Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover 13 by The Winds Of Darkover

Author:The Winds Of Darkover
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-11-23T12:46:11+00:00

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VIII

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IT SEEMED eternities that he watchfully waited, that curious doubled consciousness keeping him nerve-strained, but holding himself back from being noticed. He kept out of the way while the men at the station hurried around, making all secure as the wind rose higher, screaming around the corners of the station and the fire tower. The sickish smell grew stronger by the moment and he fancied he could feel it penetrating to the rest of his nose, into the brain, subtly eating away at his humanity and his resolution.

Nor were the others unaffected; at one point Colryn stopped in his work of nailing heavy shutters tight and bent over, crouching, his arms wrapped round his head as if in terrible pain. He began a low, crazy moaning. Gwynn, hurrying through the room on some errand or other, saw him there, went to him, knelt beside him, put an arm around his shoulders and talked to him in a low, reassuring voice, until Colryn shook his head violently as if to clear it of something. Then he stood up and swung his arms, swore, thanked Gwynn and went on with his work.

The man who was not sure at the moment whether he was Dan Barron or someone else, stayed where he was, fighting for self-control; but he was not unaffected. As the wind rose and the smell of the Ghost Wind grew stronger, strange images spun in his mind—primordial memories laden with fear and terror—frightening hungers. Once he jerked upright from a waking nightmare of kneeling over a prone man, tearing at his throat with his teeth. He shuddered, rose and began to walk feverishly around the room.

When all was secure they sat down to food, but no one ate much. They were all silent, all tormented by the rising scream of the wind, which tore at their ears and their nerves, and by the spinning of vague hallucinatory images in their eyes and their minds. Barron kept his eyes closed. It seemed easier to eat that way, without the unfamiliar distraction of sight.

Halfway through the meal, the faraway shrieking began; a high, keening, space-filling howl and yelp that rose higher and higher, through the audible frequencies, and seemed to go on even after it could be heard no more.

“Ya-men,” said Gwynn tersely, and let his knife drop to the table with a clatter.

“They can’t get into the station,” Colryn said, but he didn’t sound sure. No one after that made much more than a pretense at eating, and before long they left the food and dishes uncleared on the table and went into the shuttered and barricaded main room of the station. The yelping and howling went on—at first distant and intermittent, then constant and close. Eyes closed, Barron saw in his mind’s eye a ring of towering plumed forms, raging and shrieking and hurling themselves, in a maddened dance, around the peak of the hill.

Once Colryn tried to drown out the sound by beginning a song; but his voice died away, halfway through the first verse.

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