The Reign of Wizardry (21 page)

Theseus leaped aside from the ponderous
rush of Talos, and his eyes flashed down at the little black seal cylinder, hung by the thin silver chain at his throat. If Ariadne had promised him that wizardry could not prevail against the holder of the talisman, she had warned him, too, not to trust its efficacy.

Talos saw his glance, paused to laugh and roar a mocking question: “Mortal, was Talos the fool?”

No, Theseus thought, he himself
had been, for Ariadne was a goddess of Crete. Her kisses must have been just one more move in the game. So must have been her gift of the black seal cylinder—and her lie that it was the wall of wizardry. Even her action in giving him the Falling Star when he went
into the Labyrinth, he saw now, had only served to bring him here, face to face with Talos and death.

Ariadne, he bitterly perceived,
had proved herself false. Mistress of wizardry herself, she had surely known that Snish was also Talos—yet had let him follow the little magician here, unwarned. Anyhow, Theseus told himself, woman or witch, her kisses had been sweet!

Talos rushed again, and Theseus struck with the Falling Star. The steel blade slashed a mighty fist; drops of liquid fire oozed from bright metal. The furious bellow
of Talos shook the columns and dislodged a shower of plaster fragments. He charged again.

Again Theseus leaped aside, beneath the flashing sword. The great fist just grazed his shoulder. But still the force of it staggered him, its heat blistered his skin. He stumbled back, wiping sweat out of his eyes.

The battle, he saw, could have only one ending.

His thrusts were merely painful. They inspired
a certain brief caution in Talos, and won him a few more breaths of life. But he could hope to inflict no mortal wound. Already he was tiring, staggering. And mounting rage was swiftly overwhelming the brass man’s caution.

Once his eyes flicked about, in desperate hope of aid or escape. But there was small possibility that his men could find him here—or aid him if they did. And Talos, huge yellow
eyes blazing cunningly, kept between him and the entrance. He was helplessly trapped.

Theseus tried to side-step the next flailing blow. But, drugged with weariness and dread, he moved too slowly. The searing edge of the tremendous fist just touched his temple—and sent him spinning, to fall against the base of a square black column.

Red pain obscured his vision. His breath was gone. Struggling
to drag himself upright, he found that the Falling Star was lost. He blinked his dimming eyes and saw the great foot of Talos come down upon the sword.

Hot brass hands reached down for the body of Theseus. He looked into the flaming eyes beyond them, and saw fearful, unexpected depths of rage and hate, and knew that those hands would twist his body like a rag, wringing out viscera and blood.
But still he couldn’t rise.

“Captain Firebrand!”

His ringing ears heard that urgent golden voice, and his
clearing eyes saw Ariadne. She stood at the black hall’s entrance, behind the brazen giant. The torch she carried flamed red against her hair, and green in her eyes, and white on her heaving breast.

“Captain—I lied to you!” Agony choked her. “Break the wall of wizardry!”

The bellow of
Talos was raucously deafening. Frightful rage twisted the metal face, and hate flamed hideous in the yellow eyes. The giant dropped on his knees, and both gigantic fists came crushing down.

Theseus knew that he must obey Ariadne—if he had time! He snatched the little black cylinder, snapped the silver chain. Frantically his eyes searched for anything he could use for a hammer, to shatter it.
But Talos knelt upon the sword, and there was nothing he could reach.

“Break it!” Ariadne was sobbing. “Do not fear for me. I have saved the secrets of my own essential science. Break it—
now
!”

Desperately, Theseus twisted at the talisman with his fingers. The hard black stone abruptly crumbled, as if turned to friable clay. It crushed into dust.

Talos stiffened, the great fists suspended.

Theseus heard a tremendous rumbling—like the bellow of some unimaginably monstrous bull, he thought, lost in some ultimate cavern. The floor pitched sharply.

“My daughter—” The great voice of Talos quavered queerly, a dying gong. “Why—”

The brass giant was tossed back across the heaving floor. Staggering, he struck a great square column. It buckled. Huge black stones came toppling down. The squared
capital, which must have weighed many tons, caught Talos on the shoulders.

Theseus seized his torch and the Falling Star. He came swaying to his feet. The floor still bucked like a deck in a storm. Dust choked him. Walls were crashing everywhere, and that tortured bull still bellowed underground.

Gripping the sword, he lunged toward the brass man. But Talos, pinned beneath the fallen capital,
was already dead—and changing!

The head protruding from below that immense black stone had become human again. But it was not the head of Snish. The face was round and pink and dimpled, crowned with fine white hair. The small blue eyes, even as they glazed, seemed
to twinkle against the torchlight in a ghastly mockery of merriment.

“Minos!”

Theseus stumbled back, the torch trembling in his
cold hands.

“Then what—what was the other? That old, old woman?”

Ariadne came slowly through the raining debris to his side. Though her cool green eyes were dry, she shook with stifled sobs. Quivering, she clung to him. As the bellowing in the earth sank away, he could hear her stricken voice.

“She was my mother. This—this was my father.”

