The Mask of Circe Read online

  “See with my eyes.”

  The light-veils shifted, parted…

  “Hear with my ears.”

  I heard the shrieking of wind, the creak of cordage, the booming of sails…

  “Hate with my hate!”

  The three biremes of Helios tacked on the dark sea, their golden splendor dimmed. A shadow crept across the purple sky. Stars were gleaming wanly, stars that never shone on earth.

  They passed and were gone. I smelled the hot, sweet reek of blood, heard the bellowing of oxen, saw the flash of the golden knives as they slit shaggy throats.

  Helios!

  The golden city wailed its terror to the darkening sky! Slowly, slowly, across the blazing disc of the sun there crept an arc of darkness. It thickened. And Helios faded, dimmed, its bright luster paling as the eclipse marched across the sun’s face.

  A balustrade protruding from the clifflike towers of the temple. Panyr stood there, his horned head thrown back, his beard jutting stiffly forward, while the goat-yellow eyes searched the sky.

  “Jason!” he called to me.

  The vision passed. My sight swept on, into the heart of the temple, into enormous vaulted rooms thronged with worshippers, filled with the wail of prayers and the smell of blood.

  Into a chamber I had not seen before, I went. It was walled with black. A single shaft of pure white light blazed down on an altar, where lay a figure completely shrouded by a golden cloth.

  Against the wall a circle of light stood, a quarter darkened now, a lambent sun, darkening with eclipse as the sun about Helios was darkened.

  Priests of Apollo stood about the altar, masked with the golden disc that concealed their features. One of them held a knife, but he hesitated, glancing again and again at the pseudo-sun upon the wall. I thought: Phrontis will not kill Cyane unless all else fails, unless Apollo of the Eclipse comes to Helios. For Cyane, heir to the Mask of Circe, is the supreme sacrifice that might appease the sun god.

  The other priests chanted, and from some distant place came the chant of a great multitude in strophe and answering antistrophe.

  Then came the voice of Hecate: “There is no door in Helios for us to enter. It is too late.”

  And Circe’s voice, mingled with that of the old priestess.

  “There is a way, Mother. The ancient temple to you beyond the gates. That altar still stands.“

  “Yet the gates of Helios are too strong.”

  “Call your people! And let Hecate break the walls!”

  Chapter XII

  Battling Beasts

  Dimly I had a glimpse of Panyr on his balcony, under the darkening sky. He seemed to be listening. Then suddenly he brought up a ram’s horn to his lips and sent shout after brazen shout echoing from its mouth.

  Summoning—what?

  Panyr’s horn called. But I thought that Hecate, too, was voicing a command, and her voice reached ears that the faun’s horn could not The air grew darker. But the temple torches flamed brighter and brighter as the eclipse swept softly across the land. The golden city was fading—never, I thought, to shine bright again beneath Apollo’s sun!

  The summons of Panyr roared forth. The call of Hecate shrilled across the crags and forests. From cavern and grove, from their woodland lairs around Helios, on swift-racing feet, the centaur-people of Hecate galloped down on the golden city!

  Now the earth was solid beneath me again. The green fires shuddered, sank, and were gone. I stood with the old priestess in the midst of a moss-covered circle of rounded stones, on a forested hillside. One verdigrised boulder, larger than the others, was in the center of the circle, and on this the emerald flame still hovered.

  Through the Mask the Circe spoke to me.

  “Hecate’s old altar, without worshippers now, but still a door she can open from one world to the next.”

  Nor was this magic either, I told myself firmly, trying to keep a sane grip on reality in the midst of this nightmare rising like a storm about me. A—a machine, not necessarily a complicated affair of levers and pistons and vacuum tubes, but one of the simplest—a block of radioactive material buried in the altar stone, perhaps a source of power, or an anchor to hold Hecate here.

  But the cold logic of science faded before this rout out of ancient legend. The oak boughs above us swayed and whispered in the gathering dark. The sun was half eclipsed now. And all about us was low, inhuman laughter, the clattering of hoofs, the flat, alien stare of beast-eyes.

