Elysia (6 page)

For there, suspended on a gravitic bed of air in the centre of this central room, surrounded in the soft green haze of glowing emerald globes that floated around him, lay the body of the wizard, horizontal where his clothes drifted lazily, weightlessly outward from him. All of eight feet tall, Ardatha Ell, but slender as a wand in his robes of floating, fiery bronze mesh. Young-seeming, and yet white-haired and with skin pale as death; his eyes were
cl
osed and sunken under purple lids, like those of a corpse. Six-fingered, his hands, with thumbs on both inside and out and the nails of his long fingers white as wax, and lacquered black at their pointed tips. Sharp-pointed his chin, his nose too, and the bronze mesh slippers on his feet curled at their toes.

No beat showed in his breast, or if there was one it was imperceptibly slow, no breath seemed drawn or to issue from his lips; no proper signs of life were in him at all. And yet:

'I beg to differ,' came that voice from some unseen mechanical source, causing the Dchi-chi to start. 'The lesser part, surely? For this recumbent shell here is only the flesh of Ardatha Ell. The mind - which is greater by far, which is more truly
me - that is
in Exior K'mool's manse in Andromeda.'

The Dchi-chi gulped again, his gizzard contracting, and gazed all about at the room's crammed shelves and sorcerous appurtenances: the ancient books and bottles, charts and charms, even a shewstone like that of Kthanid in the Hall of Crystal and Pearl. And: 'Of course!' he concurred
with a nervous
chirrup.
'Why, this must be the very least part of you, I see that now. But, good sir, time waits for no creature and I carry Kthanid's message, and —'

' — And you must fly, little bird? And the secret of your cryptic statement — that for the time being I shall not re-enter Elysia — lies hid in Kthanid's message, eh?' The voice seemed far less mechanical now, much more vibrant and forceful. Even ominous, in a way. 'Very well, let's have that message now. Merely place your hand — or whatever you have which passes for one — on the pale brow of that sleeper there. Then think your message, or chirp it if
_.
you will, or even couch it in rhyme or riddle, and I shall
receive
and understand.'

Gingerly the Dchi-chi did as instructed, placed his bony bird-hand upon the brow of the suspended wizard, and ... instantly it was as if his claw was glued there, taken root in Ardatha Ell's skull and held fast by some irresistible force! He felt his message, which
he
would have passed anyway,
sucked
out of him in a moment — following which he was at once released. Staggering backwards he heard the wizard's dry, mechanical chuckle. And:

`There, all done,' said Ardatha Ell. But in the next moment, in a voice more grave: 'Aye, and this is an important task Kthanid has set me. You should have said so before now, little bird, instead of posing and parroting.'

But the Dchi-chi was already fluttering his way back down the shining corridor to the outer portal. Out into the gusting higher atmosphere of Elysia he went and down the metal steps to his airform, and only then did he pause to say: 'I thank you for your hospitality, wizard. Alas, my wit is small and likewise my talent, when compared with such as yours.'

`Not at all,' said the sphere through the bluster of air, once more completely cold and mechanical. 'We all have to begin somewhere. But when next you call, first make sure I'll be at home in person to greet you, eh? Or perhaps 111 speak to your master, Esch, and tell him to let you come more often; and we can test each other's mettle with riddles, or 1'11 teach you some tongues you haven't even heard of yet. What say you, Dchi-chi, who fancied himself proficient in the many ways of wizards?'

Casting off, the Dchi-chi answered: 'I thank you, sir, and hardly like to appear ungrateful but Esch keeps me very busy, and I haven't much of a head for heights and truth to tell, I'm afraid I'd bore you very quickly!' He dipped his airform toward the fields far below.

'Ah, well! So be it,' the sphere called after him. 'Farewell, then, little bird.' And the steps flattened themselves and folded back, becoming a panel in the sphere's silver flank as before.

... And in the fire-floating manse of Exior K'mool where it drifted over the bubbling lava lakes of Lith, two great wizards nodded and chortled, amused for a moment by this diversion whose source lay in Elysia on the far side of eternity. And then they returned to their game of chess . . .

Tiania, the fourth messenger, sat high in the branches of the Tree in the Gardens of Nymarrah. The fork where she perched was broad as a branching path, but even if she slipped she would not fall very far. The Tree's sensitive tendrils were never far away; indeed the one that carried his powerful thoughts and emotions lay on Tiania's pulsing wrist. His leaves were, huge as blankets and just as soft; his smaller branches were bigger than the oaks of Earth; all of his care and attention were centred now on this favourite child of Elysia.

