Elysia Read online

  And so they all waited, and in a little while ... so it began!

  For now de Marigny and the others began to hear, as if from far, far away, a keening as of winds blowing between the worlds, and the sounds issued from that now vibrating medallion where it turned on its golden chain before Armandra's drawn white face. What few hushed whispers had sounded before from the audience of elders now ceased; and as if to compensate, the humming and roaring of the throbbing medallion increased. Then

  It seemed to de Marigny that a host, a torrent of sighing ghost-winds rushed through the chamber. They plucked at his and Moreen's clothes, played in their hair, rushed -on in a curious swirl. And yet surely it was all delusion, for the flambeaux flickered not a jot but burned steadily as before! An illusion, yes, like the crashing of distant breakers heard in a shell, this moaning of winds plucked down from between the stars or was it?

  'This never fails to get to me,' came Hank Silberhutte's hoarse whisper in de Marigny's ear, causing him to start. `She's all woman, Armandra, but there's plenty of the stuff of her father in her, too. Still, I don't have to tell you that!'

  Indeed he didn't, for de Marigny had previous experience of Armandra's works a-plenty — but this at least was new to him. New, too, the sudden shock of her voice, where before she had been silent — that golden, bell-like voice, breaking over the ghost-ridden rush of weird winds. The short hairs of de Marigny's neck prickled as she spoke, and he felt an electric tension in the air:

  `Ithaqua has returned to Borea,' she intoned, her eyes still closed, her face white as driven snow. 'Drawn back before his time, he watches even now from the white waste. I feel his mind probing at my own, which now I fortify against him!'

  Whispers -of inquiry and alarm passed between the elders. Ithaqua had not been due back for a three-month yet! What, Ithaqua, back so soon? And no use to ask for what good reason, for there was never any good reason where the Wind-Walker was concerned. This was ill-omen indeed!

  Armandra gave them no more time for speculation, however, for 'There!' she continued, giving a curt nod of satisfaction. Now I have shut him out, whose greatest desire is to know our every secret. And now I may converse with the small, friendly winds that wander all the starlanes. Not the mighty whirlwinds of time and space, spawned in the great holes and angles of existence, but their little cousins who play in the vasty voids, whose wanderings have taken them every where and when ...'

  For a moment she was silent, breathing deeply, her brow furrowed in concentration; but then her face lightened, she smiled strangely, her right hand lifted and beckoned. 'Come then, little wind. Come talk to Armandra, and tell her of your travels. And speak, if you will, of the ways of Elysia and the roads that lead there.'

  Her eyes remained closed but her burning hair stirred eerily, apparently of its own accord, and began to drift up weightless from her alabaster neck and shoulders. The fur of her jacket grew ruffled, as by a breeze, and her smile became broader at some small secret she alone heard whispered. And:

  This one has returned from Arcturus,' she said, 'where ten thousand ice-planets whirled about a frozen hollow sun.

  And so fragile that great frozen star, that when be ventured inside and blew about its icicles and brittle stalactites, all crumbled and fell in and shattered into shards and motes of ice. And when the frozen sun collapsed, so its many worlds, released like shots from a sling, went bounding off into space to seek new suns; and so this small wind is very likely a father of future worlds! So he says, but I think it a clever fantasy, with which he hopes to please me. As for Elysia: there lies the fable, he says, for never did he talk to a wind who ever ventured there.'

  Her smile faded a little as she slowly cocked her head to allow a very small breeze to rest a moment like a kitten in the crook of her neck. Invisible, that. ether-gust, but it smoothed out the ruffled fur of her collar and caused her copper hair to billow there. 'And this one is sad,' she said, 'for he lost his brothers in the maw of a black hole, where they strayed too close to its rim. Now they are sucked through the hole to some other place far removed, and he fears he'll never more gust with them out in the stars we know. He supposes they might just possibly have found their way into Elysia — whereof he's heard it said that all the winds are fair — but alas, of the location of that place he can tell me nothing.'

