The Dark World Read online

  The Dark World

  Henry Kuttner

  Henry Kuttner

  THE DARK WORLD

  (1946)

  I. Fire in the Night

  TO THE NORTH thin smoke made a column against the darkening sky. Again I felt the unreasoning fear, the impulse toward nightmare flight that had been with me for a long time now. I knew it was without reason. There was only smoke, rising from the swamps of the tangled Limberlost country, not fifty miles from Chicago, where man has outlawed superstition with strong bonds of steel and concrete.

  I knew it was only a camper's fire, yet I knew it was not. Something, far back in my mind, knew what the smoke rose from, and who stood about the fire, peering my way through the trees.

  I looked away, my glance slipping around the crowded walls – shelves bearing the random fruit of my uncle's magpie collector's instinct. Opium pipes of inlaid work and silver, golden chessmen from India, a sword…

  Deep memories stirred within me – deep panic. I was beneath the sword in two strides, tearing it from the wall, my fingers cramping hard around the hilt. Not fully aware of what I did, I found myself facing the window and the distant smoke again. The sword was in my fist, but feeling wrong, not reassuring, not as the sword ought to feel.

  "Easy, Ed," my uncle's deep voice said behind me. "What's the matter? You look – sort of wild."

  "It's the wrong sword," I heard myself saying helplessly.

  Then something like a mist cleared from my brain. I blinked at him stupidly, wondering what was happening to me. My voice answered.

  "It isn't the sword. It should have come from Cambodia. It should have been one of the three talismans of the Fire King and the Water King. Three very great talismans – the fruit of âcui, gathered at the time of the deluge, but still fresh – the rattan with flowers that never fade, and the sword of Yan, the guarding spirit."

  My uncle squinted at me through pipe-smoke. He shook his head.

  "You've changed, Ed," he said in his deep, gentle voice. "You've changed a lot. I suppose because of the war – it's to be expected. And you've been sick. But you never used to be interested in things like that before. I think you spend too much time at the libraries. I'd hoped this vacation would help. The rest -"

  "I don't want rest!" I said violently. "I spent a year and a half resting in Sumatra. Doing nothing but rest in mat smelly little jungle village, waiting and waiting and waiting."

  I could see and smell it now. I could feel again the fever that had raged so long through me as I lay in the tabooed hut.

  My mind went back eighteen months to the last hour when things were normal for me. It was in the closing phases of World War II, and I was flying over the Sumatran jungle. War, of course, is never good or normal, but until that one blinding moment in the air I had been an ordinary man, sure of myself, sure of my place in the world, with no nagging fragments of memory too elusive to catch.

  Then everything blanked out, suddenly and completely. I never knew what it was. There was nothing it could have been. My only injuries came when the plane struck, and they were miraculously light. But I had been whole and unhurt when the blindness and blankness came over me.

  The friendly Bataks found me as I lay in the ruined plane. They brought me through a fever and a raging illness with their strange, crude, effective ways of healing, but I sometimes thought they had done me no service when they saved me. And their witch-doctor had his doubts, too.

  He knew something. He worked his curious, futile charms with knotted string and rice, sweating with effort I did not understand – then. I remembered the scarred, ugly mask looming out of the shadow, the hands moving in gestures of strange power.

  "Come back, O soul, where thou are lingering in the wood, or in the hills, or by the river. See, I call thee with a toemba bras, with an egg of the fowl Rajah moelija, with the eleven healing leaves…"

  "Yes, they were sorry for me at first, all of them. The witchdoctor was the first to sense something wrong and the awareness spread. I could feel it spreading, as their attitude changed. They were afraid. Not of me, I thought, but of – what?

  Before the helicopter came to take me back to civilization, the witch-doctor had told me a little. As much, perhaps, as he dared.

  "You must hide, my son. All your life you must hide.

  Something is searching for you – " He used a word I did not understand. " – and it has come from the Other World, the ghostlands, to hunt you down. Remember this: all magic things must be taboo to you. And if that too fails, perhaps you may find a weapon in magic. But we cannot help you. Our powers are not strong enough for that."

