Dilvish, The Damned Read online

  Dilvish, The Damned

  Roger Zelazny

  CONTENTS

  Passage To Dilfar

  Thelinde's Song

  The Bells Of Shoredan

  A Knight For Merytha

  The Places Of Aache

  A City Divided

  The White Beast

  Tower Of Ice

  Devil And The Dancer

  Garden Of Blood

  Dilvish, The Damned

  Passage To Dilfar

  WHEN Dilvish the Damned came down from Portaroy they tried to stop him at Qaran, and again at Tugado, then again at Maestar, Mycar, and Bildesh. Five horsemen had waited for him along the route to Dilfar; and when one flagged, a new rider with a fresh horse would replace him. But none could keep the pace of Black, the horse out of steel, for whom it was said the Colonel of the East had bartered a part of his soul.

  A day and a night had he ridden, to outpace the advancing armies of Lylish, Colonel of the West, for his own men lay stiff and clotted on the rolling fields of Portaroy.

  When Dilvish had seen that he was the last man standing in the place of slaughter, he had called Black to his side, hauled himself into the saddle that was a part of him, and cried for an escape. Black's gleaming hooves had borne him through a line of pikemen, their staffs turned aside like wheat, and ringing, as their metal tips touched against his midnight hide.

  "To Dilfar!" he had cried, and Black turned at a right angle in his course and carried him up the face of a cliff where only goats can go.

  When Dilvish came by Qaran, Black turned his head and said to him: "Great Colonel of the East, they have mined the air and the air beneath the air with the stars of death."

  "Can you get by them?" asked Dilvish.

  "If we go by way of the posting road," said Black, "I may be able to."

  "Then let us make haste to try it."

  The tiny silver eyes, which looked out from the space beneath space and contained the hellspecks of starstuff, blinked and shimmered ahead.

  They turned off the road.

  It was on the posting road that the first rider emerged from behind a boulder and called upon Dilvish to halt. His horse was a huge bay without trappings.

  "Draw rein, Colonel of the East," he had said. "Thy men are slaughtered. The road ahead is seeded with death and flanked by the men of Lylish—"

  But Dilvish had swept past him without making answer, and the man put his spurs to the bay and followed.

  He paced him all that morning, up the road to Tugado, until the bay, who was all alather, stumbled and hurled the man to the rocks.

  At Tugado Dilvish found his way blocked by the rider of the blood-red stallion, who fired at him a bolt from a crossbow.

  Black reared high into the air, and the bolt glanced off his chest. His nostrils grew, with a sound like the cry of a great bird coming forth from them. The blood-red stallion leapt from the roadway then and into the field.

  Black plunged ahead, and the other rider turned his horse and followed.

  Till the sun reached the top of the sky did he give chase, and then the red horse collapsed in a heap of heavy breathing. Dilvish rode on.

  At Maestar the way was blocked at the Pass of Reshth.

  A wall of logs filled the narrow trail to twice the height of a man.

  "Over," said Dilvish, and Black arced into the air like a dark rainbow, going up and across the fortification.

  Just ahead, at the ending of the pass, the rider of the white mare waited.

  Black cried out once more, but the mare stood steady.

  The light reflected from the mirrors of his steel hooves, and his hairless hide was near blue in the bright light of noonday. He did not slow his pace, and the rider of the mare, seeing that he was all of metal, backed from out the pass and drew his sword.

  Dilvish pulled his own blade from beneath his cloak and parried a head cut as he passed the other rider. Then the man was following after him and crying out:

  "Though you have passed the stars of death and leapt the barrier here, you shall never make it to Dilfar! Draw rein! You ride a nether spirit who has taken the form of a horse, but you will be stopped at Mycar or Bildesh—or before!"

  But the Colonel of the East did not reply, and Black carried him on with long, effortless strides.

  "You ride a mount which never tires," called out the man, "but he is not proof against other sorceries! Give me your sword!"

  Dilvish laughed, and his cloak was a wing in the wind.

