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Title: Bannion's cave
Author: Margaret St. Clair
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
Release date: November 2, 2026 [eBook #79911]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Standard Magazines, Inc., 1955
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79911
Credits: Tom Trussel - Stories of Futures Past (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BANNION'S CAVE ***
Bannion’s Cave
by Margaret St. Clair
[Illustration: =Lycius paid a heavy price for tinkering with time....=]
“I don’t want to be seen talking to you,” the sorcerer said. He looked
nervously up and down Dragonetsa’s main street. “In my political
work....”
“Your political work?”
Lycius replied. He raised his bushy eyebrows. “Is that what you call
your being sergeant-at-arms of the Middle-Aged Communists’ League?”
“I’m serious,” Peter answered. “You’re considered an unreliable
element.”
“I can’t help that. The prince and I want to get to Paris.”
“Don’t we all?—I mean, what’s that got to do with me?”
“We think you can help us.”
“I tell you, I don’t want to be seen talking to you,” Peter said. “I’m
just beginning to be politically reliable. I can’t jeopardize it by
being with a man who—”
“Is a werewolf?”
“Nonsense. That’s got nothing to do with it. That’s just superstition,
an out-worn relic of the dark night of ignorance and bourgeois slavery.
The reason I don’t want to be seen with you is that you’re too thick
with the prince.”
Peter looked disapprovingly at Lycius for a moment longer. Then he
turned and began to walk away. The older man caught at his sleeve.
“Wait,” he said. He leaned forward and whispered something to Peter.
The blond man blinked and chewed at his lower lip. “You wouldn’t,” he
said slowly. “Not a thing like that.”
“I would, though,” Lycius answered. “I’m desperate.”
“It’s blackmail. What do you want?”
“Come to my house tonight, around dusk.” Peter frowned. He looked at
the shadow of the local mountain, which, as the sun westered, was
beginning to spill over into the village street. Dragonetsa was located
among spurs and foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. “All right,” he
said. “After sundown. Mind, I don’t approve of this.”
* * * * *
Lycius’ preparations for the ex-sorcerer’s visit were simple. He got
out three bottles of the best wine he had been able to salvage from the
prince’s cellar, and two glasses. He also closed the shutters and put
another birch log on the fire.
Peter arrived a little before dark. He was in a bad temper. “I don’t
know why you insisted on this interview,” he said as soon as he was
inside the door. “Suppose I were to threaten to denounce _you_ to the
Central Committee? What then?”
Lycius laughed. “For being a werewolf? You’d never make it stick.
Everybody knows that lycanthropy is nothing but superstition, just as
you said. If they believe in it, they don’t dare admit it anymore.
Whereas if I told them you’d been practicing sorcery again—”
“Oh, I know,” Peter answered bitterly. “Exploiting the age-old
superstitions of the oppressed peasantry. Exploiting! All I ever got
for all the work I did for the people was an occasional chicken, and
half the time they didn’t bring them when they’d promised them. I don’t
know what they did to those chickens to make them so tough. I had to
boil them for hours and hours to get broth.”
“Too bad,” Lycius replied. “You’re doing better now, though, aren’t
you? How about a drink?”
“Thanks,” Peter said, accepting the glass. He sniffed appreciatively at
the heavy golden stuff. “Looks like sweet Szamarodny. Long time since
I’ve had any. Your health.”
When the glass was empty, he said, “Yes, I am doing a little better. I
got two acres of land in the distribution, and people say hello to me
when they meet me in the street. That’s why I want to be careful. I’d
hate to have to go back to being a sorcerer again.”
“Have a little more wine,” Lycius suggested. “I like to have it drunk
by someone who appreciates it.” He filled the glass. “Naturally, you
feel that way about sorcery. But I imagine you still have your gifts.”
