Fire of Spring

 

 

ELINA’S SCREAM ECHOED IN CYRIL BELDON’S ears as he ran down the carpeted stone hallway of the castle. He carried a flint rifle in his right hand. Each step brought him nearer to the sight he had hoped he would never see, the death tableau which had marked the end of life for so many of his family. Every ten years one life had been taken, since the first massing of stones had created Dawnstone seven centuries ago. There had been omens. As soon as the walls of Dawnstone had been raised the sun had captured a blue star passing nearby, pulling it in close to itself. A year later the sun had consumed its small companion in a fiery storm which had dominated the sky for months, as if signaling the start of the terror.

He found Elina on the red carpet just beyond the turn in the passage. Beldon stopped, desperately hoping that she would scream again, but there was only a muted gurgle coming from her torn throat. It was the only sound he would ever hear from his beloved again.

There were six of them around her: dwarflike gargoyles two feet tall with wings folded across their backs. One held Elina’s long hair with taloned fingers; two held her feet. Another was crouched near her neck, where he had been gorging on the flow of blood. The remaining two were kneeling over her belly which was smeared with blood.

Beldon fired his gun. The creature holding Elina’s hair let go with a shriek and flew at him, eyes burning with bloodshot hatred. It was bleeding where the ball from the gun had penetrated its right wing. Beldon swung at the flying beast with the butt of his rifle. He knocked it to the floor where it lay still, its leathery wings spread open.

Their feast ended, the five others launched themselves toward the open window at the end of the hall. The great glass panels were fixed in place and a chill wind blew in from the foggy, spring night, filling the heavy, white curtains as if they were sails. The flying things were out and lost in the fog in a moment, leaving him alone with the body of Elina.

Beldon went up to the body and examined its state. Her stomach was a raw mass of drying blood. Even in death she clutched the flimsy night shirt that was bunched up around her waist. Her eyes were wide open as if still seeing the horror which had descended upon her.

He knelt down and closed them gently, pitying her young form. He took off his coat and covered her. Tears formed in his eyes.

He heard something stir on the rug behind him. He turned around suddenly and saw the creature he had struck with his rifle. Removing his belt he rushed over to it and bound its taloned hands together. Then, one by one, he broke the light bones in its wings by crushing them under his boots. When he was sure the beast would never fly again he stopped and looked back to Elina’s body. Rage filled him quickly and he kicked the wounded gargoyle in the side. Tears rolled down his face, but the devil made no sound.

He picked the gargoyle up and carried it down the hall, and down the great stairs into the main room where he placed it on the warm, slate flooring in front of the large hearth fire. Then he went to the kitchen where he found a meat cleaver and carving knife.

When he got back to the fireplace the winged devil was thrashing around violently, straining at its bonds. Its eyes were fearful of the flames. Every few moments it stopped its struggles to look at the sparks which were landing near it on the slate.

Beldon kneeled down next to the creature’s face and tried to catch its attention. He knew what he had to find out, even if he had to torture it for the information.

The fiery eyes found his suddenly and the beast spoke. “A thousand years more, you’ll pay,” it said. “The others will tell how you opposed us.” Its voice was a hissing whisper broken with shrill, whistling sounds.

The creature’s eyes were now betraying something of its pain. “What’s a thousand years,” Beldon said, “when you have the right of harvest at Dawnstone forever?” He paused. “Now,” he continued, “where is your spawning ground? Tell me and I’ll kill you quickly.” He stared directly into its eyes and prodded it with the point of the carving knife.

“You will never know.”

“I will know—you fly here in reasonable time so it must be near.”

“What else do you know, fool?”

“It must be a small area, a place I know but do not recognize.” He paused again. “I am the last and I will end it,” he said, raising his voice, “I have to!” He drove the knife partially into the creature’s side. “Now tell me, for my Elina, for my dying mother, tell me now!”

But the gargoyle’s eyes were no longer looking at him. He knew that it had resigned itself to death. Beldon withdrew the knife point and considered what he could do to its body that would be cruel enough to make it speak.

Suddenly he picked up the meat cleaver and began hacking at the broken wings lying limp on both sides of the gnarly body. In a few moments he had severed the wings from the ratlike form. He picked up the pieces and hurled them into the fire.

