Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

Medea? There was a parallel. There are diseases in which blood transfusions are periodically necessary. Not that Medea drank blood; she had other thirsts. But vital nervous energy is as real a thing as a leucocyte, and witch though she was, she did not need magic to serve her needs.

Of Edeyrn I was not so sure. Some stray remembrances hung like mists in my mind. Once I had known what she was, what chilling power lay hidden in the darkness of her cowl. And that was not magic either. The Crystal Mask would protect me against Edeyrn, but I knew no more than that.

Even Llyr—even Llyr! He was no god. That I knew well. Yet what he might be was something I could not even guess at as yet. Eventually I meant to find out, and the Sword Called Llyr, which was not a true sword, would aid me then.

Meanwhile, I had my part to play. Even with Freydis as my sponsor, I could not afford to rouse suspicion among the rebels. I had explained that Medea’s drug had left me weak and shaken. That helped to explain any minor lapses I might make. Curiously, Lorryn seemed to have accepted me fully at Freydis’ word, while in Aries’ behavior I detected a faint, almost imperceptible reserve. I do not think that she suspected the truth. Or, if she did she was trying not to admit it, even in her own mind.

And I could not afford to let that suspicion grow.

The valley was very active now.

Much had happened since I came there in the dawn. I had been through enough exertion both physical and emotional to last an ordinary man for a week, but Ganelon had only begun his battle. It was thanks to Edward Bond that our plans for attack would be formulated so readily, and in a way I was glad I had been too busy for anything but the most impersonal planning with Aries and Lorryn.

It helped to cover the great gaps of my ignorance about things Edward Bond should know. Many times I angled craftily for information, many times I had to call upon the excuse of the mythical drug and upon the exhaustion of my ordeal at the Castle. But by the time our plans were laid, it seemed to me that even Aries’ suspicions were partly lulled.

I knew I must lull them utterly.

We rose from the great map-table in the council-cavern. All of us were tired. I met Lorryn’s scar-twisted grin, warmth in it now as he smiled at the man he thought his sworn friend, and I made Edward Bond’s face smile back at him.

“We’ll do it this time,” I told him confidently. “This time we’ll win!”

His smile twisted suddenly into a grimace, and the light like embers glowed in his deep eyes.

“Remember,” he growled. “Matholch—for me!”

I looked down at the relief-map of the table, very skillfully made under Edward Bond’s directions.

The dark green hills rolling with their strange forests of semi-animate trees, every brook traced in white plaster, every roadway marked. I laid my hand on the little mound of towers that was a miniature Castle of the Coven. From it stretched the highway I had ridden last night, beside Medea, in my blue sacrificial robe. There was the valley and the windowless tower of Caer Secaire which had been our destination.

For a moment I rode that highway again, in the darkness and the starshine, seeing Medea beside me in her scarlet cloak, her face a pale oval in the dusk, her mouth black-red, her eyes shining at me. I remembered the feel of that fiercely yielding body in my arms as I had held her last night, as I had held her so many times before. In my mind whirled a question.

Medea, Medea, red witch of Colchis, why did you betray me?

I ground my palm down on the tiny plaster towers of the Castle, feeling them powder away beneath my hand. I grinned fiercely at the ruin I had made of Edward Bond’s model.

“We’ll have no need for this again!” I said through my teeth.

Lorryn laughed.

“No need to repair it. Tomorrow the Coven Castle will be wreckage too.”

I dusted the powdered plaster from my hand and looked across the table at the silent Aries. She looked at me gravely, waiting. I smiled.

“We haven’t had a moment alone together,” I said, making my voice tender. “I’ll need sleep before I leave tonight, but there’s time for a walk, if you’ll come with me.”

The grave green gaze dwelt upon mine. Then she nodded, without smiling, and came around the table, stretching out her hand to me. I took it and we went down the steps to the cave-mouth and out into the glen, neither of us speaking. I let her lead the way, and we walked in silence toward the upper end of the valley, the little stream tinkling away beside us.

Aries walked very lightly, her gossamer hair floating behind her in a pale misty veil. I wondered if it was by intent that she kept her free hand resting upon the bolstered weapon at her side.

It was hard for me to keep my mind upon her, or to care whether or not she knew me for myself. Medea’s face in all its beauty and its evil floated before me up the glen, a face no man who looked upon it could ever forget. For a moment I was angry at the recollection that Edward Bond, in my flesh, had taken last night the kisses she meant for Ganelon.

Well, I would see her again tonight, before she died by my hand!

In my mind I saw the tiny roadway of the map-table, winding down from Coven Castle to the sacrificial temple. Along the real road, sometime in the night to come, I knew the cavalcade would ride again as it had ridden with me last night. And again there would be forest men hiding along the road, and again I would lead them against the Coven. But this time the outcome would be very different from anything either the rebels or the Coven could expect.

What a strange web the Morns had woven! Last night as Edward Bond, tonight as Ganelon, I would lead the same men in the same combat against the same foe, but with a purpose as different as night from day.

The two of us, deadly enemies though we shared the same body in a strange, inverted way—enemies though we had never met and never could meet, for all our common flesh. It was an enigma too curious to unravel.

“Edward,” a voice said at my shoulder. I looked down.

Aries was facing me with the same enigmatic gaze I had met so often today. “Edward, is she very beautiful?”

I stared at her.

“Who?”

“The witch. The Coven witch. Medea.”

I almost laughed aloud. Was this the answer to all her aloofness of the day? Did she think my own withdrawal, all the changes she sensed in me, were due to the charms of a rival beauty? Well, I must set her mind at rest about that, at any rate. I called upon Llyr to forgive me the lie, and I took her shoulders in my hands and said:

“There is no woman on this world or on Earth half so beautiful as you, my darling.”

Still she looked up at me gravely.

“When you mean that, Edward, I’ll be glad,” she said. “You don’t mean it now. I can tell. No.” She put her fingers across my mouth as I began to protest. “Let’s not talk about her now. She’s a sorceress. She has powers neither of us can fight. It isn’t your fault or mine that she’s too beautiful to forget all in a moment. Never mind now. Look! Do you remember this place?”

She twisted deftly from my grasp and swept out a hand toward the panorama spread below us. We stood in a grove of tall, quivering trees high on the crest of the low mountain. The leaves and branches made a bower around us with their showers of shaking tendrils, but through an opening here and there we could see the rolling country far below us, glowing in the light of the red westering sun.

“This will be ours some day,” said Aries softly. “After the Coven is gone, after Llyr has vanished. We’ll be free to live above ground, clear the forests, build our cities—live like men again. Think of it, Edward! A whole world freed from savagery. And all because there were a few of us at the start who did not fear the Coven, and who found you. If we win the fight, Edward, it will be because of you and Freydis. We would all have been lost without you.”