Madwand (Illustrated) (26 page)

A tinkling, as of hundreds of tiny bells, accompanied his passage above a gray plain where armies of humans and demons stood frozen in martial attitudes beneath some ancient enchantment whose fringes he had touched. Ahead of him then, the horizon was broken along its entire length—a thin, irregular edge of the world, rising. He focused his attention upon it.

It grew into a saw-toothed band and then a rampart—mighty, towering and black. For a long while it seemed that at any moment he might be dashed against the great range. And then a shifting of light lay a new perspective across the land, and he realized that it was incredibly distant, incredibly huge. Something tightened within the cloud of his being as he realized intuitively that he must pass over it.

Below, the hidden features of the land were still revealed in fragmentary flashes. He no longer had vision to the rear, but he felt, vaguely, that something was following him. Briefly, he assaulted the frozen part of his own mind, with inquiry as to what he was, where he had come from. Nothing yielded, the brief frenzy passed and forgetfulness of its occurrence ensued. He continued his contemplation of the world before him, realizing that he had come this way before, knowing that this time it was different, knowing that he had a mission to fulfill.

The mountains loomed even larger, and he knew that—no matter what the nature of his form—their traversal would not be easy. He began studying their silhouette, looking for a low area, a gap—anything that might ease his passage. He thought that he detected such a place off to the left, and he made an effort to direct his course toward it.

He was surprised when this actually occurred. It was his first voluntary act that he could recall since coming into consciousness, and it pleased him to see it prove fruitful. Immediately, however, he wondered what had been directing him up until this time.

He became aware then of a kind of tugging, of the sensation of being drawn onward by something beyond the mountains, something which was willing to give him a little leeway, that he come more rapidly and safely into its lands. He exerted himself again, and his velocity increased.

As he drew nearer to the mountains it seemed that he grew more tangible than he had been earlier. For now he began to meet with resistance, to feel the buffeting of the winds.

The mountains towered above him, their peaks vanishing in the darkness overhead. He rose to an even greater altitude as he came nearer, approaching the gap. The winds caught him and cast him back down, screaming now in their passage.

He stabilized himself and mounted again, moving even nearer to the rocky face as he ascended. This time he rose higher before the screaming winds forced him back.

On his third attempt, he moved more rapidly, driving himself upward with great force, the slope of the mountain becoming a dark blur before him. When the winds finally took hold of him, he fought them, almost reaching the level of the bright gap before he was forced downward yet again.

The fourth time he tried a different angle of attack and was beaten back almost immediately.

He hovered at a lower altitude, recovering orientation and stability, mustering fortitude. He massed his energies once more. Then he began to rise.

This time he followed the best course he had taken earlier, close to the face of the mountain. He hurled himself upward, attempting to exceed all earlier velocities.

The wind curled about him and played upon him as on the string of some musical instrument. He throbbed to its vibrations as he fought it. He continued to rise against its pressures, but he felt the rapid dissipation of the energies which composed his being. A feeling came over him that if he did not make it up and through this time, he would be swept away to drift for perhaps half of an age before he recovered sufficient strength to try again.

As the battering increased and he felt himself slowing he invested all of his remaining strength in an attempt to continue the upward drive. A momentary lull permitted him a great gain, but the assault began again just as he neared the gap.

“Whoever you are that calls,” he cried wordlessly toward the gap, “if you really want me, then lend a hand!”

Almost immediately, he felt the tugging—and for the first time it seemed a physical sensation rather than a psychical leading-on. He added his own energies to it and felt himself rising at a more rapid rate. He swept past the highest point he had achieved with his earlier efforts. The gap was before him if he could but bend his course and strike a proper passage now.

He exerted himself again, and the steady pull—from ahead now—assisted him. He came into the gap.

He had hoped for some sheltering from the winds once he achieved the cleft in the mountains, but now he faced a gale blowing through it. Fighting his way to the shelter of an opening in the righthand wall, he gathered his forces and considered the way ahead. He had seen prominences before him and other openings in the walls.

Braving the winds, he advanced and took shelter in the lee of a rocky rib to the left. The wind whistled by him and icy crystals sparkled in long streaks within dark grooves amid the stone. He made another effort, advancing a small distance and sheltering again. The tugging had subsided—or, rather, reverted to the mental level, as a summoning.

When he felt that he had regained sufficient strength, he entered the blast and moved forward once more. In such fashion, he traversed the long defile, finding himself at last in the final protected area, adjacent to the forward opening of the pass. As he waited there, he considered his course of action upon emerging. He decided to move immediately to the nearer side—this being the left—upon departing the gap to prevent his being swept back into it.

As he traveled that final distance, he caught a glimpse of a dark and ancient sea, far ahead, before he slipped to the side, was taken by the winds and felt himself hurled skyward.

He rose at a rapid rate, and the world spun kaleidescopically through whatever senses he possessed. He was tossed upward and outward away from the mountain and then found himself falling, to be caught and dragged through a washboard-like trough of turbulence. When this ended, he fell again, his senses in total disarray.

After a time, he slowed, and he became aware of the tugging once again. He drifted away from the region of high winds, continuing to lose altitude. Gradually, what passed for vision reasserted itself.

