The Lord spoke sharply. “Look at her, Kickaha! And say goodbye to the Anana you knew!”
Reluctantly, Kickaha turned to the window.
“That machine is removing her memory. It’s doing so slowly because a quick process injures the brain, and I do not want a mindless mistress.”
Kickaha quivered but did not move or speak.
“The machine requires an hour a day for ten days to remove all memory back to when she was approximately eighteen years old. When the process is completed, she will believe—and in a sense it will be true—that she is on her native planet and her parents and siblings are still living. It will be as if she has journeyed back in time, but without any knowledge of the thousands of years that have passed since she was eighteen.”
Kickaha could not speak for a moment, and, when he did, he croaked.
“She won’t remember me.”
“Not at all. Nor will she remember me. But I will introduce myself and, in time, make her love me. I can make any woman love me.”
“What about when she finds out the truth?”
“She won’t,” Red Orc said, and he laughed. “I’ll see to that. Of course, when I get tired of her, if I do …”
“Do you plan to do the same thing to me? Or do you have something painful in mind?”
“I could remove your memory up to the time, say, when you were a college student on Earth and went through Vannax’s gate to the World of Tiers. Or I could torture you until you scream for death. Any man, no matter how brave, can be made to do that, even I. Or, if you volunteered to kill Manathu Vorcyon and succeeded, you could earn your freedom. First, though, you would have to complete the mission of finding a way into the Caverned World. If you do so, you will get the gift of keeping all your memories. That would indeed cause you great pain because of your memories of Anana.”
Kickaha had no trouble choosing one of the options. But he would not tell Red Orc his decision until he was forced to do so. Just now, he could think only of Anana.
If we ever get free and are reunited, Kickaha thought, I’ll see that she loves me again. And I’ll tell her about our life together in detail.
Red Orc spoke another code word. The window became the wall. All four marched off through three halls and entered a large room ornately furnished in a style that Kickaha assumed was that of the natives. He and the Thoan sat down in comfortable chairs, facing each other across a large table of polished red wood in which were spiral green streaks. The table legs were carved with the figures of mermen and merwomen. Food and drink were brought in by a man and a woman, one of whom stood behind the Lord and the other behind Kickaha.
“You may bathe, eat, and rest after we’ve finished here,” the Lord said. “Now! I assume you’ve decided that you’ll try to carry out the two missions for me and for your own sake. I would certainly do so. While you live …”
“While I live, I hope,” Kickaha said.
“I know that. Let us eat.”
“I am not at all hungry,” Kickaha said. “I would choke on the first bite.”
“Sometimes the belly overrides everything. Very well. You may eat later in your own quarters.”
The Thoan waited until he had chewed and swallowed several bites and drank wine before he spoke again.
“Describe your experiences while with the ogress slut.”
Kickaha did so, holding nothing back except what the Great Mother had said about the scaly man. Red Orc might know something of what his “guest” had said and done while with Manathu Vorcyon. It did not seem likely, but he did not know what kind of espionage system his “host” might have.
When Kickaha had finished, Red Orc said, “I did not want to drag her into my affairs. Not yet, anyway. But she did it when she snatched you away from me. By the way, she did not gate you through to the forest because she was considerate of you and wanted you to have time to get adjusted to her world before she met you. She did so to protect herself. If I had implanted a small atom bomb in you and set it to explode as soon as you arrived in her world, she would have been beyond its range.”
He laughed, then said, “But I don’t have that capability. To make atom bombs, I mean. If I wanted to take the time and do the research to find the data for making one and then go through the long tedious process of mining the metals needed and building a reactor … you get the idea.”
He drummed his fingers for a moment before speaking again.
“Two days should be enough for you to recover. After that, ready or not, you will go out again. And this time I will launch you through a series of gates that I am sure Manathu Vorcyon has not trapped.”