“Your hands are next,” he said.

There was no reply. Beldon looked around the huge room that was illuminated only by the fire. For a moment his own hatred astonished him. He thought of his mother asleep in the south wing of the castle—too deaf in her old age to have heard what was going on. But then, she had died inside when they had taken his father ten years ago. Even his marriage to Elina had failed to revive her. For years he had thought they would take her when the time came. Secretly he had hoped they would take the old woman and spare Elina. The thought shamed him now.

The shame kindled itself into a new rage. He brought the knife up to the beast’s eye and pushed it in far enough to blind it. The gargoyle howled. The eye closed in shock as he withdrew the knife. The other one was watching him, jealous of its sight.

 

The creature asked, “If I tell you what you want to know, will you kill me quickly?”

Beldon was suspicious that the beast was trying to trick him into killing it. It would tell him some lie and he would kill it too quickly.

But maybe he had broken its sense of community with the others and death meant more to it now than any loyalty.

Swiftly Beldon put out its other eye, shouting. “No lies now. I won’t kill you until I’m sure.”

The creature was licking its thin lips and biting them in pain, and the only tears its eyes could shed now were made of blood. “This much is true,” it said. “The first Dawnstone conjured our spirits from the black abyss and imprisoned them in the bodies of the creature you see me in. They were harmless little things which lived in the forest. After he had bound us into these forms, he bargained to release us if we gave him all our knowledge of the forces which rule the world. If we refused he would destroy us by turning loose his birds of prey. In those days it would have been easy because we were so small and unused to our new shapes. So we gave him all our knowledge of conjuring all the powers in the blackness between the worlds. But we also tricked him into performing a ritual which turned those same powers against him. When he tested his powers for the first time, his body was turned inside out and torn into a thousand pieces; and the force of his death hurled a blue star into the sun. That much you know. But what you have never understood is that his spirit itself was destroyed, and all the heirs of Dawnstone were delivered into our power. After the lives of one hundred generations have been destroyed, we will be free of our fleshy prisons. Until then we cannot leave our bodies, but we can renew them from Spring to Spring, making them grow larger and more strong on the blood of our enemies. My death is nothing. I will have a new body at next birthing. Kill me now.”

 

“But where are you born?”

“From the earth itself, but even if you knew the place you would not be there at the right time to see it. There is nothing you can do except wait for the passage of time to free Dawnstone.” The creature sneered at him. “And the one hundredth generation will be the last. None will follow it to rob us of our vengeance.”

Beldon raised the meat cleaver and buried it in the gargoyle’s throat, cutting through to the spine, killing the creature instantly. For a moment he regretted his anger. He had to remind himself that this was not an individual he had spoken with, but a monstrous single being incarnated in living forms. He thought he could almost sense its bodiless evil near the fire, hovering there, mocking him...

He sat looking at the body for a long time. Spring, he thought, the creature had spoken of spring. Tomorrow, this morning, was the first day of spring. He thought of eggs hatching in the earth— in a field. The only fields near the castle were worked by the peasants.

But he did remember a clearing in the forest which he had not seen since he was a boy. He had never been there on the first day of spring.

He got up and threw the body into the flames. He was certain that his guess was correct.

As he put on his cloak in the hallway he felt that some new sense was guiding him. From the rack by the front door he took a walking stick, instinctively thinking of it as a weapon.

 

He opened the heavy, oaken door. It squeaked loudly, bringing a sleepy servant out to close it behind him as he went out.

He went across the windswept outer court and through the open front gate. He wondered if he would be back before his mother woke up from her trancelike sleep.

He started to run in the predawn darkness, his robe a flapping wing behind him. He slowed to a walk and his hand was on his knife hilt. Deep inside him the need to hurry was a fearful urgency uncoiling into his limbs, a fluid looseness in his hands and arms and a constricting pull in his legs and thighs.

He came to the fork in the path which led down from the castle into the village. The way left led into the forest. He followed it without stopping. He knew that he had to be at the clearing before sunrise.

He started to run again. The trees became rushing shapes on both sides of the narrow pathway. They were gray and black forms with a thousand paralytic fingers outlined against a lightening sky.