“Um.” Peter shifted his position and stretched his long legs out to the
fire. “Listen, Lycius, why are you so chummy with the prince? You can’t
be fond of him; nobody could. And as far as owing him any loyalty goes,
he only kept you around the palace because he liked to hear the girls
giggle and scream when he told them one of his retainers was a genuine
werewolf.
“Why don’t you ditch him? You could go to the village soviet and tell
them frankly you’d had a change of heart and wanted to be a useful,
productive social element. It would take a little time, but you could
get to be considered reliable.”
Lycius said nothing. Peter looked at him keenly. “Has he got something
on you?” he asked after a minute. Lycius’ massive head inclined a
fraction of an inch in what might have been assent.
“Oh, I see,” Peter said slowly. “Somebody you ate—is that it?”
“I’m not saying,” Lycius answered. “But believe me, Peter, the prince
and I want to get to Paris. All we need is money.”
“Why ask me? I’m not running a printing press. Besides, what happened
to the jewels the prince used to have? The Belodna jewels were famous.
What became of them?”
“Well, there was a singer in Bucuresti, and a dancer in Beograd, and an
actress and a couple of entertainers in Zagreb. There aren’t any family
jewels any more. More wine?”
“Thanks. I don’t care if I do. It’s wonderful, smooth stuff.”
Lycius pulled out the second bottle’s cork. “We thought you could help
us get away,” he said when Peter had half emptied his glass.
“How? Do you think that if I had access to money I’d ever have been so
poor?”
Lycius sighed. “Don’t you have knowledge of buried treasure,
underground hoards, that sort of stuff?”
“I’m supposed to. I never was any good at it. I can’t even find water
with a virgin hazel rod half the time.”
* * * * *
There was a silence. Lycius kept looking at his guest and then away
again. He threw another birch log on the fire. And as soon as it grew
empty, he replenished Peter’s glass. The fire was beginning to die down
into glowing coals when Peter said abruptly, “’Jever lose anything? I
mean anything valuable?”
Lycius looked surprised. “Why, yes. Once I lost a bundle of hundred lei
notes, and somebody stole my ruby stickpin a couple of years ago. What
about it? Everybody’s lost valuable things.”
“Don’ mean like that,” Peter answered waspishly. The second bottle of
wine was nearly gone, and he had been drinking at the rate of three
glasses to Lycius’ one. “Mean like—say you had a valuable glass bottle,
V’netian work. It gets broke one day. All gone, all of a sudden. You
can hardly believe it. I mean lost like that.”
“Oh.” Lycius seemed to think. As if absent-mindedly, he drew the cork
out of the last bottle and poured wine into the sorcerer’s glass.
“There was my wolf collar,” he said finally. “The prince had it made
especially for me to wear when I was, you know, changed. It got burned
up when the peasants set fire to the palace. I looked all through the
ashes for it, but I couldn’t find anything. It was an awfully hot fire.”
“Val’uble?”
“Oh, yes. The prince had it made by a jeweller in Bucuresti. There
were six diamonds set in a chain of flexible gold, and a clasp with an
emerald. Exquisite. I suppose the gold was vaporized and the diamonds,
being carbon, burned. I liked that collar a lot.”
“How long ago?”
“How long ago was it burned up? Let’s see, the peasants started
revolting six years ago, and it was a while after that. About five
years. Don’t you remember the fire yourself?”
“Not ri’ now,” Peter said, speaking with some difficulty. “...Five
years ago. Ought be still lots left.”
Lycius poked up the fire. In the resultant burst of light he studied
Peter’s face. The sorcerer had slumped back in his armchair and was
breathing through his mouth. He opened his eyes and looked at Lycius
briefly. “More wine,” he demanded. He held out his glass.
Lycius poured with a cautious hand. Peter drank. He said, “You go to
Bannion’s Cave, unh, tomorrow—it’ll be full moon—t’morrow night.”
“Bannion’s cave? Where’s that?”
“_You_ know. Up on hill. Outside town. Near woods.”
“Near the old ruins?”
