Lord of the Hollow Dark (40 page)

He had been a fool, as so often before in his life, but this must be the last folly. In the chaos at the moment of Marina’s rescue, he could have run with Arcane into the labyrinth. But he had gone the other way.

There had been no one between him and the passage to the outer door of the Weem. Outside that door lay the pile of weapons. He had scuttled down that passage, proud of himself, and had tugged at the bronze door. It had not been locked. He had opened it.

An acolyte in a fly-mask had been standing just outside, and in his hands had been a shotgun: Apollinax’s precaution that Sweeney had not anticipated.

“Sorry,” Sweeney had said, heartily meaning it. He had turned about and scuttled back: there might yet be time for flight into that dread labyrinth, what with Apollinax having been knocked down and his crew left temporarily leaderless. But the acolyte with the shotgun had followed him in. And at the other end of the passage, Pereira had tackled him.

With the shotgun pointed at his middle, Sweeney had not resisted. They had bound him savagely with ropes, and flung him against a wall, where he could see nothing. But he had heard Apollinax, back on his feet, say, “He shall be unmanned soon, and then you shall rend him.”

The Master had collected himself after his tumble, for next Sweeney had heard him calling out for silence, and the disciples and the acolytes had obeyed, and he guessed that Apollinax had got into the stone pulpit.

“The sacrifice shall be offered,” the Master had shouted to them, “for a woman must be given unto the Lord of This World, and at once. Take the Raven!”

What had followed, Sweeney never would be able to expunge from his memory, all his life-which might be very brief. All through that invisible agony at his back, so mercifully unseen, Sweeney had writhed as if the nails had been driven through his own hands and feet.

“Master, Master, I love you!” he had heard Grishkin begging.

And Apollinax had answered, “I know that too well, and so I crucify you.”

Grishkin’s shrieking, at a pitch he had thought impossible for any human being, had risen above even the howling of her mob of tormentors. Yet in a moment when her voice had failed, he had heard some disciple, perhaps de Bailhache, ask with a bubbling laugh, “Master, may we put torches to her now?” And Apollinax had said, “Do whatever you will with her.”

Perhaps she was dead by this time. The exulting frantic babble of disciples and acolytes blotted out her moaning, if she still moaned. Next they would come for Apeneck Sweeney—though it must be far past midnight, appointed for the Timeless Moment, the moment of the damnation of all. No matter: Apollinax must get rid of Sweeney, and for that the first day of Lent would be as good as Ash Wednesday.

Even if it should have come to pass that Sweeney had gone free from this, he never would have forced himself upon a woman again—not after having been present at the destruction of Grishkin. Apollinax’s sickle, and Apollinax’s crew, would make that abstinence certain; but even had he escaped, what had been done there to Grishkin had burnt the lustful brute out of him. In years past, he had been in his little nasty way what these damned ones had been this night in their diabolical final way. He would make no more war upon women. He had been purged of his coward’s vice-too late.

He was dimly aware that consciousness was slipping from him, after he had been compelled to suffer bound through the whole torment of Grishkin. He was in that cave pool again, sinking, sinking, sinking; and he was glad to drown.

“Sweeney,” someone was whispering to him, “sit up, man.” He tried to lie drowned at the bottom of the pool, but that was not permitted. Someone propped him against the wall. He felt cold steel pass along his wrists, and he opened his eyes: it would be Apollinax with the sickle.

It was not Apollinax. It was Coriolan, his friend Bain, and Coriolan with his little black knife was cutting the ropes that bound Sweeney’s wrists and ankles.

“Can you stand up?” Coriolan demanded urgently, chafing Sweeney’s ankles. “Try, old chap, try!”

Sweeney did try, and collapsed.

“Here, take this!” Coriolan thrust an electric torch into the bosom of Sweeney’s shirt. “They’re at the center of the Weem; go down to where we found that water...”

But now the damned had seen Coriolan, and a howl rose, and all of them were turning away from the mutilated thing on the timber cross and rushing toward Coriolan and Sweeney.

Apollinax, the sickle in his hand, came quite close up to them, though seeming to hesitate, and the blood-spattered crowd of disciples and acolytes thronged round their Master. Fly-Mask with the shotgun stood beside Apollinax.

“What are you?” Apollinax asked Coriolan. Perhaps Apollinax really did not know the answer, any more than Sweeney did.

The tall man in the kilt stood between Sweeney and that mob of the damned. “A sinner,” he said, “but you can’t do anything to me.”

