And the harp of power could find the key to a mind, and lay bonds upon that mind.
Through the open windows, faintly from below, I heard the clash of swords and the dim shouts of fighting men. But these sounds did not touch Ghast Rhymi. He was lost on the plane of pure abstraction, thinking his ancient, deep thoughts.
My fingers touched the controls of the harp, awkwardly at first, then with more ease as manual dexterity came back with memory.
The sigh of a plucked string whispered through the white room. The murmuring of minor notes, in a low, dreamily distant key. And as the machine found the patterns of Ghast Rhymi's mind, under my hands the harp quickened into breathing life.
The soul of Ghast Rhymi – translated into terms of pure music!
Shrill and ear-piercing a single note sang. Higher and higher it mounted, fading into inaudibility. Deep down a roaring, windy noise began, rising and swelling into the demon-haunted shout of a gale. Rivers of air poured their music into the threnody.
High – high – cold and pure and white as the snowy summit of a great mountain, that single thin note sang and sang again.
Louder grew the great winds. Rippling arpeggios raced through the rising torrent of the sorcerous music.
Thunder of riven rocks – shrill screaming of earthquake-shaken lands – yelling of a deluge that poured down upon tossing forests.
A heavy humming note, hollow and unearthly, and I saw the gulfs between the worlds where the empty night of space makes a trackless desert.
And suddenly, incongruously, a gay lilting tune, with an infectious rocking rhythm, that brought to my mind bright colors and sunlit streams and fields.
Ghast Rhymi stirred.
For an instant awareness came back into his blue eyes. He saw me.
And I saw the life-fires sink within that frail, ancient body.
I knew that he was dying – that I had troubled his long peace – that he had relinquished his casual hold upon life.
I drew the harp toward me. I touched the controls.
Ghast Rhymi sat before me, dead, the faintest possible spark fading within that old brain.
I sent the sorcerous spell of the harp blowing like a mighty wind upon the dying embers of Ghast Rhymi's life.
As Orpheus drew back the dead Eurydice from Pluto's realm, so I cast my net of music, snared the soul of Ghast Rhymi, drew him back from death!
He straggled at first, I felt his mind turn and writhe, trying to escape, but the harp had already found the key to his mind, and it would not let him go. Inexorably it drew him.
The ember flickered – faded – brightened again.
Louder sang the strings. Deeper roared the tumult of shaking waters.
Higher the white, shrill note, pure as a star's icy light, leaped and ever rose.
Roaring, racing, sweet with honey-musk, perfumed with flower-scent and ambergris, blazing with color, opal and blood-ruby and amethyst-blue, that mighty tapestry of color rippled and shook like a visible web of magic through the room.
The web reached out.
Swept around Ghast Rhymi like a fowler's snare!
Back in those faded blue eyes the light of awareness grew. He had stopped struggling. He had given up the fight. It was easier to come back to life – to let me question him – than to battle the singing strings that could cage a man's very soul.
Under the white beard the old man's lips moved.
"Ganelon," he said. "I knew – when the harp sang – who played it. Well, ask your questions. And then let me die. I would not live in the days that are coming now. But you will live, Ganelon – and yet you will die too. That much I have read in the future."
The hoary head bent slowly. For an instant Ghast Rhymi listened – and I listened too.
The last, achingly sweet notes of the harp died upon the trembling air.
Through the open windows came the muted clash of sword and the wordless shriek of a dying man.
XIII. War – Red War!
PITY FLOODED ME. The shadow of greatness that had cloaked Ghast Rhymi was gone. He sat there, a shrunken, fragile old man, and I felt a momentary unreasoning impulse to turn on my heel and leave him to drift back into his peaceful abyss of thought. Once, I remembered, Ghast Rhymi had seemed a tall, huge figure – though he had never been that in my lifetime. But in my childhood I had sat at the feet of this Covenanter and looked up with awe at that majestic, bearded face with reverence.
Perhaps there had been more life in that face then, more warmth and humanity. It was remote now. It was like the face of a god, or of one who had looked upon too many gods.
My tongue stumbled.
"Master," I said. "I am sorry!"
No light came into the distant blue gaze, yet I sensed a stirring.
"You name me master?" he said. "You – Ganelon? It has been a long time since you humbled yourself to anyone."
The taste of my triumph was ashes. I bowed my head. Yes, I had conquered Ghast Rhymi, and I did not like the savor of that conquest.
"In the end the circle completes itself," the old man said quietly. "We are more kin than the others. Both you and I are human, Ganelon, not mutants. Because I am Leader of the Coven I let Medea and the others use my wisdom. But – but – " He hesitated.
"For two decades my mind has dwelt in shadow," he went on. "Beyond good and evil, beyond life and the figures that move like puppets on the stream of life. When I was wakened, I would give the answers I knew. It did not matter. I had thought that I had lost all touch with reality. And that if death swept over every man and woman in the Dark World, it would not matter."
I could not speak. I knew that I had done Ghast Rhymi a very great wrong in wakening him from his deep peace.
The blue stars dwelt on me.
"And I find that it does matter, after all. No blood of mine runs in your veins, Ganelon. Yet we are kin. I taught you, as I would have taught my own son. I trained you for your task – to rule the Coven in my place. And now, I think I regret many things. Most of all the answer I gave the Covenanters after Medea brought you back from Earth-world."
"You told them to kill me," I said.
He nodded.
"Matholch was afraid. Edeyrn sided with him. They made Medea agree. Matholch said, 'Ganelon is changed. There is danger. Let the old man read the future and see what it holds.' So they came to me, and I let my mind ride the winds of time and see what lay ahead."
"And that was -?"
"The end of the Coven," Ghast Rhymi said. "If you lived. I foresaw the arms of Llyr reaching into the Dark World, and Matholch lying dead in a shadowed place, and doom upon Edeyrn and Medea. For time is fluid, Ganelon. It changes as men change. The probabilities alter. When you went into Earth-world, you Were Ganelon. But you came back with a double mind. You have the memories of Edward Bond, which you can use as tools. Medea should have left you in Earth-world. But she loved you."
"Yet she agreed to let them kill me," I said.
"Do you know what was in her thoughts?" Ghast Rhymi asked. "In Caer Secaire, at the time of sacrifice, Llyr would come. And you have been sealed to Llyr. Did Medea think you could be killed, then?"
A doubt grew within me. But Medea had led me, like a sheep to slaughter, in the procession to the Caer. If she could justify herself, let her. I knew that Edeyrn and Matholch could not.
"I may let Medea live, then," I said. "But not the wolfling. I have already promised his life. And as for Edeyrn, she must perish."
I showed Ghast Rhymi the Crystal Mask. He nodded.
"But Llyr?"
"I was sealed to Him as Ganelon," I said. "Now you say I have two minds. Or, at least, an extra set of memories, even though they are artificial. I am not willing to be liege to Llyr! I learned many things in the-Earth-world. Llyr is no god!"