The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (45 page)

You failed her again when she needed you. You were meant to guard her and you lost her. The Gargs have her now—can you imagine the sport they will have with her?

Suddenly his hands froze on the step in front of his eyes. His feet would not budge. “Yes—
yes
! I failed her. I failed her.”

Take but a single step into the embrace of darkness. There you will discover the end of your miserable existence.

Mark thought about that. Just one step off the edge of the staircase and it would be over. No more torment. But the Legun didn’t care about ending his torment.
Mark’s head lifted again to the rotating clouds, to the few steps above that turned abruptly leftward, the final ascent. Above him was the pentagonal tower, a black monolith thrust into the stormy sky. His teeth chattered in a bitter exhaustion.

Something came to mind: a memory of climbing these same steps just the day before. He recalled his conversation with Kate about the statue of Nantosueta that adorned the summit. And the centuries of dust in the highest chamber. For some reason, the Death Legion hadn’t dared to climb these steps, not in two thousand years. He took heart from it to shout his defiance at the Legun.

“I’ve had a worse monster than you on my back all of my life. So you can go back to hell!”

Then, sliding
Vengeance
back into its sheath, he used both hands to climb. He forced himself onward clinging to the next step, pulling his shuddering frame eighteen inches higher, although the pitch of the staircase seemed almost a vertical climb, with no handholds other than the cutting edges of the steps.

The chasm yawned below him, giddy and nauseating, drawing his will back, pulling him off the face.

He felt a sudden intense stab of despair. It came from outside him, from somebody else. In his confusion, he thought this came from Mo. But how could it come from his sister?

Mark was so worn out he was climbing on hands and knees. Blood oozed from around his fingernails and
mixed with the sweat that was dripping from his face so that his hands slipped on the smooth-worn stone.

The darkening sky was suddenly lit up with a flare of lightning. An ear-splitting crack of thunder boomed. The lightning erupted in a great cataract around the tower, and then it coalesced and struck back down to earth somewhere below. Mark heard a roar so violent it shook the tor. He felt the stones shift and grind under him, as if they had been struck by an earthquake. But then—suddenly—release. Something new, a massive blow, had weakened the Legun. The miasma was gone from his mind.

Groaning aloud, he forced himself on. Suddenly, the going was easier and he fell over the topmost step. He staggered through the inwardly sloping jambs of the ancient portal and farther into the atrium, there to pause, to gather his breath and allow his heartbeat to settle.

A twist of staircase led up into the projecting pentagon of the tower.

Ignoring the pounding of his heart and the wheezing of his lungs, he ascended the staircase until he emerged under the vault of the sky. He stood on the flat pinnacle, surrounded by a low wall beyond which the Vale of Tazan stretched in a dizzying panorama from horizon to horizon. Here, in the howling of the wind, so high up the tempestuous sky seemed to press down on him like a ceiling, he slumped against the gallery wall, looking down into the despoiled valley, at the pall of smoke and
ruin rising from the temple complex far beneath him. Islands of orange flames licked among the great sweep of forests, feeding the black mantle of smoke that rose into the air.

From the sloping forest across the river a gray-speckled mist was rising into the sky. He realized what it was: thousands of Gargs joining the attack. His limbs trembled with urgency as he turned to look up at the colossus that surmounted the pentagonal Rath. Nantosueta! How different she looked from the beautiful girl in the woodland glade. This figure was ten times life size, struck from the same enduring granite as the tower that bore it. His limbs wavering with exhaustion and poison, Mark gazed up into that grim face.

“Help me now, Granny Dew!”

Abruptly, he felt a new force intervene. With gritted teeth, he suffered the dislocation as he was torn away from this stony platform and returned to the cave of sulphurous lava. Here the cobwebbed figure loomed over him, her black eyes peering intently into his. She was tapping a knobbly stick against his ankles as she urged him to follow her, a flaming torch in her other hand.

