“Those would be perfect.”
“Suaxus!” snapped Hunnar. The squire nodded and disappeared down the hatchway.
“What do you think, young feller me-lad?”
“Well, actually,” replied Ethan, who'd listened to the progress of the conversation with the fascination of a bird watching the approach of a king snake, “I've always been kind of afraid of heights and—”
“Nonsense, lad, nonsense! All in your mind. Just don't look down ... course, climbing at night'll be a little rough, but there's nothing to it, what?”
“Oh sure.”
September looked at them all intently. “Now, we'll stop at the last bend in the stairway, just out of sight of the monastery entrance. If we're lucky they'll still be occupied with Hunnar's fire. They won't be looking for anyone to be dropping in on 'em from above. I'll plant the first grapple...”
Chapter Fourteen
The room wasn't very large, and the members of the Brotherhood filled it to capacity. Each pressed close upon the other for a better look at the minions of the Dark One. Real infidels were rarely available for purging and none among the brotherhood wanted to miss the infrequent, interesting ceremonies.
Light from lamps and lanterns surrounding the curved circular room threw dancing shadows against the dome. High braziers were filled with burning oil and wood. The stars shone brightly through the round skylight.
Three bronze basins with sloping bottoms flashed green-gold on the bare floor. Each contained a single body with head set higher than feet. Hellespont du Kane was the tallest of the three and his head did not reach the top of tile basin. Like the others he was tightly bound with his hands fixed to his sides.
Milliken Williams occupied the basin to his right, with Colette to his left. She'd managed to break the bonds on her feet early and leave a number of very sore brothers in her wake, but to no avail.
The brothers had slowly keen filling the basins with water, a bucket at a time, brought in from the melding room.
Since the room was not heated, the cold night air of Tran-ky-ky was gradually freezing each successive dose of water. The captives were now encased up to the shoulders in a jacket of diamond-clear ice.
Colette continued to rain verbal destruction on the gathering in several languages, none of which the brothers understood. A small chorus of same continued to moan the same unmelodic drone they'd sung since the water-pouring had begun. Only their superb survival suits had kept the captives from serious frostbite thus far — and these wouldn't help when the ice rose over their heads.
Colette looked from her father, motionless in both ice and trance, and then up at the watching Brothers.
“We've done nothing to you. Why are you doing this thing?”
The kindly Prior stared amusedly down at her. “Tch! That a servant of the Dark One should have the audacity to ask for mercy.”
“Listen,” she sighed tiredly, giving a little shiver. The cold was beginning to exceed her suit's capacity to withstand it. “We don't even know what your damned Dark One is! If you're moronic enough to believe that we're the disciples of some local devil of yours, I feel sorry for you!”
“No, She, it is I who must be sorry for you,” replied the Prior righteously. “'Tis known to all that The-Place-Where-The-Earth's-Blood-Burns is the home of the Dark One himself. From whatever homeland people come, all know that. 'Twas fortunate that you inadvertently revealed your destination to us, so that we could take proper steps. We are not ignorant peasants here!”
He looked skyward into the night. “And as you shall partake of the Cold that has held our beloved home, lo, these many centuries, so shall the Time of the Final Warming be brought closer!” He looked back at her. “That is our end and goal.”
“Look here.” Williams was feeling the cold more than any of them and now he was having trouble speaking. “If we're minions of this Dark One or not, freezing us isn't going to heat your world.”
“'Tis written in the Great Old Books that for every servant of the Dark One who is returned to the primeval cold, our world shall grow a little warmer, a little softer, a little greener. To this end is the Brotherhood Pledged!”
“Listen,” continued the schoolmaster desperately, “Tran-ky-ky might be made warm and green again. My people know a process called terraforming that could conceivably melt this ice and raise the planetary temperature. But you couldn't adapt if it were to happen in your lifetime. Besides, you'd all drown.”
“You lie most intriguingly, Evil One, but think not to deceive us.”