  And so it went: the ether winds came and departed at her bidding, breezes and breaths, puffs and pants, gusts and gasps of wind come to talk to Armandra. She spoke with bitter winds from the deepest regions of space, and Others warmed by the exhalations of suns where they'd played. There were winds born in the mountains of green worlds on balmy summer evenings, and others whose worlds were dead now and mourned their passing as winds do. Infant breezes there were, and soughing winds almost as old as time, and all of them with their own tales to tell.

  Until at the last, and just as de Mafigny began to despair of ever hearing anything useful —

  Ah!' sighed Armandra, clasping the arms of her throne and sitting up yet more regally erect. 'Now here's a rare wind indeed, and a frightened one at that!'

  Hank Silberhutte grasped de Marigny's elbow, reminder that he was not merely lost in some impossible dream or hallucination. 'This might be just what you're looking for!' the ex-Texan whispered. thought she was beginning to flag, but now she's fully alive again — see ... !'

  De Marigny saw. A faint bloom was suddenly visible on Armandra's pale cheeks, like the flush of some strange excitement. Some unseen thing a panicked gasp of air, perhaps — hid for a moment in a sleeve of her jacket, causing it to bell out, then burst free to rush round her head in a veritable frenzy of fear. Until: 'Be still! Be calm!' she cried. 'You're safe here, little one, from whatever it is that pursues.'

  De Marigny was drawn to lean closer, caught up in what was happening.

  And this one,' said Armandra, with something of triumph in her voice at last, — this last small wind — he has had all the bluster knocked out of him! He's fled far and fast from a very terrible thing, almost exhausting himself entirely in the process. He is not pursued, no, but he has heard 'the shrieking of a gaseous intelligence out beyond the Red Medusa who was pursued — by the Hounds of Tindalos!'

  De Marigny caught his breath as his flesh began to crawl, but he must hear this out.

  'A cloud of gas, yes,' Armandra continued, 'a vapour in the voids travelling half as fast as light, and pursued by the hounds. He had a name, this intelligence, which was simply a .hiss — Sssss! Or if not a name, at least that is how he thought of himself. And as he fled, so this small wind thought to hear him praying to the Great Gods of Eld in Elysia, begging of them their assistance! Then he saw the hounds where they pursued, saw them devouring the trailing wisps of the gaseous being, and when he saw how hideous they were he too fled. And so he is come here to rest and recover his strength ...'

  Armandra sighed, lay back her head a little, opened her great green eyes. Her lustrous copper hair settled down upon her head and round her shoulders, and suddenly the chamber was still and the winds were gone from it.

  Then someone coughed and the silence was broken. The spell, too. De Marigny shook himself, considered all he'd heard — especially the tale of the final visitation.

  It wasn't much to go on, he thought, but it had to be better than nothing. Or was it? What was he to make of it after all? A cloud of intelligent gas out beyond the Red Medusa Nebula? A vapour-being who prayed to the Gods of Eld? And yet if that incredible gas intelligence knew enough of the Elder Gods to call out to them for their aid, perhaps he (it?) might also know where they were. It was a possibility, however remote, that de Marigny couldn't ignore made all the more urgent by the presence of the Hounds of Tindalos. Maybe out there in the star-voids a door was closing even now, a gateway to Elysia, slammed shut forever by the Hounds of Tindalos!

  Oontawa was helping Armandra down the dais steps. The Woman of the Winds was not so much tired as dizzy from her efforts. Tracy, too, had gone to help support her; both g
irls were anxious for her, until the Warlord reached up and lifted her easily down the last two steps into his arms. She hugged him, then turned to de Marigny.

  'I'm sorry, Henri, but that's as much as I can do. It seems that this Elysia is a very special, very secret place.'

  He took her hand, kissed it, said: 'Armandra, you've probably done more for me in half an hour than I've been able to do for myself in three long years! At least I've something to go on now. But the effort has wearied you, and I had no right to ask you to do it anyway. So how can I ever find words to thank you for--'

  He paused as there came a sudden buzz of excitement from the elders close to the chamber's entrance. An Eskimo runner stood there, gasping his message. Kota'na recognized him not so much as a messenger but one of the keepers he'd left in charge of the bears that guarded the time-clock in de Marigny's chambers, and went to him at once. He returned in a moment.