The Third Power

Granny Dew led Mark out of the cave of lava, which now appeared to be an antechamber to an enormous new chamber. As if ignited by the torch’s flare, a brilliant and multicolored light swept through the chamber in motes that spiraled and flickered like starry galaxies throughout its great spaces. The colors ignited a Milky Way of gleaming reflections in the walls, in the quartzite floor and the kaleidoscope of ceiling. In their progress they brushed by straw stalactites, as delicate as ivory hair, glittering with diamantine refractions. From the floor, giant stalagmites sprang up in beautiful reds and oranges, some striated and polished like marble. As if in answer to Mark’s weakening gaze, the glitter of iron pyrites seemed to metamorphose into the glory of a peacock. He saw the bird fan its tail,
as if for a moment it had come to real life, and then it reverted to crystal.

“I don’t have time for fireworks!”

“Time does not exist here, child!”

What did that mean? Mark felt the poisons surge and swell through his blood, weakening him further from moment to moment. Now that he was dying, was he being given some sort of a final lesson?

He sensed forces, powers that went beyond any normal comprehension. There was sound too, like musical chimes and harmonies, as if the labyrinth were vying in song with the beauty of vision. Mark caught the scents of spring in his nostrils. But all the sights and sounds were doing was wasting vital seconds. When he waved it all away, the movement of his hand evoked a cloud of damselflies, bursting into being from crystalline motes; a second wave brought into life a hummingbird, with its whirring hover; the fall of silver dust became the glory of a leaping salmon, arcing full-bellied through the rainbow spray of a mountain torrent.

Even as he gasped for breath, the brilliance that seemed to exude from the very molecules of air was extinguished, and he was being directed toward a single focus. In the light of the torch still held aloft by Granny Dew, he was drawn through the entrance into a third cave. This was smaller, more intimate, and dominated by what appeared to be a circle of stalagmites. As he struggled toward it, the stalagmites took on the appearance of petrified trees. Standing in the center
was a single stone column, vaguely human in shape, as if a cowled and shawled figure brooded there. Closer still, the figure loomed, blue-black in density and flickering in its depths, as if dormant with inner life.

The old woman inched her way forward, entering the circle of petrified trees, her face downturned and averted. When she reached the central pillar, she began to anoint three faces in the stone with some kind of oil.

Her dirt-begrimed fingers traced the delicate lines of the faces with devotion, her voice growling incantations. Abruptly her task was finished. She drew back from the pillar and fell onto the dusty floor with her face still averted, skulking into the background. Mark felt compelled to turn his attention from Granny Dew to the column of stone.

Conflicting emotions swept through him: annoyance that nobody here seemed to give a damn that he was dying, along with fear of what felt like the potential for almighty good or malice.

He felt imprisoned there, his own will taken away from him, as if his being had become trapped by his own terror. But then hands, grimy and powerful, took hold of his elbows and propelled him forward into the maelstrom of power. Her words growled in his ears. “Qurun!”

Into the spinning vortex those gnarled hands guided him.

“Daaannngerrr!”

The whispering of a name . . .
Qurun Bave
. Had her words been leaves, they would already have dried and decayed to powder in his mind. And then even in her voice there was a tone of caution.
Qurun Macha
.

One of the faces in the stone appeared to have come alive, a feminine presence. In the quaver of dread in that old voice, he felt a powerful reinforcement of her warnings.

The old woman was dragging herself back a pace from him, still hugging the ground on her age-old knees. Mark realized that he no longer needed the light of the torch. He was standing between two members of the petrified circle of trees, the upstanding trunks and branches lambent with an inner radiance. His guide was urging him deeper, yet she withheld herself with hisses and moans. Studying the stone figure at the center of the circle, he saw how its surface was deeply etched with grooves, as if hands of knowledge from ages past had scored some forbidding runes over its surface. Compelled by forces he was unable to resist, he stumbled closer to the cowled figure.

“Daaannngerrr!” He heard the old woman’s urgent whisper, as if she were reading his mind.

He glimpsed her at the margin of his vision, frantic with worry, scurrying about herself, dragging her finger in the damp earth, drawing at a furious rate, faster than he could register. As if incanting some spell.

