It took some doing. He had watched Sandivar often enough, but he’d little experience himself in poling a boat. He floundered and rocked around the shallows by the island as he practised. By holding the pole with his left hand and pushing against it as well with his right forearm, he found that he could control the boat tolerably well. Surely it would do no harm simply to circle the island; that much exercise he needed, was entitled to, and since the tower could be seen for miles, there was no danger of getting lost.
Then he remembered the mroggs.
It was, of course, possible that so fantastic a creature might exist. But, it suddenly occurred to him, it was also possible that it had been invented by Sandivar only to frighten him, lest he stray too far and lose himself in the fens. Certainly, the more he thought, the more probable seemed the latter. Anyhow, mroggs never came near the island. He would not go far from the island.
Silently, the boat slipped through the marsh, and Helmut gained skill with every movement of the pole, standing in the stern. He liked the sensation of gliding; it was akin, he thought, to what flying must be like; and as each more skillful push sent the boat farther on, he left the clear water immediately around the island and was confronted by a wall of reeds and grasses higher than his head. Various channels opened in them enticingly, like the aisles of great churches, extending straight onward for yards, then turning abruptly, temptingly, so that if one were to follow such a channel, there would, every little way, always be a new corner to round, a new surprise…
He hesitated. Then he picked one at random and sent the boat gliding down its corridor. The high reeds towered over him, blocking off the sky; suddenly he began to feel imprisoned. Although the sun was well up the sky, it was very dark in this place; and the farther he went, the blacker the water became, stained and dyed by generation after generation of dead vegetation turned to muck on the bottom. All at once, Helmut realized that he had misjudged the fens—or at least this part of them. They were not friendly, nor even neutral; it seemed to him that he could sense enmity all about him.
But he was only a short way in, and it would be simple to turn and come out. He braked with the pole, then looked behind him; and he was startled to see how far he had come. It was a long way back to open water, and the corridor in the reeds was very narrow here. When he tried to turn the boat, it got tangled in the growth and, with his single hand, he could not maneuver it. Nor, because of its construction, wide and awkward at the stern, could he pole it straight backward. Perhaps a man full-grown could have, but his strength was insufficient.
Panting and sweating, he finally got the craft loose from the weeds and considered his situation. Well, he could see the sun. Take bearings from that, pole on; sooner or later the corridor would turn, and he could work back to open water. Meanwhile, it stank in here. Every thrust of his pole squilched down into rotting muck, sending up gurgling bubbles and a rank smell of decaying matter.
On down the corridor he went, hoping for a turn, widening, or some other means of going back. There was none; and now the reeds seemed to have closed behind him, too. He was alone in a strange and foreign world; and he was very hot and very tired and beginning to be afraid. When the wind blew, the reeds and cane rustled strangely, exactly as if something stalked him; and every few seconds, he looked fearfully about. Mroggs did not seem so farfetched now.
Presently his strength gave out, and he rested on the thwart, pole across his knees, the boat motionless in water utterly black and still. The reeds towered over him, shutting out the sky. He could understand now just how neatly he had trapped himself in this maze of narrow, wandering aisles; and for the first time, he wondered what had created these waterways in the beginning: they were very like game trails in the forest.
But there was nothing for it but to go on. He was, after all, the son of Sigrieth, and fear was unseemly, unbecoming, to a princeling. That did not much slow the hammering of his heart, but, doggedly, he arose and was just about once more to dip the pole in water when he saw it.
First, it was a thrashing in the reeds against the wind.
Something huge was wallowing through them only five meters ahead and twenty to his left. For a pair of frozen seconds, he stared at that commotion, his throat closed utterly with fear: then he caught the scent.
It was like the decaying reek of the marsh bottom, only a thousand times stronger. It filled the corridor in the reeds with a stench indescribable, all rot and decay, and suddenly his throat was full of hot bile. Then the mrogg plunged into view, almost close enough to touch, and Helmut spat out vomit even as, despairingly, he raised the boat pole.
Roughly man-shaped, it possessed head, torso, arms, legs. But these were the only similarities to humankind. Not an arm’s span from the prow of the boat, it stood ten feet tall and was nearly as wide; and in place of flesh there was only amorphous, sloughing muck—the rot and mud of swamps, dark black and dripping, bound with slime and some other hideous matter. Its eyes, if it had eyes, were dark pits in a huge, round, formless head, and its mouth was a wide black cave, fully opened as it confronted Helmut. Then, slowly, as if very sure of itself, it raised dripping arms from which rot sloughed and fell, mud dropped, and took the final giant step that brought it up against the boat.