Six hundred feet below, there the Tree's vast roots spread out in Nymarrah's rich soil, while as high again overhead his topmost leaves, small and lush green, trembled in Elysia's synthetic sunlight; but here in his heart
sat Tiania, talking with him as they had talked a hundred times before, though rarely so seriously:

`And you
will
speak to that Tree in the land of Earth's dreams, and pass on Kthanid's message as I've told it to you, word for word?' she begged for at least the tenth time, while the Tree caressed her with the soft-furred edge of a leaf.

'I sleep and dream, too, child,' he answered in her mind. 'If that dream-Tree may be found — even on a world as far away as Earth — then I shall find him. Aye, and I'll pass on Kthanid's message. Now be sure of that: if I must dream all night, I'll find him.' He was silent for a moment, then said: 'He must be very dear to you, this Searcher?'

'He's a friend like no other,' she answered, sighing. 'But for Henri I'd not be here. He's a brother to me, a lifelong friend and companion to my man, a champion to all lesser creatures. And we treat him like this!'

'Well, then,' said the Tree's gentle 'voice' in her head, 'if he's all of these things my task is made doubly important. And lifelong friend of Titus Crow, you say? That alone were more than enough! No, I shall not fail you. But why are you alone today? Where is your Titus?'

'With Kthanid,' she answered in a whisper, 'in the Hall of Crystal and Pearl. He's there, and by now he's very likely somewhere else.'

And with that she fell silent and was satisfied to let the Tree comfort her ...

Ithaqua The Wind-Walker was back on Borea.

Once, three years ago, this Great Old One would have sat atop his totem temple throne four or five miles from the foot of the plateau out in the white waste; he would have sat there and scowled at the plateau — threatening occasionally with raised, massive club-like fist, or lightnings called from living, lowering skies — while his wolf-warriors and the wild Children of the Winds howled and cavorted at his great splayed feet and made sacrifice to him. And when the mood took him he would have raised up tornadoes of snow and ice, gigantic wind-devils tall as the plateau itself, to hurl shatteringly against the hollow mountain's impervious flanks.

Three years ago, aye ..

But Ithaqua's totem temple was no more; at Hank Silberhutte's bidding, Henri-Laurent de Marigny had used the time-clock to destroy it utterly, a crippling blow to Ithaqua's monstrous pride. More than that, Ithaqua himself had felt the sting of de Marigny's weird hyper-dimensional vehicle, had come to understand that the plateau's Warlord and his friend from the Motherworld had his measure. And so now he stood off and kept his distance, especially since he sensed that de Marigny had returned, and that once again the time-clock and its near invincible weapon of the Elder Gods were resident in the plateau.

Like some toxic breath of ill-omen, the Wind-Walker had come back to Borea in that same hour that Armandra called her council of tribal chiefs to attend her in the Hall of the Elders, to witness her intended communication with
ether winds from all corners of space and time. And while they had gathered there at the counselling place, so he had come striding down the star-winds to Borea, evil burning in his black heart and the unquenchable lust for revenge levering his alien blood.

And because his totem temple was no more, and also because he hated and feared the time-clock, now he perched a good six miles from the plateau on the rusting steel hulk of a British ice-breaker of the late '20s; a once-proud vessel, fashioned perhaps in the shipyards of the Weir or the Tyne and long since paid for by Lloyds of London: 'lost with all hands, somewhere inside the Arctic Circle', stranded now in the ice and snows of the white waste. There the ship lay — half-shrouded in ice, her once powerful propellers jutting up at an odd angle, monument to Ithaqua's enormous cruelty snatched up by
him
in
- deranged glee and borne here through alien voids, finally to be tossed down in the snows of a strange world like some discarded toy.

And the beast himself, crouched upon the ship's flank, the carmine stars of his eyes thoughtful in his dark blot of a head where they burned on the distantly jutting rock of the plateau. For aye, he knew that Armandra talked with the winds, those traitor winds (to him) of time and space. But what his half-human daughter could do gently and without coercion, he would do brutally with blows and curses. And what secrets she could learn by simply asking, he could likewise learn with demands and threats of doom ...

In the Hall of the Elders, Armandra was in trance.

To call that place a 'hall' were no misnomer: it was a huge cavern of a chamber, lit by many flaring flambeaux; and at its centre a fur-decked dais supporting a carved, massively ornate throne. There sat Armandra, her white hands curved over the throne's stone arms, eyes closed and regal head upright, breast slowly rising and falling under a white fur jacket.

Before her face, hanging down from the forward-curving back of the throne and suspended on a chain of gold, was the large medallion she normally wore at her neck, sigil of her supremacy over the winds. Slowly the medallion turned, its gold burnished to a blaze in the bright glare of the hall's flambeaux.

