Gaal the Conqueror Read online

  The Archives of Anthropos by John White

  The Sword Bearer

  Gaal the Conqueror

  The Tower of Geburah

  The Iron Sceptre

  The Quest for the King

  The Dark Lord's Demise

  THE

  CONQUEROR

  THE ARCHIVES OF ANTHROPOS

  Cover illustration by Vic Mitchell

  Interior illustrations by Jack Stockman

  1 Vanishing Footprints 11

  2 The Dog and the Dragon 22

  3 The Enchanted Villagers 35

  4 Out of the Ashes 50

  5 The Dance of the Elms 67

  6 The Tree in the Heart of the Desert 76

  7 The Pool of Taavath-Basar 86

  8 Rapunzel's Tower 99

  9 The Quarrel 110

  10 The Stranger John Knew 120

  11 The Widow Illith 129

  12 The Sunken Garden 136

  13 The Pipes of Pan 146

  14 The Cage in the Woods 159

  15 The Last Miles 170

  16 A Dream and a Nightmare 184

  17 Darkness of Death 199

  18 The Plot of the Circle 211

  19 BamahJail 222

  20 The Bull and the Serpent 233

  21 The Mob Moves In 247

  22 The Night on the Altar 254

  23 The Sorcerer's Scheme 264

  24 Journey by Magic 275

  25 Shagah's Frame 287

  26 What John Learned 296

  27 The Hole of Blue Light 301

  Moonlight fell silently on the frozen lake. Patches of snow were an eerie blue and silver while the bare ice was black as tar. Wooded hillsides and rocks curled sleepily round the lake's shore. But John saw no beauty. "We're not going to stay here, are we?" He glanced at a trapper's cabin and then turned a worried face to his father. The cabin was perched behind them high on a rocky prominence.

  "Shh! We'll talk when we get down to the lake," his father muttered.

  For the next few minutes only the rush of their breathing, the scrinch of snow beneath their feet, and the soft shish of pine branches brushing against their clothing disturbed the magical stillness. Two minutes later Ian McNab stepped onto the ice. John hesitated. "Is it safe, Dad?"

  "Quite safe. Rabbie says it must be four feet thick by now. There are subterranean springs at one or two points near the shore, but even those spots should be safe. You needn't be scared. Try it. It feels rock solid." He stamped his foot hard on the ice. Carefully John joined his father.

  "It's Rabbie I'm scared of, Dad. Does he often get drunk?"

  "Until today I didn't know he ever did."

  "I was real scared when he chased Eleanor out of the cabin with a knife. You should have seen him. I couldn't believe my eyes. Will he go on drinking?"

  "Probably. His problem-according to his wife-is that he can't stop. The thing has him in its power. I was in two minds whether to come out for a walk or not, but I think she wanted us out of the way. She's worried about Eleanor. Seems to think she's so scared that she'll stay out all night."

  "Hm. I wouldn't blame her if she did."

  "But on a night like this she could freeze to death."

  Rabbie MacFarland was a trapper and an old friend of Ian McNab's. He had invited John and his father to his cabin on Black Sturgeon Lake for a week of trapping and ice fishing when they unexpectedly bumped into each other in Winnipeg the previous week. Ian and Rabbie had not been together since they were in France during the Great War, fifteen years before.

  Ian McNab continued, "Rabbie seemed fine when we met, and he drank very little in the army. If I had known that anything like this would happen . . ." For several moments they continued to walk in silence, following a line parallel with the shore, taking care not to slip though the ice was not very slippery. Intense cold had made it almost tacky.

  "I wanted to sneak outside when he got so mad with Eleanor. Dad-it was awful."

  "It must have been. What bothered me was all his talk about power. Did you notice?"

  "You mean on the trip when he was telling me that power belongs to men and boys, and that that's what makes us differ ent from women and girls?"

  Ian McNab nodded. After a moment John said, "Do you think he does that often-I mean get mad with Eleanor?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised. She seems cowed, scared of her own shadow."

  "I tried to talk to her, but she didn't seem to want to talk. Where do you think she's gone?"

