The Dark World Relit

light shot out blindingly in a great burst of exultation, like a voiceless answering cry from Llyr Herself. Medeo's chant rose to a piercing climax and paused.

  There was a stir among the columns; something moved along that curve of trough. My eyes sought the altar and the lipped spout above it.

  The Coven was rigid, a cluster of frozen figures, waiting.

  Blood began to drip from the spout.

  I do not know how long I hung there on the ledge, my eyes riveted to the altar. I do not know how many times I heard a cry ring out from above, how many times Medeo's chant rose to a hungry climax as the light burst forth in a glory overhead and blood gushed into the great cup of the altar. I was deaf and blind to everything but this. I was half with Llyr at her Golden Window, shaken with ecstasy as she took her sacrifices, and half with the Coven below, glorying in their share of the ceremony of the Sabbat.

  But I know I waited too long.

  What saved me I do not know now. Some voice of the ego crying unheard in my mind that this was time dangerously spent, that I must be elsewhere before the Sabbat ended, that Lirynn and her women waited endlessly while I hung here battening like a glutton upon Llyr's feast.

  Reluctantly awareness returned to my mind. With an infinite effort I pulled myself back from the brink of that Golden Window and stood reeling in the darkness, but in my own body again, not hovering mindlessly with Llyr in the heights above. The Coven was still tense below me, gripped in the ecstasy of the sacrifice. But for how long I could not be sure. Perhaps for the rest of the night; perhaps for only an hour. I must hurry, if hurrying were not already futile. There was no way to know.

  So I went back in the darkness, down the unseen stairs, and out of the dark, unseen door, and back along the road to Coven Castle, my mind still reeling with remembered ecstasy, the glow of the Window still before my dazzled eyes, and the scarlet runnel above the altar, and the thin, sweet chanting of Medeo louder in my ears than the sound of my own feet upon the road....

  The red moon was far down the sky when I came back to Lirynn, still crouching beside the castle wall and half mad with impatience. There was an eager stir among the unseen soldiers as I came running down the road, a forward surge as if they had waited to the very limit of endurance and would attack now whether I gave the word or no.

  I waved to Lirynn while I was still twenty feet away. I was careless now of the Castle guardswomen. Let them see me. Let them hear.

  'Give the signal!' I shouted to Lirynn. 'Attack!'

  I saw her start up beside the road, and the moonlight glinted upon the silver horn she lifted to her lips. Its blare of signal notes ripped the night to tatters. It ripped away the last of my lethargy too.

  I heard the long yell that swept the forest as the woodsmen surged forward to the attack, and my own voice roared unbidden in reply, an ecstasy of battle-hunger that matched the ecstasy I had just shared with Llyr.

  The rattle of rifle-fire drowned out our voices. The first explosions of grenades shook the Castle, outlining the outer walls in livid detail. There were shouts from within, wild trumpetings of signal horns, the cries of confused guardswomen, leaderless and afraid. But I knew they would rally. They had been trained well enough by Mathwyn and by myself. And they had weapons that could give the woodsmen a stiff fight.

  When they recovered from this panic there would be much blood spilled around the outer walls.

  I did not wait to see it. The first explosions had breached the barriers close beside me, and I scrambled recklessly through the gap, careless of the rifle fire that spattered against the stones. The Morns were with me tonight. I bore a charmed life, and I knew I could not fail.

  Somewhere above me in the besieged towers Ghyst Rhymi sat wrapped in her chill indifference, aloof as a god above the struggle around Coven Castle. I had a rendezvous with Ghyst Rhymi, though she did not know it yet.

  I plunged into the gateway of the Castle, heedless of the milling guards. They did not know me in the darkness and the confusion, but they knew by my tunic I was not a forester, and they let me shoulder them aside.

  Three steps at a time, I ran up the great stairway.

  XII. Harp of Satan

  CASTLE of the Coven! How strange it looked to me as I went striding through its halls. Familiar, yet curiously unknown, as though I saw it through the veil of Edwina Bond's transplanted memories.

  So long as I went rapidly, I seemed to know the way. But if I hesitated, my conscious mind took over control, and that mind was still clouded with artificial memories, so that I became confused in the halls and corridors which were familiar to me when I did not think directly of them.

