The Star Mill Read online

  "Here, Ilmar!" A soft urgent voice rang out above the baying of the hounds. "Runl"

  "Karina!"

  His abrupt glance showed him the girl at the bakehouse, flinging what looked like great haunches of raw meat from the open top-half of the dutch doorway.

  He needed no engraved invitation. When he saw that some of the dogs were diverted by her free lunch, others slowed by indecision, he flung across the wan moon-patch at a championship gallop. Never had his long legs moved so fast.

  The bottom half of door was ready to embrace him, and so was Karina. She held him very close, then crooned sobs over his hurts.

  "You should have waited, Ilmar. I meant to signal you—"

  "Perkele, child! An Ussi watch would have helped."

  He glanced out at the dogs and their early lunch with a wide blink; first they were snarling and snapping among themselves, then they shuddered on wobbling legs and dropped.

  "What did you do, Karina?"

  "Green rat poison from the Castle kitchens. You should have waited for my signal."

  "Never mind. Did you find a way to the Tower?"

  "I think so. One of the stone masons had mentioned to the scrubbing wench he is wooing that—"

  "Let's gol"

  She nodded; Ilmar followed her lead along the shadowed fringe of the time-scarred Tower rearing into the fogs, to the acute angle where the Tower abutted the great front feasting hall, unused in a century or more. Karina halted before a wild tangle of dead-leaved vines.

  "Here, I think."

  Ilmar patted her shivering shoulder and grinned. "Take it easy, girl. If there is one, 111 find it." He groped his hands behind and among the wintering shrubs, seeking out crevices between the ancient stones. A silence like the surrender of eternity enveloped the shrouded courtyard. Nothing. Nothing. A tormented passage of breathless time, then his seeking fingers caught in an opening like a grooved cup. Ilmar forced his hand further into the cup and pulled with his full strength.

  Unseen levers went into action. Silently the comer's stones sunk back. A narrow opening invited them into the tower's base.

  Karina gasped. Ilmar felt her shiver against his shoulder.

  "Why don't you go back? Even if the Witch finds out you helped me—and I don't make it—she won't hurt you. She likes your baking too much."

  "Too late," Karina wailed. "Besides, now that I know there is someplace besides this dreadful island—I can't live here any longer. If you fail—" She clung fiercely.

  "I cant fail, Karina! I understand. Shall we—?"

  The girl's grip, leech-tight, as he preceded her up the long narrow twist of stone stairs, was some comfort in the musty cold black climb. The winding walls were so close together that Ilmar's shoulders wouldn't fit; he had to move sideways. When Karina's panting breath began to tear into sobs he halted, so that they could at least lean on the slimy stone and rest for a minute or two.

  Rats scuttled across the high steps, squealing angrily at their impudent intrusion.

  "We could use some of that arsenic," Ilmar said wryly.

  "W-What about the Witch?" Karina's voice was hollow and strained. Her whole life had been a proving ground for terror of Louhi and her demon's powers. Back in her warm bake-house her Mistress was only a frightful name. Now, to be actually on the move against Louhi, was too much to face.

  Ilmar understood all this. He wanted to tell her to go back to her ovens and her seed-cakes, yet—was there any going back? The hell-dogs were Louhi's pride and joy. She was bound to find out how they had died, torture it out of the girl if necessary, and even her proficiency as a baker for the greedy hag would not save her.

  "We'll need something stronger than arsenic for Louhi," he said grimly.

  "What?" Karina demanded. "You must have brought something with you that will kill her! Please tell me!"

  Ilmar sighed. "I'm not a sorcerer, Karina. Right now I wish I was."

  "Then-?"

  "I'll have to play it by ear. Can you think of any weak spot in her witchery that might help?"

  The girl shivered. "No-o. There isn't any!"

  They moved up. Up. Up. Up. Ilmar's head pounded, dizzied by lack of oxygen in the narrow slot and the up-spiraling. His inner ears screamed their loss of equilibrium. For a space of raw time he had to pull loose from

  Karina's convulsive grip and plank both hands against the wall, while he retched up dry physical pain.

  "It can't be much further!" the girl wailed.

  Ilmar wondered vaguely in the maelstrom of his mind why Karina could take the everlasting spring-coil better than he.

  "I don't dare be sick," she gasped. "H I let go of myself I'll fall, and never get up."

