The Dark World Relit

around us were watching and listening. Lirynn hesitated.

  'We didn't bargain for this,' she said. 'Yet by the gods! To kill Llyr!

  Suddenly she sprang into action, shouting orders. Swords were sheathed. Women ran to untether the mounts. Within minutes we were in our saddles, riding out from the courtyard, the shadow of the Castle falling heavily upon us till the moon lifted above the tallest tower.

  I rose in my stirrups and looked back. Up there, dead, sat Ghasti Rhymi, first of the coven to die by my hand. I had killed her as surely as if I had plunged steel into her heart.

  I dropped back into the saddle, pressing heels into my horse's flanks. She bolted forward. Lirynn urged her steed level with me. Behind us the woodsmen strung out in a long uneven line as we galloped across the low hills toward the distant mountains. It would be dawn before we could reach Caer Llyr. And there was no time to waste.

  Medeo and Edurn and Mathwyn! The names of the three beat like muffled drums in my brain. Traitors to me, Medeo no less than the others, for had he not bent before the wills of Edurn and Mathwyn, had he not been willing to sacrifice me? Death I would give Edurn and the wolfling. Medeo I might let live, but only as my slave, nothing more.

  With Ghyst Rhymi dead, I was leader of the Coven! In the old woman's tower, sentimental weakness had nearly betrayed me. The weakness of Edwina Bond, I thought. Her memories had watered my will and diluted my power.

  Now I no longer needed her memories. At my side swung the Crystal Mask and the Wand of Power. I knew how to get the Sword Called Llyr. It was Ganelyn and not the weakling Edwina Bond, who would make herself mistress of the Dark World.

  Briefly I wondered where Bond was now. When Medeo had brought me through the Need-fire to the Dark World, Edwina Bond, at that same moment, must have returned to Earth. I smiled ironically, imagining the surprise that must have been hers. Perhaps she had tried, and was still trying, to get back to the Dark World. But without Freydyr to aid her, her attempts would be useless. Freydyr was helping me now, not Bond.

  And Bond would stay on Earth! The substitution would not occur again if I could help it. And I could help it. Strong Freydyr might be, but could he stand against the woman who had killed Llyr? I did not think so.

  I sent a sly sidewise glance at Lirynn. Fool! Ares too was another of the same breed. Only Freydyr had sense enough not to trust me.

  The strongest of my enemies must die first -- Llyr. Then the Coven. After that, the woodsmen would taste my power. They would learn, that I was Ganelyn, not the Earth weakling, Edwina Bond!

  I thrust the memories of Bond out of my mind. I drove them away. I banished them utterly.

  As Ganelyn I would battle Llyr.

  And as Ganelyn I would rule the Dark World!

  Rule -- with iron and fire!

  XIV. Fire of Life

  HOURS BEFORE we came to Caer Llyr we saw it, at first a blacker blackness against the night sky, and slowly, gradually, deepening into an ebon mountain as the rose-gray dawn spread behind us.

  Our cantering shadows fell before us, to be trodden under the horses' hoofs. Cool, fresh winds whispered -- whispered of the sacrifice at Caer Secaire, of the seeking minds of the Coven that spied across the land.

  But Caer Llyr loomed on the edge of darkness ahead -- guarding the night!

  Huge the Caer was, and alien. It seemed shapeless, a Titan mound of jumbled black rock thrown almost casually together. Yet I knew that there was design in its strange geometry.

  Two jet pillars, each fifty feet tall, stood like the legs of a colossus, and between them was an unguarded portal. Only there was mere any touch of color about the Caer.

  A veil of flickering rainbows played lambently, like a veil across the threshold. Opalescent and faintly glowing, the shadow-curtain swung and quivered as though gentle winds drifted through gossamer folds of silk.

  Fifty feet high was that curtain and twenty feet broad. Straddling it the ebon pillars rose. And above and beyond, towering breathtakingly to the dawn-clouded sky, squatted the Caer, a mountain-like structure that had never been built by woman.

  From Caer Llyr a breath of fear came coldly, scattering the woodsmen like leaves before a gale. They broke ranks, deployed out and drew together again as I raised my hand and Lirynn called a command.

  I stared around at the low hills surrounding us.

  'Never in my memory or my mother's memory have women come this close to Caer Llyr,' Lirynn said. 'Except for Covenanters, of course. Nor would the foresters follow me now, Bond. They follow you.'

  How far would they follow? My wondering thought was cut off as a woodsman shouted warning. She rose in her stirrups and pointed south.

  Over the hills, riding like demons in a dusty cloud, came horsewomen, their armor glittering in the red sunlight!