He burst out of the forest into a large clearing and stopped. He looked at the ground carefully in the pale light. It looked as if it had been plowed a long time ago—but by whom?

Something was waiting to come out of the earth. He could almost feel its presence in the morning hush. He leaned on his walking stick and waited in the chill air.

The sun started to come up in the trees and the air grew warmer. It was a bright orange sun that grew hotter as it rose over the trees before him. A wind passed through the branches, fluttering the leaves for a moment before dying, leaving an abrupt stillness over the clearing as if the world was holding its breath...

Suddenly Beldon saw the earth crack open in a thousand places across the field. He saw that it was moist under the parched surface. As he watched, thousands of small, pink-red sparks pushed out of the wet dirt.

He stepped closer, leaning over, and saw the tiny body of a winged gargoyle, pink and wet all over, entering the world from below, hatching from some infernal egg that had been waiting in the ground.

The sun caught the creatures across the entire surface of the clearing, turning their tumescent skins into red-orange slivers of fire, thousands of them transforming the field into a flame-dotted ground surrounded by green forest. There was an odor of birthing coming up from the land, making Beldon gag. Before him an evil nature was throwing up the things which were his enemy, and would continue as the seasons turned. Each spring would be a fire-like beginning for these fleshy creatures, and all would struggle toward maturity and the aim of tormenting the heirs of Dawnstone.

 

Something seized Beldon from inside like a fist entering a hand puppet, and he gripped the walking stick with both hands. Raising it, he began to walk across the open rows in the field, striking the newly born devils with a rhythmic precision, splitting open their little heads and torsos, spilling their blood back into the soil. He was tireless. The force that drove him seemed endless. Fear, sorrow, and hatred had made an alliance for the possession of his body long enough to carry out this deed. His reason was an approving spectator.

He struck them until thousands lay torn open in the morning air, their blood clotting under the open sky. Beldon continued until the sun was almost overhead. Thousands still remained to be killed. He did not know which horrified him more—the dead or the still living.

He grew tired, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of trying to stifle this fertility of numberless newborn. He stopped and picked up a living specimen. Its wings huddled close to its body. Its eyes were red rubies glazed with moisture. The creature opened its mouth to yawn and Beldon saw the tiny fangs, so much like the full grown ones which had take Elina’s life.

He lifted the creature high over his head and dashed it to the ground. He stepped on it immediately with his boot heel, feeling its life melt away into the soft earth.

Around him shadows raced on the ground. Shapes covered the sun. The shadows hovered near his feet. He looked up and saw five full grown gargoyles diving toward him out of the sun.

He raised his stick to defend himself but he was too tired. Sweat ran into his eyes. The talons struck him and hurled him to the ground. A blow hit him in the right temple and a shower of lights exploded in the darkness like sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil...

 

He remembered being carried in the air and being dropped to the ground in the castle’s courtyard. He remembered vague faces looking at him, the faces of his servants and his mother. He woke up in his bed thinking that now his mother knew about Elina. Through the window he saw dark clouds driving across the sky, leaden masses filled with flashes of lightning, each pulse of light growing stronger.

 

He got up knowing that they had brought him back so he would continue. They knew that he would go to the village eventually and choose a new bride. In time they might come for her, or her son or daughter, or his daughter’s daughter. Someone every ten years, as long as there were victims.

There were too many of the creatures to stop. He would never be able to surprise them again, they would see to that. The clearing would be carefully guarded from now on. It would be unapproachable.

And yet, he knew, some would live at Dawnstone untouched. Perhaps the ones who would be close to him now, his future bride and children, maybe they would live in peace, unharmed. He almost hoped that he would be the next one to be taken, and his family-to-be spared. It seemed right that he should be next.

He walked over to the window and looked out at the driving clouds again. He felt very different now, sure that he would be the next one to die. But his family would live, and it seemed that it should be that way and no other. Rain was falling from the clouds now, curtains of sweeping water that struck the colored glass of his bedroom window. Wind rattled the frame. He felt the hollow emptiness of acceptance as he watched the horizon of swaying trees, and the line of darkness advancing on the castle. There was a sudden break in the storm clouds and the setting sun cast its redness into the rain, turning the droplets for an instant into blood.