The Undying Wizard
Cormac heard the strange little snapping sounds long before he reached their source. Pacing determinedly back along the subterrene passage from sea to castle, he wondered at those inexplicable sounds well ahead, with no idea as to what they might be…
He did not walk like a man who had been subjected to the most cruel of torments and had been reduced to quaking shudders. He had rescued himself from insanity. He had stood tall and angry and bellowed forth his challenge to his enemy. He had waited grimly, prepared for anything at all.
Thulsa Doom had not responded.
He’ll not be meeting me face-on in sunlight then, Cormac mused, and he had shouted that aloud, as a new challenge and a taunt.
Mayhap then it’s given up he has, and fled this isle or withdrawn into “that other dimension,” whatever be the meaning of that. In which case-there are ships to be loaded and sails to be spread! And if he be here still-I’ll see that no man is out of sight of all others. And if it’s Cutha Atheldane comes walking among us-why then we’ll be hewing him into so many pieces none will recognize so much as a toe!
And back along the corridor beneath the island Cormac mac Art strode, a man full of mettle and unwavering purpose.
Then the screaming began.
The shrieks that fled to him down the tunnel were those of a woman in unbearable agony, and there was but one woman on this accursed isle that wrongly bore her name, and Cormac mac Art broke into a mindless run.
His re-lit torch roared and streamed fire in his wake with his running along that dark cavern beneath the earth. He raced as though a thousand demons sent from the Norse Hel slavered on his trail. The corridor’s squared turnings he took at the run, so that he struck the wall again and again. And he paid no mind.
Cormac ran, and the dust of centuries flew up from his feet.
He came upon the strange scene, and it brought no horror but only puzzlement-and anger. Cormac took it all in with slitted eyes-while never slowing his pace.
Against one wall of the cavern stood Samaire, pressed to the stone with her arms outstretched. Vermillion hair sprayed out over her leather coat of armour; in their tall boots of gleaming, soft black leather her legs quivered. Indeed her entire body quaked as though freezing cold, while she stood fully clothed and armoured, stretched and tense as if she were frozen in place-or bound by invisible cords or chains.
Behind her stood Osbrit the Briton of Wroxeter.
The only survivor of his crew was steadily tapping the woman’s back with a folded belt. Though he was only tapping her leather-sheathed legs and back, not striking her, the walls echoed Samaire’s constant shrill, throat-tearing cries. She squirmed and lunged against the wall as though bound to it and afflicted with awful torment.
Cormac did not pause to consider or question. With the full unthinking fury of his dash, he charged the Briton. With such force did the Gael smash into Osbrit that the bronze-haired warrior was knocked off his feet and hurled through the air.
Cormac paid the flying body no heed, but plowed to a stop ere he crashed into the cowering woman. His torch he held high; his other hand and arm slid around the seemingly agonized Samaire’s waist from behind.
“Samaire… Samaire!”
Once more the screamed, in mortal agony. Then, “Cormac,” she gasped in a weak sigh, and she sagged back against him. Yet her arms remained in place, stretched along the wall higher than her head. “Oh… oh Cormac… cut free my wrists!”
Cormac’s stomach lurched and his scalp prickled. She was not bound, but thought she was… Wulfhere was not there, but I thought he was… she had not been whipped, but thought she had been… O ye gods, he torments her too!
“There, my love,” he told her, “I have done. You’re free.”
On the instant, her arms dropped, falling as if her hands were leaden weights. With a groan she began sliding down, so that only his hand under her breast prevented her dropping into the dust of the cavern’s floor.
No sound warned the Gael, and he was not aware of seeing aught from the edge of his eye. Nevertheless he twitched his head rightward in a weapon-man’s instinct-to see Osbrit’ Drostan’s son coming at him with naked sword. A malevolent smile of anticipated death-dealing twisted the man’s mouth.
Cormac’s hands were full of torch and limp woman. The one he released, pushing her sideward so that again she sagged against the tunnel wall; the other he swung before him as both defensive shield and fiery offensive weapon. Flame streamed and roared in the tunnel’s fetid air.
The rush of fire gave Osbrit of Wroxeter pause, and that swiftly Cormac’s sword rushed from its sheath. A ferocious delight was upon him; here was something he could fight, here was a living body to receive the frustration and vengeance-need that were like a canker in his guts.
The Gael did not strike, but advanced a foot and thrust with all his strength.
He felt the familiar jolt of glaive-point against mail, metal against metal, and the resistance, then the rushing of his extended arm as scales bent and twisted and snapped and sharp steel buried itself in flesh and blood.
Belly-stabbed, Osbrit stared at the other man.
“Treacherous snake! Was I showed ye kindness, and I alone!” Cormac snarled, and gave his wrist a twist before he yanked forth his blade.
It emerged agleam. No blood followed the emergence of steel blade from sundered flesh.
Osbrit’s lips writhed in a smile. “Aye… so ye did… kindness. For it was you slew serpent and robed Norseman, and freed me from the one that I might animate the other!”
Then that smile widened, and the lips shriveled up as the skin writhed and moved on that tanned face, and it paled and paled while the skin left it, and once more Cormac mac Art stared into the death’s head face of Thulsa Doom.
Knowing the man had shown pain when the sword went into him, Cormac stabbed again. His blade plunged into the robed body just below the ribs. This time he drove forward with knotting calves to hurl the wizard backward and to the cavern floor, impaled on two feet of steel.
Dust flew up as his foeman fell, and again when Cormac dropped beside him, to his knees. Maintaining his grip on his pommel, he ground the sword in, seeking to pin the other man, if man he was, to the cavern’s floor.
“Ahgh-it hurts, lowborn vulture! It-hurts! It’s cold!”
“But kills ye-not!” Cormac grunted, exerting his strength to twist the impaling blade.
The supine body lurched and writhed. “Aahhhhhh! Son… of a moment’s dalliance… that is pain-n-nn!”
Cormac kept his eyes on the skull face, his squeezing, downpressing hand on his pommel. “Samaire-I need you!”
She must have turned then, and seen for the first time what he held pinned down like some unslayable writhing serpent.
“Gods of my-he has no face!”
“Nor blood, but he’s a body, and it’s helpless I have it, and there’s cord enow on my arm to enwrap two such! Hither, love, and bind him with this rope!”
Samaire’s horror at the awful apparition did not prevent her responding to Cormac’s need for aid in subduing… the thing. Already he was changing his squatting position and leaning hard on his pommel with his right hand, while he held out his shield-arm. Samaire hurried to remove the coil of rope.
And Thulsa Doom changed. The gaunt but powerful weapon-man’s body shivered-but the shiver was a shimmer, as eerie metamorphosis commenced. Flesh and bone changed…
“Demon!” Cormac cried out in his surprise.
“Cormac-it’s Bas!”
“Cor… mac,” gasped the druid, his face stricken. His hands shook as they went to the steel blade that pinned him down, hovered there as if he only just prevented himself from seizing the sharp steel. “Why…? Let me up, Cormac… I… I can exert druidic powers to heal myself… but… not if you will not let me up swiftly-”