It was Emer who told Carse what had happened. She did not really need to. The moment he saw her face, white as death, he knew.
“Hold never reached the Tomb,” she said. “A Sark patrol caught them on the outward voyage. They say Rold tried to slay himself to keep the secret safe but he was prevented. They have taken him to Sark.”
“But the Sarks don’t even know that he has the secret,” Carse protested, clutching at that straw, and Emer shook her head.
“They’re not fools. They’ll want to know the plans of Khondor and why he was bound toward Jekkara with a single ship. They’ll have the Dhuvians question him.”
Carse realized sickly what that meant. The Dhuvians’ hypnotic science had almost conquered his own stubbornly alien brain. It would soon suck all Rold’s secrets out of him.
“Then there is no hope?”
“No hope,” said Emer. “Not now nor ever again.”
They were silent for a while. The wind moaned in the gallery, and the waves rolled in solemn thunder against the cliffs below.
Carse said, “What will be done now?”
“The Sea Kings have sent word through all the free coasts and isles. Every ship and every man is gathering here now and Ironbeard will lead them on to Sark.
“There is little time. Even when the Dhuvians have the secret it will take them time to go to the Tomb and bring the weapons back and learn their use. If we can crush Sark before then…”
“Can you crush Sark?” asked Carse.
She answered honestly. “No. The Dhuvians will intervene and even the weapons they already have will turn the scale against us.
“But we must try and die trying, for it will be a better death than the one that will come after when Sark and the Serpent level Khondor into the sea.”
He stood looking down at her and it seemed to him that no moment of his life had been more bitter than this.
“Will the Sea Kings take me with them?”
Stupid question. He knew the answer before she gave it to him.
“They are saying now that this was all a trick of Rhiannon’s, misleading Rold to get the secret into Caer Dhu. I have told them it was not so but—”
She made a small tired gesture and turned her head away. “Ironbeard, I think, believes me. He will see that your death is swift and clean.”
After a while Carse said, “And Ywain?”
“Thorn of Tarak has arranged that. Her they will take with them to Sark, lashed to the bow of the leader’s ship.”
There was another silence. It seemed to Carse that the very air was heavy, so that it weighed upon his heart.
He found that Emer had left silently. He turned and went out onto the little gallery, where he stood staring down at the sea.
“Rhiannon,” he whispered. “I curse you. I curse the night I saw your sword and I curse the day I came to Khondor with the promise of your tomb.”
The light was fading. The sea was like a bath of blood in the sunset. The wind brought him broken shouts and cries from the city and far below longships raced into the fiord.
Carse laughed mirthlessly. “You’ve got what you wanted,” he told the Presence within him, “but you won’t enjoy it long!”
Small triumph.
The strain of the past few days and this final shock were too much for any man to take. Carse sat down on the carven bench and put his head between his hands and stayed that way, too weary even for emotion.
The voice of the dark invader whispered in his brain and for the first time Carse was too numb to fight it down.
“I might have saved you this if you had listened. Fools and children, all of you, that you would not listen!”
“Very well then—speak,” Carse muttered heavily. “The evil is done now and Ironbeard will be here soon. I give you leave, Rhiannon. Speak.”
And he did, flooding Carse’s mind with the voice of thought, raging like a storm wind trapped in a narrow vault, desperate, pleading.
“If you’ll trust me, Carse, I could still save Khondor. Lend me your body, let me use it—”
“I’m not far gone enough for that, even now.”
“Gods above!” Rhiannon’s thought raged. “And there’s so little time—”
Carse could sense how he fought to master his fury and when the thought-voice came again it was controlled and quiet with a terrible sincerity.
“I told you the truth in the grotto. You were in my Tomb, Carse. How long do you think I could lie there alone in the dreadful darkness outside space and time and not be changed? I’m no god! Whatever you may call us now we Quiru were never gods—only a race of men who came before the other men.
“They call me evil, the Cursed One—but I was not! Vain and proud, yes, and a fool, but not wicked in intent. I taught the Serpent Folk because they were clever and flattered me—and when they used my teaching to work evil I tried to stop them and failed because they had learned defenses from me and even my power could not reach them in Caer Dhu.
“Therefore my brother Quiru judged me. They condemned me to remain imprisoned beyond space and time, in the place which they prepared, as long as the fruits of my sin endured on this world. Then they left me.
“We were the last of our race. There was nothing to hold them here, nothing they could do. They wanted only peace and learning. So they went along the path they had chosen. And I waited. Can you think what that waiting must have been?”
“I think you deserved it,” Carse said thickly. He was suddenly tense. The shadow, the beginning of a hope…
Rhiannon went on. “I did. But you gave me the chance to undo my sin, to be free to follow my brothers.”
The thought-voice rose with a passion that was strong, dangerously strong.
“Lend me your body, Carse! Lend me your body, that I may do it!”
“No!” cried Carse. “No!”
He sprang up, conscious now of his peril, fighting with all his strength against that wild demanding force. He thrust it back, closing his mind against it.
“You cannot master me,” he whispered. “You cannot!”
“No,” sighed Rhiannon bitterly, “I cannot.”
And the inner voice was gone.
Carse leaned against the rock, sweating and shaken but fired by a last, desperate hope. No more than an idea, really, but enough to spur him on. Better anything than this waiting for death like a mouse in a trap.
If the god of chance would only give him a little time…
From inside he heard the opening of the door and the challenge of the guards, and his heart sank. He stood breathless, listening for the voice of Ironbeard.
XIV. Daring Deception
But it was not Ironbeard who spoke. It was Boghaz, it was Boghaz alone who, came out onto the balcony, very downcast and sad.
“Emer sent me,” he said. “She told me the tragic news and I had to come to say good-by.”
He took Carse’s hand. “The Sea Kings are holding their last council of war before starting for Sark but it will not be long. Old friend, we have been through much together. You have grown to be like my own brother and this parting wrings my heart.”
The fat Valkisian seemed genuinely affected. There were tears in his eyes as he looked at Carse.
“Yes, like my own brother,” he repeated unsteadily. “Like brothers, we have quarreled but we have shed blood together too. A man does not forget.”
He drew a long sigh. “I should like to have something of yours to keep by me, friend. Some small trinket for memory’s sake. Your jeweled collar, perhaps—your belt—you will not miss them now and I should cherish them all the days of my life.”