Kickaha had not yet eased his grief when he stepped through the gate the Lord had picked for him. At the second gate, he had time to slip a battery into his beamer before being shunted to the next station. Within three minutes, he had passed through five gates. One of these was in a cave high on a mountain. Before he was passed on, he glimpsed a valley at the bottom of which was a river. Near it was a tiny village and above that was a castle. He cried out with the joy of recognition. It was the keep of Baron von Kritz, an enemy of his when he had lived on the Dracheland level of the World of Tiers, the world he loved most. And then he was in the next station.
But this was not the place described by Red Orc. It was a windowless cell with a heavily barred jailhouse door, and it was bare of furniture except for a toilet, a washbowl with a soap dish, towels on a wall rack, and a pile of blankets in one corner.
It did have an occupant whom Kickaha recognized at once, though the man was unclothed.
Eric Clifton!
The Englishman was standing in a corner and looking confused.
Before either could say anything, Kickaha felt his senses leaving him. Clifton was now down on his knees, his face going slack. When Kickaha regained consciousness, he was lying on the floor. Like his cellmate, he was nude. And his beamer, holster, belt, and backpack were gone.
He struggled to his feet. Clifton was beginning to stir. Kickaha looked through the bars and gasped.
The scaly man was standing outside the cell.
12
I did not think that anyone save me could have been spared death from the flood,” Eric Clifton said softly behind him. “But it might have been better if you and I had perished in it. Now we are in the merciless hands of a demon from Hell, perhaps the Prince of Darkness himself. Our very souls are in extreme peril.”
Kickaha was aware of the words, but he was too intent on studying his captor to take in their full meaning. Close up, the creature looked even more monstrous and dangerous than when in the “coffin.” The massive muscles and thick skeleton were a Hercules’. The gold and green scales of his skin gleamed in the naked light above him. Around his neck from just below the jaw and to the shoulders were interlocking bands of bone on the surface of which were the snakish scales. And lines on his face revealed what Kickaha had not seen before. Bony plates underlay the scales there, too. But they seemed to be of thinner bone than on his neck and body.
Now, the scaly man opened his mouth to reveal long sharp teeth like a lion’s, though the canines were much shorter.
No fruit or vegetable eater, this thing, thought Kickaha. However, bears had a predator’s teeth, and their diet was more vegetarian than carnivorous.
The long and very narrow tip of its tongue slid out like a reptile’s. It was a green tendril extending from a red tongue that looked like a man’s.
Its large, green eyes were set an inch or so farther back than in a human skull. Though they reminded Kickaha of a crocodile’s, they had eyelids that blinked regularly.
Behind him, on the other side of the hall, were two cells similar to his.
“How long have you been here?” he said softly to Clifton.
On hearing Kickaha’s voice, the creature’s flat ears moved outwards and formed cups.
Clifton whispered, “Since two days ago. I came close to drowning in the flood, and I was much battered. But I did manage to
grab a treetrunk and float far down the flood. I was swept over the edge of a great cataract but still survived, thanks to God and my guardian angel. However, I was carried to the very deeps of the chasm, so deep that its top was a very thin ribbon of light and I was in the darkness of the bowels of Hell. I like to have died of the heat and the moisture, but I strove to reach the shore of the waters, which had become a mere river again by then. I groped around blindly, and, once more, God and my guardian angel bestowed salvation upon me.”
The scaly man had moved forward, closed his huge hands on two bars, and was eyeing the captives intently. Kickaha was startled when he saw on the creature’s right index finger the ring Clifton had worn in the pit. He turned swiftly and glanced at the Englishman’s right hand. The ring was gone. He turned back to face the scaly man. If he had taken the ring from Clifton, he had made it larger so that it could fit his huge finger.
Kickaha said, “Cut the lengthy narrative. How did you get here?”
“God bless us all! I did not think we were short of time in this prison. To be brief, I climbed as high as I could, falling several times but only short distances, until, thoroughly exhausted, I found a ledge large enough for me to sleep on despite my fatigue.”
“I told you to get to the point.”