So that now it blotted out everything else, reaching for him, its reek and horror like a nightmare. There was one terrible heartbeat in which Helmut knew it had him. Then, quite instinctively, he slashed at it with the pole.
A scream broke from him as the pole’s hardness knocked rotten chunks off that monstrous form. But the creature noticed not, as if it had neither blood nor nerves. Just before the hands, if that was what they were, closed on him with finality, Helmut struck again, and this time he did knock loose a hand itself. To his horror, it was like hitting wet mud.
But the mrogg saw now that the pole could do it damage. It hesitated, and Helmut thrust again, straight into its chest. There was no resistance, the pole went on through, but the boat moved back a foot, maybe more. Helmut heard himself screaming; he drew back the pole and raised it high to flail. If the creature were that soft, maybe he could slash it in two. But as he brought it down, the boat rocked; suddenly it turned, and he was plunged beneath the surface of the foul water. For an instant, he knew he was dead; then he found marsh bottom and somehow floundered upright, sinking to his knees in muck, the water to his chest; and yet, instinctively, he had drawn his short sword. As he surfaced, threw water from his eyes, he saw black monstrousness towering above him, smelled that hideous black reek, and then, even as he thrust and slashed with the sword, he felt a touch he would never forget—cold as death and twice as foul. The mrogg had him now; the little sword was useless against all that bulk of black, unfeeling slime. The cavernous mouth yawned above his head, and the hideous odor that came from it made him faint as it hit his face full blast. He was being lifted—
Then there came an animal roar that seemed to shake the very sky. Helmut fell, hit water; went under, came up. The roaring still went on, a rage so great, so deadly, that it chilled the blood. A hand seized him. “Back!” snapped the voice of Sandivar. “Back, out of harm’s way!”
Helmut’s vision cleared. As Sandivar dragged him backward, he saw two enormous figures locked in combat in the water—all black mud and slime and wet brown fur. Then a cry broke from him. “Waddle! Waddle!”
“Aye,” Sandivar gasped. “Come. Farther back. Give him room to fight!”
The huge bear must have plunged out of the reeds and hit the mrogg full on. His great weight had knocked it backward, tearing Helmut from its grasp. Now bear and monster fought like titans in the swamp, the big jaws of Waddle, the great paws, tearing off enormous chunks of slime. Yet, no matter how much Waddle ripped away, the creature’s size never lessened, as if it were self-renewing, drawing replacement instantly from the floor of the bog. And it had strength, enormous strength, and if it could bear Waddle down, hold him under water—
Over and over they rolled, first Waddle on top, then the mrogg. What was left of the monster was a parody of its former shape, but its volume, its bulk, remained the same. By sheer weight of dead wet mud and rot, it was bearing Waddle down. Each time he was pressed below the surface, it took a little longer for the bear to fight back up.
Then Waddle and the mrogg rose from the water together, Waddle on his hind legs, huge paws flailing. Great gouts of mrogg ichor flew with each enormous blow, and yet, no matter how much Waddle knocked away, the creature’s body flowed and changed to replace it. Near him, above the hideous roaring of Waddle, Helmut was vaguely aware that Sandivar was muttering words. Then the sorcerer pointed one long finger, and a cry that was half scream came from him, so weird that Helmut remembered it long after. Suddenly Waddle dropped on all fours, plunged splashing along the corridor toward them. And the mrogg, standing fully erect made no effort to pursue.
Sandivar stood also, that finger pointed.
The mrogg remained motionless. Then—
Helmut stared, wide-eyed, as the thing began to change. As if the slime and ichor that bound its rot together had suddenly dissolved, the mrogg’s body collapsed and flowed, head melting into shoulders, shoulders pouring down the arms, arms dropping off, the whole thing sinking lower in the water, like a figure of mud so saturated it could not longer stand. Indeed, Helmut saw, that was what was happening: under Sandivar’s spell, the mrogg was simply returning to its original components—mud and decay. Now it was almost level with the surface of the water. Then, from the formless heap of mud that by this time could have been anything, came suddenly a high-pitched, terrible, drawn-out scream, freighted with more agony than it seemed possible to bear. Then the last of the mud flowed and dissolved in the water; and the mrogg was gone.
