by Brian Lumley
Activating the orb, he commanded: ‘Seek out the Hrossak and let me see him – for an instant only!’ Then he shielded his eyes and advised Orbiquita to do the same.
The crystal ball’s screen opened, then closed at once. But not before the maiden and mage had seen Tarra seated by lantern’s gleam on the flat, walled roof of a tavern, where an obese, worried-looking Yhemni proprietor served him booze before shuffling back to a low bar. Other than these two, however, tradesman and customer, the place had seemed very empty and lonely.
‘There!’ said Teh Atht, nodding. ‘In Shad, as I foretold. Alive and well, it would seem. Meanwhile the evening turns to night, and there are far more important things to—’
He paused and his eyes grew very round. And in that moment all became clear to him, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place and locking there, so that the white mage of Klühn could see all at a glance. Before…everything had seemed coincidental, but now at last the final connection was made.
The astrologarium had told him that the world was to end, that tonight the stars would stand in strange conjunction, when the Ultimate Forces of Evil would stride forth to claim their sovereignty. This much he had known, but not the mechanics of the thing. Now he knew all, knew how they would breach those dimensional gates which so long had held them at bay. Black Yoppaloth was in their service, and held the keys to their immemorial prisons. Tonight, in his arena of death, the necromancer was going to let them out, and let them in to the comparatively sane and ordered world of men! And nothing, no one, no man strong enough to stand in Yoppaloth’s way. Unless …Tarra Khash?
Out of darkness, light at the end of a tunnel. But a very faint light, holding little of promise as yet. Still, a little hope is better than no hope at all.
Teh Atht turned from the contemplation of his now quiescent shewstone, said: ‘Orbiqu—?’
She was no longer there!
From above came a faint whirring of wings, the harsh tones of barely female voices in seeming argument, a hot waft of sulphur and hell’s own vapours. Teh Atht, for all that he was old and tired, ran from the room of the astrologarium and took the stone stairs three at a time. Lurching out onto the topmost balcony, he saw that he was too late, saw the lamia flock distantly limned against the sky where the indigo horizon met the black of space.
Orbiquita’s second boon had been granted: to be with the man she loved on this one last night of all nights! By the light of the stars, and of Gleeth, whose rim now showed rising over the mountains, the creatures she had called her sisters winged her south for Shadarabar!
On the roof of Na-dom, Amyr Arn turned the bleak bronze discs of his eyes toward Gleeth, whose rim was up over the edge of the world. Bronze those eyes of his, aye, where they should be golden, and bleak too his frame of mind. Suhm-yi senses, which numbered in excess of Man’s usual five, had warned him that things were far from right in the Primal Land. And not alone for Tarra Khash, though certainly he were the focus.
The stars, reflected in the Crater Sea far below, seemed somehow to peep and leer in a manner strange and ominous, and an unseasonably chill wind had blown all day from the south-east, which by rights should have been a warm breeze. And these things, plus the leaden weight of his own heart within him, told the silver-skinned Suhm-yi male that much was amiss. Worse, instincts keen as a knife had connected these omens inextricably to the plight of Tarra Khash, whom Amyr Arn loved as a brother.
And so he’d come up again to Na-dom’s peak, that jagged fang beloved of the gods, to call upon Gleeth for his aid and implore the benevolent old moon-god to do whatever was in his power to do for a Hrossak in peril far away in distant Shad. And now Gleeth was rising, fat-bodied and blunt-horned, and there was something of strength in him where he cleared the rim of the horizon and sailed for the sky. Now Amyr could make his obeisances, commence his prayers and beg of Gleeth his favours. But as to whether the moon-god (traditionally deaf and blind) would see or hear him, that was a different matter …
The same moon shone at a shallow slant down upon barbarically splendid Shad, where now the taverns and dwellings were beginning to empty as a silent populace made its teeming way through the streets toward Black Yoppaloth’s palace at jungle’s fringe. All of marble, copper, gold, ivory and ironwood, Shad’s domes and spires, roofs and facades caught and gave back the moon’s glints; likewise the white, often sharply pointed teeth of Shad’s people, and their golden bangles, earrings and other trinkets – and the sweat on their shiny-black trembling faces. Aye, for their terror was also reflected, and not alone by moon and starlight. No, for another source of illumination lit Shad this night, the alien aerial beacon which called the people to Black Yoppaloth’s nightmare games.
