Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/24

 us back into this world, my son was left on Earth. But I yearned for him, and left command for him to seek me in this world when he reached manhood. And Cuchulain came, hut he never found me. For he tarried with Fand until Lugh discovered his presence and forced him to return to Earth.

"For Lugh knew that he was my son! And Lugh knew when he saw you that you are the son of my blood reborn. That is why the Tuathan king showed you to me, by the shape-sending. Lugh meant to bargain with me, to exchange you to me for Fand."

Fand had shrunk out of Cullan's arms and the shade of horror and loathing on her face was stronger as she looked at him. And giant Dagda was glaring at him.

"It can't be true!" Cullan exclaimed. "I've no Fomorian blood, none of Tethra's blood, in me!"

"It is true!" Tethra affirmed. "Lugh returned later in image to offer me the exchange. He kept you ignorant of it all, of course."

Fatal conviction gripped Cullan, as he remembered Lugh's mysterious hints. And now, too, Brian Cullan realized why it was that Tethra's dark face was vaguely familiar. It was a mirror of his own face!

Tethra uttered a ringing laugh. "And now Lugh has been tricked for all his wily ways. I have Fand and the Gateway, and also I have you, the son I longed for."

He raised his voice. "Captains of Fomoria, hail my son Cuchulain. reborn and returned to me!"

From the black-mailed Fomorian lords came a roar of welcoming shouts. But Cullan was deaf to them as he turned wildly to the girl.

"Fand, this has not changed me! Even if I have Tethra's blood, my heart is with the Tuatha and with you!"

Clouded by the horror of a deep and ancient racial hate, Fand's white face looked up at him. Then that cloud vanished, and her green eyes flamed love and loyalty, as she stepped back toward him.

"I believe you, Cuchulain!" she whispered.

Angry murmurs rose from the Fomorian captains. And Tethra strode forward, astounded.

"You know not what you say, Cuchulain! You are my son, heir now to my power. Not only power over Fomoria's misty isles but power also soon over that Earth from which you came."

IS dark eyes glowed and burned. "Once we pour through the Gateway, our science will crush all there who resist us. The battle will be great, but with a world as stakes. Surely such battle, such empire, must allure you if you have blood of mine."

Cullan, despite himself, did feel that tempting strike a strange, responsive chord within him. A chord of that savage ancestral personality that more than once had dominated him, he knew it to be.

Wild, dark blood of long-dead Cuchulain, blood of this ruthless king before him, running strong in his own veins—that was what he had to fight against.

"No, Tethra!" he said harshly. "My loyalty is to Earth and to the Tuatha who protects it from you."

Tethra's dark eyes blazed anger. "Has this white witch-girl made you a