For the first time, Hiero’s mind reached out and, in a way impossible for a non-telepath to imagine, struck back at the Dweller. The stroke was not one of great strength, being both hesitant and clumsy. But the thing almost visibly staggered. It had never been challenged so in all its foul existence, prowling the swamp and its borders for prey. What became of its victims was best unthought. To what hell they had been lured and their subsequent fate there, no one would ever know, but Hiero always felt that some joint serfdom of physical pain and soul suffering was their fate.
Again he lashed out with a mental bolt and this time actually saw the horrid spots of spectral light which were its eyes blink in response. Gaining confidence with each probe he directed, he felt new strength surge through him. For the first time in a long while, or what seemed so, he became aware of the world about him and felt the night air on his face and saw the hooded shape before him and its place in the scheme of things, not as an inchoate force, but as a vile object to be destroyed. He next struck at the net of thought which the Dweller had tried to use to compress his mind in a cage, and one strong blow shattered the invisible bonds completely. Now, rejoicing in the clean surge of energy which he was using, he shaped a web of his own, willing the strands of psychic energy to form a pattern of power which would hold the living horror which was the Dweller enmeshed in its own turn. Remorselessly, calling on the Trinity and all the saints to aid, he began to choke the monster’s mind and dark spirit as it had tried to do to him.
Neither one had moved a muscle during the encounter. But as the burning, almost tangible power of the warrior-priest began to slay the Dweller, it let out one fearful cry, a mewing sound, as if some ghastly stringed instrument, some guitar forged in the nethermost pit, had struck an impossible chord. Then, grimly, it fought for its existence. And fought in vain, for all its shifts and evasions, its counterstrokes and lurements, were to no purpose.
Fending off each rally by the mere-thing, Hiero, by the power of his trained will and armed spirit, inexorably drew the strands of his mind trap tighter and tighter. When he had bent a last effort (he thought) and still found the other’s will unbroken, he breathed harder and, using his new knowledge, concentrated a dart of energy, which went through the net he fashioned in some way without disturbing it.
Once more, and for the last time, that awful mewing, twanging cry, the death scream of something never meant to give voice at all, echoed over the lonely fens.
Then—there was an instantaneous vacuum, as if a soundless bubble had burst, perhaps somewhere in another alien dimension superimposed upon ours. And then, nothing more. There was only the soughing of the night wind in the reed tops, the hum of countless insect hordes, and the rasping obligate of frog voices.
The black skiff still lay nosed upon the muck, just in front of Hiero’s tunnel. But no hooded figure now stood glaring in at the priest. A heap of colorless rags lay spilled half over the gunwales, and from the clothes, a sticky, oily substance was leaking, covering the now moonlit water with a foul stain. A charnel stench came from the rags, a reek which made the worst efforts of the marsh gases seem like perfume by comparison. Whatever had worn the hooded cloak had returned to its native elements, as foul in its strange death as it had been in life.
Choking at the vile smell, Hiero rose and, putting one foot on the strange little craft, gave it a hearty shove. To his amazement, the skiff did not simply glide off at the force of his push, but instead turned and moved away, in steady progress up the channel down which it had first come. He could see clearly now, for the mists had cleared while he had fought for his life, and he watched the mysterious boat, bearing the remains of its ghastly pilot, sedately turn a corner in the reed banks and vanish. In its strange going, it kept the last secret of the Dweller in the Mist.
Wearily, Hiero looked up at the white moon. The incredible struggle had gone on for at least three hours and yet had seemed like only a few moments. When the Dweller had first appeared, the last sickly light of the fog-shrouded sun still lingered in the west. But the position of the moon showed that it now was not far short of ten o’clock.
He turned and looked down at his two partners in jeopardy. For the first time, he smiled. The bear was swatting mosquitoes in his sleep and growling angrily as he did. Klootz was also asleep, but emitting gargantuan grunts and rumblings, while every inch of his great hide twitched and rippled in an effort to shake off the stinging bugs. Whatever spell they all had been under was completely lifted, that was certain.
The priest said a brief prayer of thanks while he watched the gibbous moon rise still farther. He was still somewhat bemused, and his nervous energy was a long way from returning to normal, while the tremendous dose of psychic strength he had utilized to fight the Dweller had taken a toll. He felt as if he had been riding for two days without a break, at a full gallop.
But it was not time to delay. The mystery of how the horror of the mere had found them was insoluble, at least at present, but one thing was clear, it had had help! That much he had been able to read from its anguished brain, even as he destroyed it and sent it back to the nameless deeps from which it should never have emerged. Somehow, even though he had seen no flier, felt no follower of any kind, the three had been tracked. They must move on and at once, before fresh forces could be assembled for their destruction. Hiero felt fairly sure that the Dweller had not been able, even if willing, to summon any aid in its last moments, because he now knew the strength of the weapon which he had used to slay it. And it had been too preoccupied fighting for its unnatural life to send any messages whatsoever. But if it could find them, by whatever means, so could others. This was a matter on which he would have to take thought, but later on, not now.
He was amused that his new confidence seemed more than temporary. Beyond, and indeed underlying, the amusement was a hard-won feeling of mental power. Hiero knew, without even wondering how he knew, that Abbot Demero or any others of the Council would now be hard-put to stand against him. He hastily put aside such thoughts as vainglorious and impertinent, but they were still there, buried but not dead, in the deep reaches of his mind. He was learning something the Abbey scholars of the mental arts were just beginning to conceive, the fact that mental powers accrete in a geometric, not arithmetical, progression, depending on how much and how well they are used. The two battles Hiero had won, even though the bear had helped decide the first, had given the hidden forces of his already strong mind a dimension and power he would not himself have believed possible. And the oddest thing was, he knew it.
Tired, but feeling somehow wonderful anyway, he roused Gorm and the morse. The bear rose, sniffed the air, and then sent a message. You have fought. It is in the air. (But) there is no blood (and) we have not waked. The enemy which strikes the mind? (Doubt/fear?)
Marveling at the bear’s perceptions, not for the last time, Hiero briefly told him of the Dweller and the fact that it was gone forever.
Gone, that is good. But you are weary, very!! Weary and also troubled (as to how) the enemy found (smelled out) us. Let us go. We (can) eat later.
The big morse nosed him all over and wrinkled his lip in distaste at some smell he seemed to detect on the mud-smeared leather. Hiero saddled him, picking off some more of the big leeches as he did, and in a short time they were on their way again, under the bright moon.