Tarra Khash saw this malevolent manifestation from across the city – this weird wheeling of a corkscrew cloud, alive with coiling green serpents of fire, whose funnel stem went down to Yoppaloth’s palace as if tethered there – and tossed back his fiery Yhemni drink at a single gulp. For the hellish twister over Shad seemed full of pent power, crouching on high like some silent beast, only waiting its chance to roar out loud and spring down upon the city. The clouds at its rim rolled and boiled and seethed with that now familiar phosphorescent emerald bile, and its corkscrew coil had origin in the palace whose ziggurat tiers rose square, dark and menacing across a night-gleaming panorama of vine-clad spires, domes and turrets.
The Hrossak had seen much the same sort of display before one time in Klühn, and knew that it was not of Nature’s doing. Nothing of good clean earth, air, fire and water this, but born of magicks beyond the mundane mind of man to conceive; and Tarra could not help but shudder as he called for another drink.
That time in Klühn, not so very long ago: yes, it had been much like this, and yet different. Then he’d had Amyr Arn of the Suhm-yi at his side, and a positive mission in mind, with at least a chance of success. But now? What could one man, alone in a strange heathen land, hope to achieve against this? Attempting to brave the terrors of that palace would put him in jeopardy not only of his life but his immortal soul! If he could find his way to the arena of death, and if no one stopped him along the way – what then?
Tarra cursed a conscience which would not let him be to die in peace or pieces but kept prodding his all too vivid memory. The look on Loomar’s face when the ships had docked in Shad’s harbour this morning and the slaves – Loomar Nindiss included, and his sister, Jezza – were led away through the leering, jeering black throng. The astonishment of Northmen and rogue Hrossaks alike as they, too, had found themselves chained and dragged cursing from the dockside toward the ziggurat palace.
And what of those poor lads and lasses now? – the slaves at least, if not the betrayed mercenaries? But Tarra Khash, he’d been set free, to go his way and live whatever remained of his or anyone else’s life this day. And now that day was evening, and soon it would be blackest night. The last night …
Galvanized, Tarra stood up so quickly he banged his knees, clouted the table with a fist hard as horn, gritted his teeth, scowled and sat down again. What? Challenge Yoppaloth on his own ground, in his own palace and on his terms – and hope to win? And if he won – why, even then he’d lose! – become heir to all the horror of a thousand-year nightmare, as the Old Ones fashioned him in his turn as their gateway to chaos and hell on earth! So perhaps Shad’s necromantic master was right: sit back and do nothing, and let the world go to blazes in one last mad catastrophic awakening of ancient evil.
But…the madman Yoppaloth had taken his sword, and no man had ever stolen from Tarra Khash. Not and kept what he’d taken. And if this really was the last night, well wouldn’t the risk be worth it? Wouldn’t anything be worth it? Yes, it would – but first he’d put another drink away.
‘Coward!’ Teh Atht said it out loud for what must be the tenth time; said it to himself, for there was no one else to hear him. Even hopper and flitter, sensing the doom hanging in the air, had gone off on their own to hide. As for the wizard
’s third familiar, the entirely liquid one: he was in the astrologarium even now, blindly smoothing the way for the world’s slippery slide to hell.
And again, for the last time: ‘Coward!’ cried Teh Atht – but coward no longer – and he strode with great purpose and determination to the table where rested his shewstone. For he’d come to the same inescapable conclusion as Tarra Khash himself: since the end was nigh, what use to hide from it? Orbiquita, no longer lamia but soft and fragile human female, had gone in search of her Hrossak, had begged her sisters to fly her direct into the jaws of death; and Amyr Arn, if he’d had his way, would have long since beaten her to it. So what was lacking in the white wizard of Klühn, who at the flick of a wrist could command more sheer power than both of these might muster in their entire lifetimes?
