It was the Dark Lord's turn to stand with head slightly atilt, listening to that return of drum roll. That he had sent a message and was receiving one in return was surely true. Thora wondered if she dared move, try to retreat back over the boxes.
It was the monstrous animal thing which moved first. Its head strained up a fraction higher, turned. Thora was sure that those vellow eyes had somehow fastened on her—that she was as exposed to it as if she lay in the open under the bright sun.
From its gaping jaws came a low, hoarse cry. Then it threw its length forward. Only it did not strike upward towards where Thora lay her spear in hand—nor did it complete the attack it had so clearly intended. For it was met while still in mid-air by Kort who sprang in silence, with none of his usual growls or snarls—rather as if he was preserving every atom of energy to the matter of getting a deadly jaw grip on that serpentine form.
The hound had closed fangs on one of the short forelegs, throwing the creature off balance and bearing it down on the pavement. Then Thora felt Tarkin move back up beside her. The girl caught at the down covered shoulder so close to her own, drew the furred one close, so that her lips brushed the other's cheek as she whispered urgently:
“Can you get away—warn the others?”
Tarkin nodded, slipped out of Thora's hold, slid backward along the boxes. With the furred one on her way, Thora's full attention returned to the fight. She had expected the men to take a hand, but they stood watching as if in their minds there could be no possible doubt as to the outcome.
Both hound and monster were bleeding. The monster kicked out with powerful hind feet as it rolled upon its back, striving to tear Kort's belly open with one of those well directed blows. But the hound fought with all the cunning of years as a hunter and a trail rover. He had loosed his first hold, leaving the small upper limb limp, the bone plainly crushed, and now made quick rushes, scoring many times on the blood spattered, spotted hide. Whenever the creature strove to use its injured limb it squalled—though Kort, far from his usual custom, continued to fight in complete silence.
That none of the men had shown any surprise at the appearance of Kort, who they must have thought to be a helpless prisoner, was first a source of amazement and then one of growing unease for Thora. Once more the Red Cloak gestured and the drummer answered.
Those flying fingers which had sent out the message were now changed for the heels of his hands, which he brought down, his palms a little cupped, on the surface of his instrument. The resulting sound was so deep, sharp—that Thora's hands swung to her ears, then she dropped the moon gem to its chain, and held on grimly to the edge of the box on which she lay.
For the beat had set her perch trembling, stirred the very air about, so that her body was being moved back and forth, as if she would be shaken from the height to the pavement below. Striving to hold to safety she was only partly aware of the influence those sounds had on the fighters, though she was startled alert to that by a cry from Kort—a wailing howl.
The hound swerved back from his prey, his head low, pawing frantically at his ears with first the right and then the left forefoot. Oddly enough the Red Cloak's own fighter was in no better case, for it rolled squealing, hammering its head up and down on the pavement, as if it had suddenly gone mad.
It twisted its body, sending blood spattering outward from the injured forepaw—some drops even falling on the drum head as the creature dug its powerful hind feet into the flooring, its head darting up now toward the drummer himself though the blind man did not retreat from the threat the creature suddenly offered.
Thora had loosed her hold on the boxes because she must, or throw herself down mindlessly. She forced her fingers into her ears. The beat was now echoed throughout her whole body, her heart responding in a faster and faster thump of its own while she jerked and twisted, trying to control her limbs.
Kort howled again, a sound of despair and agony. Then, somehow, he edged his body around, leaped into the aisle, and ran as she had never seen him run before. Still the drummer beat while the others merely stood watching.
The heavy lids were dropping over the Dark Lord's eyes. He might be withdrawing so into some inner place which was so much his own that he was now heedless of anything about him. Thora shook and quivered. She could not hope to edge back along these unsteady boxes. Her poor head for heights had been enhanced a hundredfold. Now she dared only lie and wait, without hope, to be hurled to the floor, knowing that she was no match for any weapon such as this. In the dream vision she had sent the spear to attack the drum, in her present state she had no power of any concentration left in her.
On the pavement the creature still squalled and rolled. Still none of the men moved. The girl thought dimly once of those who had already withdrawn into the dusky aisles—perhaps gone seeking the valley men. But that fear was swallowed by her own present torment, in the thought that in a moment or two she would topple over—perhaps to fall directly to the feet of the Dark Lord.
Still the drummer kept to his body-shaking rhythm. Thora used all the strength she still possessed just to hold on. The leader raised his hand. In mid-note the drum was silent.
The girl lay weak and spent. She rested her head on her arm, unable now even to raise it high enough to spy upon those below. What other weapon would the Dark Lord decide to call upon?
When he struck she was more than half prepared for it. For she had long since acknowledged that nothing in her training had prepared her to face this kind of battle.
What reached for her was not a sound now—rather it was like the net which had held Kort at their coming. Not a visible one laid around her loop by loop. No, this was totally unseen, yet it held and compelled. Something—someone reached inside her—fastened upon the weakness the drum had awakened, turned her own lacks against her.
Her will was sapped, enmeshed, held captive—she could no longer fight. She might only answer to the pressure put upon her by he who had done this thing.
