Vault of the Ages (8 page)

Open doors, and shingled booths, where the work of the town went on, lined the sides of the street. A smith, muscled and sooty, hammered out a plowshare in the ruddy glow of his fire. Across the way, a fat baker gave two round loaves of coarse black bread, new and warm and fragrant, to a boy. And a weaver had his cloths and rugs spread out for sale, next door to a tailor who sat cross-legged making complete garments. On the corner, a dark and smoky tavern rang with noisy life and beside the tavern, a trader’s store was massed with foreign goods and delicate jewelry for sale. Even now, Dalestown tried to live as it had always done.

But many newcomers filled the streets, leaning from the windows and jamming into the crowd. Refugees, thought Carl, men and women and children from outlying farms who had fled here for safety when news of the invaders came. Some could stay with friends and relatives, some could pay for a bed in one of the few inns—but most had to sleep outside, in tents or under their wagons, ready to flee inside the walls if danger threatened. Their eyes were
filled with fear and a deep, hopeless longing, their voices shrill or else hushed to an unnatural quiet. It was not a good thing to see, and Carl touched the saddlebag where he had the magic light as if groping for comfort.

The boys came out on the open market square in the center of town and forced a slow path across its packed width. The Hall loomed on the farther side, a great building of dark oak with painted gables and the heads of animals carved along the eaves and ridgepole. Here was the place of meeting for the tribe. On its right was the smaller house of the Chief, squarely and solidly built of wood and stone, the banner of the Dales—a green fir tree on a background of gold—floating above it. Toward this Carl directed his horse.

An old servant stood on the porch, looking unhappily over the restless throng. When he saw Carl, he shouted. “Master Carl! Oh, Master Carl, you’re back! Thank the gods, you’re back!”

“You never doubted it, did you, Rob?” smiled Carl, touched at the welcome. He swung stiffly to the ground, and the old man patted his shoulder with a thin, blue-veined hand.

“Oh, but it’s been so long, Master Carl—”

“Only a few days. Is my father inside?”

“Yes, he’s talking with the High Doctor. Go right in, Master Carl, go in and make him glad. I’ll take your horse.”

“And my friends’ horses too, please.” Carl frowned. He wasn’t overly happy at having to confront Donn before he had talked with his father. The High Doctor meant well, and was kindly enough when no one crossed him, but he was overbearing and tightly bound by the ancient laws.

Well, it would have to be faced sometime. “Come on, boys,” said Carl, mounting the steps.

“Maybe we should wait,” hedged Tom.

“Nonsense. You’re the guests of the house, as your folks’ll be when they arrive. Follow me.”

Carl entered a hallway paneled in wood and carpeted with skins. Light from the windows was getting dim, and candles burned in their brackets on the wall. It was a large, well-furnished house, but there were grander places in town. The Chief’s power did not lie in trade goods.

A small thunderbolt came shouting down the stairs and threw itself into Carl’s arms, squealing and shouting. “Hello, brat,” said
the boy gruffly. “Get down—the Lann don’t do as much damage as you.”

It was his young sister Betty, five years old, who clung to him and stared with wide eyes. There were only these two left—Ralph’s other children, and then his wife, had died, of some disease which the ancients could have cured but which was too strong for the drums and prayers and herbs of the Doctors, and the Chief had not married again. The three were a happy family, but there were dark memories among them.

“What’s ’at?” Betty pointed to the flashlight, wrapped in a piece from his tattered cloak, that Carl bore in one hand.

“Magic, brat, magic. Now where’s Daddy?”

“In ’a living room. Can I come?”

“Well—” Carl hesitated. It might not be wise for a child to know of this and prattle the news all over town. If the Lann were as smart as he thought, they had a few spies mingled with the refugees. “Not just now. This is man-talk. Later, huh?”

Betty made fewer objections than he had thought—she was growing up enough to learn that men ruled the tribes, under the law if not always in fact—and he sent her trotting back up the stairs. Then he led Tom and Owl down the hall to the living-room door. He opened it softly and looked in.

The room was long and low, furnished with a dark richness of carved wood and thick skins and the trophies of war and hunt. Light from many candles and the broad stone fireplace filled the farther end with radiance and shadows, glimmering off shields and swords hung above the mantel, off wrought brass candlesticks and silver plates. Windows between heavy draperies showed the last gleam of day.

