by Brian Lumley
And eventually she came.
Morning was a confusion, until Tarra remembered where and what. During the night a wind had raced around the ruins, piling up the sand a bit on his side. When he yawned and opened his eyes, what breeze remained blew dust in his face and brought him spitting awake. It was just past dawn, last star a fading gleam, sun free of Cthon’s nets and already pushing up his rim over the edge of the world.
The wind had made a good job of removing all traces of last night’s digging; the sand had been greatly levelled out, except where it lay banked against obstacles – like Tarra’s face and form. Big lizards coughed and honked to greet the dawn; camels snorted and spat; there was movement round the extinct fires and among the wagons. A Yhemni slaver came striding, his baggy silken breeches flattening to the fronts of his muscular thighs.
Tarra expelled dry crusts from his nostrils, poked his tongue about carefully in a mouth that tasted like a Northman’s sandal, blinked his eyes as the black slaver grabbed blanket, yanked it from his and Loomar’s huddled forms. ‘Up!’ the black grunted. ‘Dig holes, take bread, water. Then we go.’
Tarra squinted after him as he moved among the rest of the slaves. He glanced at Loomar. ‘Dig holes?’
‘To answer nature’s calls,’ the youth replied, spitting out sand. ‘Or maybe Hrossak’s don’t?’
For answer Tarra carefully scraped a small hole where he’d slept, dropped his trousers and squatted. ‘Oh, we do,’ he said. ‘And what’s more, I know just the right place for it!’
Loomar sprang to his feet and moved away; but he’d seen Tarra’s meaning at once, nodded his admiration of the Hrossak’s scheme. Now he waited for him to get done and tidy up the job with scuffed sand, then went and finished it off in like manner.
They weren’t given water for washing and so made do with the clean white sand, which sandpapered grime from flesh clean as a whistle. Then chains shortened to draw slaves in close to the wagons, a ladle of water to sip from (all too briefly, before passing on down the line) and a crust of bread each. Tarra managed to snatch a big lump, which this time he wolfed without pause. Lots of activity now: loading completed and frizzies starting to mount up on their camels, Northmen clambering bareback aboard tough, shaggy, half-wild ponies, and Hrossak wagoners sitting bronze in the broad wooden saddles of their mighty lizard beasts – all except one. Five beast-masters yesterday, and this morning only four …
The last lizard in the circle sprawled all unconcerned between its shafts, honking disdainfully at its leathery brothers where they tried to call it up onto vast, waddling legs. Heads began to turn; slavers scratched their necks impatiently; Cush Gemal appeared on a pony near the lead wagon, pointed, waved, shouted, gave orders. Tarra Khash, trying to look puzzled, stood tethered to the side of his wagon, raised an eyebrow at Loomar Nindiss. Give the lad his due, he managed to look gauntly innocent.
Blacks began clambering over wagons, under canvas, into and out of boats; but no sign of Gys Ankh, and puzzlement rapidly turning to rage. A frizzy came down the line, clouting slaves about their heads, shouting: ‘Gys Ankh? Hrossak? You see? Where Gys Ankh?’ He reached Loomar, who cowered back, then stepped past him and collared Tarra by the ear. ‘Gys Ankh? You see?’
‘Ow!’ said Tarra. And: ‘What did you say?’
‘Hrossak!’ the other shouted at him. ‘Where Hrossak?’
Tarra looked nervously all about, licked his lips, shrugged. ‘Er, I’m a Hrossak,’ he said, ingenuously.
‘Not you!’ the frizzy shouted, drawing back his fist. Tarra’s left hand was free. He knew that if the black hit him he probably wouldn’t be able to control that hand. It would simply lift the other’s knife from his belt and plunge it up under his chin. Which in turn would write finis on all this.
Cush Gemal’s voice intervened at the last moment, and all black heads turned in his direction. From close to the lead wagon, Gemal shouted: ‘Ankh’s pony is here, and certain of his belongings. But if he’s here it can only be under the sand! We can’t linger over it, for a rider was seen last night circling the ruins. He was just a lone rider, and he kept a safe distance, but he could be the first of many. We’re not the only raiders in the Primal Land, and not too far from Hrossa, either. Anyway, if there are pursuers they’ll be fast and we’re slow. So time’s not for wasting. Therefore, make a quick search – then we go.’
