Bloodstone (9 page)

Reckless in the presence of that which for weeks had dominated his thoughts, Kane hurried toward his goal. His shallow wounds bled afresh as he clambered over mounds of rubble and impatiently hacked restraining vines. Even in his haste, he noted that the street was in far better repair than its antiquity warranted--though whether this was due to the permanence of Krelran architecture or because the city was not altogether untenanted he could not judge. Behind him sounded the leathery slap of webbed foot, the scratch of claw on stone. The Rillyti shambled in macabre procession and hunched in the shadows as he passed, peering with basilisk intensity from apertures in the time-blasted edifices. Kane absently noted rhythmic syllabism in their subdued croaking-dirge--like in its ominous tone of mingled dread and expectancy.

Framed by the eon-haunted structures that pressed upon the debris-piled avenue, festooned with lianas and spider-rooted trees that insinuated through cracked walls, the colossal dome awaited Kane at the dead city's heart. Fired by the dying sun--or by Kane's fevered imagination--the igneous stone blazed with volcanic hue, conjuring flame images of irresistible summons. It seemed to waver in Kane's vision, and though it beckoned with the compelling lure of flame to moth--promising doom, but with it an infinite moment of unimaginable ecstasy--Kane's purpose was unswerving. His obsession to cleave through the barrier of centuries, to command the secrets of elder-world science, totally consumed him, drove from his thoughts all caution, all doubt. Before him lay the key to incalculable power; every atom of his energy must be directed toward unlocking it. He limped, though unaware of the pain of his wounds, of the sapping agony of exhaustion. The ordeal of wrenching a path through the swamp and the hysteria of headlong battle at death's crumbling precipice had left his spirit numb to further shock. Now he was surrounded by scores of savage batrachians, alone in a lost city whose prehuman antiquity his very presence blasphemed. Kane's mind was twisted to a state of dreamlike clarity and obscurity, his thoughts a dichotomy of inspired certainty, enshrouded disregard. But a demonic haunting that transcended sanity had overshadowed Kane's mind ever since his eyes had first gazed into the bloodstone ring.

Nimbus about the flame, the open plaza encircled the monolithic dome. As Kane emerged from the avenue, it seemed as if the encroaching trees were stunted, twisted by the aura that emanated from the dome, their roots forced into octopoid contortions as they sought to penetrate the court pavement. At closer observation the giant dome was not unmarred by the centuries. Fissures traced patterns across its curvature; in same places, jagged apertures gaped to reveal a double wall cross-braced with struts of bronze alloy. But not even the awesome weight of millennia had conquered this masterwork of alien engineering. Battle-scarred but erect, the dome rose in defiance of time, and only in a few sections did rifts breach both inner and outer wall.

No doorway broke the hemispherical trimness of design. However, as Kane crossed the courtyard, he saw that the avenue led toward an opening in the perimeter, wherein a flight of steps inclined gently downward into darkness. Similar depressions could be seen on either side, and presumably Arellarti's symmetry of design dictated subterranean ramps at each of the seven radial avenues. With the same reckless confidence, Kane descended the oddly spaced steps to the sunken entrance that waited in the dim light below. Sliding doors of bronze alloy stood apart across the semicircular opening, their massive slabs drawn back within the double wall. Entangled vines gave evidence of how long the doorway had lain open, awaiting entrance through its thirty-foot portal--entrance of whom? Kane stepped through.

The dome glowed, not from the sun--the fire was within. Sudden fleeting impressions, noted briefly as attention is swept past, drawn meteorlike to the heart of Arellarti: Vast open space, twilight. The sunlight filtering through fissures in the giant hemisphere in blobs of wan yellow, streaks of starlight dripping across the midnight dome of heaven. Trailing streamers of liana, like clouds against the sky, sick-toned and leprous-fleshed in the weak light. Strewn mounds of fallen rubble, soaring columns of bronze alloy, curved to brace the walls so high above. Pillars of cyclopean machinery, huddled in shrouds of fleshy creeper like brooding sentinels. Fantastic banks of ceramic and stone, metal and crystal--curiously patterned, multihued--all intertwined with mammoth lengths of copper that crawled throughout, like unthinkably huge serpents writhing from a nest of eggs.

And overawing all wonders... Bloodstone!