  Before the day lapsed into evening, the mare, too, had fallen, and Dilvish was near Mycar.

  Black halted suddenly as they approached the stream called Kethe. Dilvish clung to his neck to keep from being thrown off.

  "The bridge is out," said Black, "and I cannot swim."

  "Can you clear it?"

  "I do not know, my colonel. It is wide. If I cannot clear it, we will never surface again. Kethe cuts deeply into the earth."

  And the ambushers came suddenly forth from the trees then, some on horseback and others on foot, the foot soldiers bearing pikes; and Dilvish said: "Try."

  Black was immediately at full gallop, going faster than horses can run, and the world spun and tumbled about Dilvish as he clung to Black with his knees and his great scarred hands. He cried out as they rose into the air.

  When they struck the other bank, Black's hooves sank a full span into the rock and Dilvish reeled in the saddle. He kept his mount, however, and Black freed his hooves.

  Looking back at the other bank, Dilvish saw the ambushers standing still, staring at him, then looking down into Kethe, then back up again at him and Black.

  As they moved ahead once more, the rider of the piebald stallion fell in beside him and said: "Though you have ridden three horses into the ground, we will stop you between here and Bildesh. Surrender!"

  Then Dilvish and Black were far ahead of him, and away.

  "They think you are a demon, my mount," he said to Black.

  The horse chuckled.

  "Perhaps 'twere beter an' I were."

  And they rode the sun out of the sky and finally the piebald fell, and the rider cursed Dilvish and Black, and they rode on.

  The trees began to fall at Bildesh.

  "Deadfalls!" cried Dilvish, but Black was already doing his dance of avoidance and passage. He halted, rearing; and he sprang forward from off his hind legs and passed over a falling log. He halted again and did it once more. Then two fell at once, from opposite sides of the trail, and he leapt backward and then forward again, passing over both.

  Two deep pits did he leap across then, and a volley of arrows chattered against his sides, one of them wounding Dilvish in the thigh.

  The fifth horseman bore down upon them. The color of fresh-minted gold was this horse, and named Sunset, and his rider was but a youth and light in the saddle, chosen so as to carry the pursuit as far as necessary. He bore a deathlance that shattered against Black's shoulder without causing him to turn. He raced after Dilvish and called out:

  "Long have I admired Dilvish, Colonel of the East, so that I do not desire to see him dead. Pray surrender unto me! You will be treated with all courtesies due your station!"

  Dilvish did laugh then and made reply, saying:

  "Nay, my lad. Better to die than fall to Lylish. On, Black!'"

  And Black doubled his pace and the boy leaned far forward over Sunset's neck and gave chase. He wore a sword at his side, but he never had chance to use it. Though Sunset ran the entire night, longer and farther than any of the other pursuers, he, too, finally fell as the east began to grow pale.

  As he lay there, trying to rise, the youth cried out:

  "Though you have escaped me, you shall fall to the Lance!"

&nbs
p; Then was Dilvish, called the Damned, riding alone in the hills above Dilfar, bearing his message to that city. And though he rode the horse of steel, called Black, still did he fear an encounter with Lance of the Invincible Armor before he delivered his message.

  As he started on the last downward trail his way was blocked a final time, by an armored man on an armored horse. The man held the way completely, and though he was visored, Dilvish knew from his devices that he was Lance, the Right Hand of the Colonel of the West.

  "Halt and draw rein, Dilvish!" he called out. "You cannot pass me!"

  Lance sat like a statue.

  Dilvish halted Black and waited.

  "I call upon you to surrender now."

  "No," said Dilvish.

  "Then must I slay you."

  Dilvish drew his sword.

  The other man laughed.

  "Know you not that my armor is unbreachable?"

  "No," said Dilvish.

  "Very well, then," he said, with something like a chuckle. "We are alone here, you have my word. Dismount. I'll do so at the same time. When you see it is futile, you may have your life. You are my prisoner."

  They dismounted.

  "You are wounded," said Lance.