Peter laughed soundlessly. “Not so ol’,” he said thickly, his face
twisting. “Not so ol’ you think.”
“But—what’s the Cave got to do with my wolf collar?”
Peter leaned forward. He poked his host in the diaphragm with an
admonitory finger. “Collar in Cave,” he said, laughing. “Ri’ time of
year. Moonlit night.”
“The collar was burned up,” Lycius said doubtfully.
Peter shook his head. “Things don’ get lost; really. Not sudden like
that. They _wear out_.”
Lycius rubbed his hands together. “Well, tomorrow night would be a
good time to go,” he conceded. “Everybody in Dragonetsa will be away,
having a socialist harvest competition with the people in Bela-jiu, and
they’ll stay late. But—” His voice was still unconvinced.
Peter picked up the bottle and slopped wine into his glass. “Collar be
there,” he said. He drank, and licked wine from his chin. “Thing lost,
gone sudden, fall in time stream. Get wash up in cave. Word advice.”
His face twisted up in a giggle. “Don’ cut yourself!”
Lycius got to his feet. He stood in front of the hearth, his back to
the fire, warming himself. “I’ll try it,” he said. “But listen, Peter.
Will it be okay?”
“Hunnnnnnh?”
“I said, will it be okay? This isn’t one of those three wishes deals,
is it, where no matter what I do I come out wrong?”
Peter’s lips moved. Waveringly he pushed himself up by the arms of the
chair until he stood upright. He took a step forward, and fell flat on
his face.
* * * * *
As they toiled up the rocky path that led to Bannion’s Cave, the
thoughts of Lycius and the prince were astonishingly similar. Both
of them were thinking about the wolf collar, and with very little
scepticism as to its existence; both of them were thinking about
weapons, the prince about the pistol under his cape, Lycius about the
sheath knife in his pocket; and each had decided to dispose of the body
of the other by dragging it inside Bannion’s Cave.
The full moon shone in a cloudless sky.
They reached the cave somewhat winded. The prince dusted off a flat
rock with a fold of his cape, and sat down on it. He said, “Don’t be
long. It’s cold out here. You’ve got the flashlight?” He had a small
sullen face.
“Yes.” Lycius lingered for a moment, as if he wanted his feudal lord to
wish him luck, but the prince was looking the other way. He switched on
the flashlight. He stooped and entered the cave.
At first it looked very much like any cave. There were fruit pits by
the entrance and crusts of bread, as if someone had been having a
picnic. It seemed to be a shallow cave, rather than a deep one.
Lycius moved forward cautiously, sweeping the uneven floor from side
to side with the beam from his flashlight. He heard a faint squeaking,
a noise which he attributed to bats. As he got farther inside the
opening, he saw that there was a rift in the rear wall.
He hesitated, and then moved toward it. The cave was not quite dark;
there was a generalized bluish-green luminosity coming from somewhere.
Even the jagged edges of the rift were luminous.
Lycius was sweating. He rubbed his hands on his trouser legs to dry
them. For a moment his physiological agitation was so great that he
wondered whether he was on the brink of “changing.” Then he collected
himself. He even wondered why he had been so upset. He stepped into the
rift.
His first impression was that he had plunged into water. Everywhere the
blue-green light quavered away from him, and his body felt the mingled
buoyancy and pressure of a watery medium. He brought one hand up to
his eyes, slowly, and the flesh seemed to waver along it in an uneven
luminous line.
Lycius breathed deeply. His legs felt weak. Once more he wondered if he
was going to change. This time he rather hoped that he would. Changing
itself was a physically distressing experience, of course; but there
was something refreshing about the complete obliteration of personality
it gave. And if he turned into a wolf he wouldn’t have to go on in
and investigate the cave. The light swam confusingly around him: the
only solid surface was under his feet. The missing wolf collar seemed
unimportant and far away.