Tarra’s frizzy turned from him, narrowed his eyes against the sun’s glare where it struck on white sand. He spied the dappled, scuffed area where Tarra and Loomar had lain, the ridge of sand where it had banked against the sleeping Hrossak. He glanced sideways at the pair. ‘You, and you – you sleep?’ He pointed at the patch of suspect sand.
‘Er, yes, but—’ said Tarra.
The black stepped half-a-dozen paces, probed with the toe of his sandal. His foot came out wet and stinking. ‘What? What?!’ He turned on the pair in a fury.
‘Me!’ Loomar called out, shaking like a leaf in a gale. ‘I…I dig hole there …’
‘Why – you – not – say?’ the frizzy came stamping, his fists knots at his sides. And finally Tarra recognized him: the slaver with the key! He reached for Loomar, and Tarra reached for him – and Cush Gemal’s voice reached all three. He leaned from his pony, snapped:
‘Leave them be!’ The black slaver scowled at them, nodded respectfully at Gemal, made off dragging his tainted foot in the sand to cleanse it.
‘Tarra Khash,’ said Gemal. ‘You’re a Hrossak. What do you know about these hauling lizards?’
Tarra looked up at him. ‘I know there’s nothing I don’t know about them!’ he said. Gemal nodded, called stink-foot back, ordered Tarra’s release.
‘Hrossak,’ said Gemal, ‘you can walk or ride, it’s your choice. Riding you’ll save your feet and perhaps earn yourself a semi-permanent employment, maybe even a reward. From slave to beast-master by stroke of fate, or slave until death from some other sort of stroke. Make up your mind …’
Tarra looked at his freed right hand, clenched it tight, then looked again at Cush Gemal. ‘Seems the decision’s made,’ he said.
Gemal nodded his crest of lacquered hair. ‘We’ll see how trustworthy you are – if at all! Except we’ll not trust you too much, not just yet. There’ll be a man behind you in the wagon, with a bolt aimed at your back. So just do what’s expected of you and…I’ll talk to you again, when we break at noon.’
That was that. Tarra was led to Gys Ankh’s beast where he used its knee as a step up to its broad back, and so into his saddle. A good many years since he’d last driven a big hauler like this one, but he didn’t think he’d forgotten how. And anyway he’d soon find out. He looked about.
At the back of the saddle was a basket of greenstuff, tidbits for well-behaved beast; and hanging by the saddle a coiled whip, long and thin. This was also for the lizard, if he should turn awkward. Tarra could use the whip expertly – once upon a time, anyway. Back on the steppes, he’d often used the whip as a threat, never as an actual weapon. Kindness would normally get the job done far quicker. But of course this lizard was new to him, and Tarra himself strange to the lizard. That was something else he’d soon be finding out about.
‘Tsss! Tsss!’ he hissed. ‘Up, old scaly, and all’s well.’ The great beast turned back its head, blinked slitted eyes, honked a disinterested inquiry.
‘Tsss!’ Tarra repeated, with some urgency now, aware of his back where it made a target broad as a tavern door. ‘Up, my leathery lad, or Tarra’s in trouble!’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cush Gemal, standing in his pony’s saddle and watching all. Tarra gulped, shook down the whip. The lizard’s slitted green eyes turned a little red and his scales came down flat upon his hide. Then Tarra reached behind and took a fistful of greenstuff, wrapped it round with the tip of the whip and made a small knot. Without pause he flicked his arm and sent bundle of cabbage leaves snaking forward. Into one side of crusty mouth flew that morsel, and drawn back out in a flash withou
t touching tender flesh. But greenstuff gone and lizard chomping happily! Of course, for Gys Ankh hadn’t been here to feed him this morning.
‘Double rations at noon, old scaly,’ Tarra urged. ‘Only let’s be up now and moving, eh?’ And again: ‘Tsss! Tsss!’
And at last response. Up came the rear legs, tilting Tarra forward, and up at the front one at a time, tilting him sideways and then straightening him out. He cracked his whip over the beast’s snout, but well clear of delicate nostrils and horn-hooded eyes; and with a single snort the creature got going. The wheels of the wagon behind creaked as they started turning, and the slaves ranked on both sides began their accustomed shuffle. And now they were mobile.
‘Good!’ cried Cush Gemal from the side. ‘Take meat with me at noon, Tarra Khash, for there are things I’d like to know about you …’ He cantered forward to the head of the caravan, which now wound out of ruined Humquass and headed just south of east.