Thora wavered up. Her body, most of her mind (there was still a small portion which could only watch this action with desperate horror) was fully in subjection. Never in her life had she been so tamed, so beaten. This was worse than any defilement or maiming she could have imagined—this was a ravishing of an inner part of her, a reduction to degrading servitude.
She climbed down from her perch, walked into the open, to stand before the Dark Lord. The moon gem was blazing with bright power. Several times she had tried to break the bonds, to take the jewel into her hands to draw strength from it. But it would seem that the drum magic was supreme even over the gift of the Lady. Or else she herself was so sadly lacking in real courage she could not use that gift with true purpose. Thora remembered only too well how Karn had lain in that hall with the drums spinning darkness about him. That had been in vision—but this was real.
No expression crossed the Dark Lord's pallid face, nor did any of the unhooded men show surprise at her appearance. They might well have expected to have this prisoner so come freely into their hands.
Red Cloak's hand arose, he snapped his fingers as man might summon a hound to his will. One of the men strode to her, stooped, put out fingers to grasp the moon gem. That blazed a white fire, yet its radiance spread only a very little distance in the thickening murk. With a sharp exclamation the man jerked back. It was as if he had tried to draw a live coal from a blazing fire. Deep in Thora a small, very small hope stirred. The gem—yes, those were bonded only to her who used them with the Lady's favor. No one else might handle such unless it was during a rite and then only by the wearer's own wish.
For the first time the Dark Lord's lips moved as he spoke aloud:
“Throw that from you!”
Against every instinct, every small tatter of her old spirit, Thora's new slavery fought to obey his command. Her hand rose, fell, rose again— But when her fingers would have caught the gem, her will in battle against his compulsion, she cried out. Force turned strongly against her within her own bo
dy.
The Red Cloak held her gaze with his own half-hooded, gloating eyes. Now she believed she saw anger awaken within them. He pointed his index finger at her. From the tip of that shot a scarlet tongue of flame, searing her jerkin at the level of her heart, bringing tears of pain to her eyes.
“Off!” he cried, and there was something in his voice which was a faint echo of that enslaving drum roll. She knew that he would torment her truly unless she obeyed. And, by the Lady—she could not!
14
That hand of torment was rising again—the line of fire not so high, striking across the back of Thora's hand. A scream strangled in her throat. That part of her which the drum had not made prisoner strained, fought. She felt as if she were in the heart of a great whirlwind of force which was attempting to batter the life out of her. The pain in her flesh receded, she could not even see that face of evil before her. No, she was in the midst of a fire which leaped to utterly consume her—scarlet flames reaching out—around her there was only a thin, failing haze of defense.
Thora deliberately tried to forget her body, to batten down pain, and then fear. The gem—that was like the Lady's lamp at its most potent. There was no sky above her—so perhaps the moon power could not reach her in force. However, she opened her spirit, her mind to the fullest—knowing that she did so in great peril, for if this Dark Lord was indeed mightier than any force she could call upon, so could she give him full entrance.
Only what came to her was a drift of scent—subtle, floating, yet in truth cutting clearly through the stench of old evil—the scent of these flowers through which Tarkin had wrought her own night ritual. Then—
Into that part of her which Thora had deliberately opened flooded another, alien, mind, one which wove in and out, so sometimes the girl could grasp the edge of a thought and impression but never quite clear enough to fully understand. Save she knew that this was not of the Dark, nor was it of any force she had known all her life and had learned to use, after a half-crippled fashion.
There was something—something working here which was not of any world she knew! Something which had slept—or had been hidden for a long time—stirred. In part it was mated to that which was filling her, on another level it was totally strange. Yet she had opened herself to it and she was now an instrument of it, even as this Dark Lord would have made her a slave of his own force.
She heard—not such commands as he had been throwing at her—no, this came from much farther away. Partly it was conveyed by the hissing song of Tarkin and her People in the flowered place (for this new thing was of Tarkin); partly it was a sound of metal—as if half a hundred swords such as the one Makil wore were being beaten threateningly against the floor on which they stood.
Thora could see again the steady movement of the drummer's hands beating out his monstrous rhythm. At the Dark Lord's feet crouched the beast Kort had fought, curled into a suffering knot of blood-stained fur.
Was she swaying, answering to the drum? Thora was not sure—for she was little herself, more simply a channel through which Tarkin (who—WHAT was Tarkin?) moved or worked other ensorcellments.
But the girl could move. Yes, her hands were free to clutch the moon gem. Not to seize it and throw it from her as the Red Cloak had ordered—rather to cling to it as the one point of safety in a wild world which she could no longer understand.
The Red Cloak—the hand he had raised to blast her was still outstretched, but it no longer beamed fire. His head tilted back a little on his shoulders and his eyes were totally closed. He, too, had withdrawn into his inner self.
For this moment Thora was no longer his prey. There was that approaching which he could not understand, against which his drummer had no power! The three men behind him drew back, their eyes aglitter, their heads snapping from side to side, as if they watched for something creeping upon them down the dusky aisles.