Ralph stood before the hearth. He was a tall and powerful man of thirty-seven, his eyes blue in a grave bronzed face, his hair and close-cropped beard the color of gold. His dress was, as usual, simple: plain shirt and breeches of linen, a green wool cloak swinging from broad shoulders, a dagger at his tooled leather belt. His big hands were calloused with labor, for he worked his own farm outside the walls, but his look was calm and strong, and Carl’s heart quickened at the sight of him.

Old Donn sat in a chair by the hearth, blue robe drawn tight around his gaunt frame. Like the other Doctors, he was clean-shaven, and only a thin, white halo of hair fringed his high skull.
With his hooked nose and sunken cheeks and smoldering, steady eyes, he resembled an aged eagle. One bony hand rested on the serpent-wreathed wand of his authority where it was laid across his knees; he rested his chin in his other, as he looked across at the third man.

This was a stranger, a lean young warrior of about twenty, weaponless and clad in garments obviously borrowed from Ralph. His hair was raven black, and a dark mustache crossed his sharp face. He was seated at ease, legs crossed, a hard and hostile smile on his mouth.

“It makes no difference,” he was saying. “Whether you hold me or not, Raymon will come. He has other sons—”

“Carl!” Ralph saw the boy and took a long stride forward across the tiger-skin, his arms opening and sudden gladness lighting in his face. “Carl—you’re back!”

They shook hands, father and son, and Ralph checked himself, putting on the mask of coolness expected from a man. Perhaps only Carl saw the candlelight glisten off a tear. It must have been cruel to hear that the enemy had been in the very region where he had sent his only son, the only hope of his race.

“Yes—Father.” The boy cleared his throat, trying to get the thickness out of his voice. “Yes—I’m back, well and sound. And these are my friends, Tom and Owl—Jim, sons of John in the north—”

“Be welcome, friends of Carl and friends of mine,” said Ralph gravely. He lifted his voice in a yell for a servant. “Margo, Margo, you human turtle, bring food and drink! Carl is back!”

Donn looked keenly at the boys. “And how did the trip to the City go?” he murmured.

“Both well and ill, sir,” answered Carl uneasily. “But, Father—who is this?”

Ralph smiled with pride. “Carl, meet Lenard—eldest son of Raymon, Chief of the Lann!”

“What?” Tom’s hand dropped unthinking to his knife.

“Aye, aye. There have been skirmishes in the north between our scouting parties and vanguard Lann troops.” Ralph paced back to the hearth. “The other day our men brought back some prisoners taken in one of those fights, and among them was Lenard here. A valuable captive!”

Lenard grinned. “I was just explaining that my hostage value is
small,” he said in the harsh accents of the north. “We believe that the souls of dead warriors are reunited in Sky-Home, so—as long as my father has other brave sons—he will not betray our people to get me back.” He waved a sinewy hand. “But I must say my host Ralph has treated me well.”

“He gave oaths not to try to escape before battle is joined, and my guards wouldn’t let him get out of the house in any event,” said Ralph. “I still think we can use him…or at least learn from him.” His eyes held a brief, desperate appeal. “And if we treat our captives well, the Lann should do likewise—if they have honor.”

“We have honor,” said Lenard stiffly, “though it may not always be the same as yours.”

Carl folded his legs under him and sat down on the rug. He could not help a certain uneasiness at having Lenard so close. Lenard, the heir to the mastery over that savage horde which had chased him down the ways of night and laid the northern marches in ruin.

“But what of your journey, Carl?” persisted Donn. “What did the witch-folk say?”

Carl glanced at Lenard. The prisoner sat quietly leaning back, half in shadow, not even seeming to listen. And neither Ralph nor Donn seemed to care what he might learn.

Slowly, Carl told the story of his trip. There was stillness as he talked, under the thin dry crackle of flames. Once Donn stiffened and leaned forward, once Ralph whispered an oath and clenched his fists with a sudden blaze in his eyes—but both leaned away again, clamping the mask back over their faces, hooding eyes in the weaving shadow.

Night closed down outside, darkening the windows, stilling a little the babble of the aimless crowds. Wordlessly, the servant Margo came in with a tray of refreshment, set it on a table, and stole out again. Beyond the little ring of light at this end, the long room grew thick with a creeping darkness.

