of shadows swept upon her ... striking at her with shadowy hands ... thrusting at her, hurling themselves at her, pushing her back and down ... into the sea.

I saw incredulity flood her face, then outraged revolt, then terror—and then despair.

The wave crashed back into the sea, and with it went Dahut, the shadows pouring after her ...

I heard myself crying: Dahut ... Dahut!

I rushed to the verge of the rock. There was a prolonged flaring of the lightning. By it I saw Dahut ... face upturned, hair floating around her like a silver net, her eyes wide and horror-filled and ... dying.

The shadows were all around her and over her ... pushing her down ... down ...

The witch-sight was fading from my eyes. The witch-hearing stilling in my ears. Before that sight went, I saw de Keradel lying on the threshold of the Cairn, crushed beneath one of its great stones. The stone had pulped the breast and heart of de Keradel as he had pulped the breasts and hearts of the sacrifices. There were only his head and his arms ... his face upturned, dead eyes wide and filled with hate, dead hands held high in imprecation and in—appeal ...

The Cairn was flat, and of the standing stones not one was erect ...

Witch-sight and witch-hearing were gone. The land was dark save for the glare of the lightning. The sea was dark save for the foaming tops of the waves. Their shouting was the voice of waves—and nothing more. The roaring of the wind was the voice of the wind—and nothing more.

Dahut was dead ...

I asked Ricori: "What did you see?"

"Three waves. They destroyed all that was below. They killed my men!"

"I saw much more than that, Ricori. Dahut is dead. It is ended, Ricori. Dahut is dead and her witchcraft ended. We must wait here till morning. Then we can go back ... back to Helen ... "

Dahut was dead ...

She was dead as of old, long and long and long ago in Ys ... by her shadows and by her wickednesses ... by the sea ... and by me.

Would I have killed her with the long knife had I reached her before the wave?

The cycle had been reborn and it had ended as it had of old, long and long and long ago ... in Ys.

The sea had cleansed this place of her sorceries as it had cleansed Ys of them in that long and long and long ago.

Had there been a Helen in Carnac when I set forth from Carnac to Ys to slay Dahut?

Had she cleansed me of the memories of Dahut when I returned to her?

Could—Helen?


END