  "She can't have gone "far. Mrs. MacFarland says she usually walks along the lake this way. So far I've seen no footprints. There must be some other way down to the lake. We should see her soon." They paused and peered ahead. The lake was eerie and still. Pine woods and rocks rose steeply from the little bay around them. They stood on a desert of ice and snow as flat as the icing on a Christmas cake. But they could see no sign of a girl. "Let's push on further. It can't be more than half a mile to the point."

  "How old is Eleanor?"

  "Eleven, I think-no, ten."

  "What will we do when we find her?"

  "I'll take her along to a farm round the next point. Mrs. MacFarland told me how to find it. The people there know her and they understand the situation. It's often happened before."

  John did not reply immediately. Moonlight deepened the lines of worry on his face. Eventually he said, "What's going to happen to her? She can't go on living there if her father ..." He was about to say "keeps trying to kill her," but the words sounded too shocking. "I mean something might happen."

  Ian McNab sighed. "I'm sorry you had to see it, son. I had no idea what the situation was like. Mrs. MacFarland tells me that she has made arrangements for Eleanor to stay with her aunt in Winnipeg. She's to set out tomorrow. I volunteered for us to accompany her."

  "Good! There's no way I want to stay after what happened." For a few moments the two continued to walk in silence.

  "I'm sorry about the ice fishing trip. I should have guessed what would happen when I saw the two twenty-sixes of rye whiskey under the seat."

  "That was some ride!" John said, referring to the trip from Winnipeg in a horse-drawn sleigh that had been borrowed from the nearby farm. The trip had begun fairly sedately but had become progressively more riotous as the first twenty-six was consumed. ("You need something to keep the blood circulating in this chill," the trapper had said repeatedly.) Ian McNab had tried in vain to persuade Rabbie to quit.

  "He was funny!" John laughed. "I thought we'd all get thrown out of the sleigh."

  "I didn't see the funny side then-and I don't now. The man could have killed us. I'm amazed the farmer let him have the sleigh."

  "He didn't."

  "He didn't?"

  "No, I heard Mrs. MacFarland telling him off about it. He'd `borrowed' the horses and the sleigh without asking. She took them back herself."

  Ian McNab snorted in dismay. "He was never like that in the army. He was the best NCO I ever had. I was the one with the drinking problem in those days. Many's the time he covered for me when I was drunk."

  "Were you ever... "John hesitated, embarrassed. "Did you ever get-like him?" He knew his father had been in serious trouble by drinking in the army. He had learned the fact in their shocking last moments together in a world far away, a world in another time and space. But they had never discussed the matter.

  "I got into fights. The stuff is poison to me. In one fight in a Paris nightclub I struck a senior officer and was court-marshalled. I haven't thought about it for years, but this-this terrible business makes the nightmare real again." He seemed strangely agitated, and for a few moments they continued in silence. After a moment Ian McNab murmured, more to himself than to John, "Those are memories I'd be happy to be rid of."
r />   John said nothing. Hardly realizing what effect it was having on him, he had nevertheless begun to absorb the beauty around them, and its magic made all ugliness seem unreal and distant. "I couldn't believe it at first," he said at length, his gaze strangely remote.

  "Believe what?"

  "That I'd found you."

  "Found me?"

  "You know-in Anthropos. It was so unreal-I never thought-"

  "No, neither did I. It was strange, wasn't it? Traveling to unknown times and places to meet a son I never knew existed." He threw his arm round his son's shoulders as they began to cross a patch of wind-whipped snow, breaking the fragile layer of ice that covered both the snow and the more solid ice beneath the snow.

  Suddenly the night was filled with awesome sound. A deep, booming note resonated through the air. It seemed to come from the lake below and yet also from the hills all round. It was a majestic, musical note, like the drawing of a giant bow across a lake-sized base fiddle. Then it was gone and even the trees seemed to listen in silence. John grabbed his father's arm. "What is it?"

  "Only the ice. Tremendous, isn't it? I used to hear it in the north of Scotland when I was a boy."

  "Is it dangerous?"