Theseus kissed her dusty forehead, and turned her away,
and led her through the hail of plaster and broken stone out into the long central court. A lurid yellow pillar stood roaring in the night above shattered Knossos, for the long west wing was already burning.

Shuddering suddenly, Ariadne clung to Theseus.

“What’s happening?” he whispered. “What caused all this?”

“The wall of wizardry was a strong spell.” She paused to sob, but then her voice
was queerly calm. “It had guarded Knossos and my father from all harm, for many hundred years. It had been a dam against the stream of time. It had stopped needful change. Strains had grown against it, in the facts of history and in the very rocks beneath. The suspended laws of chance were waiting for revenge. When you broke the dam, you loosed the force of pent-up centuries—against my father’s throne!”

He peered at her, puzzled.

“Against yourself, too?”

“What do you think?” Her warm arms clung to him. Winking away her tears, she lifted her face. Beneath the blaze of burning Knossos, she remained white and young and lovely.

He shook his head uncertainly.

“Don’t you like my new sort of science?” Beneath the dying bellow of the earth and the roaring storm of flame, her low laugh was melodious
and faintly mocking. “You see, I have learned to apply the laws of nature in a slightly different way. My true science shall prevail, where all the old magic has failed.”

Hesitant, he almost pushed her away.

“But I did it all for you, Captain Firebrand.” Her golden voice sank huskily. “I had learned the new science from old
Daedalus, who dabbled in both kinds, but I broke the wall of wizardry
for you. I should do it again. Because you have taught me that human truth is more splendid—more powerful—than all the tricks and illusions of magic. I renounce the power of wizardry—or almost all of it—for you.”

Her serpent girdle was under the hand of Theseus. He felt it abruptly stiffen. Looking down, he saw that the malefic glitter had gone from the ruby eyes. He caught the dead metal, straightened
it, drew it away from her waist. Laying aside the Falling Star, he pulled her hard against him.

She kissed him bewitchingly.

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Legion of Space Series

1.
The Legion of Space
(1947)

2.
The Cometeers
(1950)

3.
One Against the Legion
(1967)

4.
The Queen of the Legion
(1983)

Humanoids Series

1.
The Humanoids
(1949)

2.
The Humanoid Touch
(1980)

Seetee Series (as by Will Stewart)

1.
Seetee Shock
(1949)

2.
Seetee Ship
(1951)

Undersea Trilogy (with Frederik Pohl)

1.
Undersea Quest
(1954)

2.
Undersea Fleet
(1956)

3.
Undersea City
(1958)

Saga of Cuckoo (with Frederik Pohl)

1.
Farthest Star
(1975)

2.
Wall Around A Star
(1983)

Starchild Trilogy (with Frederik Pohl)

1.
The Reefs of Space
(1964)

2.
Starchild
(1965)

3.
Rogue Star
(1969)

Novels

Golden Blood
(1933)

Realm of Wizardry
(1940)

Darker Than You Think
(1948)

Dragon’s Island
(1951) (also known as
The Not-Men
)

Star Bridge
(1955, with James E. Gunn)

The Dome Around America
(1955) (also known as
Gateway to Paradise
)

The Trial of Terra
(1962)

Bright New Universe
(1967)

Trapped in Space
(1968)

The Moon Children
(1972)

The Power of Blackness
(1975)

Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods
(1979)

Manseed
(1982)

Lifeburst
(1984)

Firechild
(1986)

Land’s End
(1988, with Frederik Pohl)

Mazeway
(1990)

The Singers of
Time
(1991, with Frederik Pohl)

Beachhead
(1992)

Demon Moon
(1994)

The Black Sun
(1997)

The Silicon Dagger
(1999)

Terraforming Earth
(2001)

The Stonehenge Gate
(2005)

Autobiography

Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction
(1984, updated 2005)

Collections

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume One: The Metal Man and
Others
(1999)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson,
Volume Two: Wolves of Darkness
(1999)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Three: Wizard’s Isle
(2000)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Four: Spider Island
(2002)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Five: The Crucible of Power
(2006)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Six: Gateway to Paradise
(2008)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson,
Volume Seven: With Folded Hands …
And Searching Mind
(2010)

The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Eight: At the Human Limit
(forthcoming)

Jack Williamson (1908 – 2006)

John Stewart ‘Jack’ Williamson was born in Arizona in 1908 and raised in an isolated New Mexico farmstead. After the Second World War, he acquired degrees in English at the Eastern New Mexico University, joining the faculty there in 1960 and remaining affiliated with the school for the rest of his life. Williamson sold his first story at the age of 20 – the beginning
of a long, productive and successful career, which started in the pulps, took in the Golden Age and extended right into his nineties. He was the second author, after Robert A. Heinlein, to be named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by SFWA, and by far the oldest recipient of the Hugo (2001, aged 93) and Nebula (2002, aged 94) awards. A significant voice in SF for over six decades, Jack Williamson
is credited with inventing the terms ‘terraforming’ and ‘genetic engineering’. He died in 2006.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © The Estate of Jack Williamson 1940

All rights reserved.

The right of Jack Williamson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Gollancz

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5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11187 5

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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