In the Moons of Borea (4 page)

Suddenly the Texan felt the whole unstable surface moving beneath him. He held his breath, gazed straight down into the abyss, willed himself to remain perfectly still where he had fallen, and offered up a silent prayer to those lucky stars which had ever guided and protected him. The movement beneath him subsided, but not before he had moved out another inch or two over the lip of the crevasse.

He could hear the wolf-warriors cautiously approaching him from the rear but dared not turn his head to look back. If they took him a second time, then in all likelihood he'd end up in Ithaqua's clutches anyway. The pit was greatly preferable to that . . . but the fire of life burned bright in Hank Silberhutte, and it was not a spark easily extinguished.

Now he could feel fingers fumbling at his booted feet, could hear the hoarse breathing of the heathens where they crouched fearfully behind him, precariously perched on the shale. Then - impossible, miraculous sound - he heard a cry from close at hand:

`Hang on, Hank! Just another second!'

De Marigny?
De Marigny! . . .

Yet even as hope surged up in the Texan, in the same moment he felt the shale move again, and this time there was no stopping it. He slid forward, heard the frenzied shrieks of the redmen as they also began to slide, cursed his useless hands that were bound behind him, finally plummeted into air filled with falling shale fragments.

Only at that very last second did the Warlord close his eyes - for no man likes to see death hurtling upon him - but in the next moment he opened them again as his chin sank into fur and jarred against solid flesh beneath.

Slimly muscular legs wrapped about his waist like a vice as, almost in his ear, that same triumphant voice shouted: `Got you, Hank!'

And de Marigny did indeed have him! The Texan's descent, barely begun, was checked as the cloak took the strain and hovered back away from the sheer face. And not a moment too soon. .

Whirling, screaming bronze figures shot past in a thrashing of arms and legs. Then, slow but sure, the cloak bore the two Earthmen up, up into air dark with the pent-up fury of the storm, bitterly cold air that already seemed to carry a faint tang of ozone. A single tomahawk whirled harmlessly by as they sailed up and over the top of the ridge.

Before them lay a valley and beyond that a low mountain range. Already feeling the strain on his legs where they gripped the Texan's waist, de Marigny picked an open area
in
the valley and headed for it. It shouldn't take too long to fashion some sort of sling or seat for the extra passenger, then they would get on their way again.

For somehow de Marigny knew that time was now of the essence, that any attempt to retrieve the clock must for the moment be aborted, that hideous danger loomed above Borea's lowering sky, and only the plateau could offer any certain refuge. With one supporting arm about Silberhutte's neck he used his free hand to manipulate the studs that controlled the cloak's flight, urging as much speed as possible from that garment of the Elder Gods as it dropped down like a great bird into the valley .. .

Armandra, the Priestess of the Plateau, stood high above the white waste and stared down from the plateau with troubled eyes. She saw, tiny with distance, Ithaqua's pyramid throne and the circle of totems that ringed it. Her great green eyes surveyed Borea's bleakest region, the snow plain which not so very long ago had been a battleground in the War of the Winds,. but her mind was elsewhere.

In her present mood she was not fit company, and so she had sent her handmaiden, Oontawa, away. Even Tracy, the Warlord's sister, with all her assurances that her brother would come to no harm, had not been able to comfort her; neither Tracy nor her man, James Graywing Franklin, the modern Indian come from the Motherworld with Hank Silberhutte and his party. For the Woman of the Winds was filled with premonition, and the golden medallion she wore at her throat seemed to grow more chill against her milky skin with each passing moment — which was a strange sensation for a woman to whom even the most frigid temperatures made for no slightest measure of discomfort.

The trouble was that Hank Silberhutte was away from the plateau; that and the fact that lthaqua, Armandra's alien father, was due to return shortly to this wintry world. Aye, and knowing that the Wind-Walker must soon come, still the plateau's Warlord saw fit to keep his mind closed to her. Anger flared momentarily in Armandra's breast, and the small gusts of wind that came into this lofty aerie to play with the fringes of her fur jacket stood off, grew still, as the merest tinge of carmine flecked her great eyes.

But what use to be angry about the Warlord, this man from the Motherworid who ruled her heart as surely as she ruled the plateau? What use even to love him, when all he could think of in lthaqua's absence was to be out and exploring the woods and lands beyond the mountains? A fine father for their child, this man, whose wilful nature was already apparent in his offspring.

Then she softened. Ah, but the boy would have Hank's strength, too, and perhaps something of his mother's powers. Not too much of the last, Armandra secretly hoped, for powers such as these must eventually bring him into conflict with his monstrous grandsire, that hellish Old One who even now walked the winds between the worlds as he returned to Borea from undreamed-of wanderings.

