The Sword Bearer (30 page)

An hour or so later, assisted by John and Bjorn, he went into the courtyard. Vixenia and Bjornsluv accompanied them, and Oso lay down nearby to observe. It was late afternoon, and the courtyard was deserted. Seven stone markers now were arranged in a circle around the Scunning Stones, placed there in honor of those who had perished in the battle. John had wept over two that had places of special honor—the stones for Folly, king of donkeys, and Aguila, sovereign over the eagles—the two who had given their lives to rescue the Sword Bearer.

Mab sat on the well to rest. His face was gray, and his long white hair fell lifelessly over his shoulders. But his eyes burned with a strange urgency. "Doubtless you all feel that through the courage of John and myself, by the valor of Aguila and Folly, to say nothing of your planning and valiant fighting, you have all battled well against terribly superior odds. Is it not so?"

Bjorn nodded but said nothing. Mab continued, "I now intend to show you that the odds are different from what you think." He raised his staff high. "Show them, Changer! Show them what mortal eyes so rarely see!"

The staff vibrated, and blue light began to flash from it

The scene around them faded. They seemed to stand on a plain, before a gate in a wall that almost reached the skies. And from the skies two seraphim descended, shining blue and tall as the walls themselves to stand as guards on either side of the gate. The earth shook as they reached the ground. Their faces and robes were molded in blue flame, while their voices were the thunderous notes of a vast pipe organ, as they cried, "See then, if you have eyes to see!"

It took John's breath away. Bjorn and Bjornsluv stood beside him, their faces white, their eyes wide and staring, while Oso crouched on the ground hiding his head beneath his forepaws. And as they watched, a legion of angelic beings, flaming blue and armed with swords and whips of light, descended with claps of thunder to take their places on either side of them. The ground was shaken into waves and ripples by their ponderous weight and solidity. John and the king and queen stumbled against one another and fell in a heap together.

"Stand then and see what the Changer is doing!" Mab cried from his perch on the well. "Behold what hereafter was hidden from you. Stand and see—so that after my death you will not forget!"

Still shaking, the members of the little group rose to their feet and stared.

"I have seen things no mortal eye should look upon," said the Matmon king. "I spoke foolish things with my mouth and I am ashamed."

The company huddled together, awed by the gigantic size of the wall and gate, overwhelmed by the flaming giants whose voices were the thunder of cataracts. But John looked around him to make sure there was nothing he missed. And as he did so he caught sight of another wonder.

"Look," he cried excitedly, "look at those clouds in the south! I bet we're in for a real storm. Gosh—I've never seen such clouds!"

Glowering dark brown and ominous, the clouds from the direction of the swamp were scrambling madly upward, boiling ever high to tower miles above the earth. They began to move slowly and menacingly toward the island. John had always enjoyed seeing shapes in clouds—heads and faces, animals and benign creatures of mythology. But now he found himself Struggling
not
to see. For the shapes in the clouds were terrifyingly real.

"They're just clouds," he muttered fiercely to himself. "They're only water vapor. There aren't any
things
in the clouds. It's only a storm, an ordinary thunderstorm."

But his eyes refused to obey him. Horrified, he could not prevent himself from seeing a gargantuan black serpent whose coils wound and unwound in a slow orgy of desire. John shuddered and tried to turn away. But his eyes were trapped.

"They're clouds, only clouds!" He was repeating the words aloud now, his voice cracked and his throat dry.

One of the clouds was sprouting wings that covered a quarter of the copper sky. Between the wings a lion's head appeared. Limbs pushed outward and terrifying claws were thrust into space. "Oh no! A
griffin!"
The words that came from his throat seemed to belong to someone else.

One by one clouds boiled themselves into monstrous shapes. Imperious phoenixes looked down disdainfully on the island. From the center a sinuously writhing dragon emerged, breathing red fire and lashing the forests of the mainland into flames with his tail.

Jagged lightning flashed from the clouds. But it was lightning the like of which John had never seen. For there was no light in the lightning. Afterward John called the flashes
darking
or
darkening,
for they seemed like jagged cracks which split the sky to reveal the terror of blackness beyond it.