  He was glad to see me go. They were all glad.

  And after that, unrest. For something had changed me utterly. The fever? Perhaps. At any rate, I didn't feel like the same man. There were dreams, memories – haunting urgencies as if I had somehow, somewhere left some vital job unfinished.

  I found myself talking more freely to my uncle.

  "It was like a curtain lifting. A curtain of gauze. I saw some things more clearly – they seemed to have a different significance. Things happen to me now that would have seemed incredible – before. Now they don't.

  "I've traveled a lot, you know. It doesn't help. There's always something to remind me. An amulet in a pawnshop window, a knotted string, a cat's-eye opal and two figures. I see them in my dreams, over and over. And once -"

  I stopped.

  "Yes?" my uncle prompted softly.

  "It was in New Orleans. I woke up one night and there was something in my room, very close to me. I had a gun – a special sort of gun – under my pillow. When I reached for it the – call it a dog – sprang from the window. Only it wasn't shaped quite like a dog." I hesitated. "There were silver bullets in the revolver," I said.

  My uncle was silent for a long moment. I knew what he was thinking.

  "The other figure?" he said, finally.

  "I don't know. It wears a hood. I think it's very old. And beyond these two -"

  "Yes?"

  "A voice. A very sweet voice, haunting. A fire. And beyond the fire, a face I have never seen clearly."

  My uncle nodded. The darkness had drawn in; I could scarcely see him, and the smoke outside had lost itself against the shadow of night. But a faint glow still lingered beyond the trees… Or did I only imagine that?

  I nodded toward the window.

  "I've seen that fire before," I told him.

  "What's wrong with it? Campers make fires."

  "No. It's a Need-fire."

  "What the devil is that?"

  "It's a ritual," I said. "Like the Midsummer fires, or the Beltane fire the Scots used to kindle. But the Need-fire is lighted only in time of calamity. It's a very old custom."

  My uncle laid down his pipe and leaned forward.

  "What is it, Ed? Do you have any inkling at all?"

  "Psychologically I suppose you could call it a persecution complex," I said slowly. "I believe in things I never used to. I think someone is trying to find me – has found me. And is calling. Who it is I don't know. What they want I don't know. But a little while ago I found out one more thing – this sword."

  I picked the sword up from the table.

  "It isn't what I want," I went on, "But sometimes, when my mind is – abstract, something from outside floats into it. Like the need for a sword. And not any sword – just one. I don't know what the sword looks like, but I'd know if I held it in my hand." I laughed a little. "And if I drew it a few inches from the sheath, I could put out that fire up there as if I'd blown on it like a candleflame. And if I drew the sword all the way out – the world would come to an end!"

  My uncle nodded. After a moment, he spoke.

  "The doctors," he asked. "What d
o they say?"

  "I know what they would say, if I told them," I said grimly. "Pure insanity. If I could be sure of that, I'd feel happier. One of the dogs was killed last night, you know."

  "Of course. Old Duke. Another dog from some farm, eh?"

  "Or a wolf. The same wolf that got into my room last night, and stood over me like a man, and clipped off a lock of my hair."

  Something flamed up far away, beyond the window, and was gone in the dark. The Need-fire.

  My uncle rose and stood looking down at me in the dimness. He laid a big hand on my shoulder.

  "I think you're sick, Ed."

  "You think I'm crazy. Well, I may be. But I've got a hunch I'm going to know soon, one way or the other."

  I picked up the sheathed sword and laid it across my knees. We sat in silence for what seemed like a long time.

  In the forest to the north, the Need-fire burned steadily. I could not see it. But its flames stirred in my blood – dangerously – darkly.

  II. Call of the Red Witch

  I COULD not sleep. The suffocating breathlessness of late summer lay like a woollen blanket over me. Presently I went into the big room and restlessly searched for cigarettes. My uncle's voice came through an open doorway.

  "All right, Ed?"

