by Chris Turner
Risgan gave an uneasy glance at the masonry. True enough, they were indeed eroded. He flourished a hand to the way ahead and the companions cantered forth with no lack of misgivings.
Down the stony trail they clopped and as Risgan peered critically through the pillars, cynical of Balael’s rendering of Wozganon’s ghoulmen, he wondered anew about the terrors of ghoulmen and his choice in coming to these lands, but he saw nothing... only miles of emptiness, withered grass, low sand dunes, rising heat waves. He thought to spy at the edge of his vision a flicker of motion, perhaps a two-toed sloth or a doddering aardvark or some other misshapen creature; nonetheless, when he squinted back, Risgan could detect no further movement in the glare. Thinking nothing of the sighting, he chuckled to himself and gave himself a chiding slap.
After miles of winding roadway, Moeze grew impatient and thought to test the scope of the legend. The urge, if only a call of nature, seemed artlessly sacrilegious to relieve himself upon the once-carefully hewn stone path, but with caution, he dismounted his Ayachi turlyn and took refuge in the slay bush at the foot of miniature dunes petering out in small ranks. He hoped that his absence would not be noticed. Squatting noiselessly, urging his bowels to cooperate, he noted nothing untoward and the magician became reassured. Kahel, happening to spy his stooping form, steered his own mount brazenly off the path and postured out in the open with sneering contempt. “Look, you fools! Our magician dallies in the desert and I too ride outside of the causeway and remain unmolested. Ghoulmen? Bah. There are none.” The archer turned his where-back in a disdainful circle and gave a bark of vindication. Ucyglix the didor tracker, normally a placid man, thought to venture out in the plain if only to spite the oppressive hold the legend of the ghoulmen had on his people. He fingered the necklace of the ghoulman’s tooth, still feeling obeisant to the customs and tribal superstitions of his folk. He clambered over the crumbled circles of stone, ambling jauntily as if deliberately trying to attract any number of ghouls. “I too, will test out this theory!” he emphasized boldly.
Risgan hissed his concern and Balael bawled wincing entreaties for the adventurers to return. Ucyglix did not heed the warning, nor Kahel nor Moeze who laughed at him, and engaged in casual conversation.
Immediately from all directions, came teams of ghoulmen: by the dozen, groaning, reaching out for flesh, with bare, withered arms.
Moeze leaped back in panic. He saw the horde streaming from the neighbouring dunes but the ghoulmen encircled him in a tight ring. The magician was cornered from all angles! He sought to blind the approach of his foes. But the flash of his silver blind-disc seemed useless.
The creatures merely blinked, shambled closer in numbers, immune to whatever pseudo-magic the magician offered.
The magician cried out in woe. His terror-stricken face was a testament that the quasi-dead had no limitations like those of living men and that he had been a fool.
Ucyglix was surrounded on all sides and hauled away by reaching arms and tearing teeth. Behind the hillside, glopping sounds and tearing of limbs hinted that significant feasting went on. Kahel hacked with a barbaric passion at the horde that came in ever increasing numbers. The half-men who reached for his legs were cut to ribbons.
Risgan was appalled by the bloodshed. He rode out headstrong to club at the marauders. Balael, Hape and Jurna watched in quivering fascination as Risgan lay low the fiends with bloody swings. The retriever, recalling the words of the medicine mage, resorted to shaking the ceremonial rattle, which instantly pitched the fiends into a frenzy. They reared their heads, held ears, ran amok, groaned in piteous anguish.
The others escaped back behind the shelter of columns, all save Ucyglix, drawing thankful rasping breaths, grateful to be alive. Moeze was riddled with tooth bites and finger-nail clawings and sank to the flagstones, a limp, blood-dripping, ashen-faced mass, only to be consoled by Balael.
“Will he become a ghoul?” Risgan inquired, aghast.
“Contrary to contemporary ghoulmen lore, a human does not become a ghoulman by blood contact alone,” the scout assured him. “These creatures merely feed on men’s flesh to the misfortune of their victims.”
Moeze loosed a forlorn whimper. Kahel, blinking unsympathetically, grunted and cursed Moeze for his impulsive wandering. “How do these fiends keep up their foul race then?”
“’Tis not known.”