  He found her hand and dragged her on. "As you said, there has got to be an end some place."

  When it came, the foul-aired journey ended fast. Ilmar found himself plunging through thick draperies, then pinching his eyes and blinking out through an arched alcove into an amber-lit hall. Straight ahead was an ebony-black door, a high door fashioned out of alien angles and designed for others than only humans.

  "I wonder," Ilmar murmured. "Is this—"

  "Yes, Ilmar. This is the Witch's most secret chamber."

  Something in her voice, something new, made Ilmar whirl sharply. Karina started to laugh. She rocked and danced with sudden-freed joy.

  "Karina!"

  She brushed by him with a small light dance step, laughing her gleeful chortle as if all of this were the finest of all sports. When she reached the black door she turned on him full-face and now Ilmar knew.

  He knew and turned into solid rock for a large minute.

  Karina was not Karina, after all. No.

  She was the star-hag's nameless daughter.

  XIII

  "What think you of my demon's chick, Smith?" "Don't get me started."

  "Go right ahead," Louhi cackled. "Don't mind me. I've heard everything and done most."

  Ilmar faced the Witch, a sorry rag of a hero, indeed. His tunic and his hide were torn by the dogs, and the chagrin behind the copper beard was of a twist to gladden Louhi's sunken eyes down to her lost soul.

  The star-hag was seated to the rear of a half-round room on a black throne. A long slice of window in the stone allowed weak morning light to bleed in, and besides this there were two iron dragon lanthorns hanging to each side of her, making orange flame-shadows across her deep scarlet witch's robe and the horror she wore for a face. To one side was a cavern of slumbering fire where Koko dozed on heaps of yellow cushions.

  Louhi relished the sight of Ilmar's ignominy, rocking back and forth among alien green furs. Her fur-trimmed robe fell about her hump and her crumpled-steel body in luxurious folds, jeweled claws scuttled out of voluminous sleeves; her time-blackened face was so squeezed and contorted by unspeakable sins that it was hardly human any more. Ilmar's first full look brought a deep gasp of physical pain. The condor's eyes were crimson at the edges and the pupils were blank holes pulling him down into her brain's bottomless pit.

  "Beautiful, eh, son of Ilmarinen?"

  Ilmar forced his eyes away from the Witch, to her daughter. It was a relief; but angry chagrin fired his high cheekbones. Yes. Louhi's daughter was beautiful. As beautiful as the sky-hag was hideous. Which seemed practically impossible.

  The young witch preened for him. She danced lightly around the room, while the flame-tongues of the hanging dragons licked across her superb, voluptuous body. She kept changing like a chameleon. Now she was a blue-eyed brunette sheathed in soft green chiffons; now she was a big-breasted blonde in vivid gold that seemed to have been painted on; now an auburn beauty with a white cameo face and temptingly pursed red hps.

  Now she was Karina.

  "No, damn youl" Ilmar's throat tore the words out. "I don't believe itl You aren't really herl"

  On her throne, Louhi cackled as she rocked. "Hiisi's chick can be anything!"

  She went on and on, putting on other provocative bodies made more so by other
dazzling costumes. She was Cleopatra. She was Helen. She was every man's secret dream, and the manner in which she danced and mocked with her beaded eyes told Ilmar she knew his, too. He blushed to match his beard and wrenched his look away. She was Circe, too, turning men into swine.

  "No wonder Ilmarinen fashioned me the Sampo, eh?" Louhi cried. "No wonder! Yes, youth. I created my Hiisi's daughter for a lure and a trap. I sang this into her, to my purpose. All she knows is her nymphomaniac body and her insatiable pride in tempting and trapping men." She whispered coyly. "I'm just like all mothers, I guess. I want my little girl to be everything I'm not."

  Her words told Ilmar how to deal with the nameless sexpot. He ignored her. To be ignored was the one thing she couldn't take. Louhi understood and bit her

  "Enough!" She lifted her snake-stick and pointed it at the girl. "Get out! You can have him later, when I'm through with him."

  The girl's taunting laugh was a promise; he bent his head not to see her as she brushed past him and out of the chamber, but her perfume was so rapturously wicked that he reeled back a step or two and held his breath until she was gone.

  "She knows better than to disobey me," the Witch grumbled. "I permit her these vanities. She served her purpose, getting you up here."