  "Yeah. I can't sleep yet. Maybe I'll read."

  I chose a book at random, sank into a relaxer chair and switched on a lamp. It was utterly silent. I could not even hear the faint splashing of little waves on the lakeshore.

  There was something I wanted -

  A trained rifleman's hand, at need, will itch for the feeling of smooth wood and metal. Similarly, my hand was hungry for the feel of something – neither gun nor sword, I thought.

  A weapon that I had used before. I could not remember what it was. Once I glanced at the poker leaning against the fireplace, and thought that was it; but the flash of recognition was gone instantly.

  The book was a popular novel. I skimmed through it rapidly. The dim, faint, pulsing in my blood did not wane. It grew stronger, rising from sub-sensory levels. A distant excitement seemed to be growing deep in my mind.

  Grimacing, I rose to return the book to its shelf. I stood there for a moment, my glance skimming over the titles. On impulse I drew out a volume I had not looked at for many years, the Book of Common Prayer.

  It fell open in my hands. A sentence blazed out from the page.

  I am become as it were a monster unto many.

  I put back the book and returned to my chair. I was in no mood for reading. The lamp overhead bothered me, and I pressed for the switch. Instantly moonlight flooded the room – and instantly the curious sense of expectancy was heightened, as though I had lowered a – a barrier.

  The sheathed sword still lay on the window-seat. I looked past it, to the clouded sky where a golden moon shone. Faint, far away, a glimmer showed – the Need-fire, blazing in the swampy wilderness of the Limberlost.

  And it called.

  The golden square of window was hypnotic. I lay back in my chair, half-closing my eyes, while the sense of danger moved coldly within my brain. Sometimes before I had felt this call, summoning me. And always before I had been able to resist.

  This time I wavered.

  "The lock of hair clipped from my head – had that given the enemy power? Superstition. My logic called it that, but a deep, inner well of conviction told me that the ancient hair-magic was not merely mummery. Since that time in Sumatra, I had been far less skeptical. And since then I had studied.

  The studies were strange enough, ranging from the principles of sympathetic magic to the wild fables of lycanthropy and demonology. Yet I was amazingly quick at learning.

  It was as though I took a refresher course, to remind myself of knowledge I had once known by heart. Only one subject really troubled me, and I continually stumbled across it, by roundabout references.

  And that was the Force, the entity, disguised in folklore under such familiar names as the Black Man, Satan, Lucifer, and such unfamiliar names as Kutchie, of the Australian Dieris, Tuna, of the Esquimaux, the African Abonsam, and the Swiss Stratteli.

  I did no research on the Black Man – but I did not need to. There was a recurrent dream that I could not help identifying with the dark force that represented evil. I would be standing before a golden square of light, very much afraid, and yet straining toward some consummation that I desired. And deep down within that glowing square that would be the beginning of motion. I knew there were certain ritual gestures to be made before the ceremony could be begun, but it was difficult to break the paralysis that held me.

  A square like the moon-drenched window before me – yet not the same.

  For no chill essence of fear thrust itself out at me now. Rather, the low humming I heard was soothing, gentle as a woman's crooning voice.

  The golden square wavered – shook – and little tendrils of crepuscular light fingered out toward me. Ever the low humming came, alluring and disarming.

  Golden fingers – tentacles – they darted here and there as if puzzled. They touched lamp, table, carpet, and drew back. They – touched me.

  Swiftly they leaped forward now – avid! I had time for a momentary pulse of alarm before they wrapped me in an embrace like golden sands of sleep. The humming grew louder. And I responded to it.

  As the skin of the flayed satyr Marsyas thrilled at the sound of his native Phrygian melodies! I knew this music. I knew this – chant!

  Stole through the golden glow a crouching shadow – not human – with amber eyes and a bristling mane – the shadow of a wolf.

  It hesitated, glanced over its shoulder questioningly. And now another shape swam into view, cowled and gowned so that nothing of its face or body showed. But it was small – small as a child.

