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from the Coven.
These three had been searching the thought-planes for me, but what of Ghast
Rhymi?
Deliberately I groped for the contact of his mind.
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I could not touch him. But I remembered. I remembered Ghast Rhymi, whose face
Edward Bond had never seen. Old, old, old, beyond good and evil, beyond fear
and hatred, this was Ghast Rhymi, the wisest of the Coven. If he willed, he
would answer my groping thought. If he willed not, nothing could force him.
Nothing could harm the Eldest, for he lived on only by force of his own will.
He could end himself instantly, by the power of a thought. And he is like a
candle flame, flickering away as one grasps at him. Life holds nothing more
for him. He does not cling to it. If
I had tried to seize him he could slip like fire or .water from my grasp. He
would as soon be dead as alive. But unless he must, he would not break his
deep calm to think the thought that would change him into clay.
His mind and the image of his face remained hidden from my quest. He would not
answer. The rest of the Coven still kept calling to me with a strange
desperation in their minds return and die, Lord
Ganelon! But Ghast Rhymi did not care.
So I knew that it was at his command the death-sentence had been passed. And I
knew I must seek him out and somehow force an answer from him from Ghast
Rhymi, upon whom all force was strengthless. Yet force him I must!
All this while my mind had been drifting effortlessly down the great hallway
of Caer Llyr, borne upon that tide that flows deepest in the mind of Ganelon,
the Chosen of Llyr Ganelon, who must one day return to Him Who Waits.... As I
was returning now.
A golden window glowed before me. I knew it for the window through which great
Llyr looks out upon his world, the window through which he reaches for his
sacrifices. And Llyr was hungry. I felt his hunger. Llyr was roaming the
thought-planes too, and in the moment that I realized again where my mind was
drifting, I felt suddenly the stir of a great reaching, a tentacular groping
through the golden window.
Llyr had sensed my presence in the planes of his mind. He knew his Chosen. He
stretched out his godlike grasp to fold me into that embrace from which there
is no returning.
I heard the soundless cry of Medea, vanishing like a puff of smoke out of the
thought-plane as she blanked her mind defensively from the terror. I heard
Matholch's voiceless howl of pure fear as he closed his own mind. There was no
sound from Edeyrn, but she was gone as utterly as if she had never thought a
thought. I knew the three of them sat somewhere in their castle, eyes and
minds closed tightly, willing themselves to blankness as Llyr roamed the
thought-lanes seeking the food he had been denied so long.
A part of me shared the terror xof the Coven. But a part of me remembered
Llyr. For an instant, almost I recaptured the dark ecstasy of that moment when
Llyr and I were one, and the memory of horror and of dreadful joy came back,
the memory of a power transcending all earthly things.
This was mine for the taking, if I opened ray mind to Llyr. Only one man in a
generation is sealed to Llyr, sharing in his godhead, exulting with him in the
ecstasy of human sacrifice and I was that one man if I chose to complete the
ceremony that would make me Llyr's. If I chose, if I
dared ah!
The memory of anger came back. I must not release myself into that promised
joy. I had sworn to put an end to Llyr. I had sworn by the Sign to finish the
Coven and Llyr. Slowly, reluctantly, my mind pulled itself back from the
fringing contact of those tentacles.
The moment that tentative contact was broken, a full tide of horror washed
over me. Almost I had
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touched him. Almost I had let myself be defiled beyond all human understanding
by the terrible touch of of There is no word in any language for the thing
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that was Llyr. But I understood what had been in my mind as Edward Bond when I
realized that to dwell on the same soil as Llyr, share the same life, was a
defilement that made earth and life too terrible to endure if one knew Llyr.
I must put an end to him. In that moment, I knew I must stand up and face the
being we knew as
Llyr and fight him to his end. No human creature had ever fully faced him not
even his sacrifices, not even his Chosen.
But his slayer would have to face him, and I had sworn to be his slayer.
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