Compulsion overcame dread, forcing him to stagger forward again until his outstretched hand could
reach out and touch the surface of the luminescent figure. He pressed his finger over the runes. He couldn’t read them but instinctively he sensed their incredible power.

The old woman hung upon his progress, murmuring, incanting, despairing at his incomprehension in the presence of the powers that now confronted him.

“Mark, abide! The test—
the test
!”

What test?

But there was no time to wonder as he faced the figure, which had several faces above a body that was a conflagration of glowing runes. Falteringly, as if struggling through a mixture of faintness and dread, he forced himself closer. Standing before the triple-headed being, he forced his arms through the blizzard of force, so that he embraced its glowing outline. Distantly he registered the shriek of outrage as the old woman, who had been trying to wrestle him back, was herself thrown backward, forced to prostrate herself once more two paces beyond the circle.

Mark felt a shock of fright: there was no air in his lungs as, with clumsy fingers, he ran his hands over the first face. It was a stern yet not unkindly face. His mind opened, however timidly, to question it. The voice of Granny Dew was no longer in his ears but in his head.
Qurun Bave!
He was gazing at the ruby triangle on the brow of stone, even as the old woman’s voice was cautioning him, growling at him, to move around the obelisk—as if questions could be dangerous, and hesitation more dangerous still.

A ruby triangle—the First Power!

He was allowed mere moments to confront a second face—a much younger face, with lips parted in a seductive smile. This being aroused him far more deeply than the succubus with the merest wisp of touch, then shimmered away, as if reacting to his presence with a mocking laughter. A whispered name, like a sigh against his ear:
Qurun Mab!
Cold sweat drenched his brow. Yet still, seduced by the voice, he couldn’t resist the urge to place his kiss upon those second lips. Even as he was drawn to do so, a family of lovesome shadows danced and gyrated about him, brushing against his flesh, sighing and whispering, as if he only had to free his will, to lose himself in pleasure beyond imagining. He heard sibilant peals of laughter.
She is the One, we are the daughters.
These daughters were in competition with each other for winsome seductiveness.
Come sport with us and you will know paradise . . .

Mark’s head spun, causing him to totter, almost to fall.

Child—heed the brow!

At the last moment, before his lips met those of the figure, he saw the triangle in the brow: a metamorphosing matrix of meadow-green, in which arabesques of gold ebbed and spiraled—Kate’s crystal.

With even the thought of Kate, the memory of failure rose in him. He was only vaguely aware of the voice of Granny Dew in his mind, growling, at the same time as her head was bowed to the floor—and her hand was
reaching down, slowly, carefully, to throw a cooling handful of dirt on the second face.

Now, foolish child—back!

Only with all that was left of his will could he tear himself from their embraces, the temptresses that reluctantly drew back from him and faded into the sighing figure. He forced his legs to move on muscles of lead to the third face, hidden from the light of the atrium in shadows so dark it seemed that it could not even be illuminated by the torch’s flame. His fingers recoiled in dread. The third face was cowled in a hood, the face within it, however beautiful—and beautiful he knew it was, deeply, instinctively—felt colder than winter. Her perfect teeth parted in a smile.

Mórígán!

Terror threw him back against the ring of trees, his jaws chattering, his limbs weak and trembling.

Through his dread, he heard the old woman speaking. Her words addressed the third entity, whose icy lips he had refused to kiss.

Stay your fury over this frail coracle. Let failure or success now condemn or succor him through the peril that lies before him.

A wave of force caused Mark to wheel around, to stretch his arm toward Granny Dew. She attempted to come a yard closer to help his progress, her lips moving in a growling mantra. Then suddenly, with her eyes widely staring, she thrust her hand through the fringe of trees, pressing something hard and burning against
his forehead, impressing it there, her lips writhing against each other, as if both an immense duty and a terrible sacrifice had been set in motion.

My crystal!