Descending tiers of stone benches encircled the Hall of the Elders, giving it the rich acoustics of an auditorium; so that now, in the near-absolute silence, even the steady sussuration of Armandra's breathing could be heard in all quarters. And certainly there were sufficient elders there to hear it! Chiefs of all the plateau's peoples they were: Tlingit, Blackfoot, Esquimaux, Chinook and Nootka, and all the old Northwest Tribes of old Earth, their ancestors brought to populate Borea in primal times by Ithaqua the Wind-Walker. There they sat in full ceremonial regalia, just as they might have sat at some meeting of the great chiefs in a northern forest of the Motherworld, watching Armandra with their eagle eyes and breathlessly awaiting her words and works.

To the left of Armandra's throne kneeled Oontawa, lovely Indian handmaiden and squaw of Kota'na; she was there in case the plateau's priestess should require assistance in this task she'd set herself: to call down before her those strange winds which forever wander between the worlds. And at the foot of the dais, at its front, there stood the warlord's small party: Silberhutte 'himself, his bear-brother Kota'na, Tracy (Hank's sister) and Jimmy Franklin, and The Searcher, Henri-Laurent de Marigny, and his woman Moreen. With them stood Charlie Tacomah, a modem Shawnee late of the Motherworld who had befriended Silberhutte and co. when first Ithaqua had .brought them across the star-spaces to Borea — a mistake the Wind-Walker must surely rue to this very day. After.
the war in Korea, Charlie had travelled north in the Motherworld to write a book on the old Indian and Eskimo tribes, and there on the fringe of the Arctic he'd run foul of Ithaqua. Korea to Borea, as simple as that! He'd spent some time in the camps of the savage Children of the Winds, had finally run off to the plateau. His military experience had been useful, for he'd been a strategist; now
he
had a seat on the Council of Elders. But his high-ranking friends preferred that he stand here with them.

And so they all waited, and in a little while ... so it began!

For now de Marigny and the others began to hear, as if from far, far away, a keening as of winds blowing between the worlds, and the sounds issued from that now vibrating medallion where it turned on its golden chain before Armandra's drawn white face. What few hushed whispers had sounded before from the audience of elders now ceased; and as if to compensate, the humming and roaring of the throbbing medallion increased. Then

It seemed to de Marigny that a host, a torrent of sighing ghost-winds rushed through the chamber. They plucked at his and Moreen's clothes, played in their hair, rushed -on in a curious swirl. And yet surely it was all delusion, for the flambeaux flickered not a jot but burned steadily as before! An illusion, yes, like the crashing of distant breakers heard in a shell, this moaning of winds plucked down from between the stars or was it?

'This never fails to get to me,' came Hank Silberhutte's hoarse whisper in de Marigny's ear, causing him to start. `She's all woman, Armandra, but there's plenty of the stuff of her father in her, too. Still, I don't have to tell
you
that!'

Indeed he didn't, for de Marigny had previous experience of Armandra's works a-plenty — but this at least was new to him. New, too, the sudden shock of her voice, where before she had been silent — that golden, bell-like
voice,
breaking over the ghost-ridden rush of weird winds. The short hairs of de Marigny's
neck
prickled as she spoke, and he felt an electric tension in the air:

`Ithaqua has returned to Borea,' she intoned, her eyes still closed, her face white as driven snow. 'Drawn back before his time, he watches even now from the white waste. I feel his mind probing at my own, which now I fortify against him!'

Whispers -of inquiry and alarm passed between the elders. Ithaqua had not been due back for a three-month yet! What, Ithaqua, back so soon? And no use to ask for what good reason, for there was never any
good
reason where the Wind-Walker was concerned. This was ill-omen indeed!

Armandra gave them no more time for speculation, however, for
'There!'
she continued, giving a curt nod of satisfaction. Now I have shut him out, whose greatest desire is to know our every secret. And now I may converse with the small, friendly winds that wander all the starlanes. Not the mighty whirlwinds of time and space, spawned in the great holes and angles of existence, but their little cousins who play in the vasty voids, whose wanderings have taken them every where and when ...'

For a moment she was silent, breathing deeply, her brow furrowed in concentration; but then her face lightened, she smiled strangely, her right hand lifted and beckoned. 'Come then, little wind. Come talk to Armandra, and tell her of your travels. And speak, if you will, of the ways of Elysia and the roads that lead there.'