She stood on a natural balcony of rock high on the plateau's face. Behind her a smoothly hewn corridor ran around the inside of the plateau's rocky perimeter. In the one direction it led to the mazy, multilevel tunnels, caves, dwellings, and stairways of the plateau's honeycombed interior, in the other to her own and the Warlord's private and luxurious chambers. Armandra started out between thick bars-which alone separated her from a vertiginous drop to the foot of the plateau. The bars were set wide apart, allowing the winds free entry, which was as well for they loved her and were her subjects.

Yet now, with a raised finger, she instantly hushed their humming and wailing to cock her head on one side in an attitude of listening.

Nothing .. .

Still she cautioned the winds in their play, clenching her fist tight about the medallion where she wore it, searching in its sensitive alloys for those dread vibrations which were ever precursory of Ithaqua's coming. And again . . . nothing. But in her heart Armandra knew that he must return very soon, and that before then the Warlord must be back in her arms.

And where
was
the Warlord? He had not opened his mind to her since finding the newcomer from the Motherworld staked out by the leech pool in the forest. Armandra frowned when she thought of that newcomer - of him, and of the strange vehicle which had brought him to Borea. In the Warlord's mind when he spoke to her, she had detected a hidden interest in that strange device, that 'time-clock' .. .

Armandra was no fool. She knew well enough that if one man could use such a machine to enter Borea, then that another might surely use it to leave this World of the Winds if he so desired. 'A gateway between all the worlds of space and time' - that was how her man had described de Marigny's machine: 'A vehicle of the Elder Gods.'

And again she frowned ..

She wondered who this stranger was, this Henri-Laurent de Marigny, of whom it seemed the Warlord had knowl-edge in the Motherworld. And did all men of Earth have such long, strange-sounding names? Suspicion and panic rose up in Armandra like a tide. What if he had come to Borea to take Hank away in his flying machine? What if they were already gone, away from Borea and out into the ether currents that wash between the worlds?

She trembled where she stood. No - she could not believe that - it wasn't so. But then where was he? Again she sent her thoughts out across the bleak white waste, threatening thoughts which she well knew she could never action:

`You - Warlord - father of my child. Do you not know my pain? Are you so heartless that my concern for you, which wounds me, means nothing? Explain yourself, husband, or I swear I'll send a wind to blow you off Borea forever!'

`Eh? What's this?' the
answer came back immediately, like joyous laughter in Armandra's
mind. `Do you greet me with lightnings, Armandra?'

`I greet you with - with my entire self, great fool! Oh, Hank - where have you been? What have you been doing, and why has your mind been
cl
osed to me for so long? Yes, and where are you now - and how long before you return?'

Armandra sent a host of mental questions surging out to him, demanding to know everything. And then, before he could put his own thoughts in order, she continued with yet more questions:
'And where is the newcomer's "time-clock" now? Do the wolf-warriors have it still? I hope so, for only one person has ever had the power to walk on the wind in Borea. I am that person, and I am jealous of my power.'

`Oh?'
the Warlord's thoughts finally found their way through her telepathic barrage.
'Is
that
so, wife? And what of your father's kite-men? - and what of Ithaqua himself?'

`The kites are crude,'
she answered,
'and Could not fly without my father's breath in their sails. As for the Wind-Walker: I was talking about people, human beings. Would you call Ithaqua a human being?'

`No,'
Silberhutte agreed,
'never that - he's totally inhuman. But in any case you're mistaken, Armandra. For you see, Henri also walks on the wind, and this flying cloak which bears him up is no clumsy kite!'
And he opened up his mind to let the Priestess of the Plateau see through his eyes where he soared along, high over the white waste, seated on a huge knot of leather at the end of hastily plaited thongs that were fastened to de Marigny's harness where he flew the cloak above
him.

`Do you see, Armandra? You're not the only one who can fly. De Marigny flies, too. Yes, and so do
if
Without malice, with love, Silberhutte's thoughts laughed in Armandra's mind.

For a moment she was dumbfounded by the vision his mind had opened for her. it was not the time-clock she had seen but some other device - a flying cloak. First a flying
coffin, now a flying cloak! And how many more surprises did this man from the Motherworld, this de Marigny, have in store? Armandra stood high in the plateau's wall and searched the horizon minutely for the peculiar flying shape which she knew must soon come into view, for the visitor in his flying cloak, who now bore her own man safely back to her.

As for your other questions,'
the Warlord continued,
try to answer them now. I went off with Henri - the two of us flying the cloak - to track down the wolf-warriors and get the time-clock back. Well, things went wrong and they caught me. Henri rescued me, saved my life. As to why I closed my mind to you: as long as there was any danger or the chance of danger I wouldn't let you see what was happening. I didn't want you leaving the plateau for my sake at a time when Ithaqua's return is imminent. And -

'Ithaqua!
she cut him off, her own thoroughly alarmed thoughts turning his aside.
'Oh, no -
NO!' And high on her rock-cut balcony she clutched at the medallion cradled in the hollow of her neck where it had begun to vibrate in sympathy with the Wind-Walker's approach.