  `Henri,' he said, his Indian's eyes wide and very bright. 'It is the time-clock!'

  `What?' de Marigny's jaw dropped as he grasped Kota'na's brawny arms. 'The clock? What of it?' His anxiety was very real, for he remembered that time from three years earlier, when Ithaqua's wolf-warriors had stolen his vehicle. 'Don't tell me something's happened to — ?'

  `Happened to it?' Kota'na cut him off, shaking his head in denial. 'Oh, no, my friend and yet, yes. The clock is where you left it under guard but its door has opened, and a purplish light spills out!'

  5 Great Thought Rider

  Time-clock: a totally inadequate misnomer, thought de Marigny, as he hurried with Hank and Moreen through the plateau's labyrinth to the dwelling-caves near the perimeter where the clock was temporarily housed. It did look like a clock at first glance, like a fine old grandfather in the somewhat macabre shape of a coffin, and it did have a dial and hands; but there any resemblance to a dock in the mundane sense of the word ended.

  Its weird ticking was quite irregular, its four hinds moved about the hieroglyphed dial in spastic patterns patently divorced from any chronological system known or even guessed at by man; it was certainly not an instrument for measuring the orderly passage of time at all but rather ignored and even transgressed temporal laws. And because time is part and parcel with space — the other side of the same coin, as it were — so the time-clock transgressed against spatial laws, too.

  In short, it was a vehicle for space-time travel, a gateway on all possible worlds and levels of existence, a not entirely mechanical magical carpet. Einstein would not have believed in the time-clock, and what he would have made of a gaseous intelligence riding the solar winds through space at half the speed of light ... who can say? But then again, a sea-urchin would probably experience the greatest difficulty believing in Einstein.

  De Marigny, on the other hand, did believe in the clock; each time he used it his life, Moreen's too, hung by the thread of that belief. He believed in it, and he trusted it, even though many of its complexities remained way beyond his grasp. This was hardly surprising; it had been that way for Titus Crow too, in his time. But the more de Marigny used the clock, the more he learned; a slow process, true, but a sure one. It was like being a learner-driver in the latest model of some high-technology motor-car; there was always a new button or switch one had never tried before, which might well be a device for steaming rain off the windows ... but might just as easily jettison the driver through the roof !

  Finally the three arrived at de Marigny's and Moreen's quarters, passed the Eskimo guard and keeper where he stood with a pair of massive, rumbling bears, and so into the chamber where the time-clock waited. Here small circular 'windows' looked out over the white waste, and on a bleak horizon Ithaqua crouched atop the derelict ice-breaker, watching the plateau just as Armandra had seen him in her trance. Time for only a cursory glance at the Wind-Walker, however, for here was an even greater wonder, and perhaps one just as fearful, in its way.

  For indeed the time-clock's panel stood open, its eerie purple light pouring out in rhythmic pulses from within. Just what this might signify was hard to say, but de Marigny could soon find out. 'Wait,' he said to Moreen and Hank as he stepped forward and made to enter the clock. Except

  Even as his hand gripped the frame of that narrow portal, so a figure materialized there and stepped out!

  Taken by surprise, de Marigny gasped, jumped back and almost collided with Hank and Moreen. Then he grasped and restrained the Warlord's hand where already, his knuckles were white, clenched on the haft of a bright pick-like weapon snatched from his broad belt.

  'No, Hank!' The Searcher cried then. 'There's no danger here. Can't you see who it is? Don't you recognize him? It's Titus Crow!'

  ;On legs suddenly weak as jelly de Marigny went to embrace the.newcomer — fell against nothing and staggered right through him. Crow was insubstantial as smoke, a mirage — a hologram!

  'A ghost!' Moreen gasped. 'Is this your Titus Crow, Henri? A phantom whose grave is the time-clock? Is that why it's shaped like a coffin?' And for all that she was only half-serious, still de Marigny sensed something of fear in her voice.