  Trembling down the wind came the crying of Panyr’s horn. The Mask of Circe turned to me. The Circe gestured, called a command. I was seized in huge arms and tossed upon the broad back of a centaur.

  Again the Circe shrilled an order.

  The beast-army stirred into motion like an enormous pool sweeping down under the drag of a current pulling it into a single channel. Now the boughs flashed past above me. I saw gnarled hands reaching up, ripping improvised clubs from the oaks as we swept beneath. The insane beast-laughter shouted.

  Darker, darker grew the air as the eclipse rushed relentlessly across the sun.

  A sword-hilt was thrust into my grip. It was too heavy to be wielded except two-handed. I tried desperately to keep my seat and hold the sword at the same time. Some of the centaurs, I saw, had weapons like mine, but others held things like sickles, bright-bladed, and most of them had ripped their own cudgels from the trees.

  We burst from the forest and thundered down a long slope. Far distant lay the sea, with the dimmed golden ships of Helios riding beyond the marble quay. Alien stars flamed across the black sky. Helios lay beneath us.

  The inhuman roaring of the centaurs mingled with the thunderous beat of their hoofs as the horde avalanched down on Apollo’s citadell

  We swung across a broad, paved road and swept past it through fields of flax that lay silver as a shining lake in our path. The wind shifted, bringing to our ears the wailing of the city’s people. And down the channels of air shouted Panyr’s trumpet, mindless and wordless as the voice of Pan himself, a summons that stirred raging fires deep within my blood, ancient, primal fires waking to life as the faun sounded his summons.

  Jason, son of Aeson, give me your strength!

  From somewhere, from the lost memories of Jason or from the faun’s horn, strength came, perhaps flowing into me from that monstrous beast-body I gripped between my knees. The musky, hot reek of the herd stung my nostrils. A cold wind began to blow from the sea, and the wailing cry of Helios was drowned by the centaurs’ roaring.

  No longer sun-bright, no longer blazing with supernal brilliance, Helios couched dark and immobile under the black sky.

  We thundered past titan gates, closed now, but higher than six men’s height. We swept up to the wall itself, towering far above our heads, and now we could not see into the city. But we could hear. We could hear chanting.

  “Turn thy face from us, great Apollo.

  “Turn the terror of thy dark face from Helios!

  “Walk not in our streets, nor stoop above our temple…

  “Come not to us, Apollo, in the Hour of thine Eclipse!”

  The centaurs had halted. A hundred feet away loomed the golden walls. I looked for the Circe—saw her, no longer riding a centaur, but walking—walking steadily toward the city.

  I tried to swing one leg free to dismount, but a powerful arm came back to halt me.

  “Wait,” the centaur said, thickly in his beast-voice. “Wait.”

  “Circe!” I called.

  She did not look back. Suddenly I knew what she meant to do. Only Hecate’s power could unlock Helios to us now and the old priestess could not summon forth the goddess, and live.

  It was growing darker, darker. The centaurs stirred uneasily, their voices fell silent. I could see only a white shadow moving away from us in the gloom. But about the Masked head a lambent greenness played.

  Ceaselessly the faun’s horn cried from darkened Helios. Then it too fell silent.
There was only the cry of that wailing chant:

  “Turn thy face from Helios,

  O dark Apollo!”

  Circe’s white shadow flung out its arms. And now in the silence, above the crying from the temple a thin sound began to shrill. Higher and higher it rose, pitched closer and closer to the margin of perception, and then higher still. It was a sound as no mortal throat could form, but I knew from whose throat it came—Circe’s white inhuman throat, Circe’s red mouth.

  The sound tore at my nerves and shuddered in my bones. It was no human voice—that voice of Hecate!

  The golden walls shimmered with sudden motion in the gloom. I saw the same shudder run over them that was moving in my bones. But more violently and still more violently.

  A lance of dark lightning seemed to leap across the gold. A crack appeared in the walls of Helios. Another black bolt shot out to cross it, and then another. The high walls of Apollo’s city were shaking, crumbling away.

  And still the voice shrilled on.

  From base to top of the wall a thick black serpent seemed to run. There was low thunder groaning below the keening of that unearthly supersonic voice. Vibration, I thought. No magic, simply vibration. It can break glasses or bring down bridges if you find the tonic chord. And I remembered Jericho!

  With a long, low, rumbling crash the wall crumbled. Billows of golden dust rolled up in clouds.

  A centaur thundered forward and stooped in full gallop to sweep the Circe up in his arms. She lay motionless, the Mask’s black curls streaming in the dimness.

  The crashing of the wall subsided into diminishing rumbles like sullen thunder. The centaurs began to move toward the wall. But it was a barrier no longer. Riven from base to top, it opened a wide gate for us now to pass into the golden city.

  The crying of the faun’s horn summoned us through the gap. We stampeded in a wild, shouting surge through the wall and into a street filled with wailing throngs, but their bodies made no barrier for the centaurs’ murderous hoofs. I saw the dulled glimmer of golden armor. The soldiers of Helios, filling the street, marched toward us in orderly ranks, phalanx upon phalanx.

  Well-disciplined, these men, but what armor could withstand the bone-cracking smashes of the centaurs’ hoofs?

  Unceasingly the knotted cudgels smashed down. Unceasingly the scythes of the centaurs mowed a red harvest and reaped—death. The great swords swung like monstrous flails among the armored guards. And the creatures fought as horses fight, rearing, kicking, crushing in cuirass and helmet with savage, half-mindless fury.

  We fought not without our own losses. The golden swords swung too, and I heard the wild, high beast-screams of hamstrung centaurs going down in a struggling heap among half a dozen soldiers, fighting furiously to the last stroke of a Helios sword.

  But my own mount fought unscathed. And from his back I fought too, blind and breathless, seeing nothing but the next helmed face to swing at and the next soldier that went down—and the man beyond him stepping forward into his place.

  Until at last we were on the temple steps, surging up irresistibly against the golden hordes that barred our path. But now it was fighting in the dark. Overhead only a steady, lambent ring marked the sun’s corona.

  We were inside the gate. We were storming up the long steps toward the encastled tower. And I saw Panyr’s bearded face watching us from an outjut of the temple wall. I shouted at him and he lifted his horn high in recognition.

  “Come up!” he called to us, barely audible above the uproar. “Come up to me here!”

  My centaur heard. I felt his might body gather itself beneath me and we seemed to flow up the steps through suddenly riven ranks of the gold-mailed defenders, parted helplessly before the centaur’s dripping sword. From his back I dealt with those he missed.

  Panyr waved an urgent arm toward the base of the outjut where he stood.

  “There’s a door down there,” he shouted. “Guarded—but I’ll meet you inside if you can get through. Zeus, what a battle!” He grinned and vanished.

  I did not need to urge my centaur forward. We plunged around the curve of the wall and the grille of a barred door stood before us, shining within with the armor of the defenders. My centaur laughed, a brutish whinny of sound, and rose on his hind feet. I clung to the sweating human waist, feeling the terrific jolt that racked us both as his front hoofs smashed against the grille.

  The gateway buckled. The centaur danced backward, came down to all-fours, reared again. I heard the shrill scream of his inhuman laughter, felt a worse jolt than before, and the gateway burst open before us.

  Before I was off his back four men lay dying on the floor and the centaur’s hoofs and sword dripped bloodily. He was laughing in a half-crazy voice, hysteria and savagery mingling terrifyingly.

  Then Panyr’s hoofs clicked on the floor and he came around a bend of the corridor and hailed us. The centaur cried out in no human language, and Panyr replied, laughing with excitement, breathless, beckoning us on.

  Thrice we met guards, and each time my sword and the centaur’s terrible arsenal of weapons triumphed. Panyr himself took no part in the conflict He stood back, watching and waiting, until we made our kill. Then we went on again.

  And so we came, at last, to the garden where the Python guarded Apollo’s Fleece.

  Chapter XIII

  Power Unleashed

  No time was left, now, for more than a glance through the shutter that closed the garden. For footsteps echoed down the corridor behind us, running hard, and the clatter of mail and weapons.From the distance came the roar of the battle around the temple walls, and above it the wailing of that infernal chant, and the darkness still seemed to be deepening over everything.