The feeling’s entirely mutual, thought Tarra, his bronze body swaying easily to the gait of his strange and massive mount. There are things I’d like to know about you, too …
In immemorially ordained cycles of an hundred years duration, the wizards of Theem’hdra were wont to pursue with increased vitality and inspiration their search for immortality. All save one, for apparently Black Yoppaloth of the Yhemnis had already found it. Or perhaps not. Mylakhrion, in his day, had seemed similarly interminable – and what was he now but dust and bones?
Now, there are men and there are men, and there are wizards and wizards. There were ways by which a man might aspire to aeons of existence; but black, inimical magick had never been Teh Atht’s chosen route. White magick, or at worst grey, had always sufficed; though truth to tell, at various desperate times he’d been tempted. But to his knowledge black sorcery benefited no one, and least of all its users. Not in the long run.
Mylakhrion, perhaps the mightiest mage ever, had called on Great Cthulhu for means of infinitely elongating life, only to discover it shortened to nothing. Loxzor of the Hrossaks – a steppes-bred singularity among sorcerers, powerful necromancer in his life but dead now some six or seven hundred years – had likewise sought to control the uncontrollable…and for all his foul formulae had been eaten by a slime. Exior K’mool, Mylakhrion’s one-time apprentice…well, his termination remained conjectural. Several times, tracing Exior’s pattern in the spheres of his astrologarium, Teh Atht had discovered no sure surceasement; it could be that Exior had achieved that longed-for longevity, but not in this world. Essence-sniffing spells had failed to detect tiniest trace …
Ardatha Ell, who had wandered the worlds and universes and studied the secrets of spheres within spheres, was said to sojourn in Elysia; but since he was not of this world in the first place, his case should hardly be counted. And of other wizards, black and white, who had searched for life everlasting, only to discover that the search outlasted the life: their names were legion.
Azatta Leet had died in Chlangi early in his twelfth decade, ten of which had been spent deciphering a certain Rune of Revitalization. In the hour of his triumph, upon speaking the words of power, he had become a mindless prehistoric liquid which evaporated in a stray beam of sunlight, from which it had not the sense to crawl! ‘Revitalized’, aye, but too far: for instead of returning to his youth he had become as his most remote ancestor, a denizen of oceans primal even to Primal Theem’hdra, and mortal to a fault.
Phaithor Ulm, doubtless hot on the trail of personal perpetuity, had necromantically examined exanimate intelligences which, disgruntled, had given him false information – by use of which he’d rendered himself as a handful of green dust. The pitfalls were many.
And yet at its peak the cycle sent sorcerers of all persuasions into frenzies of heightened activity, invariably reducing their numbers and rewarding none at all. As to the why of it: wizards are generally a prideful lot, and to achieve immortality would be to assume the most coveted mantle of all, the fame of Mylakhrion himself. Indeed it would be to surpass him, and in so doing become Wizard of Wizards! What? Why, lesser mages would crawl to the feet of one so mighty, imploring his very tutelage!
Hatr-ad of Thinhla (suspect sorcerer at best) might assume the duties of Teh Atht’s hall porter; Khrissa’s All-High Ice-Priest would be his potwatcher; Moormish of the Wastes would find employment translating tedious and meaningless glyphs…and so on. Sweet dreams! But if some other should stumble on the secret first: then picture Teh Atht as decoder, or porter, or potwatcher, and so on. Tasteless inversion at best.
Five years ago he’d sensed the onset of the cycle, set out upon his quest, only to have it end in the Temple of the Scarlet Scorpion, with a warning of DOOM about to befall all Theem’hdra, whose heart was his own beloved Klühn. Since when he’d returned home, discovered said doom diminished to extinction, and observed the antics of a man – a mere man – in his crystal shewstone. Ah, but perhaps not a ‘mere’ man, and certainly a most interesting one.
And now Tarra Khash seemed bound for Shad in Shadarabar across the Straits of Yhem, to be used in certain ceremonies of Black Yoppaloth’s devise. Him and likewise the many slaves and maidens taken there with him. And an entire century fled since last the Yhemnis of Shadarabar raided on mainland whites, and the cycle of immortality-lust fast approaching its peak among Theem’hdra’s thaumaturges. Oh, a very definite connection here, aye, and a state of affairs in which Teh Atht perceived a rare opportunity.