That scent of flowers, Thora drew a deep breath. No, the odor was not a true scent, even though the evil stench which appeared to hang about these Dark Ones was lessened. This was like a promise, a cord cast to rescue one who was being whirled away in a current strong beyond fighting. Thora set herself to concentrate upon Tarkin. Again the bond of the drum loosened a little—so she summoned up Power—
Power—YES! That was flooding into her hands, her heart, her mind! This was a place of long-leashed power. Not of the kind she had known, but of another sort. No moon gem, no Weapon of Lur could fight as this would do. Truly they, together, all of them, had summoned new strength out of the past—
For only an instant Thora's courage wavered. But Tarkin's essence, in spite of its alienness, was like a strong arm laid about her shoulders. She held the moon gem and waited.
At first the girl could believe that the hissing she heard was the voices of the furred ones magnified a hundred—a thousand times by some trick of this huge hall. Then, instead, she comprehended that this was another type of sound—that it was more closely allied to the metal clanking than it was to anything formed within a humanoid throat. Above that came a barking—a sharp frenzy which could only have issued from Kort at the height of some great excitement.
Those beats of the drummer were now fainter, over-ruled by the other sound. She could see that his cupped hands were pounding faster and faster—on his impassive, blind-eyed face spread a slick of moisture. He was putting into his beat more and more energy. The monster which had been curled at the feet of the Red Cloak raised its bloody head and howled with a breaking cry. Then it whipped around, gave a great leap as if it had been driven to the very edge of endurance.
For a second of stark fear Thora thought it had launched itself at her. There was a madness about it. Pink foam drooled from the corners of its mouth. But it flashed past her, heading down the aisle behind her. While the hissing there, the clanking, grew louder.
Past her shoulder shot a beam of white light. That she recognized. It was born from the Weapon of Lur. Its purity banished the murk which seemed to hang about this section of the hall where the Dark Ones had gathered. The three behind the Dark Lord fell back, their hands flying up, as if they tried so to ward off some weapon. But, though the light caught the Red Cloak full center, he still stood unmoving, his eyes closed.
Thora saw his lips moving, twisting over words. She knew he was evoking his own power, pulling from the depths of his resources the full strength which lay in the Shadow he owned as his inner master. The cloak about him blazed, even as the eyes of the furred ones caught fire when they were fully aroused. His arms moved and the cloak flapped wide, the symbols on its inner surface appearing to twine and crawl—moving, she knew not how, to shape and reshape, blazing also to enforce the call which he was sending forth.
The outer edges of that power touched the girl, was like a mighty blow which sent her reeling backward. Her body slammed against one of the piles of boxes, and instinctively she clung there, so keeping her feet. But that force had not been aimed at her—no, it was still undispatched—rather it was building within him, being nourished, into greater growth, so that at the moment of highest need he could aim it, even as the beam of Lur's weapon was used.
Also it would seem that what he garnered formed a wall of defense about him. For, though the light beam struck, it did not appear to win through an ever-thickening scarlet haze, given off by the cloak, to reach the man who wore it. Now that spear of dazzling white split, passing on either side of the Dark Lord.
Those behind him wailed, crumpled, as it reached them. The edge of one shaft touched the drummer on a shoulder. His arm fell limp and powerless to his side. Still he did not appear to know that he had been so partially disabled, rather he beat on.
Thora's head swung a fraction. She was released enough from the binding of the drum to be able to look for the source of the beam, that sound, Kort's own deep-throated barking. She saw—and could not believe what she saw.
Illusion—surely! She knew that this was no proper vision. Illusion so well spun that even with the moon jewe
l in her hold she could be bedazzled into mistaking shadow for substance—surely this must be true! Still it was so real—so plain—
Down the aisle advanced a massive crawling thing. On its back stood Kort barking. Beside him knelt Makil, holding up the weapon of Lur, high by its blade, in one hand, while with the other he kept tight grasp upon the monster he rode.
The creature of the Dark Lord leaped —straight for Kort. But it never reached the hound. Rather its bleeding body struck hard against the fore of the thing Kort and Makil rode. Striking so it fell. No paw reached out to beat it down, no fangs slashed from suddenly opened mouth to savage it, rather the body of the strange thing rolled on. There followed a sharp cry of agony as the beast was overrun, the heavy monster paying no heed to the thing it had crushed.
There came a spitting of flung darts from out of the shadows along the way. Those other followers of the Dark Lord must have lain in ambush there. There was even a bright burst of fire, but no weapon cut or singed the body of the thing which crawled ponderously forward.
Nor did any of those weapons reach the two on top of the thing's wide back. For there appeared to exist an invisible shield about them. A spear or two arched high, only to bounce back and fall to the pavement. Though that same defense was no barrier to the light of Lur's weapon but allowed the sharp beam through.
Thora flattened herself tighter against the box wall. Those who rode this monster might not see her—even Kort appeared to be looking straight ahead at the Dark Lord who still stood, his eyes shut, his whole being intent on what he would do. The surge of power which came from him was a searing wave and the girl clasped her gem tightly to her, sure that only it in her hands prevented her from now being shriveled into ash.