Helmut clung to Waddle and unashamedly began to cry.
CHAPTER IV
Now, Sandivar had postponed it as long as he could. There was sadness in him, as he circled the tower, wherein the child slept exhausted, and maybe there was fear, too. For it all depended, of course, on Helmut’s own free choice; without that, none of Sandivar’s labors meant anything, and the world, henceforward, would belong to Albrecht and his kind.
Oh, it had been a near thing, Sandivar told himself. And carelessness, utter and inexcusable, on his part. Maybe it had been too long since he was young: he should have remembered that to the young a warning was nothing but a challenge. If the mrogg had found the child a half minute earlier, if Waddle had been a half minute slower—Sandivar shuddered.
Well, his news had been quickly gathered, and, as he had expected, it was all bad. Then he and Waddle had started for home at once. All through the night they had journeyed, and morning had found them in the fens. There, halting for rest on a hummock, Sandivar had become aware of something wrong.
Through long training, such matters reached him the way odors in the air might reach another. There was, next, the necessary concentration, a wracking process, until at last he saw it all, as if he himself were a high, circling tiercel—the boy deep in the fens, the mrogg catching scent of human flesh and rousing itself… Then there had been the nightmare race against time, with Waddle running, plunging, swimming, crashing across the fens like some giant war machine. Then brave Waddle attacking without hesitation as Sandivar slid from his back, fighting a hopeless battle against an unbeatable foe—but giving Sandivar time to marshal the long and complicated incantation that was sole sure weapon against such a soulless, heartless, mindless, bloodless creature. Well, all had come out fair, but only by a hair’s breadth. And now—Sandivar turned and faced the tower door again. Now it was time.
Helmut had just awakened and was knuckling at his eyes. The boy yawned cavernously. “Say, good Sandivar, what hour is it?”
“From morning to evening you’ve slept. E’en now, the sun goes down. Are you refreshed?”
As memory returned, Helmut shivered. “Refreshed? Nightmares shall I have for a month.”
“Perhaps,” said Sandivar. “And perhaps not. Perhaps ere long you shall look on worse and smile. But first—” He poured a mug of cold water and handed it to the boy. “But first, important news have I gathered. And I think you will find it sad.”
“Sad?” Helmut had drunk; now he held the mug poised and stared at the old man. How like Sigrieth he was! thought Sandivar. Then the sorcerer nodded. “Aye,” he said. “King Gustav of Boorn, your half brother, is dead.”
“Oh, no!” Then, after that single outcry, the princeling had himself under taut control. He drew in a long breath. “That you had forecast, but—How came it?”
“Boar spearing in the Frorwald, with Albrecht,” Sandivar told him, not without irony. “The young King’s spear haft broke, he was unhorsed, and ere Albrecht, Eero, or any other could intervene, the charging boar ripped him wide. So it was announced; and then a council of nobles called. Most suspicious were they of events, but tamely the greater number yielded liege to Albrecht. A few, however, held back—Hagen of Markau, one or two others who, despite the overwhelming numbers of half-wolves already gathering to the flag of Wolfsheim, were not intimidated and spoke openly of inviting the return of the exiled bastard—Helmut—so that true blood of Sigrieth should continue on the throne.”
“Boar spearing?” Helmut said incredulously. “Thus Gustav died? He who must be ordered directly by my father before he could muster courage to face a charging pig, who abhorred the sport for its danger and the strength it took? He died boar spearing?”
“So Albrecht gave the word out.”
“Poor Gustav.” Helmut stared down at the floor. “Poor, weak, well-intentioned Gustav, whose mother my father never loved.” With head bowed for a moment, he was silent. Then he whispered, “Ah, Sandivar. If I were only older and had a good right hand—”
Sandivar felt a thrill. “You would do what?” he asked.
“Return to Boorn. Reclaim my father’s throne. Avenge Gustav—”
“And perhaps your father, too,” Sandivar said quietly.
Helmut stared at him. “My father—?”
“His illness long, his physician helpless. But really so helpless? Physicians can be bribed, and certain powders can they give that sap the strength…”
“Poison?” Helmut whispered. “My father poisoned?”
