Hunt the Space-Witch! (29 page)

In a locked chest by his bed Ystilog kept the receipts of the tour. He cabled his money back to Miilyaurr once a week; the rest of the time the money lay there for Barsac's taking, but the compulsion against killing Ystilog extended too to robbing him and to running away. He was bound to the swarthy pockmarked little man by invisible threads stronger than the strongest metal.

Barsac sank into the depths of despair. He drank, he robbed, once he killed. That was in the town of Dmynn, on the foul, polluted river Kyllnn. A riverboat man was in the same bar as the spacer, and, with two too many drinks in his belly, was boasting of the river life.

“We are free and we travel the water—the finest life there is!”

“Not half so fine as the life of a spacer,” said Barsac darkly. He sat four stools to the left, nursing the flask of wine that would be his last drink of the night. “A riverman is just a crawler next to a spacer.”

Instantly the riverboater was down off his stool and facing Barsac. “What would
you
know of this?”

“I'm a spacer!”

A low chuckle eddied up about him from all sides.

“You—a spacer?” the riverboat man said contemptuously. “I know you, you who call yourself a spacer. You're the circus man's lackey. Each morning you sweep the dung from the cages of his beasts!”

Barsac did not reply. He came forward fists first, and the riverman went rocketing back against a table. Barsac waited for him to get up, so he could hit him again. He felt restraining hands gripping his arms, and shook them off. Lifting the squirming riverman, he propped him up and slapped him.

A knife appeared. Barsac kicked it away and hit the riverman in the throat. He doubled up, choking and gasping, and managed to grate out the words,
“Lackey
…
dung-sweeper!
”

Barsac stepped backward. The riverman charged; Barsac drew his shocker, flipped up the amplifier switch, and triggered a discharge all in the same instant. A smell of burning flesh reached his nostrils a moment later.

That night they left Dmynn, traveling overland toward the forested province of Eas. As their caravan of trucks rolled out of the river town, Ystilog said coldly, “It was necessary to place a fifty-unit bribe with the local police to save you, this afternoon. For the next ten weeks your pay is cut to six units a week. And keep out of such brawls in the future.”

Barsac scowled. There was nothing he could say. Ystilog was his lord and master, and there was no way of lifting the foot planted squarely on his throat.

He lay awake nights thinking of ways to kill the little circus man, and burst into frantic fits of perspiration when the inevitable realization came that he was incapable of action.

Ystilog had him. Ystilog owned him, and he served Ystilog well.

Across the face of Zunnigennar went the traveling circus, and Ystilog grew richer. He treated Barsac well, buying him clothes, feeding him handsomely. But Barsac did a slave's work, for he was a slave. The weeks went by, lengthening into months.

Barsac wondered about the
Dywain
, bound now for the Rim stars without him, and about Zigmunn in whose name he had parted with his profession and his freedom. He thought of the girl Kassa, so long dead now. And, on those occasions when a silver-masked Glauran crossed his path, he thought of the Cult of the Witch, and of the dead world of Azonda where his blood-brother had gone.

Winter came, and with it snow; Ystilog decided time had come to return to Millyaurr and live off the summer's profits. To Millyaurr they returned, stopping occasionally along the way to recoup food expenses by giving a one-day showing in some small town. Wearily Barsac helped pack and unpack the crates. He was almost fond of Ystilog's menagerie of monsters, now, though he knew that any of the creatures would gladly kill him given the chance. He prayed for the lucky accident that would release a poison-tongued rain-toad for Ystilog, since it was impossible for Barsac wilfully to turn the beast loose on his master.

Winter held Millyaurr tight when the caravan finally returned to the Street of Liars. Seven months had gone by since the week of Barsac's leave. He had grown gaunt and his eyes now lay deep in shadow, but his old stubbornness remained alive in him, imprisoned only by the web of hypnotic command.

But lines of despair now traced themselves on his face, as once they had on dead Kassa's face. He frequented dangerous sections of town, hoping for the release of death. He drank often in the bar where he first had met Kassa, sitting alone at the table in the rear.

He was there one night in late winter, spending a borrowed three-unit piece on liquor, when the front door opened and framed in it stood a silver-masked figure, a member of the Cult of the Witch.