A gigantic crystal hemisphere nearly a hundred yards across filled the chamber's center, a smooth half-globe of dark green veined with red. Peripheral to its base was a circle of silver-white metal, linked by copper arteries to the looming columns of machinery. The heart of Arellarti did not beat; within the crystal its fires slumbered. But in the dim light Kane recognized immediately the kinship of this monolithic crystal to the bloodstone ring upon his forger. Passages of the Book of the Elders flashed through his consciousness and bombarded his senses with intolerable excitement as he understood the validity of its eldritch history.

No mine on Earth could have quarried so gigantic a crystal; Bloodstone, like the ring on Kane's hand, had come from beyond the stars. Here under this vast dome lay the culmination of Krelran science, the core of their ancient power. But that power lay dormant, buried by the centuries, and, as with the gemstone of the ring, only an aura of evil hinted of the immeasurable potential quiescent within the crystal's murky depths. No vestige of decay marred Bloodstone, nor did any vine cling to its gleaming curve. A crescent bank of the mottled red igneous stone stood close by Bloodstone, raised somewhat, as an altar before an idol. A bewildering pattern of copper- and silver-toned metal rods, cones and knobs of ceramic, and oddly hued crystal were set into its face, while within the apex of the semicircle lay a yard-wide disk of silver-white metal, from whose center a small black depression stared like a cyclops's eye. From the outer rim of this crescent dais gathered a maze of silver and copper cables, which joined into a central column of silver-white metal five feet across and fused a horizontal link between the instrument bank and the band of similar metal encircling Bloodstone.

It was an altar, observed Kane, noting the thick litter of human and batrachian bones strewn before Bloodstone at this point, the gruesome stains encrusted upon the crescent--grim evidence of the hideous rites men whispered the Rillyti held here. A humerus crunched to powder beneath his boot, testimony to the antiquity of the sacrifice. The anxious croaking of the Rillyti followed him across the dome's interior, a rumbling echo ominous as distant thunder. A monstrous congregation, they shambled behind him into their hoary temple. In the shadow they waited, squatting in puddles of tepid water, leaning on mounds of rubble, peering from behind tangles of leprous vegetation--their savage minds stricken with both anticipation and fear, as they waited to learn if the priest of legend had returned. Bronze swords in webbed hands promised the easiest fate that would await an impostor's unthinkable blasphemy.

Ignoring the Rillyti, Kane concentrated on what Alorri-Zrokros had written concerning Bloodstone--the macabre ritual his sorcery-trained mind had rehearsed, pondered over a thousand times since the reading. Only now his limbs seemed to move automatically, his thoughts incisive with inhuman clarity. The fading rays of daylight gave only splotchy illumination through the cracked dome, but he found this light more than adequate. No fear, no indecision encumbered his movements, and dimly Kane was aware that flashes of knowledge--patterns of thought not his own--were guiding him, drawing him into the ritual.

He mounted the few broad steps of the platform upon which rested the mottled stone crescent, blindly knocking away the skeletal debris. Unbearable tension charged the air like unborn lightning. The bank of instruments consumed his total attention. Jaw set in concentration, eyes hard with intensity, he studied the controls only briefly, so it seemed. Then his long fingers closed upon a silver rod and drew it down. A copper rod next, moved to the right; these ceramic knobs--too large for human grip--to be rotated thus. Kane's darting hands deftly performed intricate movements regarding which Alorri-Zrokros's instructions had been only vague. There was no uncertainty, nor did Kane pause to consult the careful notations he had distilled from the Book o f the Elders.

A few levers resisted his strength momentarily, but time had done little damage to the alien machinery. Now the air was charged with more than psychic energy. Howls of fear bleated from the watchers as they were driven back against the shadow of the cracked and curving walls. Blinding bursts of light exploded from long-dead pillars of machinery; sheets of multicolored fire enveloped the serpentine coils of alien metal. A harsh stench like ozone assailed Kane's nostrils, and the air grew thick with reeking smoke as shrouds of fleshy liana peeled away in sizzling, sickly flame. Sparks crackled through the air, blazing within the colossal dome like an insane aurora borealis. A blast of luminous flame lashed out at a group of Rillyti who had cowered too near and left a huddle of blackened death.