  "No. It comes from the ice expanding. There are joints where the ice from one shore meets the ice from another. They rub against each other sometimes."

  They were still crossing the patch of light snow. "Look, John! Those must be her footprints." Footprints could clearly be seen on the patch of snow they had just begun to cross. They bent over them, examining them excitedly. There was no clear outline in the prints-for the delicate layer of ice covering the snow prevented it. But it was clear that the prints were smaller than those of John's father, and perhaps a little smaller than John's own. In any case the region was so isolated that the footprints were unlikely to belong to anyone but Eleanor.

  "She seems to have been making for the point."

  "Perhaps she is going to the farm herself."

  "Let's follow and see."

  They straightened themselves, and with a pace quickened by excitement began to follow the tracks. Wherever the snow lacked its filmy cover of ice the tracks were clear. Larger patches of snow made their task easier as they approached the point. Even so there remained wide spaces where the wind had swept the ice clean and tracks were almost nonexistent. At one point they searched for several minutes, fearing they had lost them or that the girl had decided to stick to the areas of ice and to avoid the snow.

  "Here they are, Dad!" John had decided to examine a patch of snow further into the lake.

  Ian McNab looked up, startled and uneasy. "Then she isn't making for the farm," he muttered, hurrying to join his son.

  For several minutes longer they continued to track the footprints as they led them across patch after patch of snow toward the center of the lake, until suddenly, in the center of the largest patch they had crossed so far, the tracks stopped dead. At this point the prints were perfectly clear. The snow was thin and the footprints clean. Beyond and all around them the snow lay undisturbed. Father and son stopped, staring in bewilderment, scarcely realizing the implication of what they were looking at.

  "She-she must have jumped." The words tumbled out of John's mouth before he could stop them.

  "So where did she land?" His father's voice was not mocking, only amazed. It was obvious that she had not "landed." It was as if the owner of the tracks had been snatched into the air and had never come down.

  "Could she-could she have gone through a hole in the ice?"

  "Can you see one?"

  John did not answer. The snow lay smooth and undisturbed. There was no sign of a hole or even of a crack. "Then what happened?" John asked.

  His father was shaking his head still, his eyes wide and staring. "In the name of... what in the world ..."

  "She can't have

  Blankly they stared around them. Behind them three sets of tracks led to the point where they stood. Beyond them one set of tracks continued for five or six paces further, only to end suddenly and inexplicably. Cautiously they moved forward, and as they did so Ian McNab placed a restraining hand on John's shoulder. A sense of danger made him say, "Easy, boy. Let's not be in too much of a hurry."

  "But Dad, we gotta look around."

  "For what? She could neither have jumped nor flown."

  "Mebbe the wind has blown snow over her tracks."

  "There is no wind, John."

  There was a long pause. Slowly over John's mind there crept an idea that both frightened and yet excited him. He would be scared, very scared. But would his father let him? Not if he saw that he was afraid, to be sure. Therefore, he must hide his fear. At length he said, "Dad..."

  "Yes, son?"

  "Oh-nothing. It was a dumb idea."

  "Perhaps. And perhaps not. What's on your mind?"

  Still John hesitated. Finally, he said, "You remember when we were on the ship coming over to Canada?" His father nodded. "Well, you said it looked as though I would be going back to that other world, to Anthropos-because I had the Mashal Stone and pross stone in my blazer pocket still." They had stopped moving forward. The older man said nothing, and John continued. "I know it's crazy. But it happened to both of us. We were taken to Anthropos somehow, like magic-and both of us had been running away from something." He paused. "You're thinking the same, aren't you? You're not saying anything, but that's what you're thinking, isn't it? So mebbe ... Dad, we know where she's gone. I can feel it. It's tingling inside me now. If I so much as put one foot beyond those footprints . . ."

  Ian McNab said nothing. He stood staring at the far horizon, his face a mask. "Dad..."

  The man drew in a deep breath. "Yes, John?"

  "Dad, you said that if you went back you'd-you'd die."

  "Yes, I did say that. I could have been wrong, of course."

