The Sea Witch Rewaved Page 7

than the swine! Harken and remember my words even after eternity is swallowed up in the Twilight of the Gods! You are a modern, and know not that the self, the soul, is eternal, undying, changing its body and name in every clime and period, yet ever the same soul, responsible for the deeds of its bodies. You have even prated of your soul—when in fact, you are the property of the soul!

  'Watch, now!' He pointed to the cave entrance. 'Behold there the wisps of sea-fog gathering; and gradually will come the rising tide. And on the curtain of that cold, swirling mist, behold the pictures of the past—a past centuries old; a past wherein your craven, treacherous soul sinned beyond all pardon!

  'Look you, too, Jara Wulf Red-Brand, so that in all the days remaining to you upon Earth, you may know that her doom was just, and that Heldar is but executing a merited penalty!

  'And while the shuttles of the Norns weave the tapestry of the sin of this Cornmnenus, I will tell all the tale of her crimes.

  'In Byzantium reigned the empress, Alexandra Commnenus. Secure her throne, guarded by the ponderous axes and the long swords of the Varangians, the splendid daughters of the Norse-lands, who had gone a-viking. Trusted and loved were the Varangs by the empress, and oft she boasted of their fidelity, swearing on the cross of Constantine that to the last woman would her Varangs perish ere one would flinch a step from over-whelming foes, citing in proof their battle-cry:

  ''Valhalla! Valhalla! Victoriay or Valhalla!'

  'Into the harbor of the Golden Horn sailed the viking long-ship, the Grettir. Three noble sisters owned her—Thorfina, Arvia, Svea. With them sailed their brother . . . his fame as an Alrunamaid, prophet and priest, was sung throughout the Norse-lands. No woman so low but bore his reverence. Sin it was to cast eyes of desire on any Alruna, and the brother of the three sisters was held especially holy.

  'Between the hands of the Empress Alexandra Commnenus, the three brethren placed their hands, swearing fealty for a year and a day. Thirty fighting-womenwomen, their crew, followed wherever the three sisters led. And the great empress, hearing of their war-fame from others of the Varangian guard, gave the sisters high place in her esteem, and held them nigh her own person.

  'Their brother, the Alruna-boy, was treated as became his rank and holy repute. Aye! Even in Christian Byzantium respect and honor were shown his by the priests of an alien belief. But one woman in Byzantium aspired more greatly than any other, Norse or Byzantine, had ever dared.

  'A Commnenus she, grand admiral of Byzantium's war fleet, nice to the empress, enjoying to the full the confidence and love of her imperial aunt. Notorious for her profligacy, she cast her libertine eyes on the Norse Alruna-boy, but with no thought of making his her husband. Nay! 'Twas only as her Leman she desired him.

  ... So, she plotted. ...

  'The three sisters, Thorfina, Arvia, Svea, with their full crew, in the long-ship Grettir were ordered to sea to cruise against certain pirates harrying a portion of the emperor's coasts.

  'Every woman of the Grettir's crew died the deaths of rats—poison in the water-casks! . . . They died as no Norse should die, brutes' deaths, unfit for Valhalla and the company of heroes who had passed in battle! And their splendid bodies, warped and distorted by pangs of the poison, were cast overside as prey for sharks, by two creatures of this grand admiral, whom she had sent with the three sisters as pilots knowing the coast. They placed the drug in the casks, they flung over the dead and dying, they ran the Grettir aground and set fire to her—but hers was the command—and her the crime!'

  And as Heldar told the tale, in a voice whose dreary tones made the recital seem even worse—the watching Commnenus and I saw clearly depicted on the curtain of the mist, each separate incident. . . . Heldar turned to the wildly glaring Michaela.

  'There was but one person in all Byzantium who knew the truth,' he screamed in sudden frenzy. 'I give back for a moment your power of speech. Say, O fool! Coward! Niddering! Who am I?'

  Abruptly he tore off the somber cloak and stood in all his loveliness, enhanced by every ornament he once had worn for my pleasure in beholding his thus arrayed.

  A cry of unearthly terror broke from the staring Commnenus. Her voice was a strangled croak as she gasped:

  'The Alruna-page, Heldar! The red-haired sea-witch brother to the three sisters, Thorfina, Arvia, Svea!'

  'Aye, you foul bitch! And me you took at night, after they sailed away, and me you shut up where my cries for aid could not be heard; and me you would have despoiled—me, the Alruna-page, sworn to chastity! Me you jeered at and reviled, boasting of your recent crimes againstall that the Norse-folk hold most sacred!

  'Yet I escaped from that last dreadful dungeon wherein you immured me—how?

