Worms of the Earth, Robert E. Howard [black authors fiction .TXT] 📗
- Author: Robert E. Howard
- Performer: -
Book online «Worms of the Earth, Robert E. Howard [black authors fiction .TXT] 📗». Author Robert E. Howard
dreams.”
“I have heard a viper hiss,” he growled, “and I do not dream.
Enough of this weaving of words. I came seeking a link between two
worlds; I have found it.”
“I need lie to you no more, man of the North,” answered the woman.
“They you seek still dwell beneath the sleeping hills. They have drawn
apart, farther and farther from the world you know.”
“But they still steal forth in the night to grip women straying on
the moors,” said he, his gaze on her slanted eyes. She laughed
wickedly.
“What would you of me?”
“That you bring me to Them.”
She flung back her head with a scornful laugh. His left hand
locked like iron in the breast of her scanty garment and his right
closed on his hilt. She laughed in his face.
“Strike and be damned, my northern wolf! Do you think that such
life as mine is so sweet that I would cling to it as a babe to the
breast?”
His hand fell away.
“You are right. Threats are foolish. I will buy your aid.”
“How?” the laughing voice hummed with mockery.
Bran opened his pouch and poured into his cupped palm a stream of
gold.
“More wealth than the men of the fen ever dreamed of.”
Again she laughed. “What is this rusty metal to me? Save it for
some white-breasted Roman woman who will play the traitor for you!”
“Name me a price!” he urged. “The head of an enemy—”
“By the blood in my veins, with its heritage of ancient hate, who
is mine enemy but thee?” she laughed and springing, struck catlike.
But her dagger splintered on the mail beneath his cloak and he flung
her off with a loathsome flit of his wrist which tossed her sprawling
across her grass-strewn bunk. Lying there she laughed up at him.
“I will name you a price, then, my wolf, and it may be in days to
come you will curse the armor that broke Atla’s dagger!” She rose and
came close to him, her disquietingly long hands fastened fiercely into
his cloak. “I will tell you, Black Bran, king of Caledon! Oh, I knew
you when you came into my hut with your black hair and your cold eyes!
I will lead you to the doors of Hell if you wish—and the price shall
be the kisses of a king!
“What of my blasted and bitter life, I, whom mortal men loathe and
fear? I have not known the love of men, the clasp of a strong arm, the
sting of human kisses, I, Atla, the were-woman of the moors! What have
I known but the lone winds of the fens, the dreary fire of cold
sunsets, the whispering of the marsh grasses?—the faces that blink up
at me in the waters of the meres, the foot-pad of night—things in the
gloom, the glimmer of red eyes, the grisly murmur of nameless beings
in the night!
“I am half-human, at least! Have I not known sorrow and yearning
and crying wistfulness, and the drear ache of loneliness? Give to me,
king—give me your fierce kisses and your hurtful barbarian’s embrace.
Then in the long drear years to come I shall not utterly eat out my
heart in vain envy of the white-bosomed women of men; for I shall have
a memory few of them can boast—the kisses of a king! One night of
love, oh king, and I will guide you to the gates of Hell!”
Bran eyed her somberly; he reached forth and gripped her arm in
his iron fingers. An involuntary shudder shook him at the feel of her
sleek skin. He nodded slowly and drawing her close to him, forced his
head down to meet her lifted lips.
The cold gray mists of dawn wrapped King Bran like a clammy cloak.
He turned to the woman whose slanted eyes gleamed in the gray gloom.
“Make good your part of the contract,” he said roughly. “I sought
a link between worlds, and in you I found it. I seek the one thing
sacred to Them. It shall be the Key opening the Door that lies unseen
between me and Them. Tell me how I can reach it.”
“I will,” the red lips smiled terribly. “Go to the mound men call
Dagon’s Barrow. Draw aside the stone that blocks the entrance and go
under the dome of the mound. The floor of the chamber is made of seven
great stones, six grouped about the seventh. Lift out the center
stone—and you will see!”
“Will I find the Black Stone?” he asked.
“Dagon’s Barrow is the Door to the Black Stone,” she answered, “if
you dare follow the Road.”
“Will the symbol be well guarded?” He unconsciously loosened his
blade in its sheath. The red lips curled mockingly.
“If you meet any on the Road you will die as no mortal man has
died for long centuries. The Stone is not guarded, as men guard their
treasures. Why should They guard what man has never sought? Perhaps
They will be near, perhaps not. It is a chance you must take, if you
wish the Stone. Beware, king of Pictdom! Remember it was your folk
who, so long ago, cut the thread that bound Them to human life. They
were almost human then—they overspread the land and knew the
sunlight. Now they have drawn apart. They know not the sunlight and
they shun the light of the moon. Even the starlight they hate. Far,
far apart have they drawn, who might have been men in time, but for
the spears of your ancestors.”