  But I scarcely knew it. I had forgotten the battle and the oncoming danger behind us, and even the uncanny night-time of the Eclipse in which I must fight a battle with the gods. For the Garden of the Fleece lay before me—

  And it had changed. I laid my hand on the shutter and pushed it wide. I set a knee on the sill and bent my head through the low window, and in a half-dream, scarcely knowing what I did, I stepped down into the magical garden.

  That carpet of flowers that had blazed like molten stars no longer burned so blindingly. For this was the Hour of the Eclipse. They still burned, but with a curious, sickly flame that made me shrink at the thought of wading through them.

  But wade I must. For there in the center of the garden swayed the tree that legend called Python, sluggish, half-asleep in the deepening darkness of the Eclipse. The great eyes of the serpent-branches turned slowly to watch me, the scaled bodies turned—slowly, slowly, like serpents in a nightmare.

  Hanging among them burned the Fleece.

  Then from the window behind me a sudden tumult burst. I heard Panyr shout, and I heard the wild, screaming laughter of the centaur, and the thud of his hoofs on flesh. A wave of gold-mailed men came pouring through the broad low window—and the fight was on again.

  I would not have avoided it if I could. For I knew now the secret of the Python-Tree. I knew the one thing that would cast enchantment on it, as Medea had done for the other Jason, long ago.

  So I stumbled back among the palely burning flowers toward the tree, swinging up my dripping sword. Across the heads of the oncoming soldiers I saw the centaur flounder across the sill and come down clumsily among the flowers, both hands gripping his weapon and the savage joy of combat in his half-animal face.

  Then he struck my attackers from behind in the same moment I rushed them from the front, and for a timeless while after that, I was aware of nothing but the clash of blades and mailed bodies around me, and the desperate need to keep those golden swords away from me and to kill as many as I could.

  Partly the presence of the tree helped me. My flesh crawled at the nearness of sluggish heads that stirred and lifted with hideous avidity whenever I stepped within their reach. The soldiers feared them too, and it was their fear that mus
t have saved me from being cut down a dozen times over as we fought. For I was no hero of ancient Greece now, only Jay Seward fighting in the ghastly, pallid light of those drowsing flowers and praying that the goddess watched and could delay her hour until I was ready.

  But I had no shield to protect me, and as we struggled to and fro among the burning blossoms, my blood mingled with that of the guards. And the centaur fought like a demon. There was silence except for the thud of blows and our heavy panting as we struck and stumbled and struck again—and the flowers of Apollo drank our blood.

  Blood soaked the golden ground. The headless body of a guard collapsed, spouting a crimson stream. Avidly the flowers held out their cups. Avidly the petals stirred as they drank.

  Among the roots of the tree the blood flowed and sank. And slowly, slowly the serpent heads sank too, grew lethargic, swayed and drooped as the fight raged on about those reptilian branches.

  Three thousand years ago Jason tricked Medea into brewing a magic potion that would send the Python into a charmed slumber. I had seen with Jason’s eyes, and I knew what the potion was. Stripped of its mystic herbs and incantations, the potion was—blood.

  Even so, it was only in the Hour of the Eclipse that any human could approach this near to the tree, through the incandescence of the garden. But the right moments of the right hour were with us now, and time itself seemed to fight today for Hecate.

  The Python-Tree drank and drank. Slowly it seemed to fall into a drowsy ecstasy of vampirism as its half-reptilian roots sucked up the liquor we spilled from our living bodies.

  I watched and waited my time. And at last, in a moment while by common consent my opponents and I paused to draw a panting breath, I sprang suddenly backward toward the tree. The guardsman lifted his sword and plunged forward—and then suddenly hesitated, eyeing the sluggish serpents. But I did not hesitate. I knew the time was running desperately low.

  The lowest branches of the tree were scaly to my grasp. I swung up among them, got a knee over the thick golden limb, clambered upward, clutching the scaled branches that writhed slowly under my hands.