The Dark World Relit

slanted at me. Evil he was, and alluring as Lilith.

  I dropped my hand to sword-hilt.

  I did not. I could not move. Faster swirled the darting bright atoms, whirling about me, sinking into my body to betray me.

  I could not move.

  Beyond Medeo the twin shadows bent forward.

  'The power of Llyr holds her,' Edurn whispered. 'But Ganelyn is strong, Medeo. If she breaks her fetters, we are lost.'

  'By then she will have no weapons,' Medeo said, and smiled at me.

  Now indeed I knew my danger. Very easily my steel could have bitten through Medeo's soft throat, and heartily I wished it had done so long ago. For I remembered Medeo's power. The mutation that set his apart from others. That which had caused his to be named -- vampire.

  I remembered victims of his that I had seen. The dead-eyed guardswomen, the Castle slaves, hollow shells of women, the walking dead, all soul drained from them, and most of their life-forms as well.

  His arms stole around my neck. His mouth lifted to mine.

  In one hand he held his black wand. It touched my head, and a gentle shock, not unpleasant, crawled along my scalp. The -- the conductor, I knew, and a gust of insane laughter shook me at the incongruity of the weapon.

  But there was no magic here. There was science, of a high order, a science made possible only for those who were trained to it, or for those who were mutants. Medeo drank energy, but not through sorcery. I had seen that wand used too often to believe that.

  The wand opened the closed circuits of the mind and its energies. It tapped the brain, as a copper wire can tap a generated current.

  Diverting the life-force to Medeo!

  The shining mist-motes swirled faster. They closed in around us, bathing us in a swirling cloak. The gray shadowiness fell away from Edeym and Mathwyn. Dun-cloaked, cowled dwarf and lean, grinning wolfling stood there, watching.

  Edurn's face I could not see, though the deadly cold crept from beneath the cowl like an icy wind. Mathwyn's tongue crept out and circled her lips. Her eyes were bright with triumph and excitement.

  A numbing, lethargic languor was stealing over me. Against my mouth as Medeo's lips grew hotter, more ardent, as my own lips chilled. Desperately I tried to move, to grasp my sword-hilt. I could not.

  Now the bright veil thinned again. Beyond Mathwyn and Edurn I could see a vast space, so enormous that my gaze failed to pierce its violet depths. A stairway led up to infinite heights.

  A golden glow burned high above.

  But behind Mathwyn and Edurn, a little to one side, stood a curiously-carved pedestal whose front was a single pane of transparent glass. It shone steadily with a cool blue light. What lay within I did not know, but I recognized that crystal pane.

  Ghyst Rhymi had spoken of it. Behind it must lie the Sword Called Llyr.

  Faintly now -- faintly -- I heard Mathwyn's satisfied chuckle.

  'Ganelyn, my love, do not struggle against me,' Medeo whispered. 'Only I can save you. When your madness passes, we will return to the Castle.'

  Yes, for I would be no menace then. Mathwyn would not bother to harm me. As a mindless, soulless thing I would return to the Castle of the Coven as Medeo's slave.

  I, Ganelyn, hereditary Lady of the Coven and the Sealed of Llyr!

  The golden glow high above brightened. Crooked lightnings rushed out from it and were lost in the violet dimness.

  My eyes found that golden light that was the Window of Llyr.

  My mind reached out toward it.

  My soul strained to it!

  Warlocks and vampire-mutation Medeo might be -- or sorcerer -- but he had never been sealed to Llyr. No dark power beat latently in his blood as it beat in mine. Well I knew now that, no matter how I might renounce my allegiance to Llyr, there yet had been a bond. Llyr had power over me, but I could draw upon her power as well!

  I drew on that power now!

  The golden window brightened. Again forked lightnings ran out from it and were gone. A muffled, heavy drum-beat muttered from somewhere, like the pulse of Llyr.

  Like the heart of Llyr, stirring from sleep to waking.

  Through me power rushed, quickening my flesh from its lethargy. I drew on Llyr's power without measuring the cost. I saw fear flash across Mathwyn's face, and Edurn made a quick gesture.

  'Medeo,' he said.

  But Medeo had already sensed that quickening. I felt his body quiver convulsively against mine. Avidly he pressed against me, faster and faster he drank the energy that made me alive.

  But the energy of Llyr poured into me! Hollow thunders roared in the vast spaces above. The golden window blazed with dazzling brightness. And around us now the sparkling motes of light paled, shrank, and were gone.

  'Kill her!' Mathwyn howled. 'She holds Llyr!'

  She sprang forward.