Kane laughed in demonic exultation--a macabre figure bespattered in filth and gore, eyes ablaze like blue coals, red hair disordered with static, face transfigured in the chaotic blaze of light. Voice lifted against the crackling explosions, he screamed the chant Alorri-Zrokros had recorded, contorting his throat to shape the inhuman syllables. Rising from the shadow of the dome answered the booming chant of the Rillyti, their fear overcome by need to sound their centuries-unheeded invocation.

Bloodstone lay dormant no longer!

Energy pulsating through its arteries, the heart of Arellarti beat again after millennia of slumber. Eerie fire dawned within its green depths, eternity deep--a glow rising like dawn viewed through dark emerald, shining shifting light upon the walls of the dome. A somewhat darker, more intense gleam, the veins of red pulsed into crimson life, and through its murky translucency these scarlet tendrils twisted fantastically to disappear within the depths of Bloodstone. Incalculable cosmic energies at last unleashed, Bloodstone blazed with a coruscating fire of life.

The frenzied chant of the Rillyti echoed in an inhuman chorus of wonder, of fulfillment, of terror. The final lines of his invocation writhing from drawn lips, Kane stood before the metal circle in the center of the stone crescent. Brushing his fingers over a slash on his shoulder, he smeared the fresh blood across the silver-white disk and anointed the circular depression at its heart. The ring already numbed his hand with an electric tingle as he moved to complete the elder-world ritual.

He knotted his left hand into a fist. The bloodstone ring projected from his clenched fingers, and now he noticed that this gem, too, glowed with life--a miniature counterpart of the titanic crystal ablaze before him. Then, as if stamping his signet to some inconceivable document--a wry thought that thus had been sealed many a sorcerous pact--Kane lowered his fist toward the center of the metal disk.

For the final inches some force seemed to draw his hand like an irresistible magnet. The bloodstone of the ring meshed into the central depression, meeting the blood-dampened metal with an electric crack.

In that instant Kane felt his every cell explode with what was at once unbearable agony and intolerable ecstasy--and transcending both. His entire body snapped into convulsive rigidity as the lightning of the cosmos blasted through his being. A scream was stillborn, never reached his paralyzed throat.

Bloodstone burst into a coruscant nova of raw energy and incandesced into blinding light that for one dreadful instant fully illumined its infinite depths. And from the sentient soul of Bloodstone a bolt of green light veined with red shot out--leaped out to enfold Kane, to bathe Kane in its uncanny fire.

For a long time there was a mind-wrenching chaos of indescribable sensations, tumbling thought patterns not his own, infinite blackness broken by flashes of formless image. Adrift for an eternity in a kaleidoscopic vortex of alien dream, his mind totally intermingled into a cosmic consciousness so impossibly alien that its every whirling mote of thought was incomprehensible--riotous images inconceivable because they were projections of sensory impulses for which there existed no equivalent human receptor.

Dimly Kane retained some shredded gossamer pattern of identity, vestigial awareness of being apart... insight such as comes to a dreamer who is at once conscious that he moves within a dream but is powerless to break from its spell or even to direct its course. He sensed the fabric of his mind, his soul being spread out, probed, examined, inspected with a condescending curiosity, impersonal yet intense.

This psychic vivisection' of his consciousness angered Kane--or that ghost of his mind that now struggled toward coherent identity. He sought to group together his splintered consciousness, to repel the invading mind which relentlessly pored over the memories inscribed upon his soul. Resistance was encountered, fought against grimly as his enormous psychic vitality waxed strong. Decades devoted to occult studies had given Kane control of hidden resources, pathways of mentality unexplored by all but a few human minds. Startled by this unexpected sortie, the alien mind recoiled, and with a rush Kane reoccupied the strongholds of his consciousness. There followed a sense of baffled surprise at this unanticipated curtailment of its inspection, confidence that such defense could be overcome eventually.

Although the inquisitive dissection of his consciousness subsided, Kane still spun in a mental storm of alien thought. Fragments of image, splinters of sensation grew recognizable to him now, whether from the increasing familiarity of the new perspective, or because the enveloping sentience was shifting its sensory impulses to adapt to human perception, Kane could not tell. Inchoate phenomena were merging into a sequence, falling together like bright tiny bits of continuous mosaic. A picture began to unfold to which Kane's mind could conjecture interpretation from the recognizable fragments, although vast portions of the frieze remained formless patches of inhuman thought, tiles whose colors transcended the known spectrum.