In the distance, the light wriggled away in fish-tail glances. Lycius
hesitated. He was not so much afraid, actually, as confused and
oppressed. The mocking face of the sorcerer came before him for an
instant with the vividness of a hallucination. He sent the beam of the
flashlight out straight in front of him. It met nothing, though the
light was surprisingly yellowish and opaque. Lycius licked his lips.
Then he began to walk forward. Each step was slow and effortful.
The sandy floor was as level as a beach. But it was dotted, from
time to time, with lumps of corally, grayish stuff. They were of all
sizes. Lycius prodded one near him with his foot. To his wonder, it
disintegrated at once into a hundred small pieces that drifted gently
down to the floor. He touched the next lump with his fingers. It felt
dry and papery. He rubbed it lightly, and it too fell into bits.
* * * * *
He was seized with sudden panic. Growling, he turned toward the
direction from which he had come. To his vast relief, the rift was
still visible, a dark and jagged outline against the glowing, shifting
bluish light.
But the contrast between what he had come to find and what he was
finding still bothered him. There seemed to be nothing in Bannion’s
Cave except the lumps of grayish stuff. As he moved on, he saw that the
lumps were becoming more symmetrical. Once or twice there were contours
that suggested right angles—a box, a backless chair.
Was this what Peter had meant when he insisted that things didn’t get
lost suddenly? That they _wore out_? They came to this place, and
slowly time—or was it time?—eroded them. There ought, in that case, to
be still something left of his collar. But a cave where such things
happened was hardly a wholesome place.
Lycius moved onward. High-strung, like all werewolves, he was growing
more nervous with every wavering step. When something struck against
the calf of his leg with a high _ping_ he almost shrieked. He looked
around for the source of the _ping_ and found nothing. There was only
the greenish light quivering between him and the floor. But something
certainly had struck him; he’d felt it. If he ever got out of this
cave....
He raised his hand to his eyes and looked at it with feverish
attention. He was hoping to find the sprinkling of coarse grayish hairs
on its back that would indicate the onset of the comfortable animal
oblivion of lupinity. Moaning, he put it down again. These things never
happened when you wanted them to. It remained obstinately a human hand.
Lycius’ nervousness grew to a peak. He was just about to turn back
when he saw his wolf collar. It was lying on the sandy floor beside a
half-eroded object that looked like, and probably was, the gold watch
Lycius had lost when he was fifteen. (A mule had kicked him in the
pocket where he was wearing it.) The gold of the collar looked a little
dusty, but the diamonds and the emerald seemed to be in fine shape.
Lycius grabbed at it. To his relief, it felt perfectly solid and real.
He put it in his pocket. He turned and made his way back to the rift
in the cave as quickly as he could. It was a slow job. When he was in
the anteroom of the cave again, he rested for a moment. Then he brushed
hard at his shoulders and neck. He had the feeling that he was brushing
certain superfluous seconds and minutes away from them.
The prince was waiting for him outside the cave. “You certainly took
your time,” he said irritably. “It’s cold out here. Well. Did you get
it?”
“Yes,” Lycius answered. “I’m all right,” he added in an unsteady voice.
The observation was more to reassure himself than the prince, who was
paying little attention to him.
The prince held out his hand. “Let’s see it,” he demanded.
Lycius gave him the collar. He was feeling a profound nervous
exhaustion. Let the prince go until later, he decided—when he was
feeling more himself, he’d handle him. He only hoped his feudal lord
wouldn’t start anything.
* * * * *
The prince examined the collar. The diamonds glittered fretfully in the
moonlight. “What’s wrong with the gold?” he demanded after a moment.
There was suspicion in his voice.
Lycius shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The prince was staring at the object. “There’s some sort of insect on
it,” he declared slowly. He dusted at the collar with his cape. There
was a tinkle and a _ping!_ Something fell on the path. The prince put
out his neat little foot and made a crushing motion. When he raised his
shoe, there was a momentary glitter like rock crystal against the path.
“Some sort of winged ant,” the prince said, still staring: “The gold
looks pitted. The diamonds seem to be all right, though. Well....”