The admission did nothing to comfort Moeze, who sank back in a flaccid heap of cuts and contusions.
Risgan chastised Kahel in turn for his recklessness. “Neither should you have ridden off the trail. The two of you were like red flags.” The mounts were calmed and the unnerved troupe gathered their wits together. It was with eerie reservation that they took up their canter along the mysterious pathway and remembering Ucyglix’s woebegone screams, none would stray from the path.
* * *
The incident was put behind them. After a time, the pillars dwindled to foot high stubs. The realm of Vhaud had come to an end.
Moeze had marginally recovered from his attack and all cast glances from left to right and could see only endless tracks of desert. Sage brush and battered stone abounded. The path had deserted them.
“So, where is Lim-Lalyn then?” demanded Kahel.
Balael made a small grimace. “My calculations suggest it should be right over there by that cactus grove.” He lifted a gnarled finger to the sagebrush and the rolling emptiness.
“And yet it isn’t,” pointed out Jurna.
Kahel croaked, “I see only dust, desert man—slay bush and a few lethargic sand lizards.”
“Nay, not a few, but many,” observed Jurna.
“It was never supposed to be like this,” muttered Balael, as if to no one in particular.
“You have never been there?” roared Risgan. He rode in, staring the guide down.
“Not in any specific sense.”
“You assured me!” the relic hunter cried. “You said that you had visited these bedevilled ruins, seen them with your own eyes.”
Balael fluttered fingers. “I may have mentioned something to the effect under the influence of methrin.”
“You fool!” Risgan reached up a fist to clutch his hair with fury. “Lying toad! And I have been a credulous fool.”
“Perhaps, but no need for outbursts or violent expostulations,” advised Balael in a cool voice.
Hape breathed out a gloomy moan. “Ah, our only hope of attaining Lim-Lalyn now seems to be to give ourselves over to lady luck.”
Kahel reached over to cuff him.
“Not to fear!” assured Moeze. “I plan to uncover magic items in the mounds and hidden trunks and baskets left by the magicians.” He gave a confident sign. “This is my style, to eke out items galore on the road to success.”
Kahel gave a contemptuous sneer. “This is your hope, magician, but you’ll only find death and dry rubble here.” The archer’s scathing tone was rich with spite.
Risgan called order to the dialogue and chided Kahel for his faithless pessimism. “Kahel, I dislike your gloomy convictions. We must head west and north—to the ruins of Lim-Lalyn!”
Hape crowed, “The treasure is calling our names!”
Kahel gave a sour curse. “Bunch of idiots.” Dissension was ripe amongst the relic hunters and Risgan was no fool to deny it.
* * *
The wayfarers wandered sombrely through a region of fluted hills and low barrows. The earthy mounds supported hordes of odd slabs which seemed to have been carved into designs at one time, but which could not be ascertained as a result of erosion and effacings of time.
A poignant silence overcame the company. If ghoulmen roamed the barren wastes then it was beyond their knowledge. Balael, several times, thought to detect several eyes peering at them from behind the strange carved boulders, perhaps also low moans, but found nothing conclusive. He began to believe that the land was haunted.
* * *
On the fifth day, after the last peg-columns had fallen leagues
behind them, the company sat sprawled about a campfire at the foot of a huge semicircle of gigantic statues. Around the perimeter, many rounded boulders formed a natural ring. The didor and pack-beasts stood tethered nearby, munching sand grass and swishing their tails in the last glowering rays of dusk. The seven daunting megarets, shaped in the design of huge priest-kings, arched thrice as high as any of them and showed trim, austere figures wearing conical hats, tight robes and low triangular beards. The effigies were a source of mystery for the company and Risgan frowned anew at the sight of them. The guardians stood ancient and sombre, bleak as on the day they were erected. The relic hunters had gathered only a modest arrangement of artifacts these five last days. Predictably, spirits were low. They had lost their way at a half way point, and the site of Lim-Lalyn seemed unreachable. Perhaps only a fable?
Jurna and Kahel toyed idly with a large ornamental awl of isk horn while Hape juggled with two rough cut jewels from a lost imperial necklace of Esmons II. Moeze stared fixedly at an authentic fire stick of unknown origin, an ancient shaman perhaps, wondering how it could be used.
