From the rigid figures that watched across the water, from Rold and the Sea Kings, came a shivering sign that was a name.
“Rhiannon! The Cursed One!”
It came to Carse that even Emer, who had dared to force into the open the hidden thing she had sensed in his mind, was afraid of the thing now that she had evoked it.
And he, Matthew Carse, was afraid. He had known fear before. But even the terror he had felt when he faced the Dhuvian was as nothing to this blind shuddering agony.
Dreams, illusions, the figments of an obsessed mind—he had tried to believe that that was what these hints of strangeness were. But not now. Not now! He knew the truth and it was a terrible thing to know.
“It proves nothing!” Boghaz was wailing insistently. “You have hypnotized him, made him admit the impossible.”
“It is Rhiannon,” whispered one of the Swimmers. She raised her white-furred shoulders from the water, her ancient hands lifted. “It is Rhiannon in the stranger’s body.”
And then, in a chilling cry, “Kill the man before the Cursed One uses him to destroy us all!”
A hellish clamor broke instantly from the echoing walls as an ancient dread screamed from human and Halfling throats.
“ Kill him! Kill!”