“When I awoke, I felt around the ledge and discovered that it projected from a cave. I heard running water inside. I was very thirsty and too high above the river to get a drink. So I went into the cave, very slowly, you may be sure, sliding my feet along the rock floor and making sure that I was not at the edge of an abyss. Presently, I came to a cataract within the cave itself. And then light blazed around me. I was on a high mountain in another world. In short, I had gone through a gate hidden in a cave in the chasm. Placed there by some Lord long ago after the battle on that planet between Los and his son, Red Orc.”
“That could have been many thousands of years ago,” Kickaha said. “Probably, a Lord named Ololothon did it.”
“Yes. But I did not stay more than a few seconds on the projection of rock high on the mountain. I was gated to a another place, then another, then another. That was the last stage. I arrived in this cell inside the circle you see drawn on the floor in that corner. I advise you not to enter that circle because somebody else might be gated through at any moment. If you were standing within it when that happened, an explosion might occur.”
For the first time, Kickaha noticed the orange circular line in the corner. He said, “I doubt that would happen. If this cell is equipped with sensors, and most gates are, the gate would not be activated as long as anyone was already in that circle.”
“But you don’t know that there are sensors in this cell.”
“What happened to your ring?”
“Oh, shortly after my arrival here, I became unconscious. I suppose it was gas released by the demon. That would account for my becoming unconscious immediately after I’d entered the cell. It would also account for both of us becoming senseless when you entered. That thing came into the cell afterwards and removed our clothes and possessions. Anyway, when I woke up after arriving here, the ring was gone. He is now wearing it.”
Clifton pointed at the creature’s finger.
“I saw it,” Kickaha said. “Now …”
The scaly man spoke then with a deep resonant voice while the tendril flopped around in his mouth. His words were an incomprehensible gabble. When he stopped speaking, he cocked one ear toward Kickaha as if he expected a reply.
Kickaha replied in Thoan, “I don’t understand you.”
The scaly man nodded. But to him a nod must mean a no. He turned away and shambled off down the corridor.
“Now,” Kickaha said, “you never finished your account of how you got into the Lords’ worlds.”
“I …”
Clifton stopped, and his jaw dropped. Kickaha turned and saw that a cell across the hall from his had just been filled. The man in it was crumpling, his knees sagging. Then he lay on his side inside the circle where he had appeared. Kickaha recognized at once the long bronze-reddish hair and the angelically handsome face.
“Red Orc!”
Clifton gasped, and he cried, “The devil has caught the devil!”
An alarm must have been set off somewhere to notify the scaly man. Kickaha heard his heavy footsteps and then saw him coming down the corridor. Just before the creature got to Red Orc’s cell, Kickaha became unconscious again.
He woke befuddled, deaf, and against the wall opposite the barred door. His head felt as if it had swelled to twice its normal size. Smoke stung his nostrils and made his eyes smart, but it did not have the odor of gunpowder. He reached out on both sides of him. His right hand touched, then moved up and down, flesh and ribs. By his side was Clifton, still knocked out. He was blackened with smoke and smeared with blood and fragments of bloody flesh. When Kickaha looked down at his own body, he saw that he was also blackened and bloody. Still stunned, he flicked gobbets of flesh from his chest, stomach, and right leg. What had happened?
By then, the smoke had drifted out of the cell and down the corridor. The bars of the door were coated with blood; pieces of skin and muscle clung to the bars and lay on the floor. An eye was on the floor near Kickaha’s feet.
Slowly, he came out of his daze. He tried to get to his feet, but he was trembling so much that he could not do it. Also, his back hurt, and his legs were strengthless. He closed his eyes and sat against the wall for a while. When he opened his eyes, he had a clear idea of what had to have happened. Not Red Orc but a clone sent by Red Orc had been caught in the scaly man’s trap. But that meant that the Thoan had sent his clone after Kickaha, for what purpose he did not know.
No. Kickaha, his brain now starting to operate on all cylinders, realized what the purpose was. Red Orc had detectors that told him that he, Kickaha, had been taken away from the course set for him by the Thoan. Red Orc must have been surprised—and very alarmed—when Kickaha had once again vanished. But Red Orc had sent a clone along the same path after Kickaha. How quickly he must have acted! He had placed a bomb in the clone’s backpack, a bomb set to explode a few seconds after its carrier reached the point at which Kickaha had been snatched away. The clone, of course, had not known that Red Orc had put the bomb in the knapsack.