He put the collar in his pocket. He paused for a fraction of a second.
Then he pulled his pistol out from under his cape and fired point blank
at Lycius.
It was here that the wisdom of the werewolf’s choice of weapons became
evident. A pistol, even when loaded with silver bullets, can always be
unloaded and blanks substituted. A knife, on the other hand, remains a
knife.
Lycius stood showing his teeth while the prince emptied the gun at him.
When the prince had chucked it aside, screaming, Lycius closed in on
him. With a residue of strength he had never imagined he possessed, he
stuck his knife in under the prince’s ribs.
Distastefully, Lycius stooped and took the collar out of his pocket.
He began to push and tug the prince’s body into the cave. He tried to
avoid the sticky patches, but he couldn’t help getting some blood on
himself. He had quite forgotten Peter’s warning, and if he had recalled
it, he might not have seen how it was apposite. After all, he hadn’t
cut _himself_.
He got the body into the cave somehow, automatically avoiding the
neighborhood of the rift. When he had finished he was really exhausted.
He leaned against the cave wall, his knees bent, while he panted and
tried to recover himself. In his concentration on breathing, he even
closed his eyes.
He was recalled to reality by an insistent tickling sensation in his
wrist. He brushed at it, seeing nothing, but his fingers met a hard
shell. It must be one of the insects the prince had seen on the gold of
the collar.
He stood upright, shakily. It was time to be leaving. As he moved
toward the cave’s opening, he turned for a last look at the prince.
What he saw made his heart plunge and flutter. There was something
wrong about the prince’s face. He had to walk quite close, on tiptoe,
before he saw what it was. Most of the skin of the prince’s face was
gone. The white bone was gleaming up at him. Lycius stood perfectly
still for a moment. His mind was busy with summation. The eroded
objects in the deep part of the cave, the winged ant on the ‘gold,’
Peter’s warning, the naked bone of the prince’s face, the tickling in
his own wrist. The blood. The tickling in his wrist.
Lycius stood motionless while his heart gave one more thud. Then he
turned and ran.
* * * * *
The moon rose higher.
Peter, alone of the inhabitants of Dragonetsa, was in residence. The
rest were still in Bela-jiu, recuperating, after the fatigues of the
socialist harvest competition, with fruit punch and a lecture on
“Socialist Planning In Rural Cooperatives.”
Peter, intent on political reliability and social respectability, had
labored manfully all day beside the others at harvesting, despite his
grinding hangover. But when dusk had come he had decided that enough
was ample. Now he was asleep on his bed in Dragonetsa, snoring happily.
He had not even bothered to take off his clothes.
He was awakened by Lycius shouting. The alarm in the werewolf’s voice
cut through Peter’s vacuous dreams like a burning knife. Before Lycius
had had time to yell his name twice, Peter had crammed his feet in his
shoes and was at the window sill.
“What’sa matter?” he asked sleepily.
Lycius held the wolf collar out toward him. He was almost too winded to
speak and his face, except for the dark patches where he had smeared
his hands, was ghastly white. “—After me!” he gasped. He made a gesture
in the direction from which he had come.
Peter, following the motion, stuck his head out over the sill. His jaw
dropped. For a second he could only stare.
Between the two men and the moon, moving very rapidly, there was
advancing a great glittering cloud. It seemed to be made of thousands
upon thousands of tiny individual motes, so that its edges flickered
dizzyingly, and it glinted angrily, like frost or hail, in the light of
the full moon. A high, unmusical humming came from it.
“T-t-time t-t-termites!” Peter stuttered. He clutched the window sill.
“Didyoucutyourself?” he demanded of Lycius. The latter indicated the
patches of blood on his clothing, his face, his hands. “Prince’s,” he
gasped.
Peter looked at him distractedly. Then he snatched the wolf collar from
Lycius’ flaccid hand and dove out of the opposite window of the house.
