Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull (58 page)

Once a figure crossed the space from which the pulsing radiance poured. Hawkmoon and D'Averc stood stock still but were unseen. The silhouette vanished and they continued to advance.

Just as the stench assailed their nostrils, so the chanting began to offend their ears. There was something weirdly off-key about it, something that grated on their nerves. With their eyes half-blinded by the rosy light, it seemed that all their senses were under attack at once. But still they pressed on until they stood only a foot or two from the entrance.

They stared and they shuddered.

The hall was roughly circular, but with a roof whose height varied enormously. In this it resembled the out-ward appearance of the building, seeming to be less artificial than organic, rising and falling in a purely arbitrary way as far as Hawkmoon could tell. All the glassy walls reflected the rosy radiance so that the whole scene was stained red.

The light came from a place high in the roof and it drew Hawkmoon's wincing gaze upward.

He recognised it immediately, recognised the thing hanging there, dominating the hall. It was without doubt the thing that, with his dying breath, Mygan had sent him here to find.

"The Sword of the Dawn," whispered D'Averc. "The foul thing can have no part in our destinies, surely!"

Hawkmoon's face was grim. He shrugged. "That is not what we are here to take. He is what we have come for ..." and he pointed.

Below the sword were stretched a dozen figures, all on the whalebone frames, arranged in a semi-circle.

Not all the men and women on the frames were alive, but most were dying.

D'Averc turned his face away from the sight but then, his expression one of purest horror, forced himself to look back again.

"By the Runestaff!" he gasped. "It's barbaric!"

Veins had been cut in the naked bodies and from those veins the lifeblood pumped slowly.

The wretched on the bone frames were being bled to death. Those who lived had faces twisted in anguish and their struggles weakened gradually as their blood dripped, dripped into the pit below them, a pit that had been carved from the obsidian rock.

It was a pit, too, in which things moved, rising to the surface to lap at the fresh blood as it fell, then darting down again. Dark shapes moving in the deep pool of blood.

How deep was the pool? How many thousands had died to fill it? What peculiar properties did the pool contain so that the blood did not congeal?

Around the pool were clustered the Pirate Lords of Starvel, chanting and swaying, their faces lifted up to the Sword of the Dawn. Immediately below the sword, his body straining on the frame, Bewchard hung.

There was a knife in Valjon's hand and there could be no doubting the use he intended to make of it. Bewchard stared down at him with loathing and said something Hawkmoon could not hear. The knife glistened as if already wet with blood, the chanting grew louder and Valjon's hollow tones could be heard through it.

"Sword of the Dawn, in which the spirit of our god and ancestor dwells; Sword of the Dawn, which made Batach Gerandiun invincible and won us all we have; Sword of the Dawn, which makes the dead come alive, causes the living to remain living, which draws its light from the lifeblood of Men; Sword of the Dawn, accept this, our latest sacrifice, and continue to know that you shall be worshipped for all time while you stay in the Temple of Batach Gerandiun; then Starvel shall never fall! Take this thing, this enemy of ours, this up-start, take this Pahl Bewchard of that coarse caste who call themselves merchants!"

Bewchard spoke again, his lips writhing, but his voice could not be heard above the hysterical chanting of the other Pirate Lords.

The knife began to move toward Bewchard's body and Hawkmoon could not restrain himself. The battle-cry of his ancestors came automatically to his lips and he screamed the wild bird-cry and voiced the words:

"Hawkmoon! Hawkmoon!"

And he dashed forward at the gathered ghouls, at the noisome pit and its terrible denizens, the frames on which the dead and dying were stretched below the shining, awesome sword.

"Hawkmoon! Hawkmoon!"

The Pirate Lords turned, their chanting over. Valjon's eyes widened in rage and he cast back his robe to reveal a sword that was the twin to the one Hawkmoon carried. He cast the knife into the pit of blood and drew his blade.

"Fool! It is a truth that no stranger who enters Batach's temple ever leaves until his body is drained of its blood!"

"It is your body will bleed tonight, Valjon!" cried Hawkmoon, and he struck at his enemy. But suddenly there were twenty men blocking his way to Valjon, twenty blades against his one.