Instinctively the other patrons of the bar huddled inward upon themselves, hoping not to be noticed, as the Cultist flicked gobblets of snow from his cape and entered the bar. Only Barsac looked up unafraid, and drew out the chair next to his in open invitation.

Chapter Five

The cultist paused just beyond the door, surveying the room with the ash-gray eyes that lay just above the rim of his mask. Then, calmly, he strode down the aisle between the clustered tables and took the seat Barsac offered.

“Order two drinks,” the Cultist said in a low voice.

Barsac signalled the barkeep for two more bowls of the mulled wine he had been drinking. Timorously the bartender advanced with them, laid them down, and retreated from the Cultist's presence without even bothering to ask for his money.

Barsac studied the other. The mask ran from ear to ear and from the bridge of the nose to the upper lip; all that was visible of the Cultist's face were the gray, piercing eyes, the broad furrowed forehead, and cold downslanting lips.

“Well,” Barsac said, “drink hearty.” He raised the bowl, expecting to clink it against the Cultist's, but the other merely grunted and took a deep drink.

When he was through he peered at Barsac and said, “You are Barsac the Earther, lackey to the circus proprietor Erpad Ystilog.”

“I am. How did you know?”

“I know. Do you love your master?”

Barsac laughed harshly. “Do you think I do?”

“What I think is irrelevant at this time. You have been watched, Barsac. Ystilog was directed to you. We believe suffering is beneficial to the soul, as we understand the soul.”

“In that case you've done a good job. I've suffered.”

“We know that too. Why haven't you killed Ystilog?”

“Because—because—” Barsac strove to explain the compulsion Ystilog had laid on him, but the very compulsion kept him from framing the words. “I—I—can't say it.”

“A tongue-block? Ystilog is good at such things. Would you like to kill Ystilog?”

“Of course.”

“But you can't. Ystilog has laid a command across your mind. Yes?”

Stiffly, Barsac nodded.

The Cultist's thin lips curled upward. “Would you approve if someone else killed Ystilog for you?”

Beads of sweat broke out on Barsac's forehead. The conversation was skirting the borders of the compulsion-area in his mind; it was only with difficulty that he was forcing through his responses.

“Yes,” he said heavily.

The Cultist touched the tips of his fingers together. “In one hour Ystilog will die, if we so decide it. You will be free from your compulsion. Azonda waits.”

“Azonda?”

“Where else could you go? What else is left, Barsac? Driven downward, cut off from the life you knew, an outcast on Glaurus—take the way of Azonda. We will free you from Ystilog. Come, then, with us.”

Barsac struggled to get out a reply. Finally he said, “I … accede.”

The Cultist rose. “Within an hour Ystilog dies. We will be waiting for you, Barsac.”

And then he was alone.

He sat quietly, nursing his warm drink staring through the leaded window at the great heavy soft flakes of snow drifting downward. The Cult, he thought. Why not? What else is there? Better the Cult than endless years of Ystilog, and they will free me from—

No!

Ystilog's compunction gripped him, sent him running out of the tavern into the chill winter bleakness. By acceding to the Cultist's request he was allowing the death of Ystilog, and that ran counter to his instilled conditioning. He had to prevent the murder. He had to save Ystilog. He had to get back in time.

He ran down the empty snow-choked streets. Within an hour, the Cultist had said. Burning conflict raged inside Barsac; he fought to hold his body back, to still his legs, to give the Cultists a chance to do their work, while at the same time the demon riding his mind spurred him forward to reach Ystilog and protect him.

At the corner he waited impatiently for an airbus. It came, finally, crusted over with snow, and he took it to the Street of Liars. From the terminal it was a five-block walk to Ystilog's flat; Barsac took it at a trot, stumbling in the snow every time his mind managed to reassert control over his rebellious body.

But as he drew near the flat, Ystilog's compulsion over-mastered him, and uppermost in his mind was the thought that he must reach his master in time, save him from the knives of the Cultists—

Up the stairs. Down the hall. There was the door. Barsac gasped for breath; his lungs were icy, his nose and ears numb with cold.

“Ystilog! Hold on! I'm coming!”