Her eyes remained closed but her burning hair stirred eerily, apparently of its own accord, and began to drift up weightless from her alabaster neck and shoulders. The fur of her jacket grew ruffled, as by a breeze, and her smile became broader at some small secret she alone heard whispered. And:

This one has returned from Arcturus,' she said, 'where ten thousand ice-planets whirled about a frozen hollow sun.

And so fragile that great frozen star, that when
be
ventured inside and blew about its icicles and brittle stalactites, all crumbled and fell in and shattered into shards and motes of ice. And when the frozen sun collapsed, so its many worlds, released like shots from a sling, went bounding off into space to seek new suns; and so this small wind is very likely a father of future worlds! So he says, but I think it a clever fantasy, with which he hopes to please me. As for Elysia:
there
lies the fable, he says, for never did he talk to a wind who ever ventured there.'

Her smile faded a little as she slowly cocked her head to allow a very small breeze to rest a moment like a kitten in the crook of her neck. Invisible, that. ether-gust, but it smoothed out the ruffled fur of her collar and caused her copper hair to billow there. 'And this one is sad,' she said, 'for he lost his brothers in the maw of a black hole, where they strayed too close to its rim. Now they are sucked through the hole to some other place far removed, and he fears he'll never more gust with them out in the stars we know. He supposes they might just possibly have found their way into Elysia — whereof he's heard it said that all the winds are fair — but alas, of the location of that place he can tell me nothing.'

And so it went: the ether winds came and departed at her bidding, breezes and breaths, puffs and pants, gusts and gasps of wind come to talk to Armandra. She spoke with bitter winds from the deepest regions of space, and Others warmed by the exhalations of suns where they'd played. There were winds born in the mountains of green worlds on balmy summer evenings, and others whose worlds were dead now and mourned their passing as winds do. Infant breezes there were, and soughing winds almost as old as time, and all of them with their own tales to tell.

Until at the last, and just as de Mafigny began to despair of ever hearing anything useful —

Ah!'
sighed Armandra, clasping the arms of her throne and sitting up yet more regally erect. 'Now here's a rare wind indeed, and a
frightened
one at that!'

Hank Silberhutte grasped de Marigny's elbow, reminder that he was not merely lost in some impossible dream or hallucination. 'This might be just what you're looking for!' the ex-Texan whispered. thought she was beginning to flag, but now she's fully alive again —
see ... !'

De Marigny saw. A faint bloom was suddenly visible on Armandra's pale cheeks, like the flush of some strange excitement. Some unseen thing a panicked gasp of air, perhaps — hid for a moment in a sleeve of her jacket, causing it to bell out, then burst free to rush round her head in a veritable frenzy of fear. Until: 'Be still! Be calm!' she cried. 'You're safe here, little one, from whatever it is that pursues.'

De Marigny was drawn to lean closer, caught up in what was happening.

And this one,' said Armandra, with something of triumph in her voice at last, — this last small wind — he has had all the bluster knocked out of him! He's fled far and fast from a very terrible thing, almost exhausting himself entirely in the process. He is not pursued, no, but he has heard 'the shrieking of a gaseous intelligence out beyond the Red Medusa who
was
pursued — by the Hounds of Tindalos!'

De Marigny caught his breath as his flesh began to crawl, but he must hear this out.

'A cloud of gas, yes,' Armandra continued, 'a vapour in the voids travelling half as fast as light, and pursued by the hounds. He had a name, this intelligence, which was simply a .hiss — Sssss! Or if not a name, at least that is how he thought of himself. And as he fled, so this small wind thought to hear him praying to the Great Gods of Eld in Elysia, begging of them their assistance! Then he saw the hounds where they pursued, saw them devouring the trailing wisps of the gaseous being, and when he saw how
hideous they were he too fled. And so he is come here to rest and recover his strength ...'

Armandra sighed, lay back her head a little, opened her great green eyes. Her lustrous copper hair settled down upon her head and round her shoulders, and suddenly the chamber was still and the winds were gone from it.

Then someone coughed and the silence was broken. The spell, too. De Marigny shook himself, considered all he'd heard — especially the tale of the final visitation.

It wasn't much to go on, he thought, but it had to be better than nothing. Or was it? What was he to make of it after all? A cloud of intelligent gas out beyond the Red Medusa Nebula? A vapour-being who prayed to the Gods of Eld? And yet if that incredible gas intelligence knew enough of the Elder Gods to call out to them for their aid, perhaps he (it?) might also know where they were. It was a possibility, however remote, that de Marigny couldn't ignore made all the more urgent by the presence of the Hounds of Tindalos. Maybe out there in the star-voids a door was closing even now, a gateway to Elysia, slammed shut forever by the Hounds of Tindalos!