Free Vault of the Ages by Poul Anderson Page B

fists with a sudden blaze in his eyes—but both leaned away again, clamping the mask back over their faces, hooding eyes in the weaving shadow.
    Night closed down outside, darkening the windows, stilling a little the babble of the aimless crowds. Wordlessly, the servant Margo came in with a tray of refreshment, set it on a table, and stole out again. Beyond the little ring of light at this end, the long room grew thick with a creeping darkness.
    Under the light, Carl unwrapped the bundle in his hands. The ancient metal was smooth and cool; it seemed to vibrate with unknown powers. “And this is the light,” he said, his voice shaking ever so faintly. “Look!”
    He spun the crank, and the pure white beam sprang forth, searching out corners, flashing back from metal and darkly gleaming wood, a whisper of gears and a lance of cold, colorless fire. Ralph gasped, Lenard gripped the arms of his chair with sudden whiteknuckled force—onlyDonn sat unmoving, unblinking, like the graven image of some eagle god.
    It was to the Doctor that Carl first looked when he let the light die, for he knew that the real decision lay there. The class of the Doctors existed in all known tribes, men who handed down a fragment of the ancient wisdom and guarded the mysteries. A Doctor was many things: public scribe and record-keeper, teacher of the young, priest of the gods, medicine man in time of sickness, counselor and sorcerer and preserver of knowledge. Much of what they did was good—they knew some medicine and other things beneath all the magical rites, and their shrewd advice had helped many. But Carl thought that they were, in their hidebound beliefs and their fear of the Doom, the greatest reason why life had hardly changed in these hundreds of years. And the fountainhead of the Doctors was their grand master, Donn.
    The old man was still very quiet. He had lifted his serpent wand, as if to ward off powers of evil, but his face did not move at all, he did not even seem to breathe.
    “Carl—Carl—let me see that light!” Ralph stooped over his son, shaking with excitement, holding forth an eager hand. “Let me see it!”
    “Stop.”
    Donn spoke softly. Little more than a whisper came from his thin lips, but it seemed to fill that room of tall shadows. He held out his own gaunt fingers. “Give it to me, Carl.”
    Slowly, as if moved by a power outside himself, Carl laid the metal tube in the hand of Donn.
    “Taboo! Taboo!” The old pagan word rustled and murmured in dark corners, hooted mockingly up the chimney to hunt the wind. “It is forbidden.”
    “But it is
good!”
cried Carl, with a wrench in his soul. “It is the power which can save us from the Lann and—”
    “It is one of the powers which brought the Doom.” The High Doctor touched the flashlight with his wand and muttered some spell. “Would you unchain that wrath and fire again? Would you see the earth laid waste and the demons of Atmik raging over the sky and folk falling dead of fire and hunger and plague and the blue glow—cursing your name as they died? Taboo, taboo!”
    Carl sat numbly, hardly aware of the stern words snapping from that suddenly grim face:
    “You have broken the law. You entered the accursed City and consorted with witches. You opened a door on the powers of the Doom, and you brought one of those very devils home with you. Fools! You wanted to help the Dalesmen? Be glad you haven’t destroyed them!”
    After a moment, Donn spoke a little more gently. “Still, it is plain that some god protected you, for no harm that I can see has been done. I shall offer this light as a sacrifice to appease any anger in heaven. I shall throw it into the sacred well. And tomorrow you must come to the temple and have the sin taken off you—but that need only be marking your foreheads in the blood of a calf which you must bring. You meant well, and for that you shall be forgiven.”
    The sternness came back like the clash of iron chains: “But there