Still Apollinax hesitated, perhaps because Coriolan had the little knife ready in his fist, perhaps because he did not know with certitude the nature of his adversary. “You’re a dead thing,” the Master told Coriolan, “and you heard my summons.”

“I was sent, not summoned,” Coriolan answered, “and sent to block you.”

“You’re a pawn, and we can kill you.” The Master gripped the sickle.

In the face of all these beast-people, Coriolan’s hearty laugh rang out, and even Apollinax drew back a little. “Why, I’ve died more than once already, I think, whatever death is, and that’s my punishment, and that’s my reward. Now clear out, for you’re not to have this man.”

He turned his head slightly, whispering to Sweeney, “Run for it, old man, run for it hard while I tussle, and don’t look back. I’ll be right enough-been through this sort of thing before, and worse. I wouldn’t have it any other way. One man’s pain, another man’s pleasure, you know. Tell Marina I learnt my trade in the General’s school. Be off now, Sweeney, up the pilgrims’ path, in more ways than one. On the double!”

But Sweeney’s legs would not obey him, and he lingered, propped against the wall.

The mob of the damned ones, imprisoned here forever in their Timeless Moment of horror, still wavered about them, eager to destroy, fearing to touch the unknown. “You’re dead,” Apollinax had started to say, “and have no power...”

But Coriolan shouted, a shout loud enough to have waked the fleshly ruin on the timber cross, and dashed at Apollinax, tumbling him over. “Good at need!” he was roaring. Then twenty-four pairs of hands were clutching at Coriolan, and he was striking heavy blows with knife and fist and foot, falling, rising again, shouting, trampling on some, tossing one in the air, Samson at Gaza.

And still Sweeney could not stir.

“Take him, take him,” Apollinax was sobbing, “and put him on the altar!”

Coriolan had drawn the whole mob away from Sweeney, and had cleared a ring round himself. “Run for it, now or never, friend!” he bellowed.

From the ring of the damned about Ralph Bain, Coriolan, a shotgun muzzle thrust out, and there came a thundering blast.

Coriolan fell, for the charge had struck him in the middle. Yet they did not seize upon him. They scattered, wailing.

And Sweeney could see where Coriolan had fallen in his blood. But the shape there was shimmering, translucent, smokelike. Then it vanished altogether. No corpse lay upon the floor.

At that terror, Sweeney ran as if a spirit himself. Wailing like the others, he rushed into the second chamber of the cave, and through that chamber, and into the beginning of the labyrinth. He blundered on in blackness, bruising himself, slipping, falling to his knees, scrambling up, groping, sobbing like a child, hoping to lose himself in the heart of the Purgatory.

Minutes might have passed, hours might have passed; days might have passed; Sweeney could not tell, in this place of Time the Devourer. He found himself at the lip of that pit or gulf, with the plank still across it.

How had he contrived to get here? He had gone this far within the labyrinth twice before, and the Archvicar had drilled the clues into his head: “Pass the first gap on the left; pass the first gap on the right; take the round-headed doorway second on the right...” No, Sweeney couldn’t tell how he had blundered here, but at some time during his flight he must have remembered the little torch, for now he held it, switched on, in his hand.

Yes, this was the gulf they had crossed, surely. Yet was it? For Sweeney heard the sound of rushing water, almost at his feet. That pit or channel had been dry, he recalled, when they had reached that spot before.

However that might be, nothing was possible for him but to cross the pit by the plank. Having done so, he lay down on his belly and peered into the crevasse, holding his torch into the mystery below. He could just make out the glimmer of flowing water. It had not been there earlier. Was he mad, or in a coma, dreaming while they tormented his body on the butcher-table altar?

He stumbled on, and came presently to the second barrier, the body of silently flowing water-or to the place where it should have been. His torch showed that this must be the place of their farthest penetration earlier; there was that seam of coal, barring the way.

But now the underground river had vanished, and in its place was a channel about eight feet deep, with only a trickle, comparatively, at its bottom. This must be a dream maze!

He sat here on the lip of the drained channel, his brain empty, he unable to go forward, to go backward. Then he began to hear the knocking.

Knock knock knock. Knock knock knock. Hoo-ha, hoo-ha, hoo-ha! Nothing mattered now. The footfalls came very close, passing within two or three feet of him, it seemed, and the knocking on the stone walls was terribly loud.