  Dilvish cut for his neck without replying, hoping to burst the joint. It held, however, and the metal bore not even a scratch to tell of the mighty blow that might have beheaded another.

  "You must see now that my armor cannot be breached. It was forged by the Salamanders themselves and bathed in the blood of ten virgins…"

  Dilvish cut at his head and as he had cut at him, Dilvish had circled slowly to his left, so that now Lance stood with his back to the horse of steel, called Black.

  "Now, Black!" cried Dilvish.

  Then did Black rear high up on his bind legs and fall forward, bringing his front hooves down toward Lance.

  The man called Lance turned rapidly around and they struck him on the chest. He fell.

  Two shining hoof marks had been imprinted upon his breastplate.

  "You were right," said Dilvish. "It is still un-breached."

  Lance moaned again.

  "… And I could slay thee now, with a blade through the eyeslit of thy visor. But I will not, as I did not down thee fairly. When you recover, tell Lylish that Dilfar will be ready for his coming. Twere better he withdraw."

  "I'll have a sack for thy head when we take the city," said Lance.

  "I'll kill thee on the plain before the city," said Dilvish, and he remounted Black and descended the trail, leaving him there on the ground.

  And as they rode away, Black said to him: "When you meet, strike at the marks of my hooves. The armor will yield there."

  When he came into the city, Dilvish proceeded through the streets to the palace without speaking to those who clustered about him.

  He entered the palace and announced himself:

  "I am Dilvish, Colonel of the East," he said, "and I am here to report that Portaroy has fallen and is in the hands of Lylish. The armies of the Colonel of the West move in this direction and should be here two days hence. Make haste to arm. Dilfar must not fall."

  "Blow then the trumpets," ordered the king, starting from his throne, "and muster the warriors. We must prepare for battle."

  And as the trumpets sounded, Dilvish drank him a glass of the good red wine of Dilfar; and as meats and loaves were brought to him, he wondered once again at the strength of Lance's armor and he knew that he must try its invincibility once more.

  Thelinde's Song

  ACROSS the evening, on the other side of the hill, beneath a moon that was huge and golden, Thelinde was singing.

  In the high were-hall of Caer Devash, rung all around with pine trees and mirrored far below its cliffs in that silver river called Denesh, Mildin could hear her daughter's voice and the words of her song:

  "The men of Westrim are hardy,

  The men of Westrim bold,

  But Dilvish who was damned came back

  And made their blood run cold.

  When they hounded him from Portaroy

  To Dilfar in the East,

  He rode a thing he'd brought from Hell—

  A black and steel beast.

  They could not cut nor turn his mount—

  The horse that men call Black—

  For the colonel gained much wisdom

  With the curse of Jelerak—"

  Mildin shuddered and fetched her shimmering were-cloak—for she was Mistress of the Coven—and throwing it about her shoulders and clasping it at her neck with the smoky Stone of the Moon, she became as a silver-gray bird and passed out through the window and high about the Denesh.

  She crossed over the hill to where Thelinde stood, staring south. Coming to rest upon the lower limb of a nearby tree, she said, through her bird throat: "My child, stop your singing."

  "Mother! What is the matter?" asked Thelinde. "Why are you come in swift-form?" And her eyes were full, for they followed the changing of the moon, and in her hair was the silver fire of the witches of the North. She was seventeen and supple, and she loved singing.

  "You have sung a name which must not be uttered, even here in the fastness of our keep," said Mildin. "Where did you learn that song?"

  "From a thing in the cave," she answered, "where the river called Midnight makes a pool as it passes on its way underground."

  "What was the thing in the cave?"

  "He is gone by now." Thelinde replied. "He was a dark-traveler, one of the frog kind, I think, who rested there on his way to the Council of Beasts."

  "Did he tell you the meaning of that song?" she asked.

  "No, he said that it has come but recent, and it is of the wars in the South and the East."

  "That is true," said Mildin, "and the frog has no fear of croaking it, for he is of the dark kind and is of no consequence to the mighty. But you, Thelinde, you must be more wary. All of those with power upon them, unless they be rash indeed, fear to mention that name which begins with 'J.'"