Nothing was lacking in him, except he’d been old and afraid. Well, he couldn’t make himself young again, but fear was simply a state of mind, which the mind recognized in degrees. To have been afraid of what might happen to himself had been one thing, but his fear of what would happen if he took no action was far greater. With that resolution made, now he would see what could be done, would do what must be done.
‘The Hrossak!’ he cried, activating his shewstone. ‘Let me see him. Let me know his circumstances. Let me at least try to make amends for my failures, while still there’s time.’
The orb’s opaque screen cleared: Tarra Khash sat as before at a wooden table on the flat, open roof of a tavern where it looked out across a square, out across Shad itself. Behind the Hrossak the sky was fantastically patterned, where green lightnings leaped and coruscated along the undersides of madly gyrating clouds. And seeing that vast aerial confusion of forces, Teh Atht knew he’d been right to seek Tarra out and attempt some sort of intervention. For certainly this was the portal which the Old Ones would use to gain entry into this sphere.
But first things first: now he must discover what Tarra had learned, if anything, of the man or monster he’d travelled with all these days and nights. Metempsychosis would be the answer, not a mode the wizard liked greatly (for fear of getting stuck in someone else’s body) but he’d committed himself, and no turning back now. First he must take simple precautions – against the Yhemni taverner doing damage when he discovered himself transposed – and then he’d be on his way.
He clambered onto the table with the shewstone and spelled an Admirable Adhesion onto the floor all about, which at once turned soft and gummy. That should do the trick! Now for the transmigration, a more complicated magick far, which would take some little time in the fixing. Teh Atht concentrated, peered deep into the crystal ball, fixed the lumbering Yhemni with his eyes where he approached Tarra’s table with another drink, and—
‘If you want more drink, order now,’ the fat black’s guttural jungle tones startled Tarra back to reality, or maybe back from the alcoholic pit he’d been pursuing for much of the day. Indeed, he’d been drinking almost unabated since Black Yoppaloth had gone off with his captives and left him standing alone on the dockside; it had seemed a very logical thing to do.
Several things had seemed logical, on what was scheduled to be the world’s last day. Bedding a woman or three, starting a fight, getting roaring drunk. But while Tarra made no racial discrimination, he’d known Shad’s beauties wouldn’t appeal to him; no woman did these days, not since he’d accepted the kiss of a certain lamia. As for brawling: Yoppaloth had decreed that no one harm him, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t throw him in chains! Which had left only getting drunk, something he was passably good at. But not this time; for, try as he might, and despite all the liquors which had scalded his throat and innards, he’d somehow stayed at least relatively sober.
‘Order now?’ he repeated the taverner. ‘Why, are you going somewhere?’
The other grinned a wobbly, sickly grin, showing teeth filed to fine points. ‘Yes I am,’ he nodded. ‘Into the jungle and find a place to hide! Until tomorrow. The jungle, aye, where there are only beasts to worry about, shelter for the thousands who have sense enough to stay away from the master’s palace.’
‘What do you fear?’ Tarra asked him.
‘Death!’ said the other at once. ‘The shrieking madness of Yoppaloth’s arena! The corpses and hybrid monsters which he pits against his gladiators!’
Tarra scowled. ‘With your size and weight and – teeth! You, an eater of men, afraid?’
The other scowled back. ‘I’ll eat men, when I can get ’em,’ he answered. ‘But Yoppaloth eats souls! And the slaves aren’t the only ones who fight in his arena; if he runs out of captives, there’s always plenty more meat amongst the onlookers.’
‘What’s to stop me going into the palace?’ Tarra questioned.
‘Nothing,’ the Yhemni cannibal answered. ‘The more the better! Why, with luck you may even come out again!’
Tarra nodded. ‘Except he’s forbidden me to go.’
‘He? Who? Black Yoppaloth?’ The black’s eyes stood out in his head. ‘Then you’re mad to even think of it – and I’m mad to stand here talking to you!’ He began to turn away. ‘I wish you luck, Hrossak, and—’ And he paused, almost as if frozen there, half turned away.
