Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 Canadian (2 page)

his plot. But Cuilan had lost too, had been exiled from the Shining Land and thrust back to his own world by the great Tuatha rulers who had decreed that none should come and go between the worlds.

He had come back to the drab, war-wearied Earth, but haunted by memory of that lost, golden elysium and the love he had left there. He had sworn to return to Fand despite the stern decree of the Tuatha lords.

TVTOW, after two years of preparation, Brian Cuilan had come in the yawl to that spot in mid-ocean whence formerly his plane had been snatched into the other world. For days, he had vainly tried by the scientific means he had prepared to open that strange channel between the worlds of varying vibration. And all his attempts had failed.

This, now, was his last gamble. The way had been opened that other time by the unleashed electric forces of storm. It might happen again. If it did, the subtle scientific powers of the ancient ring upon his finger would take him through.

Cuilan, clinging to the wheel of the bucking yawl, peered tensely at the crystal on his finger. "It must happen again!"

But the crystal of the Unlocker remained dead, mocking him. The jewel itself was not a door between worlds. It was only a talisman which could take him through if the door were opened.

The sky was now night-black, the howling gale raising mountainous waves that tossed the struggling yawl like a toy on their raving crests. Lightning had begun to spear blindingly across the heavens.

Blinded by flying spray, deafened by

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the roar of tempest, Brian Cullan fought fiercely to keep the yawl against the storm. Despair closed icy fingers around his heart, for now that the full power of ihe gale was unleashed, the little craft could not long survive.

Each time it dropped dizzyingly into the trough of the great waves, he managed miraculously to keep it from swinging broadside and foundering. Eut miracles could not go on forever. Cullan's hair bristled as he saw huger waves piling blackly and leaning forward lo crush him.

Colossal hands seemed to snatch the yawl skyward, and as it hung for a moment on the crest with screw racing wildly, he knew this was the end. The whole heavens flared in that moment with dazzling lightning—

"The sign!" yelled Brian Cullan wildly. "The sign of the Gateway!"

The lightnings had whirled into a flaming, blinding circle in the sky over his head. A circle that seemed whirling down upon him.

And the crystal of the Unlocker on his finger was suddenly flaming! Scintillating with blazing rays of force that spun in a circle which was miniature match to the descending hoop of lightning above him.

Storm-lightning had momentarily opened the Gateway between the worlds of varying vibration, and the Unlocker's subtle aura of force would take him and his craft through if—

Crash! The yawl had dropped from the towering wave-crest to the surface of the sea, with a smashing shock that wenched its beams to shrieking proLesL, and that flung Brian Cullan hard against the rail.

He was half stunned, but he struggled

to his knees. Then he froze, looking around him with wild surmise on his haggard face.

Golden, glowing mists were about him, a strange, sprawling haze. The yawl floated placidly on a smooth yellow sea, amid that unearthly radiance. Black sky, howling storm, raving waves, had all vanished.

Wild joy, exultation in hope long-deferred but now at last fulfilled, hammered in Brian Cullan's heart.

"Tir Sorclia! The Shining Land!"

CHAPTER II i"* OLDEN, dreamy stretched the mists around him, stirred by the soft, warm wind into little twists of shining vapor that slowly swirled above the yellow sea. Forever hidden above the aureate haze was whatever sun lit this world. But through the sparkling, shrouding vapors there dimly bulked the outline of a distant island.

Brian Cullan felt a singing joy that thrilled his every nerve. He had fought fate and death and storm to return to ihis world, and his wild attempt had succeeded.

"Fand! Fand!" he whispered, and the name was like a jubilant prayer upon his lips.

He steered the yawl, its motor throbbing, toward the dim shape of the distant island.

This was a world of islands, he remembered. A strange, ocean world whose golden mists shrouded countless scattered isles that held wonders of beauty and terror unknown to Earth save in legend.

Cullan soon perceived that over the island ahead vast-winged shadows hov-

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ered. Then he saw them more clearly as incredible, roc-like birds that were planing to a landing on the low green land.

"The island of Great Birds!" he exclaimed, "I remember, now. And over there—"

Over there farther in the shining haze showed another isle that seemed covered by tall trees. But the trees were flowers, colossal blooms nodding and waving gently in the breeze.

