The shaggy head turned slightly, just enough to unveil an eye. Ciaran
wished suddenly he'd kept his mouth shut. The eye was pale, almost
white, with a queer unhuman look as though it saw only gods or devils,
and nothing in between.
Ciaran had met hermits before in his wanderings. He knew the signs.
Normally he rather liked hermits, but this one gave him unpleasant
qualms in the stomach.
The man dragged a rusty voice up from somewhere. "We are enslaved by
devils. Only the pure can overcome devils. Are you pure?"
Ciaran managed not to choke. "As a bird in its nest," he said. "A
newly-fledged bird. In fact, a bird still in the shell."
The cold, pale eye looked at him without blinking.
Ciaran resisted an impulse to punch it and said, "We have a means of
freeing ourselves. If enough could be freed, when the time came we
might rush the Kalds."
"Only the pure can prevail against devils."
Ciaran gave him a smile of beatific innocence. The scar and the missing
tooth rather spoiled the effect, but his eyes made up for it in bland
sweetness.
"You shall lead us, Father," he cooed. "With such purity as yours, we
can't fail."
The hermit thought about that for a moment and then said, "I will pass
the word. Give me the feke."
Ciaran's jaw dropped. His eyes got glassy.
"The feke," said the hermit patiently. "The jiggler."
Ciaran closed his eyes. "Mouse," he said weakly, "give the gentleman
the picklock."
Mouse slid it to him, a distance of about two inches. The red-haired
giant took some of his weight off Ciaran. Mouse was looking slightly
dazed herself.
"Hadn't I better do it for you?" she asked, rather pompously.
The hermit gave her a cold glance. He bent his head and brought his
hands up between his knees. His collar mate on the other side never
noticed a thing, and the hermit beat Mouse's time by a good third.
Ciaran laughed. He lay in Mouse's lap and had mild hysterics. Mouse
cuffed him furiously across the back of his neck, and even that didn't
stop him.
He pulled himself up, looked through streaming eyes at Mouse's
murderous small face, and bit his knuckles to keep from screaming.
The hermit was already quietly at work on the man next him.
Ciaran unslung his harp. The grey Kalds hadn't noticed anything yet.
Both Mouse and the hermit were very smooth workers. Ciaran plucked out
a few sonorous minor chords, and the Kalds flicked their blood-pink
eyes at him, but didn't seem to think the harp called for any action.
Ciaran relaxed and played louder.
Under cover of the music he explained his plan to the big red hunter,
who nodded and began whispering to his other collar-mate. Ciaran began
to sing.
He gave them a lament, one of the wild dark things the Cimmerians sing
at the bier of a chief and very appropriate to the occasion. The Kalds
lounged, enjoying the rest. They weren't watching for it, so they
didn't see, as Ciaran did, the breathing of the word of hope around the
circle.
* * * * *
Civilized people would have given the show away. But these were
bordermen, as wary and self-contained as animals. It was only in their
eyes that you could see anything. They got busy, under cover of their
huddled bodies and long-haired, bowed-over heads, with every buckle and
pin they could muster.
Mouse and the hermit passed instructions along the line, and since they
were people who were used to using their hands with skill, it seemed as
though a fair number of locks might get picked. The collars were left
carefully in place.
Ciaran finished his lament and was half way through another when the
Kalds decided it was time to go.
They moved in to goad the line back into position. Ciaran's harp
crashed out suddenly in angry challenge, and the close-packed circle
split into a furious confusion.
Ciaran slung his harp over his shoulder and sprang up, shaking off
the collar. All around him was the clash of chain metal on rock, the
scuffle of feet, the yells and heavy breathing of angry men. The Kalds
came leaping in, their wands flashing. Somebody screamed. Ciaran got a
fistful of Mouse's tunic in his left hand and started to butt through
the mêlée. He had lost track of the hermit and the hunter.
Then, quite suddenly, it was dark.
Silence closed down oh the gully. A black, frozen silence, with not
even a sound of breathing in it. Ciaran stood still, looking up at the
dark sky. He didn't even tremble. He was beyond that.
Black darkness, in a land of eternal light.
Somewhere then, a woman screamed with a terrible mad strength, and hell
broke loose.
Ciaran ran. He didn't think about where he was going, only that he had
to get away. He was still gripping Mouse. Bodies thrashed and blundered
and shrieked in the darkness. Twice he and Mouse were knocked kicking.
It didn't stop them.
They broke through finally into a clear space. There began to be light
again, pale and feeble at first but flickering back toward normal. They
were in a broad gully kicked smooth on the bottom by the passing of
many feet. They ran down it.
After a while Mouse fell and Ciaran dropped beside her. He lay there,
fighting for breath, twitching and jerking like an animal with sheer
panic. He was crying a little because it was light again.
Mouse clung to him, pressing tight as though she wanted to merge her
body with his and hide it. She had begun to shake.
"Kiri," she whispered, over and over again. "Kiri, what was it?"
Ciaran held her head against his shoulder and stroked it. "I don't
know, honey. But it's all right now. It's gone."
Gone. But it could come back. It had once. Maybe next time it would
stay.
Darkness, and the sudden cold.
The legends began crawling through Ciaran's mind. If Bas the Immortal
was true, and the Stone of Destiny was true, and the Stone gave Bas
power over the life and death of a world ... then...?
Maybe Bas was getting tired of the world and wanted to throw it away.
The rational stubbornness in man that says a thing is not because
it's never been before helped Ciaran steady down. But he couldn't kid
himself that there hadn't been darkness where no darkness had even been
dreamed of before.
He shook his head and started to pull Mouse to her feet, and then his
quick ears caught the sound of someone coming toward them, running.
Several someones.
There was no place to hide. Ciaran got Mouse behind him and waited,
half crouching.
It was the hunter, with the hermit loping like a stringy cat at his
heels and a third man behind them both. They all looked a little crazy,
and they didn't seem to be going to stop.