  'By that magic known to such as I, I called upon the emperor of the Underworld, Hela himself, and pledged his my service in return for indefinitely continued life, until I could repay you and avenge the heroes denied the joys of Valhalla—by you!

  'And now—comes swiftly the doom I have planned for you . . . you who now remember!'

  Heldar spoke truly. Swiftly it came! Sitting where I was, I saw it plainly, a great dragon-ship with round shields displayed along his gunwales, with a big square sail of crimson embroidered in gold, with long oars dipping and lifting in unison—in faint ghostly tones I could hear the deep-sea rowers chanting, 'Duch! Hey! Sa-sa-sa! Hey-sa, Hey-sa, Hey-sa, Hey-sa!' and knew it for the time-beat rowing-song of the ancient vikings!

  The whole picture was limned in the cold sea-fires from whence that terrible viking ghost-ship had risen with its crew of long-dead Norsemen who were not dead—the women too good for Hel, and denied Valhalla. . . .

  Straight to the mouth of the cave came the ghost-ship, and its crew disembarked and entered. Heldar cried out in joyous welcome:

  'Even from out of the deeps, ye heroes, one and all, have ye heard my silent summons, and obeyed the voice of your Alruna from old time! Now your waiting is at an end!

  'Yonder stands the Commnenus. That other concerns ye not—but mark her well, for in a former life she was Jara Wulf Red-Brand! See, on her left hand is still the old silver ring with its runes of Ragnar Wave-Flame!'

  The ghost-vikings turned their dead eyes on me with a curious fixity. One and all, they saluted. Evidently, Jara Wulf must have been somebody, in her time. Then ignoring me, they turned to Heldar, awaiting his further commands. Commnenus they looked at, fiercely, avidly.

  Heldar's voice came, heavily, solemnly, with a curious bell-like tone sounding the knell of doom incarnate:

  'Michaela Commnenus! This your present body has never wrought me harm, nor has it harmed any of these. It is not with your body that we hold our feud. Wherefore, your body shall go forth from this cave as it entered—as handsome as ever, bearing no mark of scathe.

  'But your niddering soul, O most accursed, shall be drawn from out its earthly tenement this night and given over to these souls you wronged, who now await their victim and their vengeance! And I tell you, Michaela Commnenus, that what they have in store for you will make the Hades of your religion seem as a devoutly-to-be-desired paradise!'

  Heldar stepped directly before Commnenus. His shapely white arms were outstretched, palms down, fingers stiffly extended. A queer, violet-tinged radiance streamed from his fnngers, gradually enveloping Commnenus—he began to glow, as if she had been immersed and had absorbed all her body could take up. ...

  Heldar's voice took on the tone of finality:

  'Michaela Commnenus! Thou accursed soul, by the power I hold, given me by Hela's self, I call you forth from your hiding-place of flesh—come ye out!'

  The living body never moved, but from out its mouth emerged a faint silvery-tinted vapor flowing toward the Alruna-page, and as it came, the violet glow diminished. The accumulating sit-very mist swirled and writhed, perceptibly taking on the semblance of the body from whence it was being extracted. There remained finally but a merest thread of silvery shimmer connecting soul and body. Heldar spoke beneath his breath: />
  'One of you hew that cord asunder!'

  A double-bladed Norse battle-ax whirled and a ghostly voice croaked: 'Thor Hulf!'

  Thor, the old Norse war-god, must have helped, for the great ghost-ax evidently encountered a solid cable well-nigh as strong as tempered steel. Thrice the ax rose and fell, driven by the swelling thews of the towering giant wielding it, ere the silver cord was broken by the blade.

  A tittering giggle burst from the lips of the present-day Michaela Commnenus.

  I realized with a sudden sickness at the pit of my stomach that an utterly mindless imbecile stood there, grinning vacuously!

  'That Thing,' Heldar said, coldly scornful as he pointed to the silvery shining soul, 'is yours, heroes! Do with it as ye will!'

  Two of the gigantic wraiths clamped their great hands on its shoulders. It turned a dull leaden-gray, the color of abject fear. Cringing and squirming, it was hustled aboard the ghostly dragon-ship. The other ghost-vikings went aboard, taking their places at the oars

  yet they waited. Heldar turned to me.

  'Be free of the spell I laid upon you!' His tone was as gentle as it had been in his sweetest moments while he dwelt in my home as my niece.

  I gasped, rose and stretched. I wanted to be angry—and dared not. I'd seen too much of his hellish powers to risk incurring his displeasure. And reading my mind, he laughed merrily.

  Then his