A scream. Another, drawn-out, a ghastly bubbling wail that echoed down the corridor of the old flat and sent a different sort of chill through Barsac.

He slumped against the door like a cast-off doll. Ystilog's hold on him was broken.
I was too late after all
, he thought in relief.
They got him
.

The door opened. On nerveless feet Barsac entered. Four Cultists stood within.

Ystilog lay naked on his bed, in a pool of blood. The double-barred cross stood out in red clarity against the paleness of his skin. Two silver-masked figures stood above the body, holding a keen-bladed instrument with two handles over his face, slicing down—

Barsac looked away.

“It's over,” said a familiar voice—the voice of the Cultist who had entered the tavern. “He died quickly. It was a pity.”

“I wish I could have done it,” Barsac murmured. “But the devil had me bound. Now I'm free, though. Free! Only—”

“Yes,” the Cultist said. “Free. But you know the price of your freedom.”

A third time he saw Lord Carnothute, and for the first time there was no conflict between them. Barsac, weary, drained of fury and of passion, sat tiredly in an overstuffed chair high in Carnothute's palace, listening to the huge man speak.

“You will leave for Azonda tomorrow,” he said. “There are seventeen of you in this current group of initiates. The initiation period is one year. After that—well, after that you will know which roads are open for you and which are not.”

“Will Zigmunn be there?”

Carnothute whirled and looked down at Barsac. “His year still has some months to run. He will be there. But if you have any idea—”

“You know I have none. I've lost all desire to reclaim him—or myself.” Barsac listened to his own voice, heavy, toneless, and wondered fragmentedly how he had changed so much in these seven months on Glaurus. It was as if his experiences had tarnished his soul, rusted it, corroded it, oxidized it finally to a heap of dust, and there was nothing left for him but to accept the uncertain mercies of the Cult.

“Will you have a drink?” Carnothute asked.

“I'm not thirsty.”

“Good. Loss of physical desires is essential to one entering upon his novitiate. The desires return or not, as you choose, after you receive the mask.”

Barsac shut his eyes a moment. “Did you kill the girl Kassa?”

“Yes. She had put me in a compromising position, and I either would have had to kill her or do away with myself. I've grown fond of life, Barsac. You know the rest.”

“I see.” Oddly, he did not care. Nothing seemed to matter, any more.

“Come,” Carnothute said. “Meet your fellow initiates. The ship leaves for Azonda tomorrow.”

He allowed himself to be taken by the hand and led into an adjoining room. There, sixteen others sat on plurofoam couches ringing the wall, and three silver-masked Cultists stood as if on guard at the entrance.

Barsac studied the sixteen. He counted five women, eleven men, all of them humanoid by designation. They slouched wearily against the wall, not speaking to one another, some of them virtually withdrawn from the universe to some private many-colored inner world. One expression was common to their faces: the expression Barsac knew must be on his own as well. They were people who had lost all traces of hope.

One of the women still wore the revealing costume of a party-girl, but it was frayed and tattered, and so was she. She seemed to be about forty. Her face was lined and unpretty, her eyes bleak, her mouth drooping. Next to her sat a boy of seventeen, his arms grotesquely puffed and purpled with the tell-tale stigmata of the sammthor-addict. As Barsac looked the boy quivered suddenly and emitted a cascade of tears.

Still farther on was a man of thirty-five whose face was a mass of scars; one eye was gone, the other askew, and his nose sprawled crazily over his face. One lip had been slashed; green jagged tattoo-marks marred his cheeks. He was one who would do well to take the mask, Barsac thought.

He took a seat on an unoccupied couch. He told himself:
These are people who have given up. I'm not quite like them. I'm still above water. These people have all let themselves drown
.

But with a faint petulant bitterness he admitted to himself that he was wrong, that he too belonged here among these walking dead. The Cult was a dead-end pickup. To it came human refuse, people who could not sink lower, and the Cult raised them up.

The Cult had had its eyes on him from the start. They had spotted him as a likely prospect from the moment of his landing on Glaurus, and they had followed him through each succeeding adventure, as he slipped lower and lower, as more and more of the old Barsac crumbled and dropped away, until the time had come when he could go no lower, and they had stepped in to free him from Ystilog and welcome him to their midst.