Kahel poked his sword amongst the base of the middle megarets and discovered a hidden stair leading down to some burrow, or tomb. He called the others over. Taking torches, the group took pains to investigate. Cautiously they crept down a dust-caked stairwell into a tunnel where they came into an underground chamber. Possibly it was an altar room, which harboured riches indeed, for seven statues, each higher than a man, mimicked the circle of megarets above, in breadth and configuration.
Fantastic carvings lay inscribed on the walls behind the figures. Broken masonry cluttered the gloomy chamber. At the feet of the foremost statue lay a garland of pure gold which Risgan saw contained the most precise arrangement of carving, leaf, laurel and twig. Obviously it was an item of worth. Doubtless the garland had roosted on the crown of this proud statue for an age—a rare haul!—but had been uprooted, fallen, or ripped off by thieves who thought to despoil the tomb in ancient days.
He was about to appropriate it but a sudden impulse stayed his hand. There hung an eerie waft about this place which caused a wary man to pause. In reverence, Risgan lifted the treasure back up on the top of the solemn statue and bent his head in an attitude of prayer. The other retrievers thought the act mad. Either he had fallen under the spell of the chamber’s mystique, or he was addled himself. But they made no move to seize the garland or transport it to the night air above, likely bitten by a similar sentiment. The other statues were either beheaded, or missing limbs; doubtless, vandalized. This idol with the missing garland reached out against all odds to survive the onslaughts of time—likewise the plunder and greed of men. Thinking nothing of their intrusion and self-serving intent, Risgan was the last to emerge topside from the tomb.
Under a night sky of a thousand stars, the company re-stoked their fire and told tall tales, roasting the desert fowl that Kahel had felled with one of his lucky arrows.
“We must exercise caution,” murmured Risgan sagely. “Peculiar things walk the desert. This is the realm of the ghoulmen and these are the domains of the Zanthian kings.”
“The old gods dwell here,” whispered Moeze. “I can feel them.”
“You think?” growled Kahel. “I don’t give an ounce of credence to any animated spirits or old gods.”
“Fool, you forget Afrid’s creature Hammish then,” scoffed Jurna.
Kahel uttered a malicious grunt. “A moot point. Hammish was different, some sort of thaumaturgic puppet.”
“I have never walked the steppes, though I am an experienced journeyman,” observed Jurna. “And never will I boast of agnosticism.”
Risgan mused, “The legends did seem to warn of some mystic danger around the configuration of semicircles. Walking juggernauts, or ‘Bisbis, the unholy one’, if I remember correctly. Both entities were mentioned emphatically in the Vendarian texts.”
Hape gave a grim shudder. “The information does not strike gladness into my heart!”
Risgan gave a dry laugh. “Lim-Lalyn is our only port of call, Hape. And to discover the ark of treasure. We must make do with what we have. I bid everyone to be wary! We have not come this far to be repelled.”
They drank the last of the methrin and stared fixedly into the dancing flames. Tongues gradually gave over to talk of the old gods.
One of the megarets suddenly lifted a finger, much to the dismay of Jurna.
“That hand just lifted,” he croaked.
“You’re daft,” cried Kahel.
“I say it did,” he protested.
“I say it didn’t. You’re drunk.” Kahel gave him a mocking cuff. “Too much poking about in the dark, Journeyman, has got you seeing spooks now.”
Jurna hissed out a breath; he raised a fist at the statue, then began poking about the base. He peered up at the solemn figure, flinching. He ensured that it was real by kicking the stone. He resumed his seat and the rogues drank and quarrelled in sullen camaraderie.
After a time, Jurna leaped to his feet again, thrusting out a quivering finger. “There! The megaret blinked an eye.”
Kahel sat looking at him in awe. The others saw nothing: only silent limbs of stone.
“The eye looks open to me,” remarked Risgan.
“The eye was partially open, and then it closed,” asserted Jurna. He blew out his cheeks in exasperation, in so doing beseeched Risgan for support.
There was a strained silence. In the midst of drunken quibbling, came a sudden horrible screech. For an instant, they all stood immobilized, realizing only too late that their jaunty fire had attracted a bane.