He lashed at them in fury, his throat clogged with the dreadful stench, his eyes dazzled by the light from the sword, catching glimpses of Bewchard struggling in his bonds. He stabbed and a man died, he slashed and another staggered back into the pit to be dragged down by whatever dwelt there, he hacked and another pirate lost a hand. D'Averc, too, did well and they held the pirates at bay.

For a while it seemed their fury would carry them through all the pirates to Bewchard and save him.

Hawkmoon hacked his way into the group and managed to reach the edge of the terrible bloodfilled pit, tried to cut Bewchard's bonds while he fought off the pirates at the same time. But then his foot slipped on the edge of the pool and he sank into it up to his ankle.

He felt something touch his foot, something sinuous and disgusting, withdrew as fast as he could and found his arms clutched by pirates.

He flung back his head and called: "I am sorry, Bewchard—I was impetuous—but there was no time, no time!"

"You should not have followed me!" Bewchard cried in misery. "Now you, too, shall suffer my fate and feed the monsters of the pit! Oh, you should not have followed me, Hawkmoon!"

"I AM AFRAID, friend Bewchard, that your gener-osity was wasted on us!"

Even in this predicament D'Averc could not resist the irony.

He and Hawkmoon were spread-eagled on either side of Bewchard. Two of the dead sacrificial victims had been cut down and they had replaced them. Below the black things rose and dived restlessly in the pool of blood. Above the light from the Sword of the Dawn cast a red glow throughout the hall, cast a glow upon the upturned, expectant faces of the Pirate Lords, upon Valjon's face as his brooding eyes stared with a kind of triumph at their stripped bodies which, like Bewchard's, had been daubed with peculiar symbols.

There were strange plopping noises below as the creatures in the pit swam about in the blood, waiting, no doubt, for the fresh blood to fall into their pool.

Hawkmoon shuddered and barely restrained himself from vomiting. His head ached and his limbs felt weak and incredibly painful. He thought of Yisselda, of his home and his efforts to wage war on the Dark Empire.

Now he would never see his wife again, never breathe the air of the Kamarg, never aid in the downfall of Granbretan, should that time ever come. And he had lost all that in a vain effort to save a stranger, a man he hardly knew, whose fight was remote and unimportant compared with the fight against the Dark Empire.

Now it was too late to consider those things, for he was going to die. He would die in a terrible way, bled like a pig, feeling his strength ebbing from him with every pulse of his heart.

Valjon smiled.

"You do not call out a bold battle-cry now, my slave friend. You seem silent. Have you nothing to ask me?

Would you not beg for your life—beg to be made my slave again? Would you not apologise for sinking my ship, for killing my men, for insulting me?"

Hawkmoon spat at him.

Valjon gave a slight shrug. "I wait for a new knife.

When that is brought and properly blessed, then I shall slit your veins here and there, making sure that you die very slowly, that you will be able to see your blood feeding the ones below. Your bloodless corpses will be sent to the Mayor of Narleen—Bewchard's uncle if I'm not mistaken—as evidence that we of Starvel do not expect to be disobeyed."

A pirate came through the hall and kneeled at Valjon's feet, offering him a long, sharp knife. Valjon accepted it and the pirate backed away.

Valjon now murmured words over the knife, looking often up at the Sword of the Dawn, then he took the knife in his right hand and raised it until its tip was almost touching Hawkmoon's groin.

"Now we shall begin again," said Valjon, and slowly he started to chant the litany Hawkmoon had heard earlier.

Hawkmoon tasted bile in his mouth as he tried to break free of the cords that bound him. The words droned on, the chanting rose in volume and in hysterical pitch,

". . . Sword of the Dawn, which makes the dead come alive, causes the living to remain living ..."

The tip of the knife stroked Hawkmoon's thigh.

". . . which draws its light from the lifeblood of Men..."

Absently, Hawkmoon wondered if, indeed, the rosy sword did derive its light, in some peculiar way, from blood. The knife touched his knee and he shuddered again, cursing at Valjon, struggling wildly in the bonds.

". . . know that you shall be worshipped for all time...".

Suddenly Valjon paused in his chanting and gasped, looking beyond Hawkmoon to a spot above his head.

Hawkmoon craned his neck back and gasped, too.

The Sword of the Dawn was descending from the roof!