  "You weren't wrong-you were almost dead when we left. Your time there had ended-you know that. If you went there again you'd never come back. Dad, you won't-you just mustn't go there again-you mustn't. I'll go. I'll find her and bring her back. O.K?"

  Again the man said nothing. "Are you all right?" The boy's voice was tense and anxious. "You don't look good. Your faceare you O.K?" Ian McNab nodded. Suddenly John seized him round the waist, pressing his head against his father's shoulder. "Dad, you're shaking!"

  "I'm cold, John. I'm just shivering a bit. It's thirty below zero, remember. Don't worry-I'm fine."

  There was another long pause. "Dad, is it O.K for me to go? I'll have to. It's the only way."

  "Unfortunately." The man's voice was flat, expressionless.

  "Then I'll go-O.K?" Ian McNab straightened himself and placed his hands on his son's shoulders. His face was pale, but he was smiling. "You're becoming quite a Canadian."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You've learned to pronounce words like O.K and mebbe and gotta-and you use them all the time now."

  "Oh, Dad! Look-you'll let me go-O.K?"

  "What about the Mashal Stone? You may need its powers."

  "I always carry it in my pocket-you know that. The pross stone too." His eyes shone with a fevered mixture of excitement and fear.

  Ian McNab seemed strangely calm. "I suppose you'll need me to stay so that you have someone to come back to. And we can't leave Eleanor there alone-even though I suspect the Changer has some business with her. Yes, son, go. These footprints seem like an open invitation."

  "I'll stay here and wait. If you don't come back, and I think you're in trouble I'll ..."

  "No, Dad, no! NO!" John's face was white and scared.

  Ian McNab sighed as his son clutched him convulsively. "You must let me decide what to do. I won't come unless I have to. So off you go, son! Find her quickly and bring her back."

  John looked puzzled. "Unless you have to? How do you mean? How would you know you had to?"

  Ian McNab looked long into the eyes of his son. "I'll know," he said eventually. "Was I not once Mab the Seer? I
have not completely lost the powers of perception I had in Anthropos. I'll know all right. For one thing something tells me that in a life-and-death crisis you will call out my name-and I'll hear you. But let's not think about that now."

  "But Dad, you'd die!"

  Ian McNab placed his hands on either side of John's face and once again looked deep into his eyes. "Hey, stop that! That's a bridge we may never cross. In any case it's a bridge the Changer probably controls. Let's focus on the job at hand. Off you go now."

  John straightened himself and released his father. " 'Bye, Dad!" He hesitated a moment. "There'll be no need for you to follow. Really there won't." His voice shook a little. For a moment he looked as if he would embrace his father again. Then, evidently changing his mind, he turned on his heel and advanced to the point where the footprints stopped. He turned his head to look back once, smiling nervously. Then as he took a final step his body was wiped clean from space as though it had been a chalk drawing wiped from a blackboard. Ian McNab was left to stand alone on a patch of snow on a frozen lake, staring at two sets of footprints that led nowhere.

  No sooner had John stepped beyond the last footprint than the ice-covered lake vanished. He was somewhere else. Total blackness wrapped him round. For a moment he froze, wondering where he was and what he should do next. He did not have long to wait, for the ground under his feet tilted, pitching him forward. He struggled to keep his balance and failed, throwing his arms out to protect himself. But to his horror there seemed to be nothing in front of him. He found himself falling, screaming as his body hurtled downward, spinning head over heels.

  His fall ended as suddenly as it had started. A dozen scratching twigs and branches received him into their embrace, and daylight burst over him. He opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of gray sky through a lacework of leaves. Twisting his head in panic, he saw to his great relief that he was only three or four feet from the ground. He half rolled and half wriggled to free dom, tumbling awkwardly onto wet grass. Pulling himself to his feet, he saw that his Canadian clothes were gone. Instead he was wearing leather boots, a loose woolen garment that was something like a pair of trousers, an equally loose linen shirt gathered at the wrists, belted and falling to just above his knees. To complete the outfit a heavy woolen blue cloak fell from his shoulders.