It was not true. It could not be true. He would not let it be true.
Boghaz came up onto the dais. He gave Carse one queer shrewd glance but when he spoke to the Sea Kings his manner was smoothly diplomatic.
“No doubt the Lady Emer has wisdom far beyond mine and I mean her no disrespect. However, the barbarian is my friend and I speak from my own knowledge. He is what he says, no more and no less.”
The men of the galley crew growled a warning assent to that.
Boghaz continued. “Consider, my lords. Would Rhiannon slay a Dhuvian and make war on the Sarks? Would he offer victory to Khondor?”
“No!” said Ironbeard. “By the gods, he wouldn’t. He was all for the Serpent’s spawn.”
Emer spoke, demanding their attention. “My lords, have I ever lied or advised you wrongly?”
They shook their heads and Rold said, “No. But your word is not enough in this.”
“Very well, forget my words. There is a way to prove whether or not he is Rhiannon. Let him pass the testing before the Wise Ones.”
Rold pulled at his beard, scowling. Then he nodded. “Wisely said,” he agreed and the others joined in.
“Aye—let it be proved.”
Rold turned to Carse. “You will submit?”
“No,” Carse answered furiously. “I will not. To the devil with all such superstitious flummery! If my offer of the Tomb isn’t enough to convince you of where I stand—why, you can do without it and without me.”
Rold’s face hardened. “No harm will come to you. If you’re not Rhiannon you have nothing to fear. Again will you submit?”
“No!”
He began to stride back along the table toward his men, who were already bunched together like wolves snarling for a fight. But Thorn of Tarak caught his ankle as he passed and brought him down and the men of Khondor swarmed over the galley’s crew, disarming them before blood was shed.
Carse struggled like a wildcat among the Sea Kings, in a brief passion of fury that lasted until Ironbeard struck him regretfully on the head with a brass-bound drinking horn.
XII. The Cursed One
The darkness lifted slowly. Carse was conscious first of sounds—the suck and sigh of water close at hand, the muffled roaring of surf beyond a wall of rock. Otherwise it was still and heavy.
Light came next, a suffused soft glow. When he opened his eyes he saw high above him a rift of stars and below that was arching rock, crusted with crystalline deposits that gave back a gentle gleaming.
He was in a sea cave, a grotto floored with a pool of milky flame. As his sight cleared he saw that there was a ledge on the opposite side of the pool, with steps leading down from above. The Sea Kings stood there with shackled Ywain and Boghaz and the chief men of the Swimmers and the Sky Folk. All watched him and none spoke.
Carse found that he was bound upright to a thin spire of rock, quite alone.
Emer stood before him, waist deep in the pool. The black pearl gleamed between her breasts, and the bright water ran like a spilling of diamonds from her hair. In her hands she held a great rough jewel, dull gray in color and cloudy as though it slept.
When she saw that his eyes were open she said clearly, “Come, oh my masters! It is time.”
A regretful sigh murmured through the grotto. The surface of the pool was disturbed with a trembling of phosphorescence and the waters parted smoothly as three shapes swam slowly to Emer’s side. They were the heads of three Swimmers, white with age.
Their eyes were the most awful things that Carse had ever seen. For they were young with an alien sort of youth that was not of the body and in them was a wisdom and a strength that frightened him.
He strained against his bonds, still half dazed from Ironbeard’s blow, and he heard above him a rustling as of great birds roused from slumber.
Looking up he saw on the shadowy ledges three brooding figures, the old, old eagles of the Sky Folk with tired wings, and in their faces too was the light of wisdom divorced from flesh.
He found his tongue then. He raged and struggled to be free and his voice had a hollow empty sound in the quiet vault and they did not answer and his bonds were tight.
He realized at last that it was no use. He leaned breathless and shaken, against the spire of rock.
A harsh cracked whisper came then from the ledge above. “Little sister—lift up the stone of thought.”
Emer raised the cloudy jewel in her hands.
It was an eery thing to watch. Carse did not understand at first. Then he saw that as the eyes of Emer and the Wise Ones grew dim and veiled the cloudy gray of the Jewel cleared and brightened.
It seemed that all of the power of their minds was pouring into the focal point of the crystal, blending through it into one strong beam. And he felt the pressure of those gathered minds upon his own mind!
Carse sensed dimly what they were doing. The thoughts of the conscious mind were a tiny electric pulsation through the neurones. That electric pulse could be dampened, neutralized, by a stronger counter-impulse such as they were focusing on him through that electro-sensitive crystal.
They themselves could not know the basic science behind their attack upon his mind! These Halflings, strong in extra-sensory powers, had perhaps long ago discovered that the crystals could focus their minds together and had used the discovery without ever knowing its scientific basis.
“But I can hold them off,” Carse whispered thickly to himself. “I can hold them all off!”
It enraged him, that calm impersonal beating down of his mind. He fought it with all the force within him but it was not enough.
And then, as before when he had faced the singing stars of the Dhuvian, some force in him that did not seem his own came to aid him.
It built a barrier against the Wise Ones and held it, held it until Carse moaned in agony. Sweat ran down his face and his body writhed and he knew dimly that he was going to die, that he couldn’t stand any more.
His mind was like a closed room that is suddenly burst open by contending winds that turn over the piled-up memories and shake the dusty dreams and reveal everything, even in the darkest corners.
All except one. One place where the shadow was solid and impenetrable, and would not be dispersed.
The jewel blazed between Emer’s hands. And there was a stillness like the silence in the spaces between the stars.
Emer’s voice rang clear across it.
“Rhiannon, speak!”
The dark shadow that Carse felt laired in his mind quivered, stirred but gave no other sign. He felt that it waited and watched.
The silence pulsed. Across the pool, the watchers on the ledge moved uneasily.
Boghaz’ voice came querulously. “It is madness! How can this barbarian be the Cursed One of long ago?”
But Emer paid no heed and the jewel in her hand blazed higher and higher.
“The Wise Ones have strength, Rhiannon! They can break this man’s mind. They will break it unless you speak!”
And savagely triumphant now, “What will you do then? Creep into another man’s brain and body? You cannot, Rhiannon! For you would have done so ere now if you could!”
Across the pool Ironbeard said hoarsely, “I do not like this!”
But Emer went mercilessly on and now her voice seemed the only thing in Carse’s universe—relentless, terrible.
“The man’s mind is cracking, Rhiannon. A minute-more—a minute more and your only instrument becomes a helpless idiot. Speak now, if you would save him!”
Her voice rang and echoed from the vaulting rock of the cavern and the jewel in her hands was a living flame of force.