Stranger still that such a woman should have been utterly unknown to Bran Mak Morn…
It was a mystery whose unraveling could not concern him now.
“Your sword is welcome, and gratefully accepted,” Bran told her, wondering what course he should take. For the success of his desperate scheme, his presence here on the moors must not be made known. Under the circumstances, there was no choice but to accept her at her word and trust to her good intentions.
“My position is awkward,” he began. “The nature of my venture demands secrecy. If you would render me a great service, proceed to Baal-dor and tell no one that you have seen me. Presently I will return to Baal-dor, and we can talk at greater length…”
“The King of Pictdom shall never return to Baal-dor,” Liuba promised in sombre tones. “Where Bran Mak Morn would boldly venture, he shall no more return to the world of men.”
Bran’s eyes narrowed. “It seems you are more than commonly informed. Are you prophetess, or merely clever spy?”
Liuba broke off a length of convolvulus, twining the blue-flowered vine about her long fingers. “Does it matter? Enough to say that you go to your doom.”
“What game do you play, Liuba?”
Her dark eyes met his. “You go to slay the ancient enemies of our race. Alone, you shall never return. Let me come with you. It may be that two blades of Pictish steel can stay the scales of fate from their predestined balance.”
At another time Bran might have acted otherwise. This dawn his nerves were wire-taut, his patience thin as a knife’s edge. It riled him to be confronted thus by this self-assured girl in man’s attire.
“Since you affect to know so much of my affairs and my destiny,” he told her curtly, “then you doubtless know as well that this is a personal blood-feud. If you would help me, go your own way and say nothing of this meeting.”
“Personal blood-feud?” Liuba’s brows rose. “And what of your sister? With my help there’s a chance…”
“If I’d wanted help, I could have chosen from the best of my warriors!” Bran snapped. “It will take stealth and iron nerve to save Morgain-a task only one man can hope to carry out. This is not the work for a blundering army, or for a girl who struts about wearing man’s weapons.”
The convolvulus vine snapped in her fist, as the girl’s hand fell to swordhilt. One glance at the wrath in her eyes, and Bran knew he must kill her if she drew blade.
“So be it!” spoke Liuba after a dangerous pause. Her lips were tight with icy rage.
“I have freely offered you my aid. You have refused. Have done. When next I offer you my aid, it shall be for a price.”
“As you will,” Bran returned dourly. “I ask that no man serve me without recompense of sorts.”
“Be sure that I shall set the price!”
“As you say. Now enough of this delay. Go your own way and-I charge you-say nothing of this meeting.”
But Liuba had already spun on her heel, and with feral grace the girl strode away into the pines and was instantly lost from sight.
11
REALM OF ENDLESS NIGHT
For a moment Bran Mak Morn stared after the vanished girl. A strange apparition, he meditated, this girl who offered herself as sword-companion for a doomed quest. He could almost imagine her a fantasy of his overwrought mind, or a phantom of this haunted land, so fantastic her mien, so abrupt her appearance and departure. In truth, this stretch of heath and ridge was shunned by Pict and Celt alike, although no sinister legends survived to account for this avoidance.
Then, shrugging, Bran turned his steps once more for the nameless barrow beneath Kestrel Scaur.
As once before, two years ago, Bran Mak Morn sought a Door to Those Below. Then he had found one within Dagon’s Barrow. But the king of Picdand was too well known these days to risk a journey south of the Wall to the Welsh Marches, nor did it seem likely the People of the Dark would have left unguarded that Door through which he had stolen their Black Stone.
Bran knew Atla and Claudius Nero and their minions must have entered Baal-dor through some hidden burrow that night they stole away Morgain and left a cairn of Roman heads as proof of their power to strike where they willed. A careful search had not disclosed such a passage, and Bran concluded they would likely have blocked its entrance in some cunning fashion to protect their retreat.
Skirting the foetid pit that yawned blackly from the clearing about the barrow, Bran noted that it was similar to the crater he had examined at the ruined camp. Some twenty feet across, the tunnel was gouged from the earth to a depth of perhaps fifty feet-rising from below at a sharp angle, its lower end totally occluded with a rubble of broken earth and stone. Bran’s belly drew tight at the memory of the horror he had glimpsed as it burst forth here. Hell-worm. A nightmare that had lurked beneath the surface to strike at Nero’s command.
Bran pondered a moment as to what other unknown horrors might he waiting beneath the fragile shell that men foolishly called solid earth. The tunnel that was its spoor was blocked below. Were the passage clear, even in his fury Bran would have had little heart to follow its slime-hung course.
Hunched and ominous, the barrow stood watchfully from the center of the clearing. The stone at its entrance was still rolled away from the opening. A glance showed the freshly torn earth and hanging roots of turf where the great stone had only recently been wrenched aside. The stone was immense; it must have called for many hands to pull it away from the tunnel mouth.
Bran’s face grew hard. Atla and Claudius Nero had first appeared from beside the barrow; when the hell-worm struck, they had fled from here. Remembering the steps that descended from beneath the central slab of stone of Dagon’s Barrow, the Pict thought he knew where the two had fled.
The tunnel that pierced the barrow was dank and fusty, though the breezes of spring dawn seemed to have stirred the dead air within. Ghosts of sunlight stole past the opening, revealing a section of tunnel lined with joined slabs of sweating stone. The passage was low and narrow, and vanished into blackness.
Bran took a long look at the spring morning, drew a deep breath of blossom-scented air. His love of the cloud-chased blue skies and the rolling heather was deep and abiding. He regretted that he should never see them again.
Turning, he plunged into musty darkness.
The passageway was cramped, even for a man of Bran’s tightly knit frame. He did not like the cold beads of moisture that oozed from the stone slabs, but he had no course but to brush against their slimy pressure as he stooped through the close passageway.
Then he was through, and into a low domed chamber where a man could stand clear of the compressing walls of stone. A wan mist of sunlight seemed to filter through the tunnel, lessening to some extent the thick gloom within. As Bran’s eyes became accustomed to the tenuous light, he could dimly discern the confines of the buried tomb. Heavy deposits of nitre encrusted the chamber walls, and trickles of soil had sifted past crevices in the stones to form melted hillocks of debris across the stone flags of the floor. Overlying all was a soft carpet of dust and mould and rotted spiderwebs of uncounted centuries.
It was a solidly crafted barrow, this eons-defying tomb raised in some lost age. In the center of the chamber stood a massive stone table-an immense slab of stone perhaps ten feet long and half as broad, supported at either end by two squat blocks of stone. Raised to chest level, the stone table suggested an altar at first glance. Finding no groove carven into its periphery to channel away sacrificial blood, Bran concluded that here had reposed the body of that unknown king or warrior for whom the barrow had been raised.