  'So someone did escape from the Castle,' I said between my teeth. 'And the Coven have been warned, after all!'

  Lirynn grinned and shrugged. 'Not many.'

  'Enough to delay us.' I frowned, trying to make the best plan. 'Lirynn, stop them. If the Coven ride with then- guards, kill them too. But hold them back from the Caer until --'

  'Until?'

  'I don't know. I'll need time. How much time I can't say. Battling and conquering Llyr won't be the work of a moment.'

  'Nor is it the work of one woman,' Lirynn said doubtfully. 'With us to aid you, victory will fly at your elbow.'

  'I know the weapon against Llyr,' I said. 'One woman can wield it. But keep the guardswomen back, and the Covenanters too. Give me time!'

  'There will be no difficulty about that,' Lirynn said, a flash of excitement lighting her eyes. 'For look!'

  Angling across the hills, riding one by one into view, hotly pursuing the armored rout, came green-clad figures, spurring their horses forward.

  Those figures were woodsmen's men whom we had left behind in the valley. They were armed now, for I saw the glitter of swords. Nor were swords their only weapons. A spiteful crack echoed, a puff of smoke arose, and one of the guardswomen flung up her hands and toppled from her mount.

  Edwina Bond had known how to make rifles! And the woodsfolk had learned how to use them!

  At the head of the woods men I noted two lithe forms, one a slim, supple boy whose ashy-blond hair streamed behind his like a banner. Ares.

  And at his side, on a great white steed, rode one whose giant form I could not mistake even from this distance. Freydyr spurred forward like a Valkyrie galloping into battle.

  Freydyr and Ares, and the men of the forest!

  Lirynn's laugh held exultation.

  'We have them, Bond!' she cried, her fist tightening on the rein. 'Our men at their heels, and we to strike from the flank -- we'll catch and crush them between hammer and anvil. Gods grant the shape-changer rides there!'

  'Then ride,' I snapped. 'No more talk! Ride and crush them. Hold them back from the Caer!'

  With that I raced my steed forward, lying low on the horse's mane, driving like a thunderbolt toward the black mountain ahead. Did Lirynn know how suicidal might be the mission on which I had sent her? Mathwyn she might slay, and even Medeo. But if Edurn rode with the Coven guards, if ever he dropped the hood from his face, neither sword nor bullet could save the woodsmen!

  Still they would give me time. And if the woodsmen's ranks were thinned, so much the better for me later. I would deal with Edurn in my own way when the time came.

  Ahead the black columns stood. Behind me a shouting rose, and a crackle of rifle-fire. I looked back, but a fold of the hills hid the combat from my eyes.

  I sprang from the horse's back and stood before the pillars -- between them. The coruscating veil sparkled and ran like milky water before me. Above, towering monstrously, stood the Caer, the focus of the evil that had spread across the Dark World.

  And in it reposed Llyr, my enemy!

  I still had the sword I had taken from one of the woodsmen, but I doubted if ordinary steel would be much good within the Caer. Nevertheless I made sure
the weapon was at my side as I walked forward.

  I stepped through the veil.

  For twenty paces I moved forward in utter darkness. Then light came.

  But it was the light that beats upon a snow plain, so bright, so glittering, that it blinds. I stood motionless, waiting. Presently the dazzle resolved itself into flickering atoms of brightness, weaving and darting in arabesque patterns. Not cold, no!

  Tropical warmth beat upon me.

  The shining atoms drove at me. They tingled upon my face and hands. They sank like intangible things through my garments and were absorbed by my skin. They did not lull me. Instead, my body greedily drank that weird snowstorm of -- energy? -- and was in turn energized by it.

  Tide of life sang ever stronger in my veins.

  I saw three gray shadows against the white. Two tall and one slight and small as a child's shadow.

  I knew them. I knew who cast them.

  I heard Mathwyn's voice.

  'Kill her. Kill her now.'

  And Medeo's answer.

  'No. She need not die. She must not.'

  'But she must!' Mathwyn snarled, and Edurn's sexless, thin voice echoed hers.

  'She is dangerous, Medeo. She must die, and only on Llyr's altar can she be slain. For she is the Sealed of Llyr.'

  'She need not die,' Medeo said stubbornly. 'If she is made harmless -- weaponless -- she may live.'

  'How?' Edeym asked, and for answer the red warlock stepped forward out of the dazzling white shimmer.

  No longer a shadow. No longer a two-dimensional grayness. He stood before me -- Medeo, warlock of Colchis.

  His dark hair fell to his knees. His dark gaze