Now, it is seen how the Primal Land’s wizards were rivals all; none more aware of that fact than Teh Atht himself, who knew well enow the difficulties to be encountered in attempting to breach any fellow wizard’s protections – the spells each sorcerer employed to maintain and ensure absolute privacy – especially at the onset of the looming hour of propitiation. To dare even the most covert surveillance of Black Yoppaloth’s machinations at this time would result in dire rebuke, be sure! If indeed this were that same Yoppaloth of histories a thousand years old, retribution were surely swift and most certainly mordant!
Teh Atht had read somewhere how, as a result of just such imprudent prying, Exior K’mool of Humquass had invoked a certain Yoppaloth’s wrath: the Yhemni mage had conjured against him a squad of onyx automatons, with quicksilver blood and unbreakable crystal scythes for arms. Not even the curse of Curious Concretion would work on them, because they were stone already! And how might one freeze or poison quicksilver blood? Only by extreme good fortune, and at the very last moment, had Exior recalled a laconic Rune of Liquescence (with which in less perilous times he’d reshaped poorly constructed shewstones), melted the scythe arms of the robots and so rendered them comparatively harmless. But still and all they’d clumped around Humquass for a week before the last of them stamped himself to cryptocrystalline shards.
Dangerous then to send any familiar creature spying on him, lest Yoppaloth discover it and send back something much worse; but what if Yoppaloth himself took to his own bosom just such a spy? Aha! Different story then, for sure – especially if that spy should be kept in ignorance of his role!
And wherefore Teh Atht’s desire to spy on the Yhemni mage in the first place? Simply to discover if indeed he was that same Yoppaloth come down the centuries – and if so, how! Perhaps there was that in his methods which Klühn’s resident sorcerer could use to his own ends. He doubted it, for the Yoppaloth of legend wasn’t much known for white or even grey magicks, but it were surely worth the shot.
All of these thoughts had been in Teh Atht’s mind while he drifted high over Theem’hdra to Nameless Desert. It was a journey he might have accomplished in minutes, but that would mean suffering the debilitating nausea of great speed; and also, he’d desired to spend time merely thinking things out. And so he’d flown a circuitous route and slowly, which were just as well; for as evening came down so he’d found himself nodding where he sat cross-legged, in contemplative attitude, in the softly indented centre of his levitator. Already the false vitality gained from magickally accelerat
ed sleep was wearing off, his mind succumbing to weariness and dull sloth; and in any case it were never a good idea to go lamia-visiting by night.
Even now he spied a red-glowing blowhole reeking of sulphur and setting the sands a-shimmer with its heat, and knew that down there somewhere in a lava cavern where red imps leaped and cavorted, ‘cousin’ Orbiquita kept her stony vigil, all cased in a sort of Curious Concretion of her own. He suspected she’d know very little of Black Yoppaloth, but probably a good deal about a certain Hrossak.
Still and all, however much or little she knew, it would all keep until morning. And so Teh Atht formed a Warm Web about himself and flying carpet both, and lay him down to sleep a genuine sleep. And his carpet circling safely on high, through all the long night …
IV
ORBIQUITA – CUSH GEMAL – WEIRD MAGICK!
Orbiquita slept and nightmared. Nothing strange in a human being tossing in the throes of fever-dreams, conjuring monsters from subconscious mind – but weird indeed for a monster to conjure human beings! She dreamed of Tarra Khash (as she’d been wont to do a great deal recently), a Hrossak in trouble. And now he was brought back fresh to mind by Teh Atht’s urgent, whispered inquiry:
‘Orbiquita, are you awake? Wake up, cousin, for I wish to speak with you about a man called Tarra Khash.’
The wizard had slept late, almost till noon. Then, starting awake, he’d remembered his reason for being here and mouthed a simple spell of Self-Contained Coolness. And all enveloped in a bubble of sweet air, he’d flown his carpet almost vertically into volcanic vent and descended to lamia lair.
‘Oh, Tarra, Tarra!’ Orbiquita moaned her brimstone passion. And she writhed somewhat in her cocoon of lava.
Teh Atht drew back a little, looked nervously all about. This was after all a forbidden place, and he risked much in coming here. He had his spells, his various protections, of course; but so did lamias, along with awesome armaments, and few as powerful as the Lamia Orbiquita. Forbidden and forbidding, this lava cavern, aye, for it was the inner sanctum of the entire Sisterhood: their secret Place of Places, their ‘holy’ place, if that word had meaning at all to such as them. Teh Atht’s eyes scanned what to him was a veritable scene from hell: