“…ha-ad to-ooo-ven-geann-ccce-”
“Vengeance? Ye knew him before?”
N-O-oh-passst-pa-a-ast-li-i-ife…”
“Ah.” The druid crouched close to the dead man, motionless but for the tortured moving of his lips. “And, Thorgast Shield-hewer, dead and not dead, poor cold shade dragged back from the Otherwhere… who called you here?”
“C-C-uth-no-o-ohh,” the corpse moaned, as though confused. “L-et me-go-oh…”
“Speak the name, Thorgast Shield-hewer that was. Who? Speak-and these will be your last words; speak, and return where you belong… dead man!”
Staring, his face pale, Cormac strained to hear.
Thorgast Shield-hewer spoke two words, a strange name if it was a name, and then he was still, and the flesh faded from his white face to leave behind only the eternally grinning death’s head on the skeleton he had been before he was called back by him whose name he pronounced: “Thulsa Doom!”
Chapter Seven:
Pacts
Brian and Ros were heroes. Both slim, and neither ill-favoured, the excited young men reminded Cormac of tail-wagging dogs after their first hunt. The hounds of Cormac, he thought, and wondered if he were not crediting himself with overmuch. His head had been swelled a bit by that name the crew had begun applying to themselves after the successful fighting off of the Pictish attack asea: the Cormacanachta; descendants or followers of Cormac.
So Ros and Brian-I-love-to-fight were heroes, and the two youthful weapon-men strutted and figuratively wagged their tails before the others, while responding to questions with answers longer than necessary. If those who had abided outside did not quite fawn on the two who with Cormac and Bas had “slain” no less than two-and-twenty ghastly un-men, they did certainly show their envy and adulation.
Most of the others, just as naturally, expressed the wish that they’d been allowed to go within, rather than remaining without; but… captain’s orders.
During that great deal of chatter, Cormac caught the eye of a rather sombre Lugh, and he winked. Lugh’s looks improved; Ros and Brian were the heroes of the hour-or moment-but that wink advised the archer that Cormac mac Art still remembered how initial entry had been gained to the Castle of Kull of Atlantis.
Bas ruminated apart, while Cormac, the dead man’s words having discovered to him his extraordinary danger from whom or whatever Thulsa Doom was, brooded on his future. How, he wondered, as Ros na Dun Dalgan and Brian na Killevy received the adulation and envy of their comrades, did a mere weapon-man protect himself, much less do combat against a sorcerer so powerful as to raise the dead and turn them into fighting men?
Wulfhere meanwhile was grim. The Dane was essaying not to show his unhappiness at being left out of the steel-wielding action-and probably suspecting Cormac of having cheated him of his beloved sport: the splitting of shields and helms and skulls. Cormac said nothing to the giant from Dane-mark. He had no doubt that impatient and impetuous Wulfhere would have been slain within. The Dane’s pride and concept of manhood would have prevented his employing the dodging, fleeing, circling, snapping-wolf tactics that Cormac had used-to the saving of his own life.
And Samaire sulked.
Wulfhere had held her fast, nor had she ceased struggling and railing at him until Cormac reappeared; four ashy-faced men emerging from the reeking charnel-house of the thrice-ancient castle. Released then, Samaire had not run to Cormac as all would have thought natural, but had turned from him. Nor would she say aught to the Dane or accept his bumbling friendly overtures.
Now, either forgetting their leader with two younger heroes to raise on high or perhaps respecting Cormac’s withdrawal into himself, all trooped inside to see what little there was to be viewed: corpse-slain corpses and oak-made skeletons. Eighteen of the former there were, mingled among a score and two of the latter. Blood and cruor, weapons and rattly bones, dismembered and beheaded corpses and a chopped-up throne; these were what remained to be seen.
And so they were noted and exclaimed over-along with the excited words of Ros and Brian, but one of whom was so much as a score of years of age.
Others remained outside in the still-warm sunlight of early fall.
With his soiled robe flapping in a little breeze, Bas walked away to be alone with himself and his gods. Cormac sat on a rounded stone, heedless of his wounds. Someone or other had salved and bandaged them; someone or other not Samaire. Again and again he examined and worked at his doffed coat of linked steel chain, though he was hardly aware of what he did. Cormac spoke not now to gods; he was alone with his thoughts.
Samaire, too, had remained outside. Around the castle she had walked, into the shadowy gloom betwixt it and the cliff. Her helmet of lacquered and bronze-studded cowhide she had removed, so that her wealth of orange-and-gold hair stirred about her shoulders and bounced when she walked.
Cormac noted well her departure, while making sure his noticing went unnoticed. He assumed she had gone to relieve herself; it was no privacy she’d had on the ship, and soon they’d be aboard again. Morosely, he ruminated.
Thulsa Doom.
Thulsa Doom, Doom, Doom, Thool-sah… Doooommmm. The name and its ominous sound pulsed within his head like a gloomy drum, thrumming there and somberly booming. Thulsa Doooommmm…
What was a Thulsa Doom?
Who was Thuls-
He knew.
He saw. It was what his former crewmen had called “the remembering” that was upon him once again; the pictures, the words and memories or “memories” within his brain.
A bronzed hand tore away the shielding veil from a tall, spectrally thin man in a dark, well-made robe. A woman screamed; white faces, including those of soldiers in uniforms and with weapons unfamiliar to Cormac mac Art, shrank bank. Revealed behind the veil was the face of the living man in the robe. But it was no living face; it was a bare white skull, in whose eye sockets flamed livid fire!
Cormac heard… a voice thrumming in his mind as if in an echoic cavern, and he knew that this was the voice of the faceless man…
“Aye, Thulsa Doom, fools! The greatest of all wizards and your eternal foe, Kull of Atlantis! You have won this tilt, but beware, there shall be others.”
Cormac saw that death’s head man burst the cords that bound him; saw him swing to stalk, dark robe whirling and flapping about his heels to the tall ornate door. The back of his head, too, was the skull of a man long dead. Cormac saw a sharp blade transpierce the tall figure… and emerge unblooded. Seated on a stone on a lonely island plain incalculable years later, Cormac saw the skull-faced mage turn, saw him laugh, heard him speak, sneering-
“Ages ago I died as men die! Nay, I shall pass to some other sphere when my time comes, not before. I bleed not, for my veins are empty… Stand back, fool, your master goes. But he shall come again to you, and you shall scream and shrivel and die in that coming!”
Cormac saw…
The skull faced wizard step to a door bordered all about with squared, runic decor, and pass through it, and… vanish.
He heard… a man’s voice-what man? Could there be men with names such as Ka-nu, and Tu?
Aye, there had been, time out of mind.
“Next time we must be more wary, “ one said, within the mind of the seemingly stricken mac Art, “for he is a fiend incarnate-an owner of magic black and unholy. He hates you, for he is a satellite of the Great Serpent.”
“Me? Hates me? I broke? I broke his power, I? But I am… I am…”
“He has the gift of illusion and invisibility… you must beware of Thulsa Doom, for he vanished into another dimension, and as long as he is there he is invisible and harmless to us… but he will come again.”