Pain exploded in Mark’s head. He was flung back against the circle of petrified trees, his eyes wide. A potent force was assuming form in the pillar before him. For a moment, in place of the cowled figure of the third face, he saw a constantly metamorphosing matrix of dark and light, before the cowled face with its icy beauty returned.

His brow, with its obsidian crystal, was forced into intimate contact with the brow of the face. He could smell the oils of Granny Dew’s anointing. He could feel the area of contact condense to form a triangle. An inverted triangle—he knew it would be black. The sensation of fusion was so agonizing that for a moment he lost consciousness, but the strength of attachment wouldn’t allow him to fall. Without the strength to hold back any longer, his lips pressed against the icy lips, tasting the old woman’s earth-encrusted fingers, the sweet aromatic oils . . .

A new shock of union rippled through him, scoring throughout his mind and spirit like an electrical discharge, thrilling to the very tips of his fingers and toes. A deep, animal part of him exulted. A whisper entranced his mind. He was aware that it entered through the burning triangle in his forehead, though he was no longer in contact with the being.

So the De Danaan blasphemy is now challenged? Yet is such an ordeal warranted? Are you worthy?

What was he supposed to reply to that? The question was too vague, too fantastic, for his comprehension.

He felt certain that it was from this dreadful face that the dark shadows crept, to glide and gyrate over the walls of the cave.

He heard the old woman reply on his behalf:

Mark is afraid. He has known fear of rejection for a very long time. Yet he will assume the powers of True Believer.

With his heartbeat roaring in his ears he heard the reply of the Third Power, like glaciers grating over the rubble of landscapes.

Does he understand that something which so terrifies him in ignorance will become a thousand times more terrible through understanding?

He murmured, “I’m here too, you know.”

The shockwave of direct communication threw him onto his knees.
And so understanding, will you, Mark Grimstone, accept your destiny?

“I’ll accept it. Whatever you want of me.”

There was a pause in which that chilly face appeared to assess him anew. Then, as if to scorn him, he was shown a pinpoint of light in the darkness. A terrible despair cut through his awareness as Mo’s voice rose, like a plaintive cry, on the wind. “I am losing my strength, Alan! Leave me!”

Mo—Mo was in danger. Concern for his sister flooded Mark’s mind. “All I ask is that you let me do it quickly enough to make a difference.”

He knelt before Mórígán, trembling, in a dreadful silence. Then he felt a powerful throbbing from his forehead which spread so that his whole mind seemed probed. There was a quickening in him, as if a little of his strength was returning, barely enough to enable him to stand on his own and endure the shock of being cast out of the labyrinth.

Back on the pinnacle, and gasping once more for breath, Mark saw how the Legun had expanded its power. The sky was a maelstrom, ravaged by lightning. He swayed back against the rail, staring up at the gigantic statue far above his head. He sensed his newly acquired oraculum blazing darkness rather than light, focusing all of his concentration on the figure of Nantosueta, marbling its surface with rivulets of fiery luminescence, which sparkled and cascaded in a dense web of runnels and matrices throughout the crystals of the rock.

Moment by moment, as the figure grew ever more incandescent, weakness invaded Mark’s heart. Icy sweat dripped from his face. Yet still he held his trembling body erect as the Dark Queen blazed brighter—as if the crystals of granite took fire.

When she spoke, it sounded like the rattling of a sea of bones.

Speak—and quickly before you invoke my wrath. Why have you profaned my age-old slumber?

“Don’t you remember me?” He had to hurl his words with all of his strength from mind to mind, and even then
they sounded like a whisper against the battening storm of force that whipped and tossed about the tor. “We met in the chamber—in a kind of dream.” He panted for every breath now, trying to overcome the growing giddiness in his mind.

Silence.

“I don’t have time left for explanations. Look at what’s going on around you!” His breath was shallow, rapid. “Down there . . . on the temple plateau. Innocent people are being murdered by the same evil you fought long ago.”

Weariness again, in a great wave of sorrow, swept through the very atoms of his spirit as that great head turned.