Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/14

 Cullan, "Come you too, outworlder. It may be that fate itself has brought you back to this world against my decree, to play a part in our final war with darkness."

"Hell take all your wars and orders!" blazed Cullan. "I'm going after Fand!" Lugh's eyes fixed him freezingly. "It may be that you will go, but it will be as I direct. Obey me, outworlder!"

He and Dagda, or their images, abruptly vanished. Cullan stood torn with indecision as Goban begged him to obey the order.

"Alone you could not even find black Mruun of the north," Goban insisted. "The lord Lugh's power only can recover Fand now."

That consideration was what impelled Brian Cullan finally to obey, despite his wild impatience. He followed Goban out of the palace and down through the silent deathly city to the docks.

He was moving toward the yawl, when Goban objected. "That outworld craft of yours looks far too slow. We go in one of our own boats."

Cullan knew the tremendous speed of the slim, undecked metal boats of the Tuatha. He dropped into one after Goban, who went to the stern and touched the controls of the box-like generator of atomic power.

White fire jetted back under water from the stern, and the slim craft leaped out through the harbor like a frightened horse. Avoiding the thunderous falling water-spout by a swift turn of the tiller, Goban sent the boat skimming the yellow swells due westward through the golden mists.

The Tuathan captain seemed feverish with excitement over Lugh's promise of final war. But Cullan's mind could hold only one thought—memory of Fand in that last moment when she had clung to him and he had promised to return.

He had no eyes, in his agony of spirit, for the islands that took form in the golden mists and dropped behind them. The Isle of Silver with its argent rocks and burnished beaches, the strange Isle of Fire whose uprushing red flames glowed infernal through the haze, the other, farther isles that he vaguely recognized—he was blind now to their wonder. The golden mists darkened as night began to tall. The slim boat rushed on and on over the smooth yellow swells. Then far ahead in the dusking mists there loomed a larger island" The bubble-like domes of its city surrounded the shimmering, lofty spires of a mighty citadel. Lights were shining there, many boats moving, in feverish activity.

"Thandara, citadel of the Tuatha lords and heartland of our race!" Goban was crying to him. "It wdces for the last war with the Fomorians."

Thandara, fabled citadel of bae old Celtic gods! Cullan, crushed by his dread, could feel only a numbed wonder as they rushed toward it.

CHAPTER III

UATHAN warriors were already coming from other islands, as was evidenced by the many boats speeding into the harbor of the dry. But Goban steered their own racing craft past the harbor, directly toward the point where the sheer, shimmering outer wall of the great citadel rose from the water edge.

There in the face of the wall was a water-gate opening directly into the citadel. In the deepening dusk, Goban deftly