He felt no particular compunction at his desertion of Lycius. Paris
beckoned; and after all, nothing he could do would help the werewolf.
He felt perfectly sure that both Lycius and the village of Dragonetsa
itself had only a few seconds of temporal existence remaining to them.
He saw no reason to stay and share their fate.
Lycius, left alone, was changing. After so many false alarms and
baffled hopes, he was taking on the wolf shape at last. His jaw grew
shallower, his snout lengthened. He dropped down on all fours, the
coarse wolf pelt sprouting on him.
The time termites, in a vast glittering cloud, covered him up.
Peter’s prognostications had been wrong in one particular. A werewolf,
when changed, is immune to anything except silver bullets. Thus it
was that the moon, some three-quarters of an hour later, though it
looked down upon a Dragonetsa that would have been of interest only to
archaeologists, found a Lycius who was reasonably intact.
Reasonably intact. A casual observer would have said that he was all
right, except for a few bald patches on his muzzle and paws. (The
bald patches represented the places where the prince’s blood had
been smeared on him in his human form.) A closer observer would have
hesitated. The shifting brilliance of the werewolf’s eyes looked bad,
and so did his nervous trembling. A dog in the same condition would
have been on the edge of convulsions or running fits.
* * * * *
Lycius was a werewolf. In his narrow skull were confused memories of
homicide—the prince—of danger—the time termites—and of loss—Peter’s
taking the wolf collar. Overriding them all was the memory of the
intolerable tickling the wings of the time termites had inflicted on
him.
He hesitated, cringing and trying to lick his eroded fur. The neural
itch was maddening. He howled, choked, and howled again. The moon rose
higher. Lycius slunk off into the shadow of the dust mound that had
been the City Hall of the Soviets.
He waited. When the President of the Electrical Co-operative returned
from Bela-jiu, about ten o’clock, Lycius slid out of the darkness and
bit him in the leg. He bit the Secretary-Treasurer of the Tractor
Pool, a woman named Popovici-Banatseanu, and a rather mature Young
Pioneer before the other villagers could come to their senses enough
to drive him off with sticks and rocks. The people he bit had to have
the Pasteur treatment and anti-tetanus serum, flown in from Bucuresti;
between that and the total destruction of Dragonetsa, it was nearly a
month before anybody had time to organize a wolf hunt.
When they did, they were efficient about it. But they hunted him for
three days, and all they found was a handful of wolf tracks. One of
the older men murmured “Lycius,” when he saw them, but the others
hushed him up. The shushee muttered, “I suppose _he_ was an agent
of Anglo-American imperialism, too,” (a reference to the official
explanation of Dragonetsa’s sudden destruction), but he was careful to
mutter too softly to be heard.
They didn’t catch the werewolf, then or ever. They did drive him from
his usual haunts in the forest far up onto the mountain. He did no
further harm, and pretty soon they were too busy rebuilding Dragonetsa
to have any time for wolf hunting.
Lycius remained a slightly demented werewolf. His nerves kept itching.
He drifted into Bannion’s Cave one day, past the prince’s skeleton, and
seemed to like the dampness and the dark, though the bones appeared to
bother him. At present he is living in a sort of symbiosis with the
time termites. He kills small animals on the side of the mountain, eats
what he likes of them, and brings the residue to Bannion’s Cave for the
time termites. It looks like a ritual of propitiation.
He is not particularly unhappy. He always wanted to go to Paris; and
about half the time he is convinced that Bannion’s Cave, which is
rather high up on the mountain, is really the Eiffel Tower and that
the glittering of light on the termites’ wings is the lamps of the
boulevards. At such moments he rolls on the cave floor and whines with
sheer pleasure.
But the symbiosis is an uneasy one. The time termites don’t bother
him overtly. But he has only been living in the cave for a couple of
months, and his fur has already turned quite white.
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Stories Annual, 1955 (Vol. 1, No.
1). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected, but minor
inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
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