“Aye,” said Sandivar. “At the behest of Albrecht, who, fair-favored and wealthy as he is, could subtly corrupt the Gods themselves. Yes, poisoned, and a long time dying of it. Now, you exiled, Gustav dead, and Albrecht crowned Emperor of the Gray Lands. So all comes round neatly as he has from the first so carefully planned.”
“Then the Gods curse him!” cried Helmut furiously and struck the bed with hand and stump. “And curse me too for a youngling and a cripple!” Savagely, he struck the bed again and again until Sandivar shouted: “Hold!”
Helmut sprang to his feet. “Hold?” he cried. “My sword hand gone, my half brother murdered, my father poisoned, my kingdom usurped, and you cry hold?” Then he shouted: “Rage! Vengeance! Death! Destruction! These you once promised me as my portion. If you have wizardry, give them now to me—”
Sandivar cut in coldly: “Wouldst have revenge against Albrecht?”
“Revenge? I’d give my life—”
“Aye.” Again Sandivar’s cool voice cut across the boy’s shouting. “But life is easy to give. How much more would you pay?”
Helmut stared at him. “What more is there?”
Sandivar sighed, a gusty sound of resignation. “Do you not understand? Revenge must always be bought with the soul.”
For a moment, there was silence. Then Helmut said, evenly: “If only I could wield broadsword, use chain-mace and lance, a soul would be small coin.”
“The soul of a prince is never small coin,” Sandivar said, in a voice full of strange emotion, and then he turned away.
He could hear Helmut breathing hard behind him. Finally the boy asked, in a voice still controlled, “There is, then, a way?”
Sandivar closed his eyes. Now, he thought, I must be very honest. “Aye,” he said at last. “There is a way.”
“Through necromancy?”
“Through that and battle.”
“Then tell me of it.”
“Demand
that I tell you of it,” said Sandivar. “Do not ask me.
Demand
it.”
“I so demand.” The boy’s voice had an iron ring; it was almost as if Sigrieth spoke in the tower room.
Sandivar let out a shuddering breath. “Then since you have demanded, I will tell you. Whether you can comprehend is another matter. Here, however, is its cost: ten years off the span of life in this, our world—and those, ten youthful years, precious beyond all others. Also this: to look upon horrors few could endure, horrors beside which the mrogg you encountered this morning becomes as the lap pet of a lady-in-waiting. And this more, and this perhaps the worst of all. A risk you run, should you endure that which I have mentioned, of damage to the soul, the core of it, the very kernel of it—the risk that never more will you be able to love.”
“Love?” said Helmut. Then repeated the word contemptuously: “Love. In return for vengeance, I would—”
“No.” Sandivar held up his hand. “Say it not lightly. You are too young and know too little of the world. But should I tell you that you may, should you do what I suggest, never laugh again—that, perhaps, you could comprehend.”
Staring at him, Helmut frowned. “Never laugh?”
“Perhaps not. What you will look upon, whom you will meet, and the ordeals you will endure will be such that they may indeed freeze the soul, so that all love, all laughter will have fled.” Wearily he sat down on a bench. “Now, hear me.”
Helmut also sat. “I listen,” he said gravely, and already he seemed years older.
Sandivar mustered his thoughts. “In ways beyond explaining,” he said, “there are worlds within worlds and worlds beyond worlds. You have seen those wonderfully carved balls of ivory from the East, in which globe rests within globe within globe, ad infinitum?”
“I have seen them.”
“So all these worlds. And there is only one thing that keeps them separate and discrete—and that is Time. Each world functions on a different time—otherwise they would blur and merge. And only in two ways can Time be bridged: by necromancy or by death, which is a kind of sorcery in itself.”
He hesitated. “But no time or reason for complicated explanations. Suffice this: that through certain powers I possess, I can send you from this world into one far less pleasant, and there you would live ten years in what, in this one, would be ten minutes. Then, by the same art, I could summon you to return. Ten years in that world, as many minutes in this one—and Albrecht suddenly has to deal not with a child but with a man full-grown.”
There was a long pause while Helmut digested this. “In ten minutes I can be a man?”
“No. You do not comprehend. Men are not made so quickly. In another world, you will live ten years, and ten years of an existence that you can not now imagine. That is what will make you a man. No one escapes payment in full for manhood, and you would pay more than most. But that ten years will amount only to so many minutes here, and—” he turned over an hour glass, “you would return before this sand ran out.”
