The Sword and the Stallion - 06 (13 page)

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'Then give me the bag which contains your power.'' The decaying hand reached toward Calatin, but Calatin replaced the little bag in his robe and smiled. "The power must be transferred willingly, as you know, or it will cease to be. I must first be sure, Sactric, that you will complete that part of the bargain which is yours."

Sactric said bleakly:’
^’
We give our word rarely, we of Malibann. When we give it, we are bound to keep it. You requested our help first in destroying what remains of the Mabden race and then in imprisoning the Fhoi Myore in an illusion from which they will be unable to escape, leaving you free to use this world as you feel fit. You have agreed to bring us Goffanon and to help us leave this plane forever. Well, you have brought Goffanon and that is good. We must trust that you have the power to help us depart this world and find another, pleasanter place in which to live. Of course, if you do not succeed in that, we shall punish you. You know this, also."

"I know it, Emperor."

' 'Then give me the bag. ‘'

Calatin showed considerable reluctance to comply as he once more drew out the leather bag, but at last he handed it to Sactric, who accepted it with a hiss of pleasure.

' 'Now Goffanon, listen to your master Calatin!" Calatin began, while the dwarf's friends looked on in misery. "You have a new master, now. It is this great man, this emperor, this Sactric." Calatin stepped forward and took Goffanon's huge head in his jewelled fingers and turned it so that the eyes stared directly at Sactric. "Sactric is your master now and you will obey him as you have obeyed me."

Goffanon's words were slurred, the speech of an idiot, but they heard him say:

"Sactric is my master now. I will obey him as I have obeyed Calatin."

"Good!" Calatin stepped back with a look of considerable self-importance on his handsome face. "And now, Emperor Sactric, how do you intend to dispose of my two enemies here?" He indicated Corum and Ilbrec. "Would you allow me to devise a means . . . ?"

"I am not yet sure I wish to dispose of them," said Sactric. "Why slaughter good animals before they need to be eaten?"

Corum saw Ilbrec pale a little at Sactric's choice of phrase and he, himself, found the words distressing. Desperately, he tried to devise a method of capturing Sactric, at very least, but he knew that Sactric was able to enter and leave his mummified corpse at will and to invoke lethal illusions at a moment's whim. There was little either he or Ilbrec could do but pray that Calatin would not get his will.

Calatin shrugged. "Well, they must die at some time. Corum, in particular . . ."

"I will not discuss the question until I have tested Goffanon." Sactric returned his attention to the Sidhi smith.' 'Goffanon. Do you remember me?"

"I remember you. You are Sactric. You are now my master," rumbled the dwarf, and Corum groaned to see his old friend brought so low.

"And do you remember that you were once here before, on this island you call Ynys Scaith?"

"I was on Ynys Scaith before." The dwarf closed his eyes and moaned to himself. "I remember. The horror of it . . ."

' 'But you left again. Somehow you overcame all the illusions we sent you and you went away
..."

"I escaped."

"But you took something with you. You used it to protect yourself until you could leave. What became of that which you took?"

"I hid it," said Goffanon. "I did not wish to look at it." "Where did you hide it, dwarf?"

'‘I hid it." Goffanon's face now had upon it an idiot grin. ''I hid it, Lord Sactric."

"That thing was mine, as you know. And it must be returned to me.
I
must have it again, ere we leave this plane. I shall not leave without it. Where did you hide it, Goffanon?"

"Master, I do not remember."

Sactric's voice now had anger in it and almost, Corum thought, desperation. "You must remember!" Sactric wheeled, pointing a finger from which dusty flesh dropped even as he spoke. ‘’Calatin! Have you lied to me?"

Calatin was alarmed. His air of complacency had disappeared to be replaced with a look of anxiety.' 'I swear to you, Your Majesty. He must know. Even if it is buried in his memory, the knowledge is there!"

Sactric now placed his claw-like hand upon Goffanon's broad shoulder, shaking the dwarf.' 'Where is it, Goffanon? Where is that which you stole from us"

"Buried
..."
said Goffanon vaguely. "Buried, somewhere.
I
put it in safety. There was a charm to ensure that it could never be found again, save by me . . ."

"A charm? What kind of charm?"

"A charm
..."

"Be more specific, slave!" Sactric's voice was high; it shook. "What did you do with . . . What did you do with that which you stole from me?'' It had become plain to Corum that the Emperor of Malibann had no wish to reveal to the others what Goffanon had taken and it began to dawn on the Vadhagh prince that if he listened carefully he might discover some weakness in the apparently invulnerable sorcerer.

Again Goffanon's answer was vague. "I took it away, master. She . . ."

"Be silent!" Sactric wheeled to address Calatin again. The wizard looked ill. ' 'Calatin, upon your word that you would deliver Goffanon to me I helped you make the Karach, I helped you infuse life into it, as you desired, but now I find that you deceived me
..."

' 'I swear to you, Lord Sactric, that I did not. I cannot explain the dwarf's inability to answer your questions. He should do all you tell him without hesitation
..."

"Then you
have
deceived me—and deceived yourself, moreover. Something has died in this Sidhi's brain—your magic has proved unsubtle. Without his secret we cannot leave this plane— would have no desire to leave this plane. Therefore our bargain ends
..."

"No!" shrieked Calatin, rising, seeing his own terrible death suddenly appearing in Sactric's cold, blazing eyes. "I swear to you—Goffanon has the secret—let me speak to him . . . Goffanon, listen to Calatin. Tell Sactric what he wishes to know
..."

