The Twilight Lander dropped his own weapon, seized the other haft in
both hands, and wrenched. Grimly the Ganasthian hung on. Kery worked
his way in closer. Suddenly he released the shaft, almost fell against
his enemy, and drew the Dark Lander's sword. The short blade flashed
and the sentry fell.
The door was barred. He beat on it frantically, hearing the clatter
of feet coming up the stairs, knowing that a thunderstorm of hurled
weapons was on its way. "Sathi!" he cried. "Sathi, it is Kery, let me
in!"
The first soldiers appeared down at the end of the corridor. Kery threw
himself against the door. It opened, and he plunged through and slammed
down the bolt.
Sathi stood there and wonder was in her eyes. "Oh, Kery," she breathed,
"Kery, you came...."
"No time," he rasped. "Where is the pipe of Killorn?"
She fought for calmness. "Mongku has it," she said. "His chambers are
on the next floor, above these--"
The door banged and groaned as men threw their weight against it.
Sathi took his hand and led him into the next room. A fire burned low
in the hearth. "I thought it out, against the time you might come," she
said. "The only way out is up that chimney. It should take us to the
roof and thence we can go down again."
"Oh, well done, lass!" With a sweep of the poker Kery scattered the
logs and coals out on the carpet while Sathi barred the door into the
next room. Drawing a deep breath the Killorner went into the fireplace,
braced feet and back against the sides of the flue and began to climb
up.
Smoke swirled in the chimney. He gasped for breath and his lungs seemed
on fire. Night in here, utter dark and choking of fouled air. His
heart roared and his strength ebbed from him. Up and up and up, hitch
yourself still further up.
"Kery." Her voice came low, broken with coughing. "Kery--I can't. I'm
slipping--"
"Hang on!" he gasped. "Here. Reach up. My belt--"
He felt the dragging weight catch at him, there in the smoke-thickened
dark, and drew a grim breath and edged himself further, up and up and
up.
And out!
He crawled from the chimney and fell to the roof with the world reeling
about him and a rushing of darkness in his head. His tormented lungs
sucked the bitter air. He sobbed and the tears washed the soot from his
eyes. He stood up and helped Sathi to her feet.
She leaned against him, shuddering with strain and with the wind that
cried up here under the flickering stars. He looked about, seeking a
way down again. Yes, over there, a doorway opening on a small terrace.
Quickly now.
They crawled over the slanting, ice-slippery roof, helping each other
where they could, fighting a way to the battlement until Kery's
grasping fingers closed on its edge and he heaved both of them up onto
it.
"Come on!" he snapped. "They'll be behind us any moment now."
"What to do?" she murmured. "What to do?"
"Get the pipes!" he growled, and the demon blood of Broina began to
boil in him again. "Get the pipes and destroy them if we can do nothing
else."
They went through the door and down a narrow staircase and came to the
fourth floor of the palace.
Sathi looked up and down the long empty hallway. "I have been up here
before," she said with a coolness that was good to hear. "Let me
see--yes, this way, I think--" As they trotted down the hollow length
of corridor she said further: "They treated me fairly well here, indeed
with honor though I was a prisoner. But oh, Kery, it was like sunlight
to see you again!"
He stooped and kissed her, briefly, wondering if he would ever have
a chance to do it properly. Most likely not but she would be a good
companion on hell-road.
They came into a great antechamber. Kery had his sword out, the only
weapon left to him, but no one was in sight. All the royal guards must
be out hunting him. He grinned wolfishly and stepped to the farther
door.
"Kery--" Sathi huddled close against him. "Kery, do we dare? It may be
death--"
"It will be like that anyway," he said curtly and swung the door open.
* * * * *
A great, richly furnished suite of chambers, dark and still, lay
before him. He padded through the first, looking right and left like a
questing animal, and into the next.
Two men stood there, talking--Jonan and Mongku.
They saw him and froze for he was a terrible sight, bloody, black with
smoke, fury cold and bitter-blue in his eyes. He grinned, a white flash
of teeth in his sooted face, and drew his sword and stalked forward.
"So you have come," said Mongku quietly.
"Aye," said Kery. "Where is the pipe of Killorn?"
Jonan thrust forward, drawing the sword at his belt. "I will hold him,
prince," he said. "I will carve him into very bits for you."
Kery met his advance in a clash of steel. They circled, stiff-legged
and wary, looking for an opening. There was death here. Sathi knew
starkly that only one of those two would leave this room.
Jonan lunged in, stabbing, and Kery skipped back. The officer was
better in handling these shortswords than he who was used to the longer
blades of the north. He brought his own weapon down sharply, deflecting
the thrust. Jonan parried, and then it was bang and crash, thrust and
leap and hack with steel clamoring and sparking. The glaives hissed and
screamed, the fighters breathed hoarsely and there was murder in their
eyes.
Jonan ripped off his cloak with his free hand and flapped it in Kery's
face. The northerner hacked out, blinded, and Jonan whipped the cloth
around to tangle his blade. Then he rushed in, stabbing. Kery fell
to one knee and took the thrust on his helmet, letting it glide off.
Reaching up he got Jonan around the waist and pulled the man down on
him.
They rolled over, growling and biting and gouging. Jonan clung to his
sword and Kery to that wrist. They crashed into a wall and struggled
there.
Kery got one leg around Jonan's waist and pulled himself up on the
man's chest. He got a two-handed grasp on the enemy's sword arm,
slipped the crook of one elbow around, and broke the bone.