The two remembered isles gave him his bearings. He turned the yawl and sent it throbbing away in a direction thai was north by his gyro-compass. It was the way to the isle of the Waterspout where was Fand's city, Ethne, whose beauty had haunted his memory these two years.

"Two years?" thought Cullan. "But only two days have passed in this world, since Lugh forced me back to Earth."

Bitter had been that memory of the hour when he had been exiled from this world and from Fand by stern decree of Lugh, lord of the Tuatha. But now the bitterness was dissolved in the joy of return.

No: even his knowledge that he was returning into Tir Sorcha in direct defiance of the warning of mighty Lugh, not even the penalty of doom he risked, could temper his joy. Somewhere here he and Fand would find chance for happiness, however brief.

Cullan could not measure the passage of time as the yawl sped north and north. It might be near nightfall but he had no means of guessing. Almost tremulously, his eyes strained into the mists ahead. Then at last the island of bis hopes took slow shape.

It was the Isle of the Waterspout, a low green hill rising from the yellow sea.

A deep bay indented its southern coast, and above that bay cli m bed the shimmering structures of the faery city, Ethne.

Most wonderful was the giant geyser of water that gave this isle its name. It was a colossal waterspout that sprang perpetually from a pit on the north shore and curved obliquely across the whole island to thunder down in a ceaseless cataract into the bay below the city.

"Ethne at last! And Father there, hoping and waiting for me—'*

Brian Cullan's pulse hammered as he sent the yawl speeding into the bay. Loud in his ears now was the unending, booming thunder of the falling waterspout, whose maelstrom of currents he gave wide berth.

The battered little yawl glided into the bay on throttled motor. Ahead lay the ancient yellow stone docks of Ethne, and from them climbed the streets and elfin buildings of Fand's City.

Cullan saw that remembered beauty through blurred eyes. Poised beneath the rushing rainbow of water that arched the sky, Ethne was a city of dream. Its buildings were shimmering spheres like iridescent bubbles, rising in breathtaking loveliness to the highest cluster of bubble-domes that was Fand's palace.

Suddenly, Cullan's wild elation checked a little. The city was strangely still, strangely silent There was no sound but the distant boom of the falling water-sprout, and no figures moved in the streets of shimmering spheres. He could see none of the fair-haired Tuatha lords and ladies, none of the dark slaves who had served them.

Fear grew swiftly in Brian Cullan's heart as he brought the yawl to the docks of worn yellow stone. He moored it hastily between the slim, burnished metal

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boats that floated here. Then he leaped quickly up onto the dock.

"Good God!" His exclamation came from lips stiffened by horror.

*■ VHE dock was Uttered with slain men. ■*■ Most of them were Tuatha warriors, tall, fair-haired men in silver mail and helmets, lying with their glittering flame-swords still shining in their hands, their bodies blasted and blackened where enemy swords had touched them.

But among them lay also many of those enemy warriors who had died fighting them. These were dark, stocky, brutal-looking men in black armor, men like the dark slaves whom the Tuatha had owned. There had been an Invasion and battle here in Ethne!

"Fand!" cried Cullan agonized. He ran up the sloping streets toward the highest bubble-palace.

Lost now on him were the beauty of shimmering domes and gorgeous gardens. Faery Ethne was a silent city of the dead. There were corpses everywhere in the streets, mostly Tuatha but no small number of the dark warriors.

Cullan remembered as he ran what Fand had mentioned, fliat their slaves were prisoners taken in war with the dark, deadly enemies of the Tuatha, the Fomorians who dwelled far northward in this world.

The Fomorians? The mysterious, malign race whose memory lived in Celtic legend as lords of evil who struggled against the Tuatha gods? They had been here in Ethne, had slain every soul. But Fand?

Wild with dread, Brian Cullan reached the palace and burst inside. In here, in the great central hall that was like the interior of a white pearl, the dead

Tuatha warriors were thickest. And out on the terrace where Fand and he had declared their love, and in the wondrous gardens below it, other dead bodies of the handsome Tuatha folk lay sprawled. Cullan searched frantically through the silent halls of death, but could not find Fand's body. He stood, wild with doubt and dread, feeling a ghastly loneliness in this still city of death.