A gigantic black-winged isk swooped down, eyes gleaming in the crackling flames. The monster perched on the shoulder of the foremost statue—the one that had blinked—it was a creature larger than any they had seen in Melfrum’s menagerie, and its crooked yellow eyes stared down at them with mocking, and bird-like intensity. The vulture-ish beak dripped with vile fluids, and the baldish head was utterly hideous.
The companions froze, too dazed to move. Spells and weapons were too late to brandish.
The monster surveyed the lounging men with a clucking delight. “Well, well! What do we have here?” it rasped. “An impling gathering! You didn’t invite old Gualk? Unfairness to the point of rudeness! Before I dine, do you have any last requests?”
Risgan jumped to his feet. “Now hold on a minute! How is it that isks can talk?” His breath was a shallow whisper in his chest.
The bird croaked out a laugh. “We guardians of the desert are cannier than you might think. The thauma-mage Ai-woo, gave us nomadic isks the power of speech. Pity that the cretin refused to cater to our whims, so we were forced to feed on him.”
“The action seems unjustified,” observed Risgan.
“Ostensibly, but we are a fractious breed, us isks, given to mercuriality of mind, as you doubtless know.”
Risgan spoke in cautious tones, “We are neither ‘Ai-woo’, nor possessing any desire of being eaten, so let us abandon this line of inquiry. We have meat aplenty, as you can see on our spit, which you are welcome to, the tender fowl which we fry at this moment.”
“The morsels,” croaked the bird wrathfully, “are birdlings and my menu does not include ‘fowl’.”
“Understandably, and the suggestion, which came on impulse, was given in jest.”
The isk seemed ruffled by the lie and its beak parted in rancour.
Jurna scrambled for his slingshot. He essayed a bolt. Kahel reached for arrows, intending to score. But the arrows deflected off its tough hide, likewise the stones, the thing’s hide being twice the thickness of any normal isk’s.
Moeze loosed the spell of the stink tube. But the creature merely blinked twice and flicked out a devious tongue from a slavering beak. “No magician, I think not.” With a downward swat of black wing, it sent Moeze sprawling into the fire. Moeze sprang out like a pixie, brushing himself off of flames.
From the sky, came two other of the bir
d’s cronies perching on the arms of the adjacent megarets. Each revelled in the sport below, hopeful that their master would indulge them in the inevitable spoils.
Risgan realized that flight was impossible. He gave a confident gesture of hand. “I warn you, Isk. We are fierce warriors and magicians.” He hoisted the rattle. “Let you and your crew find amusement elsewhere—or pay the penalty.” The others had quietly attempted to back away and the two isks had fluttered down casually to block their exits between the boulders. Risgan continued in defiance, “I normally am partial to animals but I formally forbid you to hinder our welfare. Behold the sacred sign of this Besimeeth cross! Begone! May you rot in the three pits of Douran’s hell!” Risgan crafted the sign as Ampfu’s medicine mage had shown them in a moment of magnanimity.
The isk merely laughed and screeched at the top of its lungs and hopped down off its perch. It thudded ominously by the fire, a huge juggernaut, a movement which caused the remaining didor to break its tethers and bolt.
The didor found its bulk between the isk and the relic hunter, and was seized in the grotesque beak.
The horned bill snapped hard. The didor was flung far out into the wastes to land in a mangled heap. The iskish terror hopped forward. It faced Risgan, eyes burning like coals, blinking in the merciless way that those feral beasts have of doing and enjoying. Risgan almost keeled over with the stench of its breath.
“Hear me now, manling! Me and my kind roamed these wastes before you were half monkeys in men’s bodies.” The bird ruffled its feathers to create a rank wind. “’Tis you who are out of place here—a blemish on these ancient lands. ’Tis you who disturb bones that have no right to be disturbed.”
Risgan grudgingly felt an essence of truth to the assertion. He gave a mild wave. “Things stand as they are.” He blew a pinch of purple gibbeth powder into the beast’s face, waiting for a chance to strike at it with the club, but the bird merely shook its beak and cawed in mockery. “I am too old for that gambit, halfwit. Your smouldering magician has discovered that already. I perceive you running out of schemes... now, time to meet Douran.” With its horrid beak, it lunged out for a final reckoning.