  From somewhere a bloody figure in dented armor stumbled. I saw Lirynn's scarred face twist in amazement as she blinked at the tableau. Her sword, red to the hilt, was bare in her hand.

  She saw me with Medeo's arms about my neck.

  She saw Edurn.

  And she saw Mathwyn!

  A wordless, inarticulate sound ripped through Lirynn's throat. She lifted high the sword.

  As I tore myself free from Medeo's grip, as I sent him reeling away, I saw Mathwyn's wand come up. I reached for my own wand, but there was no need.

  Lirynn's blade sang. Mathwyn's hand, still gripping the wand, was severed at the wrist. Blood spurted from cut arteries.

  Howling, the shape-changer dropped forward. The lycanthropic change came upon her. Hypnotism, mutation, dark sorcery -- I could not tell. But the thing that sprang at Lirynn's throat was not human.

  Lirynn laughed. She sent her sword spinning away.

  She met the wolfling's charge, bracing herself strongly and caught the thing by throat and leg. Fanged jaws snapped viciously at her.

  Lirynn heaved the monster above her head. Her joints cracked with the inhuman strain. One instant Lirynn stood there, holding her enemy high, while the wolf-jaws snarled and strove to rend her.

  She dashed the wolf down upon the stones!

  I heard bones snap like rotten twigs. I heard a scream of dying, terrible agony from a gaping muzzle from which blood poured.

  Then Mathwyn, in her own shape, broken, dying, lay writhing at our feet!

  XV. Lair of Power

  MIRACULOUSLY the weakness that had chained me was, gone. Llyr's strength poured through me. I unsheathed my sword and ran past Mathwyn's body, ignoring Lirynn who stood motionless, staring down. I ran to the pedestal with its blue-litten pane.

  I gripped the sword's blade and sent the heavy hilt crashing against the glass.

  There was a tinkling of pizzicato notes, a singing of thin goblin laughter. The shards fell clashing at my feet.

  At my feet also dropped a sword. A sword of crystal, nearly five feet long -- pommel and guard and blade all of clearest glass.

  It had been part of the window. For within the hollow pedestal was nothing at all. The sword had been part of the pane, so that my breaking the crystal had released the weapon from its camouflaged hiding-place.

  Along the sleek blade blue light ran. Within the crystal blue fires burned wanly. I bent and picked up the sword. The hilt was warm and alive.

  The Sword Called Llyr in my left hand, the sword with blade of steel in my right, I stood upright.

  Paralyzing cold breathed past me.

  I knew that cold.

  So I did not turn. I swung the steel sword under my arm, snatched the Crystal Mask from my belt, and donned it. I drew the Wand of Power.

  Only then did I turn.

  Through the Mask queer glimmers and shiftings ran, distorting what I saw. The properties of light were oddly altered by the Mask. But it had its purpose. It was a filter.

  Mathwyn lay motionless now. Beyond her body Medeo was rising to his feet, his dark hair disordered. Facing me stood Lirynn, a stone woman, only her eyes alive in her set, white fac
e.

  She was staring at Edurn, whose sleek dark head I saw. His back was toward me. The cowl had been flung back upon his shoulders.

  Lirynn sagged down, the life going out of her. Bonelessly as water she collapsed.

  She lay dead.

  Then slowly, slowly, Edeym turned.

  He was tiny as a child, and his face was like a child's too, in its immature roundness. But I did not see his face, for even through the Crystal Mask burned the Gorgon's glare.

  The blood stilled within me. A slow tide of ice crept with iron lethargy into my brain and cold wariness engulfed me.

  Only in the eyes of the Gorgon fire burned:

  Deadly radiations were there, what Earth-scientists call ectogenetic rays, but limited till now to the plant-world. Only the mad mutation that had created Edurn could have brought from hell such a nightstallion trick of biology.

  But I did not fall. I did not die. The radiations were filtered, made harmless, by the vibration-warping properties of the Mask I wore.

  I lifted the Wand of Power.

  Red fires blasted from it. Scarlet, licking tongues seared out toward Edurn.

  Lashes of flame tore at him, like crimson whips that burned and left bloody weals on that calm child-face.

  He drew back, the lance of his stare driving at me.

  With him, step by step, retreated Medeo. Toward the foot of the great stairway that led to Llyr's Window.

  The whips of fire seared across his eyes.

  He turned and, stumbling, began to run up the stairway. Medeo paused, his arms lifted in an uncompleted gesture. But in my face he read no softening.

  She, too, turned, and followed Edurn.

  I dropped the useless sword of steel. Wand in left hand, the Sword Called Llyr in my right, I followed them.

  As my foot touched the first step, a trembling vibration shook