  Wolf and cowled figure hung in the golden mists, watching and waiting. The sighing murmur altered. Formed itself into syllables and words. Words in no human tongue, but – I knew them.

  "Ganelon! I call you, Ganelon! By the seal in your blood – hear me!"

  Ganelon! Surely that was my name. I knew it so well.

  Yet who called me thus?

  "I have called you before, but the way was not open. Now the bridge is made. Come to me, Ganelon!"

  A sigh.

  The wolf glanced over a bristling shoulder, snarling. The cowled figure bent toward me. I sensed keen eyes searching me from the darkness of the hood, and an icy breath touched me.

  "He has forgotten, Medea," said a sweet, high-pitched voice, like the tone of a child.

  Again the sigh. "Has he forgotten me? Ganelon, Ganelon! Have you forgotten the arms of Medea, the lips of Medea?"

  I swung,' cradled in the golden mists, half asleep.

  "He has forgotten," the cowled figure said.

  "Then let him come to me nevertheless. Ganelon! The Need-fire burns. The gateway lies open to the Dark World. By fire and earth, and darkness, I summon you! Ganelon!"

  "He has forgotten."

  "Bring him. We have the power, now."

  The golden sands thickened. Flame-eyed wolf and robed shadow swam toward me. I felt myself lifted – moving forward, not of my own volition.

  The window swung wide. I saw the sword, sheathed and ready. I snatched up the weapon, but I could not resist that relentless tide that carried me forward. Wolf and whispering shadow drifted with me.

  "To the Fire. Bring him to the Fire."

  "He has forgotten, Medea."

  "To the Fire, Edeyrn. To the Fire."

  Twisted tree-limbs floated past me. Far ahead I saw a flicker. It grew larger, nearer. It was the Need-fire.

  Faster the tide bore me. Toward the fire itself -

  Not to Caer Llyr!

  From the depths of my mind the cryptic words spewed. Amber-eyed wolf whirled to glare at me; cowled shadow swept in closer on the golden stream. I felt a chill of deadly cold drive through the curling mists.

  "Caer Llyr," the cloaked Edeyrn whispered in the child's sweet voi
ce. "He remembers Caer Llyr – but does he remember Llyr?"

  "He will remember! He has been sealed to Llyr. And, in Caer Llyr, the Place of Llyr, he will remember."

  The Need-fire was a towering pillar a few yards away. I fought against the dragging tide.

  I lifted my sword – threw the sheath away. I cut at the golden mists that fettered me.

  Under the ancient steel the shining fog-wraiths shuddered and were torn apart – and drew back. There was a break in the humming harmony; for an instant, utter silence.-

  Then -

  "Matholch!" the invisible whisperer cried. "Lord Matholch!"

  The wolf crouched, fangs bared. I aimed a cut at its snarling mask. It avoided the blow easily and sprang.

  It caught the blade between its teeth and wrenched the hilt from my grip.

  The golden fogs surged back, folding me in their warm embrace.

  "Caer Llyr," they murmured.

  The Need-fire roared up in a scarlet fountain.

  "Caer Llyr!" the flames shouted.

  And out of those fires rose – a woman!

  Hair dark as midnight fell softly to her knees. Under level brows she flashed one glance at me, a glance that held question and a fierce determination. She was loveliness incarnate. Dark loveliness.

  Lilith. Medea, witch of Colchis!

  And -

  "The gateway closes," the child-voice of Edeyrn said.

  The wolf, still mouthing my sword, crouched uneasily. But the woman of the fire said no word.

  She held out her arms to me.

  The golden clouds thrust me forward, into those white arms.

  Wolf and cowled shadow sprang to flank us. The humming rose to a deep-pitched roar – a thunder as of crashing worlds.

  "It is difficult, difficult," Medea said. "Help me, Edeyrn. Lord Matholch."

  The fires died. Around us was not the moonlit wilderness of the Limberlost, but empty grayness, a featureless grayness that stretched to infinity. Not even stars showed against that blank.

  And now there was fear in the voice of Edeyrn.