  "She isn't the real Karina," Ilmar gritted.

  The hag chuckled. "Not the one Koko first brought you to, the one who hid you in the loft No. She is real enough. She is the best bakeress I have ever had, a genius with flour and milk and other goodies." She grimaced. "Hiisi knows my pleasures are few these days. What good is my sorcery if I have nobody here to use it on?" Brushing him up and down with her hell-windows eyes, she relaxed again and wriggled with comfortable anticipation.

  "She killed your dogs," Ilmar said.

  "My demon pets! Hardly! A minor potion to put them to sleep, no more. To keep you from killing any more of my beauties, damn you!" Her face blazed for his blood. "Never mind, the others will finish you off when I and my daughter are through with you."

  "Do you think there's enough of me to go around?"

  "Well make you last, son of Ilmarinen. As for Karina, I admire the girl's spunk. Most of this generation of my slaves are worms."

  "Did you really spare her cousin?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. I couldn't have her commit suicide on me. She's too good a bakeress. And her body is strong; it will bear many children to serve me, better than the other spineless tarts." She scowled thoughtfully. "I think—yes—I think Tursas will have her first"

  Ilmar's body stiffened; his muscles and nerves shot through with electricity.

  "Tursas." The name conjured up monstrous visions of Aijo's Iku-Turso, still hiding from Ukko in the molten fires at the center of a small green planet.

  "My dog keeper. He has earned her. He has served me faithfully. Tursas is big as a bull and most of the jellyfish among my Castle servants offer him but little in the way of specialized entertainment."

  Ihnar tried, but he couldn't keep back all his horror and anguish for Karina. The chords in his neck crackled with it.

  Louhi curved a smile.

  "That upsets you, does it? You are in love with Karina?" Ilmar grated a no.

  "Ah? There's some milk-faced slut pining away for you back among the Vanhat? Why don't you tell me her name. As you know already, I have managed to move Pohyola and my Storm quite a way in that direction, and soon I shall divorce my island from it by a time trick. I don't mind telling you, son of Ilmarinen, that much of my sorcery concerns what I learned many thousands of lifetimes ago: that Time is an illusion. When one learns how to manipulate it, back and forth, one fives forever and outwits the bumbling technology of the Ussi with very little trouble. True, the inside-out Sampo has had me trapped, and it is an all-powerful thing. But I have been working on the problem here in my tower for centuries, now, and I am on the very brink of escaping from it. So I shall be visiting my old enemies, the Van-hat, and I would be glad to give your rakas the sad story of how you died." She added, maliciously, "Especially I will be glad to tell her how, in the end, you succumbed to my daughter's so very many charms.

  Which you will, son of Ilmarinen. You will, before the dogs get you."

  Ilmar shrugged off the chilling implications and sent his mind darting in all directions. First he must make an effort to save Karina; and the only way he could possibly even try was to get her up here to the Tower.

  "There isn't anybody else," he told her carefully.

  "NiinP" She sniffed at his statement from all angles. "I am thinking now about you and Karina. A spurt of new blood in my stockyard might help...."

  Cupidity leaked out of those eyeholes. This was the lately-human creature who refused to share a Star Mill of endless resource with anybody. The cosmic string-saver. To Louhi, her slaves were like her bullocks, her sheep, her hogs.

  "When one lives forever one must look ahead," she mused.

  Silence.

  "What did you have in mind?"

  "You know what I have in mind, son of Ilmarinen. You are not stupid. Keep this in your head at all times: I know your thoughts. I am way ahead of you and all of your futile race. I need new blood and before you die, you may as well contribute."

  Ilmar locked his hps together, then he decided to grudge out what would get Karina to the Tower. "I I would never do it, if only because it would please you, Witch!"

  "No?" She rattled her snake-stick on the side of her throne noisily. "Koko! Wake up, slugabed!"

  From his fetal curl on the silken cushion, Koko yawned himself awake, tinkling the bells on his ruff.

  "First put some wood on the fire, insect!"

  "At once, Mistress."

  Koko hopped like a mantis from his fluffy perch and scampered to feed the slumbering red coals from the j woodheap. The Witch's eyes were on him, so Ilmar sped ;a fast look in the direction of the elongated thicklip1 window. Mournful dawn was dragging its misty self through the opening. Escape by the window? Ilmar considered such a possibility, discarded it, remembering the long sheer drop. And the Sampo? Where was the perverted Mill?