Cullan whispered through dry lips. "If those dark devils killed Fand—"

He stopped and whirled. A slight sound had reached his ears. Were there still some of the Fomorians here ?

Cullan stooped quickly aid snatched up a flame-sword from a dead warrior. He knew the weapon from previous use. As his fingers closed on its hilt, its slim blade glowed with shining force—force released from the condenser-chamber in the hilt, that would blast any living thing touched by the blade.

He listened again, standing ready with the flaring sword in his hand, his lean, dark face taut and terrible. Then he went toward the heap of dead on the great stair, From there had come the sound. A man in that heap of corpses was stirring feebly. It was a tall Tuatha warrior, whose face was on one side blackened and scorched by the grazing touch of a flame-sword.

Brian Cullan knew this man. It was Goban, captain of Fand's guards, a man at whose side he had fought against Mannanan's plotters two years — two days, here!—ago.

With fierce impatience, he raised Goban to sitting position and sought to revive him. The Tuathan, he saw, had been stunned by the glancing touch Of a flame-sword and left for dead. Now, he opened his eves.

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"Cuchulain!" cried Goban looking wildly up into Cullan's face, and calling him by the name all the Tuatha had called him because of his resemblance lo his long-dead ancestor. "Cuchulain, you've come back! But too late!"

He choked the last words out in a groan, looking around the corpse-littered palace. "Goban, what has happened here?" cried Cullan hoarsely. "Where is Fand?" He spoke in the Tuatha language, so like the ancient Gaelic, that he had learned here before time.

"The Fomorians have her — Tethra's dark warriors have taken her to black Mruun in the north!" groaned Goban. "They slew all here but me, and I should have died, too."

Cullan's blood iced with dread. Fand a prisoner of the dealiest enemies of the Tuatha, the dark Fomorians whose evil had been legend even in Earth for ages? "It was that traitor Mannanan's doing," said Goban thickly. "The cursed one who was once Fand's husband."

"Mannanan ?" cried Cullan. "But he was killed two years ago—two days ago, by your time—when we smashed his plot to seize the Gateway."

"Aye," said Goban, "but it seems now that Mannanan's plot was not really his own. He was but a pawn in the hands of the Fomorians. Those black devils were the ones who really coveted the Gateway, so that they could go through into your Earth.

"And when Mannanan's plot failed, Tethra's black horde acted quickly. They came to seize the Gateway mechanism and Fand, who is its guardian and knows the secret of its opening. They poured into Ethne last night from hundreds of boats and slew all in the city. They pressed the last of us into the palace as

we sought to defend Fand.'*

Goban/s eyes lighted fiercely. "You should have seen her, wielding sword with us like a tigress against the swarming dark ones. And as she fought, she cried, "If Cuchulain were but with us still!" That was all I heard before a sword grazed my face, and I fell stunned.''

Brian Cullan's heart was bursting with wild emotion. And from his lips there broke a sound of rage that was almost a snarl.

fPHAT strange resurgence of ancestral personality, of ancestral memory, that once before had made him Cuchulain reborn, was waking in him again.

"We'll not stay here wailing her loss!" he cried. "We'll follow northward after them, even to Mruun!"

The red rage was creeping ever-stronger across his brain, the terrible personality of the ancient Hound beginning again to dominate his maddening mind.

To have lost Fand, by merely hours! To have spent those long months of toil and danger and deadly risk to win back to the Shining Land and her, only to find himself too late!

"Wait, Cuchulain!" pleaded Goban. '"'We two could do nothing against all the Fomorians in black Mruun. The Tuatha of all the isles must be told of this. 1 must call, Lugh, lord of the Tuatha.''

"Why didn't you call when danger first threatened?" Cullan demanded savagely.

"There was no lime!" Goban protested. "The Fomorians burst in upon Ethne like a flood, a wave of death that rolled upon Ui in moments."

Goban rose unsteadily to his feet with

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Cullan's help, and staggered unsteadily across the hall to a pedestal on which was mounted a nest of coenceiitiic crystal globes. He peered intently into the globes.

Light grew inside the coencentric crystals. Cullan knew he was witnessing some of the alien science of the Tua-thans, Sfi ancient science transcending the younger one of Earth.