Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 02 (21 page)

 
          
At
the table,
Warren
had twitched open that paper wad, and he
was a-studying the alexandrite. A ray of light came from the lamp Hazel
Techeray had set down again, and struck to the table. I saw the alexandrite shine
red and fiery in it. That thing looked as hot as a coal on the hearth. I
wondered if it would blaze up at us.

 
          
"They
want it,” said
Warren
softly. "They're trying to involve it in something.”

 
          
The
cabin creaked, but not so heavy and tingly now.

 
          
"Give
it up,” the voice of Brooke Altic rang to us. "Give it up. It's no good to
Ben Gray except as a souvenir. In our hands, it can benefit the world.”

 
          
"Benefit
men and women?” I called a challenge to him.
"Or just
only Shonokins?”

 
          
"Benefit
men and women who help us,” said Brooke Altic.
"Even
you, John.”

 
          
"You
counted me out of it once,” I reminded him through a space in the logs.

 
          
"You
can still square accounts with us, and profit,” he said. "Get Ben Gray to
give it up. Otherwise, you won't last out the night. We’re concentrating
attention on you. That's a promise, John, a promise I’ll be able to keep.”

 
          
He
talked out yonder in the night. A night thing, that's what you might
could
call Brooke Altic. I recollected tales about other
night things, how they left their graves at sundown and drank the blood of
sleeping folks. The Shonokins had ways just that bad, if they could fetch them
off.

 
          
"I
mean every word I say,” he told us, and fell quiet. The creaking and rocking of
the cabin started in again.

 
          
I
looked toward the table where
Warren
had put down the alexandrite. It made a
little crumb of fire there, stronger than just the lamplight on it. I braced
myself on that rocking floor.

 
          
"What's
a-happening there?" I inquired
Warren
.

           
"I'm not quite sure. All I know
is
,
there's power in this jewel. I wonder—wonder—”

           
He leaned his rifle to a chair back.
"Where's a knife?'' he called.

           
"Knife?”
Callie repeated as she came in from the back room where she'd been on watch.

 
          
"A
knife, and quick,” he said, the sharpest I could imagine him a-talking to her.

 
          
"Here,”
she said, and ran to the sink and fetched back a carving knife. I could see its
whetted edge shine out. He took it, and I wondered what he was up to as he
turned it over and over.

 
          
"It's
been blessed already, coming from your hand to me,” he said to Callie,
"but I must do even more, with what words I remember.”

 
          
He
clutched the knife against him with both hands and ducked his head down. The
house creaked as he did that. I reckoned that he said some kind of prayer.

 
          
"All
right now!” he halfway shouted all of a sudden.

 
          
With
the point of the knife he shoved the alexandrite to the dead center of the
table. "Clear these things off here, Callie,” he said, like an order.
"I'm going to need all the room there possibly is.”

 
          
She
and Hazel Techeray quick whisked away some bowls and cups and spoons. The house
made its rattle all round us, though this time I didn't hear that wind.
Warren
took the knife and began to gouge a long,
straight line in the wood of the table top. He cut another line, and then
another, then two more. He made them into the shape of a five-pointed star
there, with the alexandrite at the middle of it, a-shining more like a fire
coal than ever.

 
          
“What
in the world are you a-doing?” I wondered him, but he said nair word back. He
shifted the knife in his hand and dragged the point strong to dig a circle all
round outside the five points of his star.

 
          
“I
know,” chattered Hazel Techeray, a-watching. “I know what that there thing is.
Ain’t nair seen one before, but I’ve heard tell of them. I’ve heard them
called—” “It’s called a pentacle,” said
Warren
, a-straightening himself up and a-dropping
the knife. “Now, where’s that pencil John used with the plate?”

           
He took it, and the house shook all
round us as he wrote big letters inside each point of the star.

 
          
“Mr.
Warren, you dead certain sure of what you’re a-doing?” Hazel Techeray squeaked
to him. “
Them’s
the names of the Five Kings of the
North!”

 
          
“That’s
right,” he said. “A pentacle can defend both the body and the soul, if they
deserve to be defended.” Outside, the wind made its howl again, and the thunder
gave a roll like a barrel of stones a-running downhill.

           
“All right now,” said
Warren
. “Come here, everybody. I need you.”

 
          
“Who’s
a-going to stay on watch?” asked Mr. Ben.

 
          
“I
need you,” said
Warren
again. “Here’s our pentacle, and the alexandrite is its center of help
to us. Somebody must stand at each of the five points. Come here, John. You
stand beside me.”

 
          
I
came there. Callie drew up on his other side. In front of me, a word was
written in the nearest point of the star. HALANTA, I thought it said. The word
in the point toward
Warren
looked to be ZITRAEL, and in the one toward Callie, THANAOR. Mr. Ben
came and stood at a point marked TALOUK. Next to him was Hazel Techeray, and
her point had the name ZITRAMI. That's the best I recollect. Just now, I'm not
sure in my mind I want to know if those names are spelled right or not. We all
kept hold of our guns, all but Hazel Techeray, who hadn't been given one, and
Jackson Warren, who'd leaned his away.

 
          
"We're
all a-going to get ourselves destroyed with this," said Hazel Techeray,
a-shaking where she'd stood herself at ZITRAMI.

 
          
"We'll
hope not," said
Warren
, a-motioning to make us all stand just at the star points.

 
          
"Then
names looks heathen to me," said Mr. Ben.

 
          
"Heathen
or not, I'll call on them. Quiet, now."