Jonan screamed. Kery reached over. He took the sword from his loosening
fingers and buried it in Jonan's breast.
He stood up then, trembling with fury, and looked at the pipes of
Killorn.
It was almost as if Mongku's expressionless face smiled. The Ganasthian
held the weapon cradled in his arms, the mouthpiece near his lips. He
nodded. "I got it to working," he said. "In truth it is a terrible
thing. Who holds it might well hold the world someday."
Kery stood waiting, the sword hanging limp in one hand.
"Yes," said Mongku. "I am going to play it."
Kery started across the floor--and Mongku blew.
* * * * *
The sound roared forth, wild, cruel, seizing him and shaking him,
ripping at nerve and sinew. Bone danced in his skull and night shouted
in his brain. He fell to the ground, feeling the horrible jerking of
his muscles, seeing the world swim and blur before him.
The pipes screamed. Goodnight, Kery, goodnight, goodnight! It is the
dirge of the world he is playing, the coronach of Killorn, it is the
end of all things skirling in your body--
Sathi crept forth. She was behind the player, the hell-tune did not
strike her so deeply, but even as his senses blurred toward death Kery
saw how she fought for every step, how the bronze lamp almost fell from
her hand. Mongku had forgotten her. He was playing doom, watching Kery
die and noting how the music worked.
Sathi struck him from behind. He fell, dropping the pipes, and turned
dazed eyes up to her. She struck him again and again.
Then she fled over to Kery and cradled his head in her arms and sobbed
with the horror of it and with the need for haste. "Oh, quickly,
quickly, beloved, we have to flee, they will be here now--I hear them
in the hallway, come--"
Kery sat up. His head was ringing and thumping, his muscles burned and
weakness was like an iron hand on him. But there was that which had to
be done and it gave him strength from some forgotten wellspring. He
rose on shaky legs and went over and picked up the bagpipe of the gods.
"No," he said.
"Kery...."
"We will not flee," he said. "I have a song to play."
She saw the cold remote mask of his face. He was not Kery now of the
ready laugh and the reckless bravery and the wistful memories of a lost
homestead. He had become something else with the pipe in his hands,
something which stood stern and somber and apart from man. There seemed
to be ghosts in the vast shadowy room, the blood of his fathers who had
been Pipers of Killorn, and he was the guardian now. She shrank against
him for protection. There was a small charmed circle which the music
did not enter but it was a stranger she stood beside.
Carefully Kery lifted the mouthpiece to his lips and blew. He felt the
vibration tremble under his feet. The walls wavered before his eyes
as unheard notes shivered the air. He himself heard no more than the
barbarian screaming of the war-music he had always known but he saw
death riding out.
A troop of guardsmen burst through the door--halted, stared at the tall
piper, and then howled in terror and pain.
Kery played. And as he played Killorn rose before him. He saw the reach
of gray windswept moors, light glimmering on high cold tarns, birds
winging in a sky of riven clouds. Space and loneliness and freedom, a
hard open land of stern and bitter beauty, the rocks which had shaped
his bones and the soil which had nourished his flesh. He stood by the
great lake of sunset, storms swept in over it, rain and lightning, the
waves dashed themselves to angry death on a beach of grinding stones.
He strode forward, playing, and the soldiers of Ganasth died before
him. The walls of the palace trembled, hangings fell to the shuddering
floor, the building groaned as the demon-music sought and found
resonance.
He played them a song of the chase, the long wild hunt over the heath,
breath gasping in hot lungs and blood shouting in the ears, running
drunk with wind after the prey that fled and soared. He played them
fire and comradeship and the little huts crouched low under the mighty
sky. And the walls cracked around him. Pillars trembled and broke. The
roof began to cave in and everywhere they died about him.
He played war, the skirl of pipes and the shout of men, clamor of
metal, tramp of feet and hoofs, and the fierce blink of light on
weapons. He sang them up an army that rode over the rim of the world
with swords aflame and arrows like rain and the whole building tumbled
to rubble even as he walked out of it.
Tenderly, dreamily, he played of Morna the fair, Morna who had stood
with him on the edge of the lake where it is forever sunset, listening
to the chuckle of small wavelets and looking west to the pyre of red
and gold and dusky purple, the eyes and the lips and the hair of Morna
and what she and he had whispered to each other on that quiet shore.
But there was death in that song.
The ground began to shake under Ganasth. There is but little strength
in the lungs of one man and yet when that strikes just the right notes,
and those small pushes touch off something else far down in the depths
of the earth, the world will tremble. The Dark Landers rioted in a more
than human fear, in the blind panic which the pipes sang to them.
[Illustration: _The Dark Landers rioted under inhuman fear; in the
blind panic which the pipes sang to them._]
The gates were closed before him, but Kery played them down. Then he
turned and faced the city and played it a song of the wrath of the
gods. He played them up rain and cold and scouring wind, glaciers
marching from the north in a blind whirl of snow, lightning aflame in
the heavens and cities ground to dust. He played them a world gone
crazy, sundering continents and tidal waves marching over the shores
and mountains flaming into a sky of rain and fire. He played them
whirlwinds and dust storms and the relentless sleety blast from the
north. He sang them ruin and death and the sun burning out to darkness.
When he ceased, and he and Sathi left the half-shattered city, none
stirred to follow. None dared who were still alive. It seemed to the
two of them, as they struck out over the snowy plains, that the volcano
behind was beginning to grumble and throw its flames a little higher.