Hot stirrings of air began to scorch his face. His neck was aching, his head strained back. With the roar and rush of mighty winds, the flaming blue seraphim and the host of angelic beings rose to meet them, swelling as they rose to match the size of the dragon. Hot wind flung John on his back. He caught a glimpse of Bjorn lying on the ground across the body of Bjornsluv. He wondered if they were dead. Vixenia cowered on the ground beside Oso. Only Mab remained at ease, seated on the well, his ancient, wrinkled face alight with exultation.

Then John's head was split by a peal of thunder of a kind he had never heard before and would never hear again. Mab was hurled on the ground beside him as the flaming army engaged its foes. Flashes of red lightning blinded him so that he could no longer see what was happening. His body was tossed to and fro by hot wind and the terrifying shaking of the earth. His ears were deafened by screams, thunderclaps and roarings as the battle raged about him. Then with startling suddenness it ended.

He sat still. After several moments he struggled to his feet and looked up. The clouds, still dark and ominous, were clouds and nothing more, clouds that were hurrying away from the island in the direction of the swamp, shrinking as they went. Behind them in a glory of blue light the angelic hosts were driving them, lashing them with awesome whips of light Soon they were lost from view.

One by one the members of the little company picked themselves up. King Bjorn and his queen were quite unharmed. The giant walls and gate could no longer be seen. The tower, the keep and the castle walls were in their accustomed places. They were once more surrounded by the familiar courtyard.

No one spoke. The vision had numbed their brains and stilled their tongues. The king and queen moved silently into the keep. Oso and Vixenia disappeared from view, and John and Mab were alone.

It was then that John noticed that something had changed. The double doors to the tower, which had been closed by magical powers since first the tower was spoken into being, were now standing widely ajar.

The wrinkles on Mab's forehead gathered themselves into a frown. For several minutes he stared through the open doors at the died floor inside the tower.

"What can it mean?" he mused. "Surely something of great moment is about to take place. I saw nothing of this in my dreams. Or can it be that. . ." He paused and his frown deepened. "Can it be that something is direly amiss?"

With John's help he moved toward the doors. "Let us close them," he said. The doors were iron embossed and of solid oak. He leaned against the doorpost as John seized one of them and pushed. But it might just as well have been set in cement. It could not be shifted.

A shadow crossed Mab's face. "My own strength fails," he said quietly. "Would that I could assist you. But death claws at my bones."

John felt a stab of fear. He used his shoulder as a sort of battering ram, and then heaved with his back and his thighs, but his efforts were unavailing. "You're not dying," he panted fiercely. "It's the door. It just won't budge!"

Mab shook his head wonderingly. "Then something mysterious is afoot," he said. John creeped cautiously inside the tower, peering at the stone walls of an empty room that formed the ground floor. Its high ceiling was crisscrossed with massive beams. The stones that formed the glass-smooth walls were irregular in shape, fitting together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with only hairline cracks to show where one stone joined another.

Two diamond-paned windows admitted patterned shafts of afternoon sunlight on the floor. A stone stairway led up the lefthand wall to an opening in the ceiling. A second door which must have led down to the wharf was closed.

Mab followed John into the room and stared in wonder at the cunning marvel of the closely fitted stones. "No human hand put these together," he said softly.

"This place is prickling with magic," John replied.

"Yes," the seer breathed, "and the power you sense is putting life and strength into my bones! It is not magic. It is the Changer's power."

For several minutes they moved along the wall, fingering the smooth stones and trying in vain to feel the joints, commenting from time to time on the workmanship. Mab's body straightened. His step grew firmer as the minutes slipped by. Imperceptibly the room had grown slowly darker, until at last John said, "It must be getting late. It's nearly dark"

The seer turned and strolled to the window. "It is no natural darkness," he stated after a moment "The Mystery of Abomination has changed its custom. Three weeks yet remain to full moon. Yet it is descending on the courtyard. This bodes ill for the cause."