 
          
He
flung up his arms high and spoke:

 
          
"You
Five Kings," he said, "assist me, who have the boldness to name you,
whom no man should name and invoke save when in great danger."

 
          
Thunder
sort of moaned outside. Lightning flashed its glow in at the log spaces. I
thought Hazel Techeray would fall over.

 
          
"We
are in great peril of soul and body,"
Warren
spaced his words out slow. "Pardon me
if I have sinned in any manner, for I trust in your protection."

 
          
I
stood there where he'd put me to stand. I made no move, said no word. They'd
chosen me the captain to defend that cabin, but here I had to give over to
Warren
. He knew what he was a-doing. Or anyway, I
hoped he did.

 
          
There
came another big, whanging rattle of thunder and lightning.

 
          
"They're
a-fetching more
storm
on us," whined Hazel
Techeray.

 
          
"I
think that happens to be our own storm," said
Warren
, and as he spoke there rose up a wild wail
all round the place: The Shonokins, and not a laugh this time. Something
pestered them.

           
"Stop in there, stop, stop!”
yelled Brooke Altic to us.

 
          
"We've
penned up the jewel,” said
Warren
, so softly he was hard to hear talk, even when I stood next to him.
"They were focused on it. Now they know they can't reach it.”

 
          
Thunder,
thunder, and lightning, lightning.

 
          
"You
can't do that!” Brooke Altic was a-yammering.

 
          
Nothing back from
Warren
, nair reply to Brooke
Altic.
Warren
lifted his two hands again and spoke more
slowspaced words:

 
          
"Preserve
us from evil spirits,” he halfway sang. "Help us to bind and destroy the
evil spirits, and reconcile the good ones to us. Be our sins forgiven,
be
they washed whiter than snow.”

 
          
I
looked at the name in my star point.
HALANTA.
I
wondered myself who Halanta was. I wondered who those others were, called by
Hazel Techeray the Five Kings of the North. I asked in my soul about what a
pentacle might
could
do, where it came from, who first
knew the way to draw one. I got no answer. But the tempest storm made its voice
heard over our cabin roof. And, midmost of the star, that alexandrite stared
like a shining red eye at me. I had the notion that smoke began to curl around
it

 
          
I
cut a look at Jackson Warren. His face was tenched up like as if it had been
pulled tight all round and pegged down at the edges like a banjo head. His
skin shown
white and gleamy. I thought his hair stood up
stiff as a brush. He was all the way into what he was a-trying to do.

 
          
"I
call, I call,” he was a-saying. "I call, you Five Kings, and judge if I
and my cause are worthy. I commit unto you these enemies; I call on you to
judge them truly.”

 
          
I
felt that if I looked round, there'd be something close behind me. Something
I'd be purely scared to see. But I didn't look round. I set my eyes back on the
flame-shining alexandrite.

 
          
Outside,
the wailing cry again, all round and round the house. It sounded like pain, bad
pain.

 
          
"They're
in trouble, I vow,” growled out Mr. Ben, beside his TALOUK point of the star.

 
          
"Yes,”
said
Warren
, tight as a fiddle string. "Yes,
because it's our storm now, not theirs. The Five Kings answer us.”

 
          
They
answered us, sure enough, right then. You
should ought
to have heard the drum roll of that thunder.

 
          
Warren
hiked his hands higher toward the rafters
over him, and he turned his face up, too.

 
          
"Five,”
he rolled out. "You are five, and the points of the pentacle are five, and
the number five has great force in holy things. There are the five fingers on a
hand, the five toes on a foot. There are the five senses—tasting, smelling,
hearing, seeing, touching. Five is a number that will send away bad
spirits,
expel deadly poisons.” He drew his breath in, hard.
"It is a number full of majesty, a vehicle of human life.”

 
          
"Human
life,” I echoed him to myself, while I recollected that the Shonokins took
their pride in being something other than human.

 
          
I
looked back at the alexandrite. It burned, sure enough. It scorched its place
into the wood of the table top, made the wood black.

 
          
"You
can't!” screamed a voice at us from outside, and this time I nair thought it
was Brooke Altic.

 
          
"We
can,” said
Warren
, loud and clear as a man a-making a speech.
"We can do what we do. We do it against the force and will of evil.”

 
          
It
was near about like a wink of the eye that alexandrite made.
A
darkening and a brightening, hot and trembly.
I had the feeling of a
grip on me, not like that tingly grip out on the Shonokin track. I told myself
to be glad of that grip. It was from something on my side, the human side of
things.

 
          
Outside,
there beat up voices. "No! No
!
^M
A
whole bunch of them a-saying that, and up over them all, Brooke Altic: “You
seal your doom, you seal your doom—”

 
          
But in the room with us, a whispery sound in the air, friendly.

 
          
“You
are welcome here, you noble Five Kings,” rang out
Warren
. “We have called you here by the great name
to which every knee is bowed, in this world and in the next.”

 
          
He
pointed his finger to the alexandrite. It sort of puffed and smoked there, and
the light in it died down, and it
laid
like a cinder.

 
          
There
came a scratching on the logs of the cabin outside, all the way round, front
and back, like hands a-picking at the walls. The wailing voices made their sad,
awful sound out yonder. Brooke Altic's voice screamed:

 
          
“What
are you trying to do? What are you going to do?”

 
          
Not
one of us replied him that, but we knew that something was a-being done. The
jewel he'd wanted from us, the jewel he would have tied his power to, would
have used to rule us,
was
no jewel now. It crumbled
where it lay on the scorched table, like an ash dropped off a cigar. I saw a
black burnt place on the wood.