Two of the Brothers approached. They carried a large bronze kettle between them. Carefully, they distributed its load of water between the three basins. Colette tried to pull herself higher as they poured the ice water into hers, but it brought the water level up to her neck. The pair left for the melting room for another load.
Almost immediately a crust began to form on top of the water. Another few trips and the ice would be over her head. Or maybe the insulation on her suit would give out before that.
“We come openly, as guests, and you receive us with murder,” she said, a little frightened now. Any kind of reasonable, logical argument she could fend aside and handle. But religious fanatics! ... “We needed your help, dammit!”
“We intend to help you,” soothed the Prior. He turned to the shifting, watching mob.
“Brothers! These poor, degenerate minds cry out to us for salvation! Let us pray for them, that their souls may meet in the next plane of existence uncontaminated by illogic and unreason.”
“Let it be so!” hummed the assembled Brotherhood. They joined the uninspired choir in its steady, dissonant drone, the noise broken only by Colette's hysterical sobbing.
There was a sudden, violent crack from above. A deep voice moaned in terrifying, sepulchral tones...
“LET IT BE KNOWN THAT THE DARK ONE PROTECTS HIS OWN!” Rapidly, it added it Terranglo, “COVER YOUR EYES!”
Immediately all the trannish eyes in the room shot upward, while the trio of imprisoned humans bent their heads and squeezed theirs shut tight.
Explosion. Bodies flying. Those left standing made a concerted, panicked dash for the exit, tramping some of the wounded in an unbrotherly haste to escape. Above, the weird voice boomed.
“I AM THE POWER AND THE GLORY OF DARKNESS AND ALL WHO STAND AGAINST ME SHALL BE SLAIN!”
There was another explosion and more of the Brotherhood fell. A lesser crash sounded from above. It was followed by brilliantine tinkling as the skylight was shattered. A cable ladder snaked into the room. Before the bottom had unrolled, Skua September was already halfway down its swaying length. Ethan, Hunnar, and several soldiers followed.
The big man went immediately to the single doorway. He needed Hunnar's help to clear away the bodies.
“Thank Deity for small favors!” he breathed. “It bolts from the inside!” Hunnar threw the latch.
“'Tis not strong, Sir Skua. It will not stand against a determined rush.”
Ethan and the soldiers all had torches strapped to their waists. They were intended to provide light if the Brothers blew out lamps. Now they were put to a different use. A quick thrust into a hanging lantern and they were lit. Then they began the slow, dangerous job of trying to melt the trapped prisoners free.
Ethan was working on one side of the copper basin that held Colette.
“Hurry, please!” she pleaded. “I ... I can't feel my legs anymore.”
“How much time?” September asked Hunnar.
“One cannot say.” The knight stared at the bolted door. “These are not soldiers and do not react as such. Yet it will soon occur to the last of the escapees that we are far from supernatural in shape or form, and some might have recognized us.”
It took four of them to lift each metal coffin. Two tilted the heavy container upward. One at a time, the three prisoners slid free, each still encased in a block of ice. Now the melting could proceed at a decent pace.
“'Tis a difficult decisi
on for them,” Hunnar continued. “If we are truly servitors of the Dark One, as our ability to throw thunder and lightning might suggest, then I would not expect them to attack again at all. But they might consider us to be only mortal servants of the Dark One, deluded mortals, in which case—”
“Shove the Dark One! How much time've we got?”
There was a thump as someone tried the door, then a rattling of the latch. This was quickly followed by a series of heavy bumps, then silence.
“Well, that answers that,” the big man growled. He turned back to the center of the room.
The melting was nearing completion and Williams, Colette, and the motionless senior du Kane were almost free.
“You know,” said Ethan conversationally as he melted away the last of the clinging ice from her ankles, “you'd look absolutely awesome in a martini.”
“I could use one about that size right now,” she replied tightly. “Thank the Devices for these suits!” He started to rub her legs and she didn't protest.
“I'm okay,” she said finally. “Help the teacher.” Ethan looked over at the senior du Kane, who lay still and quiet on the stone floor.