Below him, sweeping down to the still sea and seeming to continue beneath its surface, was a fantastic, terraced city of asymmetrical buildings, many of them of a darkly burnished metal, extending on to the right and the left to vanish at the horizon. He was drawn nearer to this place. Towers of colored smoke redolent with heavy perfumes drifted by him. His vision was constantly tricked by the unusual perspectives, the pale light. He drifted lower and saw where demons walked with their human lovers; he heard the strange, slow music from the revolving pentagons. He moved above an avenue lined with grotesque statues, all of them turning slowly in a centuries-long figure-dance. An enormous being, chained among russet pillars, wept continually into a stone basin from which green chalices were filled by the passersby. Faint flashes like heat lightning colored the somber sky far out over the sea. He grew dizzy at the prospect; there was something new and not quite comprehensible in every direction that he looked. Such as the high, yellow tower near the seaside with the statue of the dark woman-like bird-thing crouched atop it . . . 

Then it stirred and he knew that it was no statue.

Nyalith’s voice went forth like trumpets across the land and the sea.

All motion below him was frozen for an instant.

And he knew.

He turned toward the waters and directed his course out over them, his velocity mounting steadily, the world becoming a gray, tunnel-like blur about him. He moved along that line of force which had drawn him across the world. He felt, for the first time, the presence toward which his flight was bearing him.

Before him, there occurred a darkness at the end of the tunnel. Then, for one flashing moment, he caught sight of the great black-winged form, limned against a violet sky, lightnings flickering about it. A moment only, and then he was swept to that destined rendezvous, his newly awakened consciousness shifting and breaking apart, merging.

He opened his beak and sent forth his answering cry across the still waters, a cry of exultation in the knowledge that he, Henry Spier, had been joined with the ancient consciousness of Prodromolu, Opener of the Way.

He rode the winds to a great height, then dived down to regard his own reflection in the waters—shadowy birdform haloed in baleful light. Here was the power, he knew. He would summon his people and lead them across the land to the place of the Gate. There he would arouse his human body on the other side. It mattered not that but one Key was in place. This would prove sufficient with the Opener of the Way as aid, once the blood of any of the fallen was added to the spell. There was nothing now to stay the merger of the planes, the salvation of his world. He beat downward once with his wings, feeling their strength, grazing the surface of the water beneath which bright things moved.

Then, sea-splitting tower of scale and mud, it rose before him, red eyes unwinking, wrack of the depths adorning its horns, upon whose back the rock-shelled scavengers danced among skeletons of ships and shards of dead things’ bones. And even as it reared, it swayed, the dragger-back-into-the-mud of primordial creation, Talkne, Serpent of the Still Waters, who had for eons awaited this passage and the renewal of their eternal conflict.

Prodromolu’s wings went wide, scooping at the air, slowing his forward progress. In that instant before recovery, Talkne struck.

Hammerlike, the head of the serpent fell against the fluttering bird, driving it down among the waves amid a flurry of feathers. Talkne plunged after him.

Prodromolu’s talons extended like switchblade scimitars, to gouge long furrows in the serpent’s side. His beak slashed as Talkne threw a coil over his back.

Then they were rolling over and over in the water, sending up mighty showers of spray, their blood darkening the foam as it billowed in all directions. His talons continued to slash against the side of the snake, seeking purchase there, as the coil tightened across his back and Talkne’s head darted from side to side, moved forward, moved backward, seeking an opening for a deadly strike. Above them, the skies darkened and lightened again. Far across the water, the cry of Nyalith was repeated.

“It is a summons you will never answer, Bird,” hissed Talkne.

“We’ve had this conversation before, Snake,” Prodromolu answered.

For the first time, their eyes met, and both stared for a long, peculiar moment.

“Pol?” the bird croaked.

“Henry . . . ?”

And then Prodromolu struck, overwhelming the slower, human personality within. Talkne writhed in the sudden spasm of his talons, but the dark wings were already shrugging water as they beat with a sound like wet sails aluff, and the serpent was rolled onto her back, tail thrashing, as Prodromolu mounted the air and strove to raise the other into his own element.

Talkne fought back, heaving coil after coil toward the bird. But Prodromolu avoided them or slashed with his beak, never missing a beat with his pinions as he commenced a slow movement in the direction of the land, dragging the serpent after him, half-in, half-out of the water.

The bird uttered a triumphant cry as his velocity increased and more and more of Talkne’s bulk was drawn into the air, dangling and writhing. After a time, the mountains came into view, and the world-city upon their slopes. It was then that the serpent struck again.

Talkne’s head flashed upward, mouth wide. But the fangs closed only on feathers. The tail swung then like a great club, battering the bird. Prodromolu reeled and jerked at the blow but did not lose altitude. Three times the serpent attempted to catch him in a coil and three times failed. Again, the head came up and back, but Prodromolu parried the strike with his beak and strove for a greater altitude.

They mounted higher into the streak-shot air. The land was nearer now, and Talkne’s weight hung limp and heavy in the dark bird’s claws. The wing-beat tempo increased and a steady wind fanned the snake.

“Out of the water,” Prodromolu said, “you are nothing but a stuffed skin, a sausage.”

Talkne did not reply.

“I am Opener of the Way,” he said after a time. “I go to throw wide the Gate, to bring the breath of fresh life.”

“You will not depart this world,” Talkne hissed.

Prodromolu swept on toward the land, its music and incense now reaching him across the water, a crowd of its orange-robed inhabitants waiting near the shoreline to be slain, singing and swaying as his shadow drew near. He opened his beak again and cried out to them.

As he approached the land he chose the spot with care, fled across the lower terraces and opened his claws as he banked and commenced a wide circle.

The serpent body writhed, twisting as it descended upon the city. Where it struck, buildings collapsed and people and demons were crushed, fountains were broken and fires sprang forth from the rubble. Prodromolu’s head dropped and his wings swept back. He plunged toward his fallen adversary.