The sky was overcast with misty gray, through which the sun shone
coldly yellow when Bran came to Dagon’s Barrow, a round hillock
overgrown with rank grass of a curious fungoid appearance. On the
eastern side of the mound showed the entrance of a crudely built stone
tunnel which evidently penetrated the barrow. One great stone blocked
the entrance to the tomb. Bran laid hold of the sharp edges and
exerted all his strength. It held fast. He drew his sword and worked
the blade between the blocking stone and the sill. Using the sword as
a lever, he worked carefully, and managed to loosen the great stone
and wrench it out. A foul charnel house scent flowed out of the
aperture and the dim sunlight seemed less to illuminate the cavern-like opening than to be fouled by the rank darkness which clung there.
Sword in hand, ready for he knew not what, Bran groped his way
into the tunnel, which was long and narrow, built up of heavy joined
stones, and was too low for him to stand erect. Either his eyes became
somewhat accustomed to the gloom, or the darkness was, after all,
somewhat lightened by the sunlight filtering in through the entrance.
At any rate he came into a round low chamber and was able to make out
its general dome-like outline. Here, no doubt, in old times, had
reposed the bones of him for whom the stones of the tomb had been
joined and the earth heaped high above them; but now of those bones no
vestige remained on the stone floor. And bending close and straining
his eyes, Bran made out the strange, startlingly regular pattern of
that floor: six well-cut slabs clustered about a seventh, six-sided
stone.
He drove his sword-point into a crack and pried carefully. The
edge of the central stone tilted slightly upward. A little work and he
lifted it out and leaned it against the curving wall. Straining his
eyes downward he saw only the gaping blackness of a dark well, with
small, worn steps that led downward and out of sight. He did not
hesitate. Though the skin between his shoulders crawled curiously, he
swung himself into the abyss and felt the clinging blackness swallow
him.
Groping downward, he felt his feet slip and stumble on steps too
small for human feet. With one hand pressed hard against the side of
the well he steadied himself, fearing a fall into unknown and
unlighted depths. The steps were cut into solid rock, yet they were
greatly worn away. The farther he progressed, the less like steps they
became, mere bumps of worn stone. Then the direction of the shaft
changed sharply. It still led down, but at a shallow slant down which
he could walk, elbows braced against the hollowed sides, head bent low
beneath the curved roof. The steps had ceased altogether and the stone
felt slimy to the touch, like a serpent’s lair. What beings, Bran
wondered, had slithered up and down this slanting shaft, for how many
centuries?
The tunnel narrowed until Bran found it rather difficult to shove
through. He lay on his back and pushed himself along with his hands,
feet first. Still he knew he was sinking deeper and deeper into the
very guts of the earth; how far below the surface he was, he dared not
contemplate. Then ahead a faint witch-fire gleam tinged the abysmal
blackness. He grinned savagely and without mirth. If They he sought
came suddenly upon him, how could he fight in that narrow shaft? But
he had put the thought of personal fear behind him when he began this
hellish quest. He crawled on, thoughtless of all else but his goal.
And he came at last into a vast space where he could stand
upright. He could not see the roof of the place, but he got an
impression of dizzying vastness. The blackness pressed in on all sides
and behind him he could see the entrance to the shaft from which he
had just emerged—a black well in the darkness. But in front of him a
strange grisly radiance glowed about a grim altar built of human
skulls. The source of that light he could not determine, but on the
altar lay a sullen night-black object—the Black Stone!
Bran wasted no time in giving thanks that the guardians of the
grim relic were nowhere near. He caught up the Stone, and gripping it
under his left arm, crawled into the shaft. When a man turns his back
on peril its clammy menace looms more grisly than when he advances
upon it. So Bran, crawling back up the nighted shaft with his grisly
prize, felt the darkness turn on him and slink behind him, grinning
with dripping fangs. Clammy sweat beaded his flesh and he hastened to
the best of his ability, ears strained for some stealthy sound to
betray that fell shapes were at his heels. Strong shudders shook him,
despite himself, and the short hair on his neck prickled as if a cold
wind blew at his back.
When he reached the first of the tiny steps he felt as if he had
attained to the outer boundaries of the mortal world. Up them he went,
stumbling and slipping, and with a deep gasp of relief, came out into
the tomb, whose spectral grayness seemed like the blaze of noon in
comparison to the stygian depths he had just traversed. He replaced
the central stone and strode into the light of the outer day, and
never was the cold yellow light of the sun more grateful, as it
dispelled the shadows of black-winged nightmares of fear and madness
that seemed to have ridden him up out of the black deeps. He shoved
the great blocking stone back into place, and picking up the cloak he
had left at the mouth of the tomb, he wrapped it about the Black Stone
and hurried away, a strong revulsion and loathing shaking his soul and
lending wings to his strides.
A gray silence brooded over
Comments (0)