Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“I know,” she said. “Yes, I know, Ganelon. Yet we had to try, at least. And the Coven had been weakened by losing you. Without you, none of the others would have dared call on Llyr, except perhaps Ghast Rhymi.” She stared deeply into the fire. “I know you Ganelon. I know the pride that burns in your soul. And I know, too, that vengeance, now, would be very dear to your heart. Yet you were sealed to Llyr, once, and you have been Covenanter since your birth. How do I know you can be trusted?”

I did not answer that. And, after a moment, Freydis turned toward the smoke-blackened wall. She twitched aside a curtain I had not seen. There, in an alcove, was a Symbol, a very ancient Sign, older than civilization, older than human speech.

Yes, Freydis would be one of the few who knew what that Symbol meant. As I knew.

“Now will you swear that you speak with a straight tongue?” she said.

I moved my hand in the ritual gesture that bound me irrevocably. This was an oath I could not break without being damned and doubly damned, in this world and the next. But I had no hesitation. I spoke truth!

“I will destroy the Coven!” I said.

“And Llyr?”

“I will bring an end to Llyr!”

But sweat stood out on my forehead as I said that. It was not easy.

Freydis twitched the curtain back into place. She seemed satisfied.

“I have less doubt now,” she said. “Well, Ganelon, the Norns weave strange threads together to make warp and woof of destiny. Yet there is a pattern, though sometimes we cannot see it. I did not ask you to swear fealty to the forest-folk.”

“I realize that.”

“You would not have sworn it,” she said. “Nor is it necessary. After the Coven is broken, after an end is made to Llyr, I can guard the people of the woods against even you, Ganelon. And we may meet in battle then. But until then we are allies. I will name you—Edward Bond.”

“I’ll need more than that,” I told her. “If the masquerade is to pass unchallenged.”

“No one will doubt my word,” Freydis said. Firelight flickered on her great frame, her smooth, ageless face.

“I cannot fight the Coven till I get back my memories. The memories of Ganelon. All of them.”

She shook her head.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I cannot do too much on that score. Something, yes. But writing on the mind is touchy work, and memories, once erased, are not easily brought back. You still have Edward Bond’s memories?”

I nodded.

“But my own, no. They’re fragmentary. I know, for example, that I was sealed to Llyr, but the details I don’t remember.”

“It would be as well, perhaps, to let that memory stay lost,”

Freydis said somberly. “But you are right. A dulled tool is no use. So listen.”

Rock-still, boulder-huge, she stood across the fire from me. Her voice deepened.

“I sent you into the Earth-World. I brought your double, Edward Bond, here. He helped us, and—Aries loved him, after a while. Even Lorryn, who does not trust many, grew to trust Edward Bond.”

“Who is Lorryn?”

“One of us now. Not always. Years ago he had his cottage in the forest; he hunted, and few were as cunning as Lorryn in the chase. His wife was very young. Well, she died. Lorryn came back to this cottage one night and found death there, and blood, and a wolf that snarled at him from a bloody muzzle. He fought the wolf; he did not kill it. You saw Lorryn’s cheek. His whole body is like that, scarred and wealed from wolf-fangs.”

“A wolf?” I said. “Not —”

“A wolfling,” Freydis said. “Lycanthrope, shape-changer. Matholch. Some day Lorryn will kill Matholch. He lives only for that.”

“Let him have the red dog,” I said contemptuously. “If he likes, I’ll give him Matholch flayed!”

“Aries and Lorryn and Edward Bond have planned their campaign,” Freydis said. “They swore that the last Sabbat had been celebrated in the Dark World. Edward Bond showed them new weapons he remembered from Earth. Such weapons have been built and are in the arsenal, ready. No Sabbats have been held since Medea and her followers went searching to Earth; the woodsfolk held their hands. There was nothing to strike at except old Ghast Rhymi. Now Medea and the rest of the Coven are back, they’re ready. If you lead against them Ganelon, the Coven can be smashed, I think.”

“The Coven has its own weapons,” I muttered. “My memory fails—but I think Edeym has a power that—that—” I shook my head. “No, it’s gone.”

“How can Llyr be destroyed?” Freydis asked.

“I—I may have known once. Not now.”

“Look at me,” she said. And leaned forward, so that it seemed as though her ageless face was bathed in the fires.

Through the flames her gaze caught mine. Some ancient power kindled her clear blue eyes. Like pools of cool water under a bright sky—pools deep and unstirring, where one could sink into an azure silence forever and ever….

As I looked the blue waters clouded, grew dark. I saw a great black dome against a black sky. I saw the thing that dwells deepest and most strongly in the mind of Ganelon—Caer Llyr!

The dome swam closer. It loomed above me. Its walls parted like dark water, and I moved in memory down the great smooth, shining corridor that leads to Llyr Himself.

ONWARD I moved. Faces flickered before me—Matholch’s fierce grin, Edeyrn’s cowled head with its glance that chilled, Medea’s savage beauty that no man could ever forget, even in his hatred. They looked at me, mistrustfully. Their lips moved in soundless question. Curiously, I knew these were real faces I saw.

In the magic of Freydis’ spell I was drifting through some dimensionless place where only the mind ventures, and I was meeting here the thoughts of the questing Coven, meeting the eyes of their minds. They knew me. They asked me fiercely a question I could not hear.

Death was in the face Matholch’s mind turned to mine. All his hatred of me boiled furiously in his yellow wolf-eyes. His lips moved—almost I could hear him. Medea’s features swam up before me, blotting out the shape-changer. Her red mouth framed a question—over and over.

“Ganelon, where are you? Ganelon, my lover, where are you? You must come back to us. Ganelon!”

Edeyrn’s faceless head moved between Medea and me, and very distantly I heard her cool, small voice echoing the same thought.

“You must return to us, Ganelon. Return to us and die!”

Anger drew a red curtain between those faces and myself.

Traitors, betrayers, false to the Coven oath! How dared they threaten Ganelon, the strongest of them all? How dared they—and why?

Why?

My brain reeled with the query. And then I realized there was one face missing from the Coven. These three had been searching the thought-planes for me, but what of Ghast Rhymi?

Deliberately I groped for the contact of his mind.

I could not touch him. But I remembered. I remembered Ghast Rhymi, whose face Edward Bond had never seen. Old, old, old, beyond good and evil, beyond fear and hatred, this was Ghast Rhymi, the wisest of the Coven. If he willed, he would answer my groping thought. If he willed not, nothing could force him. Nothing could harm the Eldest, for he lived on only by force of his own will.

He could end himself instantly, by the power of a thought. And he is like a candle flame, flickering away as one grasps at him. Life holds nothing more for him. He does not cling to it. If I had tried to seize him he could slip like fire or water from my grasp. He would as soon be dead as alive. But unless he must, he would not break his deep calm to think the thought that would change him into clay.