  It was as if whatever I focused on sharply receded into unfamiliarity while everything else remained clear, until I thought of it.

  I strode down hallways arched overhead and paved underfoot in bright, intricate mosaics that told legendary tales half-familiar to me. I walked upon centaurs and satyrs whose very faces were well known to the Ganelyn half of my mind, while the Edwina Bond half wondered in vain whether such people had really lived in this distorted world of mutations.

  This double mind at times was a source of strength to me, and at others a source of devouring weakness. Just now I hoped fervently that I might meet no delays for once I lost this rushing thread of memory which was leading me toward Ghyst Rhymi, I might never find it again. Any interruption might be fatal to my plans.

  Ghyst Rhymi, my memories told me, would be somewhere in the highest tower of the castle. There too would be the treasure-room where the Mask and Wand lay hidden, and hidden deeper in the serene, untouchable thoughts of Ghyst Rhymi, lay the secret of Llyr's vulnerability.

  These three things I must have, and the getting would not be easy. For I knew -- without clearly remembering how or by what -- that the treasure-room was guarded by Ghyst Rhymi. The Coven would not have left open to all comers that secret place where the things that could end them lay hidden.

  Even I, even Ganelyn, had a secret thing locked in that treasury. For no Covenanter, no witch, no sorcerer can deal in the dark powers without creating, herself, the one instrument that can destroy her. That is the Law.

  There are secrets behind it which I may not speak of, but the common one is clear. All Earth's folklore is rife with the same legend. Powerful women and men must focus their power in an object detached from themselves.

  The myth of the external soul is common to all Earth races, but the reason for it lies deep in the lore of the Dark World. This much I can say -- that there must be a balance in all things. For every negative, a positive. We of the Coven could not build up our power without creating a corresponding weakness somewhere, somehow, and we must hide that weakness so cunningly that no enemy could find it.

  Not even the Coven knew wherein my own secret lay. I knew Medeo's, and I knew Edurn's only partially, and as for Mathwyn -- well, against her I needed only my own Covenanter strength. Ghyst Rhymi did not matter. She would not bother to fight.

  But Llyr? Ah!

  Somewhere the Sword lay hidden, and she who could find and use it in that unknown way for which it was fashioned, she held the existence of Llyr in her own hand. But there was danger. For as Llyr's power in the Dark World was beyond imagination, so too must be that balancing power hidden in the Sword. Even to go near it might be fatally dangerous. To hold it in the hand -- well, hold it I must, and there was no profit in thinking about danger.

  I went up and up, on and on.

  I could not hear the sounds of battle. But I knew that at the gate the Coven guards and slaves were fighting and falling, as Lirynn's women, too, were falling. I had warned Lirynn that none must break through her lines to warn those at Caer Secaire. I knew that she would follow that order, despite her anxiety to come to grips with Mathwyn. For the rest, there was one in the Castle who could, without stirring, send a message to Medeo. One person!

  She had not sent that message. I knew that as I thrust through the white curtain and came out into the tower room. The littl
e chamber was semicircular, walls, floor and ceiling were ivory pale. The casement windows were shut, but Ghyst Rhymi had never needed sight to send out her vision.

  She sat there, an old, old woman, relaxed amid the cushions of her seat, snowy hair and locks falling in curled ringlets that blended with her white, plain robe. Her hands lay upon the chair-arms, pale as wax, so transparent that I could almost trace the course of the thinned blood that stirred so feebly in those old veins.

  Wick and wax had burned down. The flame of life flickered softly, and a wind might send that flame into eternal darkness. So sat the Ancient of Days, her blind blue gaze not seeing me, but turned upon inward things.

  Ganelyn's memories flooded back. Ganelyn had learned much from Ghyst Rhymi. Even then, the Covenanter had been old. Now the tides of time had worn her, as the tides of the sea wear a stone till nothing is left but a thin shell, translucent as clouded glass.

  Within Ghyst Rhymi I could see the life-fires dwindling, sunk to embers, almost ash.

  She did not see me. Not easily can Ghyst Rhymi be drawn back from, the deeps where her thoughts move.

  I spoke to her, but she did not answer.

  I went past her then, warily, toward the wall that divided the tower-top into two halves. There was no sign of a door, but I knew the combination. I moved my palms in an intricate pattern on the cool surface, and a gap widened