“Your father ... is he...?”
“Watch.” She bent over him and Ethan heard her whisper in his ear. “Free credit...”
A hand twitched, then a leg. Stillness, and then the old man sat up, blinking, and looked up at his daughter. She put a big arm under his left and helped him to his feet.
“Well my dear, are we safe or are we dead?”
“It's still a moot point, father, but we incline to the former.”
He sighed. “Ah well. Pity.” Click. “I was so wondering what kind of flowers they have in the next world.”
“Only flower-souls, I've told you that, father. Come on now, move around a little. That's it.” At Ethan's slack-jawed stare she replied, “Automatic protective trance. He goes into it whenever his system is overloaded. This isn't the first time it's saved his life.”
There was a loud crash and the door shook violently.
“We've overstayed our welcome,” suggested Ethan.
September stood facing the door, watching it silently. He held a small, tightly bound package of vol leather in one hand. It had a short, stubby fuse projecting from it and he nonchalantly tossed it from one hand, to the other, back and forth, back and forth.
“Let's step lively there, folks, what?”
There was another crash and the door bulged inward alarmingly. Williams was being helped through the shattered skylight. Hellespont du Kane was halfway up the ladder and Ethan waited with Colette at the bottom.
“Let's go,” he said finally.
She looked uncertainly at the swaying ladder. “I ... I don't know. I'm not built for this kind of exercise.”
“Would you rather be in that martini? Come on, go. I'll help you.” She started up. He put a hand under her enormous rear — it felt like a cake of sherbet — and tried to give her weight a boost upwards. Then he mounted the ladder close behind. If she fell he didn't know what he could do. While she climbed and grunted, he climbed and prayed. Hunnar was right behind him.
September walked to the bottom of the ladder. The crackle of splintering wood filled the room and the door exploded inward. A mob of howling, robed scholars piled into the entrance. They pulled up short at the sight of September standing calmly under the ladder.
A few carried knives this time, probably appropriated from the monastery kitchens. The Brothers were fast losing their intellectual detachment. September reached out and touched the fuse to a nearby lamp. He looked at it for a moment, then gently tossed it.
It landed at the feet of the unmoving Brothers. September coutinued to watch it with interest. The fuse shrank. Then in one motion he turned, leaped, and was halfway up the ladder before someone in the mob unfroze and threw the first club.
Ethan was peering anxiously down through the broken glass. He extended a desperate hand and Hunnar another. Together they yanked hard and Ethan fell backwards. September came out of the opening, tumbled onto the roof, and was followed by a geyser of dust and pulverized stone.
“Quite a banger,” he murmured, feeling his side where a thrown staff had grazed him. “Glad I saved that one for last.”
For the second time that night Ethan found himself running blindly over rooftops, dodging pillars and buttresses, dropping from level to level toward the stairway. Apparently the Brothers were too disorganized, or demoralized, to offer ready pursuit. Or maybe that last bomb had eliminated the sanctimonious Prior and several of his deputies.
At any rate, they met no opposition in their hectic scramble downwards. They reached the last roof above the stairway without being challenged.
To their left a long black streak extended back into the monastery, a charred wound. The results of Hunnar's covering blaze set earlier that night. A large band of Brothers stood in front of the burnt entrance, armed with the usual clubs and staves.
They were expecting an attack from the front. Clearly no one had brought them the word about the return of the Dark One's other servants. Not very military. Hunnar's soldiers surprised them completely.
There was no pursuit as they started their second dash down the stairway.
“So much for rule by reason and logic,” September grunted. He was breathing heavily. The run down from the monastery had finally tired even him. But now they were safe on board the Slanderscree and there weren't enough Brothers in the world to get them off it again. The big man was staring up at the monastery buildings, faint ghosts against the black crags.
“Well, it performed well enough — within their own tight little precepts,” Ethan countered. Behind him, Ta-hoding was sending the crew aloft, yelling dire threats at imagined slackers.