Again Helmut thought hard and at last nodded. “Now I think I see. But what good is manhood if I am untrained in the warrior arts? Even had I full growth, ten years more it would take to make me righting man the equal of Albrecht or even Eero—”
“You do not know the world to which I propose to send you,” Sandivar said, in a voice almost like the toll of a bell. “It is, as they say, an Underworld, a place made for the shades of only the greatest warriors. Or, to be more blunt, it is a kind of hell in which the fighting is endless and relentless. But so much would you learn there in those years from such great men condemned to endless battling, with all its horror and all its glory, that upon your return no warrior of this world could stand against you.”
As he said these last words, he saw something move in Helmut’s eyes. The boy asked: “Not even Albrecht?”
“Not even Albrecht.”
Helmut was silent for perhaps five seconds. Then he arose. “That being the case,” he said quietly, “I will go.”
They were the words Sandivar had been waiting for, but now he hated the sound of them. “Perhaps,” he temporized, “you do not still understand—”
“I understand enough,” Helmut said. “I understand that in ten minutes of this world’s time I can return as a full-grown man and trained warrior and Albrecht’s equal. I understand that Albrecht will then die. Unless you make sport of me, send me to this place, good Sandivar, and this at once.”
“Look me fair in the eyes,” Sandivar said.
Helmut did so, unblinking.
“You are certain?”
“Aye. I am certain.”
“Then,” Sandivar said, a catch in his throat, “come give me kiss, my son. For it is the last I will have from childhood.”
“Aye,” Helmut said. “I will give you kiss. You have been as father.” And he embraced the old man.
When they broke apart, Sandivar pulled himself together and said, “Now, come.” Quite briskly, he led Helmut up a ladder to the second floor, an area heretofore prohibited to the boy. This part of the tower was completely empty except for a huge book on a lectern and a great urn in one corner. Now Sandivar went to the urn, dipped the contents from it, and very carefully traced a pentacle on the floor. What fell from the dipper was neither totally liquid nor powder, but something in between, a shining, dazzling substance that all at once seemed to light the dark with a cold, white fire. At last the pentacle was fully traced, and, breathing hard, Sandivar turned to face the child. “As in death,” he said gently, “one must go naked and alone.”
“All right,” the boy said; and he stripped off the kirtle. His flesh looked greenish in the glow as he stepped into the pentacle. He stood there, watching Sandivar, betraying no fear, as the old man stepped behind the lectern.
Sandivar’s mouth was dry; he swallowed hard. The strange script of the pages seemed to blur before his eyes as he began to read from the book. But that was all right, for he knew the spell by heart. His voice droned on and on, pronouncing each syllable precisely and carefully, for that was part of the secret. At last, after what seemed to him ages, he heard his own voice stop. Drawing in a long, deep breath, he slowly raised his head.
But, of course, the pentacle was empty. And all the cold, glowing, glittering fire of it had died. The room, save for a candle Sandivar had lit, was in darkness.
Sandivar waited. Truly, now, time was endless. Outside, he heard Waddle scratching at the door. Overhead, bats stirred and rustled, for it was nearing sundown. A great distance away, a horn blew, summoning home the fishermen of the fens, who would rather have died than venture this far into the marsh.
Still Sandivar remained motionless. In the darkness of the room, he watched until his eyes hurt. He knew what to expect; and yet this was the first time that he’d a stake of his own in the words he’d mouthed. Then the pentacle began to glow again. At first the light was like fox fire in wet woods, faint, illusory; but it brightened steadily, as Sandivar watched and held his breath. There was a precise second, a tick of time, which he must grasp… The cold light intensified; then Sandivar thought:
Now!
And he quickly said the necessary half-dozen words. Immediately an explosion of radiance cold as death and bright enough to sear filled the room; outside the tower, Waddle howled and moaned in terror. Sandivar stood unmoving, eyes closed. In a moment, he opened them. The radiance was subsiding. In its midst stood a figure. Sandivar could see it only in silhouette—the tall, wide-shouldered, barrel-chested, slim-waisted outline of a man. Instinctively Sandivar’s eyes went to the right arm. Where a hand should be, it was lacking, and the arm ended in a stump.
The fire died. Behind Sandivar, the candle flickered and guttered, the light it shed pathetic after all that hellish radiance. “Helmut?” Sandivar said, almost hesitantly.