Chapter Four
The cold gray mists of dawn wrapped Queen Bryn like a clammy cloak. She turned to the man whose slanted eyes gleamed in the gray gloom.
'Make good your part of the contract,' she said roughly. 'I sought a link between worlds, and in you I found it. I seek the one thing sacred to Them. It shall be the Key opening the Door that lies unseen between me and Them. Tell me how I can reach it.'
'I will,' the red lips smiled terribly. 'Go to the mound women call Dagon's Barrow. Draw aside the stone that blocks the entrance and go under the dome of the mound. The floor of the chamber is made of seven great stones, six grouped about the seventh. Lift out the center stone--and you will see!'
'Will I find the Black Stone?' she asked.
'Dagon's Barrow is the Door to the Black Stone,' he answered, 'if you dare follow the Road.'
'Will the symbol be well guarded?' She unconsciously loosened her blade in its sheath. The red lips curled mockingly.
'If you meet any on the Road you will die as no mortal woman has died for long centuries. The Stone is not guarded, as women guard their treasures. Why should They guard what woman has never sought? Perhaps They will be near, perhaps not. It is a chance you must take, if you wish the Stone. Beware, queen of Pictdom! Remember it was your folk who, so long ago, cut the thread that bound Them to human life. They were almost human then--they overspread the land and knew the sunlight. Now they have drawn apart. They know not the sunlight and they shun the light of the moon. Even the starlight they hate. Far, far apart have they drawn, who might have been women in time, but for the spears of your ancestors.'
The sky was overcast with misty gray, through which the sun shone coldly yellow when Bryn came to Dagon's Barrow, a round hillock overgrown with rank grass of a curious fungoid appearance. On the eastern side of the mound showed the entrance of a crudely built stone tunnel which evidently penetrated the barrow. One great stone blocked the entrance to the tomb. Bryn laid hold of the sharp edges and exerted all her strength. It held fast. She drew her sword and worked the blade between the blocking stone and the sill. Using the sword as a lever, she worked carefully, and managed to loosen the great stone and wrench it out. A foul charnel house scent flowed out of the aperture and the dim sunlight seemed less to illuminate the cavern- like opening than to be fouled by the rank darkness which clung there.
Sword in hand, ready for she knew not what, Bryn groped her way into the tunnel, which was long and narrow, built up of heavy joined stones, and was too low for her to stand erect. Either her eyes became somewhat accustomed to the gloom, or the darkness was, after all, somewhat lightened by the sunlight filtering in through the entrance. At any rate she came into a round low chamber and was able to make out its general dome-like outline. Here, no doubt, in old times, had reposed the bones of her for whom the stones of the tomb had been joined and the earth heaped high above them; but now of those bones no vestige remained on the stone floor. And bending close and straining her eyes, Bryn made out the strange, startlingly regular pattern of that floor: six well-cut slabs clustered about a seventh, six-sided stone.
She drove her sword-point into a crack and pried carefully. The edge of the central stone tilted slightly upward. A little work and she lifted it out and leaned it against the curving wall. Straining her eyes downward she saw only the gaping blackness of a dark well, with small, worn steps that led downward and out of sight. She did not hesitate. Though the skin between her shoulders crawled curiously, she swung herself into the abyss and felt the clinging blackness swallow her.
Groping downward, she felt her feet slip and stumble on steps too small for human feet. With one hand pressed hard against the side of the well she steadied herself, fearing a fall into unknown and unlighted depths. The steps were cut into solid rock, yet they were greatly worn away. The farther she progressed, the less like steps they became, mere bumps of worn stone. Then the direction of the shaft changed sharply. It still led down, but at a shallow slant down which she could walk, elbows braced against the hollowed sides, head bent low beneath the curved roof. The steps had ceased altogether and the stone felt slimy to the touch, like a serpent's lair. What beings, Bryn wondered, had slithered up and down this slanting shaft, for how many centuries?
The tunnel narrowed until Bryn found it rather difficult to shove through. She lay on her back and pushed herself along with her hands, feet first. Still she knew she was sinking deeper and deeper into the very guts of the earth; how far below the surface she was, she dared not contemplate. Then ahead a faint witch-fire gleam tinged the abysmal blackness. She grinned savagely and without mirth. If They she sought came suddenly upon her, how could she fight in that narrow shaft? But she had put the thought of personal fear behind her when she began this hellish quest. She crawled on, thoughtless of all else but her goal.
And she came at last into a vast space where she could stand upright. She could not see the roof of the place, but she got an impression of dizzying vastness. The blackness pressed in on all sides and behind her she could see the entrance to the shaft from which she had just emerged--a black well in the darkness. But in front of her a strange grisly radiance glowed about a grim altar built of human skulls. The source of that light she could not determine, but on the altar lay a sullen night-black object--the Black Stone!
Bryn wasted no time in giving thanks that the guardians of the grim relic were nowhere near. She caught up the Stone, and gripping it under her left arm, crawled into the shaft. When a woman turns her back on peril its clammy menace looms more grisly than when she advances upon it. So Bryn, crawling back up the nighted shaft with her grisly prize, felt the darkness turn on her and slink behind her, grinning with dripping fangs. Clammy sweat beaded her flesh and she hastened to the best of her ability, ears strained for some stealthy sound to betray that fell shapes were at her heels. Strong shudders shook her, despite herself, and the short hair on her neck prickled as if a cold wind blew at her back.
When she reached the first of the tiny steps she felt as if she had attained to the outer boundaries of the mortal world. Up them she went, stumbling and slipping, and with a deep gasp of relief, came out into the tomb, whose spectral grayness seemed like the blaze of noon in comparison to the stygian depths she had just traversed. She replaced the central stone and strode into the light of the outer day, and never was the cold yellow light of the sun more grateful, as it dispelled the shadows of black-winged nightstallions of fear and madness that seemed to have ridden her up out of the black deeps. She shoved the great blocking stone back into place, and picking up the cloak she had left at the mouth of the tomb, she wrapped it about the Black Stone and hurried away, a strong revulsion and loathing shaking her soul and lending wings to her strides.
A gray silence brooded over the land. It was desolate as the blind side of the moon, yet Bryn felt the potentialities of life--under her feet, in the brown earth--sleeping, but how soon to waken, and in what horrific fashion?
She came through the tall masking reeds to the still deep women called Dagon's Mere. No slightest ripple ruffled the cold blue water to give evidence of the grisly monster legend said dwelt beneath. Bryn closely scanned the breathless landscape. She saw no hint of life, human or unhuman. She sought the instincts of her savage soul to know if any unseen eyes fixed their lethal gaze upon her, and found no response. She was alone as if she were the last woman alive on earth.
Swiftly she unwrapped the Black Stone, and as it lay in her hands like a solid sullen block of darkness, she did not seek to learn the secret of its material nor scan the cryptic characters carved thereon. Weighing it in her hands and calculating the distance, she flung it far out, so that it fell almost exactly in the middle of the lake. A sullen splash and the waters closed over it. There was a moment of shimmering flashes on the chest of the lake; then the blue surface stretched placid and unrippled again.