And Goffanon's voice answered flatly:

"You are not my master now, Calatin."

' ‘ Very well,'' said Sactric
.'
‘ You must be punished, wizard
..."

Then, in a panic, Calatin cried out: "Karach! Karach! Destroy Sactric!"

The hooded figure rose swiftly, tearing off its outer robe and drawing a great sword from a scabbard at its belt. And Corum shouted in fear at what he saw.

The Karach had a Vadhagh face. It had a single eye and another covered by a patch. It had a hand which shone like silver and another made of flesh. It wore ornate armor almost exactly the same as Corum's own. It had a conical cap with a peak and engraved over the peak in Vadhagh lettering was a name: "Corum Jhaelen Irsei" which means Corum, the Prince in the Scarlet Robe.

And the Scarlet Robe, Corum's name-robe, flapped on the Karach's body as it strode toward Sactric.

And the Karachi's face was alike in every major detail to Corum's.

And Corum knew now why Artek and his followers had accused him of attacking them on Ynys Scaith. And he knew why the Mabden had been deceived into thinking that he fought with the Fhoi Myore against them. And he knew, too, why Calatin had made that bargain with him, long ago, for his name-robe. Calatin had been planning all this for some time.

And looking upon that face that was not his own face Corum shuddered and his veins became cold,

Now Sactric disdained to use his magic against the Karach, the doppelganger (or perhaps his magic was useless against a creature which was already, itself, an illusion), and he cried to his new servant:

''Goffanon! Defend me!"

And obediently the massive dwarf leapt forward to block the Karachi's path, his giant axe swinging.

And, fascinated and full of fear, Corum watched the fight, believing that he at last looked upon the 'brother’ of the old woman's prophecy, the one whom he had to fear.

Calatin was screaming at Corum: "There! There is the Karach, Corum! There is the one destined to kill you and to take your place. There is my son! There is my heir! There is the immortal Karach!"

But Corum ignored Calatin and watched the battle as the Karach, its face expressionless, its body apparently tireless, aimed blow after blow at Goffanon, who parried with his double-bladed war-axe, the war-axe of the Sidhi. And Corum could see that Goffanon was tiring, that he had been exhausted before he ever reached the island, and that soon the dwarf would fall to the Karach's sword, and it was then that Corum drew his own sword and ran toward his double, while Sactric laughed:

"You hurry to defend me, too, Prince Corum?"

And Corum darted a look of hatred at the corrupt form of the Malibann before he brought his sword, the cross-forged sword which Goffanon had made for him, down upon the shoulder of the Karach and made the thing mm.

"Fight me, changeling!" Corum growled. "It was what you were created to do, was it not?"

And he drove his sword at the Karach's heart, but the creature stepped aside and Corum could not stop his own momentum and the blade went past the Karachi's body and then buried itself in flesh, but it was not the Karach's flesh.

It was Goffanon's flesh that the sword found and Goffanon groaned as the blade pierced his shoulder, while Corum gasped in horror at what, inadvertently, he had done. And Goffanon fell back and it must have been that the sword-blade had lodged itself in a bone for the movement of the dwarf's falling wrenched the sword from Corum's hand and left him without weapons so that the

Karach, with a terrible fixed grin on its face, a glitter in its single, soulless eye, advanced to slay him.

Ilbrec now drew his own bright blade Retaliator and came striding to Corum’s assistance, but before he could cross the space Calatin rushed past him and began to flee down the hill, having given up any notion of defeating Sactric and plainly hoping to reach his boat before the Malibann realized he had gone.

But Goffanon saw Calatin and he raised his hand to grasp the sword he had made and which now stuck in his shoulder (and still he was careful not to touch the handle) and he wrenched it from the wound and he turned it, poised it, then flung it with great force after the retreating wizard.

The moon-colored sword whistled across the distance between Goffanon and Calatin and the point found the wizard between the shoulder blades.

Calatin continued to run for some moments, apparently unaware that the sword pierced his body. Then he faltered. Then he fell, croaking:

"Karach! Karach! Avenge me. Avenge me, my only heir! My son!'‘

The Karach turned, its expression softening, searching for the source of those words, its sword falling to its side. At last its eyes found Calatin (who was still not dead but was attempting to get to his knees and crawl on toward the shore and the boat in which, such a short time before, he had sailed in triumph) and Corum felt sure he detected genuine misery in the Karach’s expression as it realized the plight of its dying master.

"Karach! Avenge me!"

And the Karach began stiffly to walk down the hill in the wake of its master until it reached the enfeebled Calatin, whose fine, occult robes were now all smeared with his own blood. And from this distance it seemed to Corum that he, himself, paused beside the wizard and sheathed his sword. It was as if he watched a tableau from the past or the future in which he was the main actor; it was as if he dreamed, for he could not bring himself to move as he watched his double, the Karach, the changeling, stoop and look at Calatin’s face in puzzlement, wondering why its master groaned and writhed in this way. It reached out to touch the sword which jutted from Calatin’s shoulder blades but then it withdrew its hand as if the sword had been hot. Again it seemed puzzled. Calatin was panting out more words to the Karach, words which the onlookers could not hear, and the Karach put its head on one side and listened carefully.

Calatin's dying hands found a rock. Painfully the wizard pulled his body onto the rock and the moon-colored sword was pushed free, falling to the ground. Then the Karach sheathed its own sword and bent to lift its master, its creator, in its arms.

Sactric spoke now, from behind the three who stood on the hill watching this scene. He said:

"Goffanon, I am still your master. Go after the changeling and destroy it."