Though Red Orc could not have known what was occurring after Kickaha had vanished from the detectors, he had guessed that only an enemy would do it. He might have reasoned that Manathu Vorcyon had abducted Kickaha again. Whoever was responsible, he or she possessed a device Red Orc lacked. So that person must be destroyed even if Kickaha was also turned into a shower of fragments.
Despite his pain and violent shaking, Kickaha got up and limped to the door of his cell. The bars of the clone’s cell had been bent outward. The vagaries of the explosion had left a leg, severed at the upper part of the thigh, standing against the bars, a hand lying on the floor outside the bars, and what looked like a rib.
He pressed his shaking face against the bars and looked down the corridor. The scaly man was standing about twelve feet from the door of Kickaha’s cell, but he was moving his head vigorously up and down and to both sides. It was as if he was trying to move the scattered pieces of his brain back into their previous positions. Though he was clean of blood and gobbets, his bright gold and green scales were dulled by smoke.
Kickaha turned to look at Clifton. The man’s eyes were open, and his mouth was working. Kickaha still could not hear anything. He started to walk toward the Englishman but never made it. His senses faded.
When he awoke, he was lying on his back on a bed in a big room. Its ceiling and walls were huge screens displaying unfamiliar animals and many scaly men and women moving through exotic and brilliantly colored landscapes. All of his pains and the shaking were gone. As he sat up, he could hear the rustling of the sheets. He pushed away the covers to expose his legs. The smoke, blood, and flesh pieces had been washed off.
Near him, Eric Clifton lay on a similar bed under a gl
owing crazy quilt just like his own. Kickaha was noting that the room had no windows or doors when a section of the wall sank into the floor. The scaly man entered. For a moment, he turned his head. The profile was an unbroken arc from the back of his neck to just below his lower lip except for the small protrusion of the tip of his nose. The line described by his profile was like the somewhat flattened arc of a mortar shell. The insectile appearance was increased when he came straight on to Kickaha’s bed. But when he stopped in front of the bed and spoke, he seemed more human than insect. The tone of his voice and his eyes sounded as if they were expressing concern.
“I don’t understand,” Kickaha said.
The scaly man lifted his hands and turned their palms upward. But if that gesture meant that he also did not know Kickaha’s speech, he certainly was not going to be frustrated.
During the next two months, Kickaha and Clifton spent at least four hours a day teaching Thoan to him. Meanwhile, they lived in luxurious rooms a story above the hospital room and were served food, some of which was tasty and some of which repulsed them. They also exercised vigorously. And the scaly man had returned Clifton’s ring, now resized to fit the Englishman’s finger.
Their host’s name was Khruuz. His people had been called Khringdiz. He, the lone survivor, had never heard of Thokina, the name given his kind in Thoan legend. But Kickaha thought that the Lords had adapted Khringdiz to their own pronunciation.
They were deep underground below the “tomb”—itself very deep—to which Kickaha and Anana had gated. Khruuz did not know why they had been transported to his place of millennia-long rest. But when Kickaha told him that he had used the Horn of Shambarimem, a sonic skeleton key to all gates, Khruuz understood. He said that it was still an accident that they had gone through the gate there. What had happened was that the gate, like many closed-circuit gates, had a “revolving node.” Anywhere from ten to a hundred gates were continuously “whirled” in the node. The gatee might be passed through any one of them, his entrance being determined by which one he encountered when a gate became activated by an energized portion of the node. The Horn had been blown just as a “crack” or flaw opening to the tomb had come by in its rotation. The flaw was not a true gate, that is, it had not been made by a Lord, but existed in the fabric. But the Horn had made the difference.
The World of Tiers Volume Two: Behind the Walls of Terra, the Lavalite World, Red Orc's Rage, and More Than Fire Page 83