Even coming as this did after eon-spanning panoramas of loathsome cruelties and history-wrenching wars, this vision of Roman conquest had the power to fill Bran’s heart with black hatred and killing rage. The staggering defeats of the Celtic tribes struck deep pain within his Pictish soul-Bran Mak Morn, a Pict, whose race had been driven from these same lands by the ancestors of these slaughtered Celts.
Not even the memory of the abominations of the serpent-folk could sicken him now-not as he viewed the lurid carnage and tyrannical devastations of the Roman invaders. His hatred of Rome became a burning agony in his heart, a gnawing demon in his brain.
And now the armored legions of Rome stood poised to spew forth murder and pillage through the Highlands of Caledon. Truly, any pact with any power was altogether justified if it would mean the defeat of Rome…
Abruptly there was blackness.
Then the slow return of eerie luminescence from the Altar of the Black Stone.
Bran’s eyes held a mad glare. Thunder of all gods-what a vision that had been! How long had he been held within its spell? His muscles ached from long immobility; his knees sagged against the iron bars in sudden weakness.
Yes, an alliance with beings who could wield such powers as he had glimpsed against the might of Rome… Like King Gorm, the conquests of Bran Mak Morn would make legends to outlast the age…
A tight smile crept over Bran’s battered face as he pondered the prospects…
Atlas shout broke the insidious spell.
“Where’s Morgain!”
15
NO WAY OUT
As the cavern dissolved into a fantastic mirage of past eons, Morgain alone among the watchers did not fall under its spell. The throbbing ache of her scourged flesh and the straining agony of her wrists were more compelling sensations than the hypnotic sense of wonder that caught up all the others-Bran, Atla and Claudius Nero, and the ancient serpent-wizard, Ssrhythssaa.
Slowly the girl spun at the end of the leather thongs that suspended her tortured body from the iron grating above. Alternately her pain-fogged eyes stared into the shimmering sorcery of the Black Stone’s mirage, or into the starless night of the cavern’s periphery.
A thread of memory. The ripping embraces of Aria’s long whip had spun her writhing body about on its tether. The twisted leather straps continued to unwind, wind, and unwind yet again as she hung pendant. Atla had been beating her when Claudius Nero arrived with the unconscious body of Bran Mak Morn. Nero had put a halt to the torture. How long had it gone on? Morgain could not remember. That she was still alive was evidence the witch must have waited for signs of returning consciousness before continuing the brutal flogging.
Still half in shock from her beating, Morgain had little attention for the awesome spectacle that held the others spellbound. The period of her slow revolutions were gradually diminishing when a sudden dull snap brought the girl from her stupor. Her body seemed to sag a fraction of an inch toward the floor of the cage. Morgain turned her face upward.
One of the twisted leather thongs had parted-cut through by the rasping friction of the strands against the rust-pitted bar.
Hope-so faint, so unexpected, as to seem a cruel jest-rallied Morgain’s broken spirit. Interrupted in her vengeance by Neros coming, Atla had not bothered to lock the cell of her comatose victim. The door was yet ajar.
A desperate chance-but Morgain knew full well she had nothing to lose. Her fingers were nerveless from loss of circulation, but she could still swing her hanging body about on its tether. Gritting her teeth against the pain her movements sent coursing through her tortured body, Morgain twisted herself violently against the tether-rasping the leather thongs against the pitted iron.
In the darkness her stealthy motion was well concealed. Knowing that at any instant one of the entranced watchers might turn away from the shadow-images thrown forth from the Black Stone, Morgain ignored the added strain on her wrists and shoulders, and struggled against the tether with desperate strength.
Hours seemed to drag hopelessly past. Dizziness and pain nauseated her. Doggedly Morgain kept to her task.
Another cord suddenly let go. Then a third snap…
Morgain dropped to the floor of the cage. The drop was only inches, but her knees buckled, and the girl flung out her nerveless hands to keep from felling flat. It seemed to her that the entire cavern reeled at the shock of her fall. Morgain waited breathlessly for the alarm.
Nothing. Held spellbound by the Black Stone, the others had not heard the soft slither of her collapse to the floor. A low hiss, long drawn-out. Morgain started. It was the sigh of her pent-up breath.
Warily the girl came to her feet. Her wrists were still tied together. A thousand white-hot needles lanced through her hands, as some degree of circulation returned to them. Dried blood caked the leather strands where they had bitten. It would take minutes, once untied, for her to regain use of her fingers, Morgain realized. Escape from the cell was the paramount dilemma for her.
Expecting any instant that her movement would be noticed, Morgain crept to the cell door. Its hinges had rasped horribly, she remembered. It stood ajar; the opening was only slight but Morgain was slim. Sucking in her breath, she edged her lithe form through the narrow opening.
Rusted iron scraped against her bare flesh. The girl pressed past the opening. It was very close…
A dull grunt from the hinges-thunder to her ears.
Then she had wriggled through. Wild-eyed, Morgain searched for evidence of alarm. There was none. The sound had not broken upon the watchers-not even to Bran, whom she dimly saw as a vague blotch upon the bars of his cage.
Incredibly, she was free.
Free to do what?
A scorpion, it is said, seeing itself encircled by converging flame, drives its fetal sting into its own back. All other creatures, lacking the scorpion’s wisdom, seek only to flee despite that impossibility. So it was with Morgain.
She had no idea what other eyes watched from the crouching darkness. At any instant she might be seen. She knew the blackness that seemed to hide her was a false refuge, for the eyes of the People of the Dark must surely pierce its veil, although the half-humans-Atla and Claudius Nero and those he commanded, still seemed to require some faint glow of light.
Weaponless, her wrists still bound together, there was nothing Morgain could do to help Bran escape from his cell. Any foolish attempt to do so must surely draw attention and end with her immediate recapture. If she fled, there remained the desperate chance to reach the world of men and to return with an army of Bran’s vengeful warriors.
The odds were hopeless-but death was the certain and hideous alternative. Morgain fled on silent feet.
Morgain owed her escape to two twists of chance. Senseless from her savage flogging, bound and helpless, the idea that the girl could escape was too remote for her captors to take seriously. At the same time, her pain-glazed delirium had spared her from the hypnotic fascination of Ssrhythssaa’s conjuration.
As she crept through the ensorcelled cavern and fled down the first passage she came upon, luck continued to favor the girl. The passage seemed to lead upward, and again fortune seemed to guide her steps. This last was cruel illusion.
How far she fled before she at last collapsed to gulp great breaths of dank air, Morgain did not know. The light from the scintillant mirage filtered eerily for a space through the passages that led from the cavern of the Black Stone. Beyond all was blackness-blackness tenanted by unseen peril, by hidden pitfalls and obstructions, by looming walls of stone, from which time and again her outflung wrists fended her staggering body away an instant before bruising collision.