Among all the strangeness, Tarra sensed a weird addition. Slowly the Yhemni turned back to face him; his fat black lips opened, spoke – and Tarra gasped! Gone now the man’s untutored jungle slur and mode of expression, his gurgled formation of unfamiliar words. And in its place – the voice of a scholar! Oh, the voice was the same, but the way it was used, and what it said:
‘Tarra Khash, you don’t know me but I know you well enow.’ The huge man seated himself in a chair opposite, stared at Tarra through eyes which had lost all their sloth. ‘Now listen, you’re a strong man and can stand any shocks I throw you, and so I’ll name names and then you’ll know I speak the truth. Do you understand? If so close your mouth and nod.’
Tarra had been gaping. Hardly knowing why he obeyed, nevertheless he did. And the fat, black, strangely altered Yhemni taverner nodded in his turn and rapidly spoke these words:
‘Stumpy Adz, Amyr Arn, Ahorra Izz, Orbiquita! There, and now you know that I know you. Now listen and I’ll tell you a stranger thing: I am not the Yhemni taverner you take me for. Oh, I inhabit his body, for the moment, but my mind is the mind of another. Or rather, his is.’
Tarra’s jaw had fallen open again.
‘You remember on that island where I wrecked your ship, and turned Yoppaloth to stone so that he’d sink?’ The black’s voice was urgent now. ‘Well, do you remember – when Cush Gemal, or more properly Black Yoppaloth, hurled a bolt of green fire into the sky? He hurled it at me! I was the wizard who scried on him that time, and did my best – or what I thought was my best – to destroy him. Close your mouth.’
Tarra snapped his jaws shut again, shook his head to clear it – both of alcoholic fumes and of madly whirling thoughts. And at last he found words of his own to speak. ‘If you’re not the man I see before me, then who are you?’
‘Teh Atht,’ the other replied. ‘White wizard of Klühn. And right now this fellow’s mind is in my body in my manse in that city. I swapped places with him, d’you see, in order to speak to you. Now listen, if we’re to defeat Black Yoppaloth and keep them out who he’d let in, there are things I need to know. First off: I notice you’re not wearing your sword. Does he still have it?’
Tarra nodded.
‘That’s bad. You know that blade’s a Suhm-yi Sword of Power?’
Again Tarra’s nod.
‘But does Yoppaloth know it?’
‘Not from my lips, no.’
The black man sighed his relief. ‘Well, that’s one point in your favour, anyway.’
‘In my favour?’ Tarra frowned. ‘How do you mean?’
The other continued as if he hadn’t heard him: ‘But it’s strange that with magick such as his…I mean, I’d have sworn he’d immediately recognize such a sword.’
‘Magick?’ the Hrossak was coming t
o grips with the situation. ‘Such as Yoppaloth’s? Huh! He has no magick! Not of his own making. He’s protected by the Old Ones, that’s all.’ And again: ‘Huh! – that’s all, indeed! – and by his own protections, which with their permission he’s gathered over the years. But harmful magick to command? He has none. He can deflect, turn back another’s spell upon the sender, use what powers the Old Ones may lend him – and that’s all. They’ve taught him a little necromancy, too, and the making and mating of hybrid creatures for his arena, but that’s the lot. And now? Why, now I fancy he’s little more than a dangerous madman – a madman with the destiny of the whole world in his hands, yes – but no more a sorcerer than I am!’
Teh Atht’s black host’s turn to gape. And after a moment: ‘That might explain a great deal,’ he whispered. ‘For instance: I had expected him to seek me out when he discovered how I spied on him, but he did nothing except threaten.’
‘He wouldn’t know where to begin,’ said Tarra.
‘But he did hurl a bolt at me, which could have caused me great harm!’
‘Power of the Old Ones,’ the Hrossak insisted. ‘The same green fires which twist and writhe in the maelstrom over the palace even now. Look, see for yourself.’ And he turned where he sat and pointed at the sky over Shad. ‘He uses that power occasionally, when he has to, but it depletes him mightily, and then like a vampire he draws on the strength of others to fill himself up again.’
‘But it’s recorded that upon a time he sent onyx automatons against the wizard Exior K’mool!’ Teh Atht protested.
‘The Old Ones may well have,’ Tarra countered, ‘on his behalf, but not Yoppaloth himself. No, for if he has any magick at all, it’s only—’