Son of Power Part 29

Her voice was from the playhouse. It was steady but startling.

Something cold in it--very weary. Still he did not see her. The door was on the western side.

Skag answered.

"Oh--" came from Carlin.

There was an instant intense silence; then he heard:

"Go into the house. I thought it was Malcolm. . . . I'll join you.

Don't come here--"

He turned obediently. He had the male's absurd sense of not belonging.

. . . He might at least be silent and do as she said. A keener gust of reality then shot through him. His steps would not go on. She must have heard his change from the gravel to the gra.s.s, for she called:

"It's all right, go right in--"

"But, Carlin--"

"Don't come here, dear! It's--not for you to see now!"

He halted, an indescribable chill upon him. The low threshold was in sight, yet Carlin did not appear in the doorway. It was not more than sixty feet away, across the lawn. It may have been something that she had on. . . . A gold something. This came because of a fallen bit of gold-brown tapestry on the threshold. It had folds. Out of the cone of it, was a rising sheen like thin gold smoke. A fallen garment was the first thing that came to Skag's mind, keyed to the suggestion of some fabric which Carlin was to put on. The thing actually before his eyes had not dislodged for an instant, the thought-picture in his mind.

Right then Skag made a mistake. He had not taken ten running steps before he knew it, and halted. That which had been like rising gold smoke was a hooded head--lifting just now, dilating. Already he knew, almost fully, what the running had done. The thought of Carlin in the playhouse had over-balanced his own genius. He walked forward now, for the time not hearing Carlin's words from within. . . . The door was open; the windows were screened. The girl was held within by the coiled one on the stone. . . . She was imploring Skag to go back:

". . . to the house!" he heard at last. "Wait there--don't come! It is death to come to me!"

He could not see her.

"Where are you standing, Carlin?"

"Far back--by the sewing machine! . . . Will you not--will you not, for me?"

He spoke very coldly:

"While he watches me from the stone--you come forward slowly and shut the door!"

"That would anger him into flying at you--"

Quite as slowly, his next words:

"I do not think he is angry with me--"

Yet Skag was not in utter truth right there, even in his own knowledge.

His voice did not carry conviction of truth. . . . The thing unsteadied his concentration. The fact that he had started to run and thus ruffled the cobra, was still upon him like shame. It reacted to divide his forces now, at least to make tardier his self-command. Back of everything--Carlin's danger. There was a quick turn of his eye for a weapon, even as he heard a deep tone from Carlin--something immortal in the resonance:

". . . You might save me . . . but, don't you see--I want you more!"

A _lakri_ of Bhanah's leaned against the playhouse at the side towards the road.

The cobra had lifted himself erect upon his tail almost to the level of Skag's eyes, hood spread. Carlin talked to him--low tones--no words which she or Skag should know again. . . .

The _lakri_ was of iron-wood from the North, thick as the man's wrist at the top. It pulled Skag's eye a second time. It meant the surrender of his faith in his own free-handed powers to reach for the _lakri_; it meant the fight to death. It meant he must disappear from the cobra's eye an instant behind the playhouse. . . . Carlin's tones were in the air. He could not live or breathe until the threshold was clear--no concentration but that. . . . Like the last outburst before a breaking heart, he heard:

"If you would only go--go, my dear!"

He had chosen--or the weakness for him. There was an instant--as his hand closed upon the _lakri_, the corner of the playhouse wall shutting him off from the cobra--an instant that was doom-long, age-long, long enough for him to picture _in his own thoughts_ the king turning upon the threshold--entering, rising before Carlin! . . . The threshold was empty as he stepped back, but the cobra had not entered. Perturbed that the man had vanished, he had slid down into the path to look.

Skag breathed. "And now if you will shut the door, Carlin--"

A great cry from Carlin answered.

Thick and viperine, the thing looked, as it hurled forward. It was like the fling of a lash. Four feet away, Skag looked into the hooded head poised to strike, the eyes flaming into an altogether different dimension for battle.

The head played before him. The breadth of the hood alone held it at all in the range of the human eye--so swift was the lateral vibration, a sparring movement. The whole head seemed delicately veiled in a grey magnetic haze. Its background was Carlin--standing on the threshold.

"I won't fail--if you stay there!" he called.

It was like a wraith that answered--again the old mystery, as if the words came up from his own heart:

"I--shall--not--come--to--you--until--the--end!"

Skag was back in the indefinite past--all the dear hushed moments he had ever known ma.s.sed in her voice.

"Stay there--not nearer--and I can't fail!"

He was saying it like a song--his eyes not leaving the narrow veiled head before him. It was like a brown sealed lily-bud of hardened enamel, brown yet iridescent--set off by two jewels of flaming rose.

There was no haste. The king's mouth was not tight with strain. It was the look of one certain of victory, certain from a life that knew no failures--the look of one that had learned the hunt so well as to make it play. . . .

The brown bud vanished. Skag struck at the same time. His _lakri_ touched the hood. With all his strength, though with a loose whipping wrist, he had struck. The _lakri_ had touched the hood, but there was no violence to the impact. . . . Carlin's love tones were in his heart. Skag laughed.

The head went out of sight. Skag struck again. It was as if his _lakri_ were caught in a swift hand and held for just the fraction of a second. No force to the man's blow. The cobra was no nearer; no show of haste. Skag's stick was a barrier of fury, yet twice the king struck between . . . twice and again. Skag felt a laming blow upon a muscle of his arm as from sharp knuckles.

And now they were fast at it. The man heard Carlin's cry but not the words:

"Stay there!" he sang in answer. "Not nearer--just there and I can't lose! . . . It isn't in the cards to lose, Carlin--"

Yet his mind knew he could not win. The cobra's head and hood recoiled with each blow. It took Skag's highest speed--as an outfielder takes a drive bare-handed, his hands giving with the ball. The head moved past all swiftness, even the speed greatest swordsmen know. It was like something that laughed. Before the whirring _lakri_, the cobra head played like a flung veil between and through and around.

. . . So, for many seconds. The grey magnetic haze was a dirty brown now. The man was seeing through blood. He could not make a blow tell.

He could not see Carlin. . . . She was not talking to him. . . . She was calling upon some strange name. . . . His arm was numbed again--like a blow from a leaden sling. There was a suffocating knot in his throat and the smell of blood in his head . . . that old smell of blood he had known when his father whipped him long ago. . . .

He tried to chop straight down to break in upon the king's rhythm. It answered quicker than his thought. . . . Yes, it was Malcolm M'Cord, she was calling. . . . He saw her like a ghost now. She was utterly tall--her arms raised! . . . Then he heard a rifle crack--then a breath of moisture upon his face--the sealed bud smashed before him--the rest whipping the ground.

Skag went to Carlin who had fallen, but he was pulled off abruptly.

"I say, Lad, let me have a look at you. . . . The child's right enough. Let her rest--"