Under the light, Carl unwrapped the bundle in his hands. The ancient metal was smooth and cool; it seemed to vibrate with unknown powers. “And this is the light,” he said, his voice shaking ever so faintly. “Look!”

He spun the crank, and the pure white beam sprang forth, searching out corners, flashing back from metal and darkly gleaming wood, a whisper of gears and a lance of cold, colorless fire. Ralph gasped, Lenard gripped the arms of his chair with sudden whiteknuckled force—only
Donn sat unmoving, unblinking, like the graven image of some eagle god.

It was to the Doctor that Carl first looked when he let the light die, for he knew that the real decision lay there. The class of the Doctors existed in all known tribes, men who handed down a fragment of the ancient wisdom and guarded the mysteries. A Doctor was many things: public scribe and record-keeper, teacher of the young, priest of the gods, medicine man in time of sickness, counselor and sorcerer and preserver of knowledge. Much of what they did was good—they knew some medicine and other things beneath all the magical rites, and their shrewd advice had helped many. But Carl thought that they were, in their hidebound beliefs and their fear of the Doom, the greatest reason why life had hardly changed in these hundreds of years. And the fountainhead of the Doctors was their grand master, Donn.

The old man was still very quiet. He had lifted his serpent wand, as if to ward off powers of evil, but his face did not move at all, he did not even seem to breathe.

“Carl—Carl—let me see that light!” Ralph stooped over his son, shaking with excitement, holding forth an eager hand. “Let me see it!”

“Stop.”

Donn spoke softly. Little more than a whisper came from his thin lips, but it seemed to fill that room of tall shadows. He held out his own gaunt fingers. “Give it to me, Carl.”

Slowly, as if moved by a power outside himself, Carl laid the metal tube in the hand of Donn.

“Taboo! Taboo!” The old pagan word rustled and murmured in dark corners, hooted mockingly up the chimney to hunt the wind. “It is forbidden.”

“But it is
good!”
cried Carl, with a wrench in his soul. “It is the power which can save us from the Lann and—”

“It is one of the powers which brought the Doom.” The High Doctor touched the flashlight with his wand and muttered some spell. “Would you unchain that wrath and fire again? Would you see the earth laid waste and the demons of Atmik raging over the sky and folk falling dead of fire and hunger and plague and the blue glow—cursing your name as they died? Taboo, taboo!”

Carl sat numbly, hardly aware of the stern words snapping from that suddenly grim face:

“You have broken the law. You entered the accursed City and consorted with witches. You opened a door on the powers of the Doom, and you brought one of those very devils home with you. Fools! You wanted to help the Dalesmen? Be glad you haven’t destroyed them!”

After a moment, Donn spoke a little more gently. “Still, it is plain that some god protected you, for no harm that I can see has been done. I shall offer this light as a sacrifice to appease any anger in heaven. I shall throw it into the sacred well. And tomorrow you must come to the temple and have the sin taken off you—but that need only be marking your foreheads in the blood of a calf which you must bring. You meant well, and for that you shall be forgiven.”

The sternness came back like the clash of iron chains: “But there shall be no more of this. Ralph, you know the law as well as I do, and we have both been lax about enforcing it. This is certainly not the first time a trader to the City went inside the taboo circle. But it shall be the last. From now on, the law of the Dales shall be carried out to the full. And that law says—for breaking the taboo on ancient works and magic, the penalty is death!”

L
OOKING
into the wrathful eyes of Donn, Carl dared not argue further. He knew that this old man, who, in other times, had held him on his knee, given him toys and gifts, taught him the arts a Chief should know, would not hesitate to order him killed if he thought it was demanded by the gods. Tom and Owl shrank into the half-darkness beyond the firelight, afraid even to whisper. Ralph himself dropped his gaze and muttered surrender.

Donn’s power was great in a very practical sense: he was the absolute ruler of the order of Doctors, which owned great lands and wealth; and his hold on the people was such that he could stir them up against anyone who dared oppose his stiff will. But more than that, he was the one who spoke for the gods. He was the agent of those great shadowy powers of sky and earth, fire and water, growth and death and destiny, before which men quailed. Even Carl felt a shiver in his flesh at thought of what might be stooping over the world and listening to this man’s words. For the moment, bitter disappointment was lost in a tide of fear, the inbred fear of many generations, and Carl bowed his head in submission.