  Hopping to crouch at his Mistress' feet, Koko turned: his gooseberry eyes on Ilmar, pointing like a child. "Who i is he, Mistress? I never saw him before."

  "Friend of Karina's."

  "Oh!" Koko's round green face brightened; his ears vibrated with ingenuous happiness. "Cousin Toivo from over the mountain!"

  Louhi rumbled in her throat. She gave the dwarf a rap with her snake-stick and turned to Ilmar. "See why I keep him around? For one thing, he is too stupid to fear me, and that's a diversion in itself. Another thing, his race is so needful of affection that they will strain their talents to the utmost to get even crumbs."

  "Talents?"

  Koko had the run of the Castle and the farmyard in toto. Was there something else? Did the hag have a reason for allowing Koko to wander at will?

  "It's beginning to penetrate that copper-covered skull, I see."

  "You mean it was Koko? But I—"

  Louhi's cackle was shrill and triumphant. "Very well. It will amuse me to show you why Koko makes such an excellent spy." She rapped the dwarf-alien on his frizzy head again. "Assume the position, bug!"

  Eager to be of service and thus gain a morsel of his Mistress' spurious affection, Koko folded up his grasshopper's legs on the green fur rug at the Witch's feet. It was a familiar ritual, plainly. Ilmar watched with fascinated repulsion at what happened now.

  "Koko's race are shy tree-climbers, hard to tame as koalas. But they have one special talent."

  She tapped Koko's odd ears several times with her stick. "Show me a remember, little bug!"

  Koko's emaciated body went stiff, all but the ears. They began to vibrate at the tips like hummingbird wings. His round green eyes turned to milky clouds and while this happened, the ears shivered themselves into a gray-green blur.

  Then a strangeness occurred. A land of powder poured out of the dwarfs ears and made a three-dimensional cloud over his head. It wa
s like cartoon talk. But it was pictures. A race of kaleidoscopic pictures, a montage of hodge-podge images, until Louhi got the ones she wanted and tapped his head to halt them.

  Ilmar saw himself meeting Koko in the meadow, through Koko's bulbous eyes. He saw himself take Koko's hand and lead him down the cowpath. There was no need for words. Louhi had intuited the truth. Especially how Koko's eyes had unwittingly seen Karina's disbelief in a returned Cousin Toivo and how she had hastily sent Koko to fetch water....

  Back to life, Koko clapped his hands and tittered cretinic rapture in having pleased his Mistress. Nothing else mattered to his alien mind but this.

  "I understand," Ilmar said. "Koko's your spy. The servants and warriors will react freely around him because he's so childish."

  "You catch on fast." The sky-hag sneered. "I'm tempted to keep you around for a while, perhaps on some cushions at the other side of the fire, for balance."

  Ilmar ground his teeth and tried to think nothing. Let her Witch's tongue wag. Let her revel in her triumph while he could batter and badger his mind into devising some way of making it less than complete.

  "Kokol" cracked Louhi. "Fetch my breakfast! Make sure that Karina has not bittered my milk-cakes with her tears!"

  Koko scampered off through the black doorway. Lou-hi's eyes were sharp, swift blades when they turned abruptly on Ilmar. She seemed to have tossed idle torment ramblings to one side and reached a pinpoint decision.

  "Yes, I would like to keep you around. It would be amusing to have your blood mixed with my next crop of slaves, to extend my vengeance, as I have sworn by Hiisi to do to all of the Vanhat, past, present, and future. Still, it might lead to trouble in the end. You are of heroic blood. You are immune to many kinds of death. You proved that by escaping from my dogs the last time you blundered past the Storm. No. I must not linger about your punishment and death. You Vanhat heroes are a devious lot." She rattled her snake-stick loudly on the stones and screamed for her warrior guards. "Go! Find out if my dogs are awake! Breakfast is ready!"

  XIV

  Ilmah's long string-like muscles tied themselves into knots while he waited for Louhi's beast-faces to return. To end up as dogfood was scarcely what destiny and the loom of his Vanhat ancestry had presaged for him, but it was beginning to look as if that sword-brand on his face was a misnomer, after all. While Louhi slopped up porridge and a black brew that steamed like coffee but smelled like toad-vomit, Ilmar paced and made a furtive try at drawing out the Flame Sword.