Nothing mattered now. He turned his torch beam upon the passage through which he had come. There was nothing at all to be seen, though the knocking continued; then it began to diminish, to recede, and went away up the passage. He had been ignored. He was nothing to the dead. And these dead, so long dust, were nothing to him, now that the terror of Coriolan’s vanishing obsessed him.

He may have sat there a vast while, or for only seconds: it did not matter. Then—

“Swee-ney!” a low voice said. He was startled out of his apathy: this was worse, far worse, than the knocking, this direct address. “Swee-ney!” it came again, from below him, as if a demon were calling. He had been dangling his legs over the edge of the channel of the vanished burn. Something clutched his right ankle.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” At that touch, a cry burst out of Sweeney, beyond his control, and he snatched away his ankle, and dropped his little torch into the darkness below. But a light came up out of the channel, and hands fastened on his shoulders.

“Get away, get away!” Sweeney squealed, restored to vigor by this new fear, fending off the thing with his hands as if it had been some huge spider. He leaped to his feet, but a beam shone in his face.

“Swee-ney!” someone repeated, insistently. The beam was turned back upon the torch’s holder, to show the face of the speaker.

It was Phlebas. “Swee-ney!” The little man was pointing to handholds in the stone, below, pointing and beckoning.

They must have stationed Phlebas as a sentinel here, or else sent him this far in search of Coriolan and Sweeney. He followed Phlebas down into the channel, where the water ran only so high as their ankles, and down under a thick stratum of coal. Some awareness was coming back into Sweeney’s head; even some faint hope. They turned to their left, ascending a few steps; and Sweeney saw the light of torches in a big rock chamber. They must be at the center of the Weem.

Melchiora and Lady Fergusson were bent over Manfred Arcane, who had been lying unconscious for two hours. He seemed to stir slightly, unless Marina had mistaken a shifting of the torch beam for a motion of the man’s hand. There came noises from behind Marina, and she swung round in the dread that it might be Apollinax. But the torch showed her Brasidas, with Sweeney.

“Coriolan, Captain Bain, where is he?” she asked, all shaking.

Sweeney’s lips moved, but nothing came out for a time. She cried, “Do they have him?”

Sweeney put his hands to his forehead. “No, no, they couldn’t hold him. But he won’t be coming here. He told me to tell you that he learnt his trade in the General’s school.” Something like a sobbing groan came out of Sweeney.

She was about to seize him and shake everything out of him, when they heard Arcane utter something. They knelt about the man on the floor.

Arcane mumbled mostly, but one sentence came from him distinctly: “You are foul!”

Then his right hand began to make chopping movements. “Manfredo, Manfredo!” Melchiora held him, cooing at him in Italian.

Manfred Arcane, once the Archvicar, opened his eyes; sat up; shook his head several times, as if to clear it; blinked in the torchlight that was focused upon him; stretched his arms.

“Strange,” Arcane muttered, “wonderfully strange. The virtue drained out of me-the vitality, the energy, whatever animates the soul and the body-so swiftly. Was I gone from you long? And where did I go? Nothing quite like that ever came over me before, do you know. Strain, perhaps? The heavy air here? Do I dodder?”

Melchiora was embracing him, whispering in his ear. But he put her aside gently, and rose to his feet.

“Such a dream,” Marina heard him say, “horrid, quite horrid, quite real and vigorous: but not unnatural in this place, I suppose. I dreamed that I was drained of blood, but rose again; and then I destroyed Apollinax with a
labrys.
Ugh! Give me a torch, if you will.”

He flashed it round. “Sweeney! You’ve come through: I felt sure you were man enough for that. Where’s Coriolan?”

“They don’t have him,” Sweeney mumbled. “He’s gone away; they couldn’t hold him.”

“Gone into the Lodging?”

“Gone into nothing. He won’t be here. I can’t think of a way to tell you...”

“Don’t try just now, Sweeney. I guess; I suspected it from the moment he came. Tell us later, for this isn’t the place or the time for it. Ah, Marina, don’t cry; it couldn’t have been otherwise; he’s not to be pitied, not by you and me. Something like this had happened to him in Ireland, I think, some time before he came here-if one can speak of ‘time’ in such a connection; and before that, years before, defending a woman.... I knew his family a little. Would you have guessed that he was born only two or three years after I was? Not from his appearance, would you? That first roused my suspicions: he hadn’t aged. Why pity him? There’s nothing pitiable in dying a hero’s death over and over. The ancients would have said that he was favored of the gods above all men. No demon sent him to us.”