She bit her lip, frowning thoughtfully. The ship Wave-skimmer ploughed on through the salt waters of the Outer Sea, sails fat with wind, yards and masts straining to those gusts that hurled its prow through the heaving waves. These same salt winds stirred the long blond hair that hung below the barbarian's shoulder, which he tied behind him during battle, and made him draw his thick cloak tighter to his shoulders. He rode the heaving deck on solidly planted war-boots, a scowl on his face.
There were human undercurrents all about him that he did not like. He did not trust Red Lori, for all that he was half in love with her. There was an attitude the witch-woman seemed to have—of waiting, sniffing at the air, like a wolf on the hunt—that made him itch between his shoulder blades. And Florian, half mad himself with love for the belly-dancer, with hate in his eyes when he thought of Red Lori. Ah, and Cybala? He could not read the dancing girl. What emotion gripped her as she lay in her cabin bunk at night?
“We near our goal, Kothar. Look there!”
“A slim forefinger pointed at the waves. Kothar repressed a cry of surprise. These waters were blue, clear as the crystal-ware of Zoardar. And not so far down in those limpid depths-surely those were gardens, he was seeing? He leaned his weight upon the rail, peering downward.
"Aye, barbarian. The pleasure gardens of Afgorkon—or so the legends say Built upon the side of an ancient mountain that did not sink as completely as did all the rest of this land. Here are his artifacts, his impedimenta, the equipment which enabled him to become the most famous wizard of all.”
His eyes saw marble statues, rows of dead trees, petrified now, with sea coral and swaying anemones where flowing hibiscus. and lovely roshamores were wont to grow upon a time. He made out something that had been a labyrinth of tall hedges, a stone walkway wending in and out of these once-lovely places, part of a colonnaded temple, shattered and long in ruins.
“It is not so deep here,” the witch-woman murmured at his side. "A good diver can fetch to that place and back and bring me what it is I want. Grovdon Dokk. To me!”
And when the captain was at her side, knuckling his brow, "Anchor here! Then send to me your divers,” she ordered.
She paced up and down until two dark Tharians, lean men with their nakedness hidden in breech-clouts and belts that held long knives, stood before her. They had deep chests, powerful muscles. Men such as these earned their living off the coral banks beyond the Tharian sea-strand, diving for sponges and occasionally a wreck or two submerged among the bottom stones.
“I seek a chest of many colors,” Red Lori murmured, “a coffer in which—hermetically sealed—are certain parchments I would have for my own. It has runes worked onto its top, in bright enamels and rust-less metals. You shall know it by its brilliance. It shall draw you as might a lantern lighted below the waves. Fail me not, and two gold bars each shall be your prize.”
The Tharians grinned and went to the opening in the railing where a plank was affixed so they could dive deep. Kothar watched them, his eyes moving from them to the waters that appeared oddly cloudy, murky, where the anchor had been dropped. This cloudiness extended outward, hiding the gardens, the statuary and even the columns of the temple to some forgotten god.
The men dove.
Down they went, until they disappeared in that cloudy stirring of the sea bottom, which swallowed them up as if they had never existed. Red Lori went striding up and down the deck, hammering a fist into her palm in her excitement, but the barbarian never moved, never took his eyes from that strange murkiness that seemed so—menacing.
The water-clock dripped away the minutes. Overhead, the sun moved across the sky. It hid behind a cloud and a chill darkness came upon the ship-deck. Kothar stirred. Was the wind moaning? Rising in its intensity? He shivered and looked at Red Lori, bent above the railing, staring into those deeps with worried eyes.
The captain padded across the deck, his face echoing the anxiety in the witch-woman. “They have not come back, mistress. They are good men, strong divers. They have fought undersea things before. I do not like this.”
"They have been gone too long,” she nodded.
“Shall we up anchor and sail away?”
“No!" The word came out of her in an explosion of breath. Kothar stared hard at Red Lori, seeing tears trickling down her smooth cheeks. There was fright in the green eyes that turned to him, and a desperate appeal for help.
“Kothar! Everything depends on my getting that coffer. Everything! Including your hope to be free of Afgorkon's curse!”