`What
is it, Armandra?'
the Warlord anxiously questioned, half-knowing the answer even before she dared express it in thought.
'Is he ?'

'Yes, Hank,'
she cried, her thoughts awash with waves of fear - fear for her man out above the white waste, flying over Ithaqua's own territory at this very moment -
'he's coming back! Oh, Hank, hurry! My father comes, striding down the winds to Borea even now!'

Now she could actually see the fliers, a double dot in the sky over Ithaqua's temple, growing larger by the second. Silberhutte had closed his mind to her yet again - perhaps to urge more speed from the man who flew the cloak, more likely to isolate himself from Armandra's mind should her dread father appear on the scene too soon, when the Warlord's thoughts would probably be the last he would ever think — and so the Priestess of the Plateau scanned the far, misted horizon for a larger, darker shape.

Then her eyes detected a movement on the plain southwest of the plateau: the shape of a snow-ship sent out earlier to patrol the far western edge of the white waste and keep a lookout for Silberhutte's party as that band returned. Since the warriors who manned the ship would not return empty-handed, Armandra knew that Kota'na and the rest of her husband's chosen men must be aboard.

She shuddered. So now there would be two targets for Ithaqua when he came: the snow-ship and the flying cloak. Wasting no more time in useless fretting, ignoring the now insistent throbbing and humming of the medallion about her neck, Armandra closed her eyes and lifted up her bare arms until they were horizontal, pointing with her index fingers out over the white waste.

Slowly, eerily, her long red hair floated up over her head, drifting lazily, weightlessly above her. Her face became suffused with a carmine tinge that brightened steadily as it burned out from beneath closed lids. The bones of her skull began to show through her flesh like an X-ray picture, and twin carmine stars blazed where her great eyes had been. Now she herself drifted up from the rocky floor, long legged, straight-backed, regal as a materpiece of some fantastic macabre sculptor, her hair and head ablaze with an inner light.

A moment later, coming suddenly upon her from the corridor at her rear, an Eskimo watchkeeper from the roof of the plateau stopped dead in his tracks at the fearful sight of his sovereign in the act of commanding the winds. Seeing that Armandra was already aware of all that transpired, without daring to disturb her in any way, he bowed himself out backward and hurried back the way he had come.

His skin crawled with the sensation of unseen energies,
powers of air and space that concentrated now about Armandra, held as yet in check by her, ready to leap in obedience of her slightest command .. .

`Henri, we're in big trouble,' Silberhutte shouted up to the man who flew above him. De Marigny barely heard the other's words before they were snatched away by squalling winds which seemed to howl now from every corner of the sky. He held the cloak on course as steadily as he could and glanced down to see the Texan twisting this way and that where he hung suspended, scanning the sky and shaking his whipping hair out of his eyes.

`Is it Ithaqua?' de Marigny shouted back.

`Yes, and any time now. Look at the sky — there, to the east!'

De Marigny looked as bidden and saw a fantastic, freakish thing. The sky itself seemed acrawl with sentient,
deliberate
motion.

The clouds, white and grey and a mixture of both — heavy nimbostratus and wispy cumulus alike, from all strata of Borea's atmosphere — were being drawn, sucked toward some central point. It seemed to de Marigny that he gazed upon a huge whirlpool in the sky, a cauldron of boiling clouds. More strongly yet the winds howled and rushed, threatening now to drag the cloak and its passengers, too, toward that portentous and awe-inspiring aerial phenomenon.

In a matter of seconds the sky became still darker and angry, until it was as if a deep and dreadful twilight had fallen over Borea. Now the clouds jostled and careened above, blue-black and laced with brightly flick
ering trac
eries of electrical fire; while eastward, at the centre of the tumult, there seemed to be a great, continuous explosion taking place in the upper atmosphere. The clouds boiled down and outward from that point, like an inverted ocean hurled back by the emergence of a volcano of the upper air, except that where the cone should be, only an area of clear sky now showed.

The clear patch rapidly enlarged as, suddenly, the clouds took flight. They raced away from that spot, writhing and roaring their terror with thunder voices across Borea's tortured heavens, hastening one another with lashes of lightning. And finally de, Marigny and his passenger saw
why
the clouds fled in such chaotic panic .. .

For now he came, striding down from vaults of space as a giant descends an invisible stairway, falling out of the sky on great webbed feet, glaring down on the white waste through huge carmine stars that burned as the fires of hell themselves in his darkly demonic head.