It came slowly and then Hawkmoon could see that it hung in a land of web of metallic ropes—and there was something else in the web, now—the figure of a man.

The man wore a long helmet that hid all his face. His armour and trappings were all black and golden and at his side he bore a huge broadsword.

Hawkmoon could not believe it. He recognised the man—if man it was.

"The Warrior in Jet and Gold!" he cried.

"At your service," said a sardonic voice from within the helm.

Valjon snarled with rage and flung the knife at the Warrior in Jet and Gold. It clattered on his armour and fell into the pool.

The Warrior hung by one gauntleted hand to the pommel of the Sword of the Dawn and carefully cut at the thongs holding Hawkmoon's wrists.

"You—you desecrate our most holy object," Valjon said unbelievingly. "Why are you not punished? Our god, Batach Gerandiun, will have his vengeance. The sword is his, it contains his spirit."

"I know better," said the Warrior. "The sword is Hawkmoon's. The Runestaff saw fit, once, to use your ancestor Batach Gerandiun for its purposes, giving him power over this rosy blade, but now you have lost the power and Hawkmoon here has it!"

"I do not understand you?" Valjon said baffled.

"And who are you? Where do you come from? Are you—could you be—Batach Gerandiun?"

"I could be," murmured the Warrior. "I could be many things, many men."

Hawkmoon prayed that the Warrior would be finished in time. Valjon would not remain so dazed for-ever. He clung to the frame as his wrists came free, took the knife the Warrior handed him, began gingerly to cut at the thongs binding his ankles.

Valjon shook his head.

"This is impossible. A nightmare." He turned to his fellow pirates. "Do you see it, too—the man who hangs from our sword?"

They nodded dumbly. One of them began to run back towards the entrance of the hall. "I'll fetch men.

Men to aid us..."

Hawkmoon sprang then—sprang for the nearest pirate lord and grasped him by the throat. The man cried out, tried to wrench Hawkmoon's hands away, but Hawkmoon bent back his head until the neck snapped, swiftly drew the sword from the corpse's scabbard and let the body drop.

There he stood, naked in the glow from the great sword, while the Warrior in Jet and Gold cut at the bonds of his friends.

Valjon backed away, his eyes disbelieving. "It cannot be. It cannot be..."

Now D'Averc swung down to stand beside Hawkmoon, then Bewchard joined him. Both were unarmed and naked.

Nonplussed by their leader's indecision, the other pirates made no move. Behind the naked trio, the Warrior in Jet and Gold swung on the great sword, dragging it nearer to the floor.

Valjon screamed and grabbed for the blade, wrenching it from its web of metal. "It is mine! It is mine by right!"

The Warrior in Jet and Gold shook his head. "It is Hawkmoon's by right!"

Valjon clutched the sword to him. "He shall not have it! Destroy them!"

Now men were rushing into the hall, bearing brands, and the pirate lords drew their swords, began to advance on the four who stood by the pool. The Warrior in Jet and Gold drew his own great blade and swept it before him like a scythe, driving the pirates back, killing several.

"Take up their swords," he told Bewchard and D'Averc. "Now we must fight."

Bewchard and D'Averc did as the Warrior instructed and, following behind him, pushed forward.

But now it seemed that a thousand men filled the hall. They had gleaming eyes which lusted for their lives.

"You must take that sword from Valjon, Hawkmoon," shouted the Warrior above the din of battle.

"Take it—or we shall all perish!"

Again they were pressed back to the edge of the bloody pit and behind them there came a slobbering sound. Hawkmoon darted a look into the pit and cried out in horror. "They are rising from the pool!"

And now the creatures swam toward the edge and Hawkmoon saw that they were like the tentacled creature they had encountered in the forest, but smaller.

Evidently they were of the same breed, brought here centuries before by Valjon's ancestors, gradually adapting from an environment of water to an environment of human blood!

He felt a tentacle touch his naked flesh and he shuddered in cold terror. The peril at his back gave him extra strength and he drove with all his might at the pirates, seeking out Valjon who stood nearby, clutching at the Sword of the Dawn which engulfed him in its weird, red radiance.

Seeing his danger, Valjon moved his hand to the hilt of the sword, called out something and waited expectantly. But what he expected to happen did not occur and he gasped, running at Hawkmoon with the sword raised high.