Quickly John joined him. Darkness grew even blacker outside until they stared at unrelieved obscurity. "What now?" John muttered grimly. They did not have long to wait to find out.

A vertical line of light appeared like a crack in the blackness. Slowly it broadened to reveal the deadly pallor of the Lord of Lunacy. John stared at it with revulsion.

The white specter stood motionless for a full minute, its face creased by a frozen sneer. Slowly the skull began to split down the middle, and through the opening there poured out first smoke, then tongues of flame. A red snout thrust itself from inside the skull and a crowned dragon head emerged. Then six more heads erupted from the skull. As the pale body of the Lord Lunacy shriveled like a cast-off garment, a red and scaly dragon emerged to stand in seven-headed splendor in the courtyard.

The darkness was gone, and John gasped as many-hued flashes of late afternoon sunlight sparkled from the myriad jewels adorning the scales of the dragon's long and sinuous body. It coiled and uncoiled itself like the body of a snake, the tail lashing the ground in fury. And as it writhed and lashed, it grew, until it had stretched to sixty or seventy feet, the four scaly feet tearing the green turf with their cruel claws. Then the crowned heads squeezed themselves close to one another and the dragon moved purposefully toward the open door of the tower.

"It had only one head in the Tower of Darkness," John breathed. "At least I only saw one."

"Quick!" hissed Mab, seizing John by the arm, "Up the stairs! Large as it seems it can still enter the tower."

"Can you make it?" John asked. Yet even as he stared he could see that the old man was possessed with something like his old vigor. They quickly climbed the steps and emerged in a broad corridor that led them past an open door to another staircase. This too they climbed, to arrive at a second landing where another door lay open to an empty room. They waited and listened at the top of the stairway, stifling their breathlessness so that they could hear what was happening below.

First came the hideous sound of fire being breathed from seven pairs of nostrils. Then came the scraping of scales against the doorpost. John said, "Let's hide in the room and close the door. I'm sure it doesn't know we're here. Anyway it's too big to get through the door." But as they tried to close the door behind them it proved as stubborn and resistant as the main doors.

"The Garden Room!" the seer gasped, holding a trembling hand to his head. "It is our only hope."

John had no time to think for Mab pushed him toward the stairs. "Go quickly," he said. "I will follow." Afterward John marveled at the astonishing strength that emerged from the seer.

The third staircase angled to open on yet another corridor and a third open door. For a moment the sight of what lay beyond the door checked them, for it was as though on the other side no room existed. Instead an open hillside sloped down to a sunlit valley hundreds of feet below them.

"What. . ."John gasped.

But the seer pushed him through the doorway. They stumbled down the hillside to where a clump of bushes afforded a hiding place. Flinging themselves on the ground they lay behind the bushes and peered at the doorway from which they had emerged.

Its frame stood alone and unsupported. Behind it the hillside rose. Through it they could still see the corridor of an open room in the tower. Bewilderingly a blue sky arched the heavens above the door. The tower itself was nowhere to be seen.

They had little time to marvel at the mystery of the Garden Room and the magic of the doorway, for within seconds seven crowned dragon heads began to squeeze themselves through it. The long scaly body and tail followed, and rapidly the mighty creature was growing to an even greater length. Then it stretched its wings and swept voluptuously into the air.

"It's a flying four-legged snake with seven heads," John marveled. Slowly it circled to a great height. Then breathing fire it hurled itself toward the valley below. Relief settled over them. They were safe—for the moment at least.

But the seer's sense of urgency did not permit them to rest. "I know it is the Changer's business, but it can be up to no good," he told John grimly. "The Regents must be where the creature is headed. Come. We cannot fly but we must make what speed we can. Let us see what is afoot"

For two and a half hours they hurried stumblingly in the direction of the valley floor, the seer swaying drunkenly from time to time. Then their way was blocked by a dense copse. "Around—or through?" Mab panted. His face was gray and wet with perspiration. The strength he had gathered from the tower seemed to be leaving him. Then, with all the urgency of his being, he said, "We must go through. Follow me."