The Slanderscree began to move out of the harbor. Astern, a quartet of soldiers were ungently dumping the Brothers who'd taken the raft earlier. It was more humane than similar actions that had been performed on Terra ages ago, for there was no water for the captives to drown in.
On the other hand, the ice wasn't especially soft.
The wind blew and the Slanderscree enslaved it, cutting west, then south, to take advantage of the slightest counterbreeze. Ta-hoding didn't miss many.
A week later they saw the first smoke. It blew steadily to the east, black and sooty and well up in the atmosphere. From there Ta-hoding was able to ignore the compass and follow the black line. They made even better time. It was another two days before they had their first glimpse of The-Place-Where-The-Earth's-Blood-Burns, and another two before the base of the giant volcano came into view.
Mottled brown and black, splashed higher up with ice and snow — fourteen kilometers of vertical hell shrouded in ice and rock. It was magnificent, awesome, and a little bit frightening.
“Well, no hallucinations so far,” Ethan mused.
“How,” Colette snapped back, “could you tell the difference?”
Williams voice sounded behind them. “I'd very much like to land.”
Ethan turned. Eer-Meesach was there, too. “Really, Milliken, in light of the past weeks, don't you think...”
A huge paw came down easily on his shoulder. “We did leave without properly fixing the bowsprit, friend Ethan,” said Hunnar. “Nor did the crew receive their promised chance for a rest on shore.”
“You're not afraid the spirits and goblins will object?”
The knight didn't smile. He gazed over the ice at the sky-rubbing cone.
“As a cub I might have been. As a younger man I'd have been uncertain. But the wizards have explained to me what it really is, a thing neither supernatural nor inherently inimical, and I am not afraid.”
They followed the jagged shore southward, searching for a place to put in. Hundreds of meters of broken, tortured rock fell in undisciplined cataracts onto the clear ice. But nowhere did it level off.
Just as they rounded the southern tip of the island-mountain, hitting into the wind again, the plutonic crust a
bruptly gave way to a smooth, level stone beach. Ropy lines of pahoehoe marched gently into the frozen sea.
They tied up half into the wind, still protected by the sheltering bulk of the volcano. Ice-anchors were used this time, set with care and precision under Ta-hoding's experienced watch. Once again the repair crew set about their tasks — for the last time, one hoped.
Considering what they'd gone through the past weeks, though, there were none who blamed the craftsmen for an occasional over-the-shoulder glance. You couldn't be too sure that the ground would not still deliver up yet another fiendish surprise, hey? So the carpenters and sailweavers worked a little slower, a little more observantly.
Rolling blackness. Distant night-stars of plasmoid terror. Vast spaces unmeasureable. False concepts of life and death. The living dark came, a loathsomeness of long licorice tentacles and soul-draining fangs.
It groped for him in the emptiness, reaching, twisting. He ran faster and faster on a sea of gurgling tar, an oil-sky overhead. The ocean grabbed and tugged at him. Down he looked and saw in horror that it wasn't a sea at all. He was running on the back of an amorphous amoeba that humped and shook and laughed.
He tried to jump, but now fat greasy pseudopods held him firm. All about the nightmare, shapes flowed up and around. In the middle of each the faces of things not human chuckled and puckered at him.
Black fronds clutched tighter, enveloping, suffocating. He tried to scream and one of the inky ropes dove down his throat, choking him. They crawled over his eyes, under his ears into his nostrils. Cilia brushed and tickled obscenely.
He couldn't breathe. He coughed, gagged. The thing in his throat was curling into his belly, swelling, filling him with gravid blackness.
The interior of the cabin was dark, too. But it was a comforting, familiar, prosaic dark — not sticky, not malevolent, not full of nightmare shapes. Despite the cold he was sweating profusely and heaving like he'd just finished marathon.
Shaking, he reached for the lamp, then caught himself. His hand paused in mid-air, drew away slowly. No ... no. It was a bad dream. Nothing more. Happens to everyone.
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