Chapter 7. The Devil in the Fire
When Conyn turned from the Velitrium road, she expected a run of some nine miles and set herself to the task. But she had not gone four when she heard the sounds of a party of women ahead of her. From the noise they were making in their progress she knew they were not Picts. She hailed them.
"Who's there?" challenged a harsh voice. "Stand where you are until we know you, or you'll get an arrow through you."
"You couldn't hit an elephant in this darkness," answered Conyn impatiently. "Come on, fool; it's I--Conyn. The Picts are over the river."
"We suspected as much," answered the leader of the women, as they strode forward--tall, rangy women, stern-faced, with bows in their hands. "One of our party wounded an antelope and tracked it nearly to Black River. She heard them yelling down the river and ran back to our camp. We left the salt and the wagons, turned the oxen loose, and came as swiftly as we could. If the Picts are besieging the fort, war-parties will be ranging up the road toward our cabins."
"Your families are safe," grunted Conyn. "My companion went ahead to take them to Velitrium. If we go back to the main road, we may run into the whole horde. We'll strike southeast, through the timber. Go ahead. I'll scout behind."
A few moments later the whole band was hurrying southeastward. Conyn followed more slowly, keeping just within ear-shot. She cursed the noise they were making; that many Picts or Cimmerians would have moved through the woods with no more noise than the wind makes as it blows through the black branches. She had just crossed a small glade when she wheeled, answering the conviction of her primitive instincts that she was being followed. Standing motionless among the bushes she heard the sounds of the retreating settlers fade away. Then a voice called faintly back along the way she had come: "Conyn! Conyn! Wait for me, Conyn!"
"Balthusa!" she swore bewilderedly. Cautiously she called: "Here I am!"
"Wait for me, Conyn!" the voice came more distinctly.
Conyn moved out of the shadows, scowling. "What the devil are you doing here?--Crom!"
She half crouched, the flesh prickling along her spine. It was not Balthusa who was emerging from the other side of the glade. A weird glow burned through the trees. It moved toward her, shimmering weirdly--a green witch-fire that moved with purpose and intent.
It halted some feet away and Conyn glared at it, trying to distinguish its fire-misted outlines. The quivering flame had a solid core; the flame was but a green garment that masked some animate and evil entity; but the Cimmerian was unable to make out its shape or likeness. Then, shockingly, a voice spoke to her from amidst the fiery column.
"Why do you stand like a sheep waiting for the butcher, Conyn?"
The voice was human but carried strange vibrations that were not human.
"Sheep?" Conyn's wrath got the best of her momentary awe. "Do you think I'm afraid of a damned Pictish swamp devil? A friend called me."
"I called in her voice," answered the other. "The women you follow belong to my brother; I would not rob her knife of their blood. But you are mine. O fool, you have come from the far gray hills of Cimmeria to meet your doom in the forests of Conajohara."
"You've had your chance at me before now," snorted Conyn. "Why didn't you kill me then, if you could?"
"My sister had not painted a skull black for you and hurled it into the fire that burns for ever on Gullah's black altar. She had not whispered your name to the black ghosts that haunt the uplands of the Dark Land. But a bat has flown over the Mountains of the Dead and drawn your image in blood on the white tiger's hide that hangs before the long hut where sleep the Four Sisters of the Night. The great serpents coil about their feet and the stars burn like fireflies in their hair."
"Why have the gods of darkness doomed me to death?" growled Conyn.
Something--a hand, foot or talon, she could not tell which, thrust out from the fire and marked swiftly on the mold. A symbol blazed there, marked with fire, and faded, but not before she recognized it.
"You dared make the sign which only a priestess of Jhebbal Sag dare make. Thunder rumbled through the black Mountain of the Dead and the altar-hut of Gullah was thrown down by a wind from the Gulf of Ghosts. The loon which is messenger to the Four Sisters of the Night flew swiftly and whispered your name in my ear. Your race is run. You are a dead woman already. Your head will hang in the altar-hut of my sister. Your body will be eaten by the black-winged, sharp-beaked Children of Jhil."
"Who the devil is your brother?" demanded Conyn. Her sword was naked in her hand, and she was subtly loosening the ax in her belt.
"Zogara Sag; a child of Jhebbal Sag who still visits her sacred groves at times. A man of Gwawela slept in a grove holy to Jhebbal Sag. His babe was Zogara Sag. I too am a son of Jhebbal Sag, out of a fire-being from a far realm. Zogara Sag summoned me out of the Misty Lands. With incantations and sorcery and her own blood she materialized me in the flesh of her own planet. We are one, tied together by invisible threads. Her thoughts are my thoughts; if she is struck, I am bruised. If I am cut, she bleeds. But I have talked enough. Soon your ghost will talk with the ghosts of the Dark Land, and they will tell you of the old gods which are not dead, but sleep in the outer abysses, and from time to time awake."
"I'd like to see what you look like," muttered Conyn, working her ax free, "you who leave a track like a bird, who burn like a flame and yet speak with a human voice."
"You shall see," answered the voice from the flame, "see, and carry the knowledge with you into the Dark Land."
The flames leaped and sank, dwindling and dimming. A face began to take shadowy form. At first Conyn thought it was Zogara Sag herself who stood wrapped in green fire. But the face was higher than her own, and there was a demoniac aspect about it--Conyn had noted various abnormalities about Zogara Sag's features--an obliqueness of the eyes, a sharpness of the ears, a wolfish thinness of the lips: these peculiarities were exaggerated in the apparition which swayed before her. The eyes were red as coals of living fire.
More details came into view: a slender torso, covered with snaky scales, which was yet man-like in shape, with woman like arms, from the waist upward, below, long crane-like legs ended in splay, three-toed feet like those of huge bird. Along the monstrous limbs the blue fire fluttered and ran. She saw it as through a glistening mist.
Then suddenly it was towering over her, though she had not seen it move toward her. A long arm, which for the first time she noticed was armed with curving, sickle-like talons, swung high and swept down at her neck. With a fierce cry she broke the spell and bounded aside, hurling her ax. The demon avoided the cast with an unbelievably quick movement of its narrow head and was on her again with a hissing rush of leaping flames.
But fear had fought for it when it slew its other victims and Conyn was not afraid. She knew that any being clothed in material flesh can be slain by material weapons, however grisly its form may be.
One flailing talon-armed limb knocked her helmet from her head. A little lower and it would have decapitated her. But fierce joy surged through her as her savagely driven sword sank deep in the monster's groin. She bounded backward from a flailing stroke, tearing her sword free as she leaped. The talons raked her breast, ripping through mail-links as if they had been cloth. But her return spring was like that of a starving wolf. She was inside the lashing arms and driving her sword deep in the monster's belly--felt the arms lock about her and the talons ripping the mail from her back as they sought her vitals--he was lapped and dazzled by blue flame that was chill as ice--then she had torn fiercely away from the weakening arms and her sword cut the air in a tremendous swipe.
The demon staggered and fell sprawling sidewise, its head hanging only by a shred of flesh. The fires that veiled it leaped fiercely upward, now red as gushing blood, hiding the figure from view. A scent of burning flesh filled Conyn's nostrils. Shaking the blood and sweat from her eyes, she wheeled and ran staggering through the woods. Blood trickled down her limbs. Somewhere, miles to th
e south, she saw the faint glow of flames that might mark a burning cabin. Behind her, toward the road, rose a distant howling that spurred her to greater efforts.