“Wait outside,” Lenard ordered his men. “Bulak and Toom—” he nodded to two scarred warriors who had shown no fear—“come with us, the rest mount guard. We won’t be in there past sundown.”
He swung to the ground. “Lead us in, Ronwy,” he said.
Slowly, trembling a little, the old chief began picking his way through the thorny brush and between the heaps of brick and glass. Lenard followed with Kuthay, then the boys; Bulak and Toom, with weapons in hand, came last.
There was a rustle and a rattle and a blur of movement. Lenard swore as the rattlesnake struck. Its fangs sank harmlessly into the thick sole of his boot, and he crushed it with the other foot.
“Are you sure the curse is gone?” asked Carl with grim amusement.
The two warriors were shaken, and old Kuthay had gone white. But Lenard’s answer barked angrily forth: “A snake can be anywhere. And this one did no harm, did it? If that’s the best the guardians of the vault can do, we’re safe.”
As they came to the entrance, he pointed to the inscription above it. “What does that say?” he asked. Carl remembered what travelers had long told, that none of the northerners could read.
“Time vault,” said Ronwy. He turned solemn eyes on his captors. “It is time itself, and all the ghosts and powers of a past that is not dead, only sleeping, which are locked in here. Enter at your peril.”
“Bluff!” snorted Lenard.
The door creaked open under Ronwy’s touch. Darkness gaped below. “Go ahead,” ordered the prince. “If there are deathtraps inside, they’ll get you first.”
They fumbled a way down the stairs into the cool night of the cellar. Ronwy felt his way to the table where he had candles and gave one to Lenard. The Lann prince struck fire with flint and steel to light it, and a yellow glow spilled forth over the dusty cases and machines.
Lenard’s breath sucked in between his teeth and something of the holy fire of wisdom-hunger grew in his eyes as he stared about him. “So this is the vault,” he whispered.
He lit other candles until the shadows retreated to the corners and waited huge and threatening. Bulak and Toom posted themselves at the foot of the stairs, looking about with awe-struck vision. Kuthay’s lips moved in a voiceless chant. Lenard prowled about among the racks, touching a model here and a book there with fingers that trembled ever so faintly. Carl went over to the bronze plaque and read its appeal again. Tears blurred his eyes.
“What is this?” Lenard touched a thing of metal plates and levers. “An instrument of torture?”
“It is a printing press,” said Ronwy tonelessly. “They used it to make books, so that all could learn what was known.”
“Bah!” Light and shadow slid across Lenard’s savage face, etching it against the shuddering gloom. “What can we use for war?”
“There were no weapons here,” said Ronwy. “It was war that destroyed the ancients, and the man who created the vault did not want to raise that devil again.”
“I think you’re lying.” Lenard slitted his eyes. “Carl! Where are the weapons?”
“I don’t know of any,” said the boy. “Ronwy tells the truth.”
“If I put your hands into this—printing press—and crushed them, you might remember.”
“What good would that do you?” Ronwy straightened, strangely majestic. “You can’t wring facts from us that we don’t have.”
“There must be something here that can be used in battle,” snapped Lenard. “Otherwise Carl wouldn’t have had the idea.”
“There is—wisdom, knowledge, yes,” said Ronwy. He stroked his white beard. “There are no tools of war here, but there are the means of making some.”
“What? What can you do?”
The old man went over to a set of shelves where dusty bottles were racked, one beside the other. On his last visit, Carl had not been able to read the legends engraved on the glass. They had been letters and numbers forming no words, and he had thought they were magical signs. Ronwy had told him that they were merely symbols for various substances, and that certain old books—chemistry texts, he called them—had explained these and had told what the substances in combination would do.
“I can make certain things,” said the witch-chief, so quietly that his voice was almost lost in the heavy gloom. “For example, from what is in these flasks I can brew a magic potion which men can eat. Thereafter they are invulnerable. No metal can pierce their skins, no stone or elub can bruise them, no poison can hurt them. Will that be enough?”
Carl’s body jerked, and a wave of sickness swept through him. Had Ronwy turned traitor? Was he really going to aid these robbers?
Lenard’s eyes flamed. “Yes, that will do—for a beginning!” he said. His voice rang forth, triumphant: “An army which cannot be hurt—oh, yes, that will do!”
Even Bulak and Toom started forth, with greed in their faces.
“One moment,” said Kuthay shrewdly. “If this is so, why have you not made the City-folk, or yourself at least, invulnerable?”
Ronwy smiled wearily. “This place and its magic is taboo for us,” he answered. “My people would have nothing to do with it, and if I used it on myself they would cast me out.
Furthermore, the thing is dangerous. There will be devils raised which may break loose, and it angers the gods when men thus take divine powers.”
Bulak and Toom shrank back toward the stairs.
“Go ahead,” said Lenard coldly. “I’ll risk the devils and the gods.”
“I need someone to help,” said Ronwy. “Carl, will you?”
“No,” said the boy. “No, you turncoat.”
“Go ahead and help him,” ordered Lenard. “You know a little more than any of the rest of us about this.” He laid a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Or must I have you—no, not you, but your friends—put to torture?”
Sullenly, Carl went over to the witch-chief. Lenard and Kuthay joined their men at the door, beckoning Tom and Owl over to them.
Ronwy’s old hand shook a little as he took down one of the bottles. This one had words on it, besides the chemical symbols, but Carl could not understand them: GUNPOWDER (BLACK). Then he remembered that “guns” were the lightning throwers of legend, and despite himself he shivered.
“This is all the vault has,” sighed Ronwy. “But we’ll have to use it all. Carl, find me a bowl.”
The boy searched through a stack of apparatus until he found a large one. As he brought it back, Ronwy’s lips touched his ear and the chief whispered: “I’m trying to trick them.”
A surging gladness went through Carl. He held his face tight, not daring to look toward the Lann who stood watching.
Ronwy opened the bottle and spilled the black grains into the bowl. Again he had a chance to murmur. “They may kill us. Shall I go on?”
Carl nodded, ever so faintly.
Ronwy searched for other flasks. Meanwhile, he began to chant, his high, thin voice echoing in a saw-toothed wail that brought gooseflesh even to Carl’s skin. Kuthay, a black shadow against the dimly sunlit doorway, lifted the House of Jenzik against magic.
“In the name of Atmik, and the Cloud, and the blue-faced horseman who sowed the glowing death across wasted fields, ten thousand devils chained and raging to be free, by the Doom and the darkness, I conjure you, ancient Rebel, child of night, out of the lower depths—”
“Some more bowls, Carl. Spread the black powder in half a dozen.”
Ronwy unstoppered another flask and shook some blue crystals into one bowl. Into another he put a white substance marked NaCl but seemingly common salt, and into a third some purplish-black stuff. “Nee-wee-ho-hah-nee-yai. Atmik, Atmik!”
A hurried whisper: “Carl, I hope to frighten them from the vault so that they won’t dare use its real powers—”