  "Why is that?"

  The silver-gray form fluttered to the ground. Then her mother was standing beside her, tall and pale under the moon; her hair was braided and twisted high upon her head into a crown of the coven, as it is called.

  "Come with me now within my cloak, and we will go to the Pool of the Goddess, while the fingers of the moon still touch upon its surface," said Mildin, "and you shall see something of which you have sung."

  They descended the hill to the place where the rivulet, which begins high upon the hill at the spring, passes down with barely a ripple into their pool. Mildin knelt beside it in silence, and leaning forward, she breathed upon the surface of the water. Then she summoned Thelinde to her side and they stared downward.

  "Look now into the image of the moon reflected in the water," she told her. "Look deeply. Listen…

  "Long ago," she began, "even as we reckon tune, there was a House which was stricken from the peerage of the East, because several generations had intermarried with the Elf-kind. Elfmen are tall and fair to look upon, quick in thought and action, and though their race is much older, Men do not generally recognize the Elf peerage. Pity… The last man of this particular House, bereft of his lands and his titles, turned his hand to many occupations, from the sea to the mountains, and finally he came into soldiery, in those first wars with the West, some several centuries ago. Then did he distinguish himself in the great Battle of Portaroy, delivering that city out of the hands of its enemies, so that he came to be called Dilvish the Deliverer. See! The picture comes now clear! It is the entry of Dilvish into Portaroy…"

  And Thelinde stared into the pool where a picture had formed.

  Tall he was, and darker than the Elf-kind, with eyes that laughed and glowed with the pride of triumph. He was mounted on a brown stallion, and his armor, though dented and scratched, still glowed in the morning sun. He rode at the head of his troops, and the people of Portaroy stood at the sides of the roadway and cheered, and the women th
rew down flowers before him. When he came at last to the fountain in the square, he dismounted and drank the wine of victory. Then the Elders gave speeches of thanks and a great open banquet was laid out for their deliverers.

  "He looks to be a good man," said Thelinde. "But what a great sword he wears!—It reaches down to the tops of his boots!"

  "Yes, a two-handed engine named that day Deliverer. And his boots, you will note, are of the green Elvish leather, which Men cannot buy—but which are sometimes given as a gift, in sign of favor by the High Ones—and it is said that they leave no footprints. It is a pity that within a sennight of that feast which you see spread, Deliverer should be smashed and Dilvish no longer among the living."

  "But he still lives!"

  "Yes—again."

  There was a turbulence within the pool, and another picture emerged.

  A dark hillside… A man, cloaked and hooded, within a faintly glowing circle… A girl bound upon a stone altar… A blade in the man's right hand and a staff in his left…

  Mildin felt her daughter's fingers seize upon her shoulder.

  "Mother! What is it?"

  "It is the One you must never name."

  "What is he about?"

  "A dark thing, requiring the lifeblood of a virgin. He has waited since beyond time for the stars to reform themselves into the proper positions for this rite. He has journeyed far, to come to that ancient altar in the hills above Portaroy, to the place where the thing must be accomplished.

  "See how the dark things dance about the circle— bats and wraiths and wandering wisps—craving but a drop! They will not touch the circle, though."

  "Of course not…"

  "Now, as the flames of that single brazier reach higher and the stars come into the correct position, he prepares to take her life…"

  "I cannot watch!"

  "Watch!"

  "It is the Deliverer, Dilvish, coming that way."

  "Yes. After the manner of the High Ones, he seldom sleeps. He goes to take his air in the hills above Portaroy, wearing his full battle trappings as people expect of deliverers."

  "He sees Jel— He sees the circle! He advances!"

  "Yes, and he breaks the circle. Being of the High Blood, he knows he has ten times the immunity of a man to sorcery. But he does not know whose circle he has broken. Still, it does not kill him. Yet he is weakened—see how he staggers!—so great is the power of that One."