  Silberhutte, on the other hand, was quicker to grasp the true picture. 'Shh, Moreen!' he whispered, putting a protective arm round her shoulder. 'This is no ghost. It's not magic but science. And Henri's perfectly correct: wherever this 3-D picture is coming from, it's certainly a picture of Titus Crow.'

  De Marigny had meanwhile recovered himself and stepped back from the apparition; and as for Crow, he seemed just as bemused as the three whose eyes followed his every movement. For a moment utter confusion was written on his face; then, like a man suddenly blind, he groped his way backward until once more he stood inside the clock and was bathed in its -ethereal glow. Then came his voice, that deep, rich and oh so well remembered voice from the memories of de Marigny and Silberhutte both: -

  `Henri? I saw you then, but just for a moment. If that was really you out there, please come inside the clock where we can talk. I'm riding a Great Thought sent by Kthanid. Outside the clock I'm largely immaterial, but in here I'm much less a spectre. Only be quick, Henri, for Kthanid can't keep (his up for very long.'

  De Marigny needed no further urging. With a second `Wait!' to his friends, he stepped inside the clock and was engulfed in its pulsing light. Then for a moment two old, true friends peered anxiously at one another — and at last smiles broke out, and laughter — and finally they pounded each other's backs.

  'It's you,' said de Marigny, in the flesh of a sort, anyway! But how?'

  'You haven't changed, Henri,' said Crow then, holding him at arms' length. 'Not a jot. Still full of questions I never have the time to answer.'

  `And you,' the other returned. 'Why, if anything you seem even younger!' And then, with less levity: 'But you're wrong, Titus, for I have changed. I've been changed. It's not simply my own skin I've to care for now. But ... I want to show you something. How long do we have?'

  Crow's smile also fell. 'Minutes,' he answered. 'I'll get the very briefest warning, and then I'll be on my way back to Elysia.'

  'Time enough,' said de Marigny; and over his shoulder he called, 'Moreen, will you come in here, please?'

  She came at once, innocent and charming as. always. Face to face with the girl, Crow's eyes opened wide in wonder and appreciation. And: 'This is Moreen,' said de Marigny. 'Born in Borea's moons of Earth stock taken there by Ithaqua. Funnily enough, she was mine even before I found her, much like your Tiania. Now we travel together.'

  Crow gave the girl a hug, said to his friend: 'You'd have been pushed to find her like on Earth, Henri — or even in Elysia, for that matter.'

  'Room for another in there?' came the friendly, growled query of the plateau's Warlord. And a moment later Hank Silberhutte, too, stood bathed in the dock's weird illumination. For that was another anomaly of the time-clock: that the space within it was very nearly as great as that outside! . And now for the first time it was Crow's turn to display amazement. 'What?' he said, his eyes incredulous where they looke
d Silberhutte up and down. 'Hank? Is it really you? My God! And how long ago since we all went at the Burrowers together, eh? And how much passed between?'

  'That was ... another world,' said the other. 'Hell, it really was! But from what I've heard, it hardly seems-we'll have the time now to fill in the gaps. So Moreen and me, we'll, simply stand here and listen, and try to keep patient until you and Henri get done. You're not here for the fun of it, eh, Titus?'

  Crow's face quickly became grave. 'Not for the fun of it, no. My reason for being here is probably the best any sane human being could have.' He turned more fully to de Marigny. might have come sooner, mind to mind, but you weren't receptive. You were preoccupied, Henri, your mind full of other things. But I know that wherever the old time-clock was, then that you'd be there too. Also, I might have simply come here — more fully "in the flesh" — in another time-clock or via this one. But with very few exceptions all the clocks are back in Elysia now, where for a little while at least they're destined to.stay. This clock of yours is one of those few exceptions. Also, to use this clock as a gateway and come here physically, that would mean returning the same way: transmitting myself physically into Elysia. And right now nothing physical is allowed into Elysia. Which is why I rode a Great Thought, between Kthanid and the clock. it was the only way.'

  'You seem physical enough to me,' said de Marigny, and the Warlord nodded his agreement.

  'I felt your arms around me,' said Moreen.