The big barbarian shook himself. All along, he had known he would be called upon to go down into those eerie deeps, as if a corner of his mind had told him so. He and Frostfire, daring the wrath of Afgorkon: This was what it meant when the chips were on the counting table.
He dropped his cloak, worked loose the leather bindings of his mail shirt. Lori came close, red-nailed fingers striving to loosen clasps. Those fingers trembled and shook so that he was forced to push her hands aside, chuckling.
“Those waters will be cold. Have hot rum waiting for me, well buttered,” he grinned, kicking free of his war-boots.
Then he drew Frostfire from its scabbard and vaulted over the rail. He went into the cloudy water, his great chest filled with precious air. The sword dragged him downward until his open eyes caught a blurry glimpse of a ruined marble statue and part of a wall and a stone archway, still standing. Then his bare feet touched bottom.
He must look for brightness, Red Lori had said. The coffer that contained the parchments glowed, she claimed—or so the tale had it. But there was no brilliance here, no hint of any light but that which seeped from the surface. Yet he moved forward, under the arch, eyes darting here and there.
Once, out of the very corner of an eye, he caught a flash of light, but it was blotted out. Yet he swung that way, swam forward toward the tumbled stone blocks of what had been a wall, blue and dim in this sea-bottom world.
And then—
A thing of blackness, ebon and threatening, rose up from those walls, a great jet outline—something bulbous, without shape, unknown and mysterious—and a length of something equally black tugged at his ankle. He fought against it, he lifted Frostfire—slashed.
Frostfire bounced on that rubbery blackness. Another tentacle and another came to wrap around his arms, his torso. Strong were those ebon things twisting about him, like constrictor snakes out of the Oasian jungles. He fought them with his own titanic thews, his muscles bulging, rolling and heaving, trying to slash with his sword-edge, seeking to thrust its sharp point into that rubbery black hide.
Kraken1 The vast beast of the sea deeps that dwelt in sea caverns and the long-forgotten ruins that dot the floor of the Outer Sea. A creature large enough to attack a ship, a being of a hundred thick tentacles each able to shatter the mast of a large ship.
He hung helpless in those things as they drew him between a stone archway, past two tumbled statues, toward a black hole in the side of a crumbled stone wall. There was a light ahead of him by which he could see the titanic bulk of the sea beast.
Its maw gaped wide to swallow him.
Chapter Five
Two big eyes stared unwinkingly at him as the ivory beak of the octopus opened wide. Its squat, vast bulk rested against a stone structure that had been an altar, long, long ago. And on the altar was the coffer. Even with his lungs about to burst from lack of air, with his head reeling, Kothar knew the intertwined enamels, the reddish glow of that rust-less metal.
The tentacles brought him upward toward that open maw.
Kothar struggled; he freed an arm, twisted Frostfire, stabbed. The point did no more than prick one of the bulging eyeballs, but the pain must have been sharp, because the tentacles flailed him sideways, away from the terrible beak.
The Cumberian felt stone at his back, crunching into it. He did not see what it was. Some statue or other, he guessed. His right arm went high, holding Frostfire.
Through the water, he heard the
faint clang of steel on stone. Instantly, his arm felt the shock of that blow, a quivering began in his fingers that went into his wrist and forearm, then upwards to his shoulder. From his shoulder, that queer tingling ran throughout his body.
And—his flesh began to glow!
Blue he was, all radiant blue—and that body brightness added to the strange light of the enameled coffer. A strength such as he had never known came into his flesh. He writhed in the grip of the tentacles, and strangely felt no more the need for air.
He brought Frostfire down in a sweeping arc.
Against the bulbous head of the great Kraken he drove his steel. The edge went into that blubbery substance, slashing deep. Deep! An inky fluid ran out of the cut. Blood? Purple because of his bluely glowing body and the red blood of the Kraken? Kothar did not know, he wrenched his sword free.
He struck again, again!
Far into that mass he lunged his glowing steel. Whatever had happened—thanks to Dwalka! For now he could fight, he could slay. His barbarian muscles rolled as he struck and cut with the edge of Frostfire until at last its point reached deep inside the Kraken's brain.
The tentacles about him loosed to thrash about, striking the stone walls of what had been Afgorkon's necromantic chamber, long centuries ago. The octopus rose upward, seeking to flee this chamber that was its death room. It reached the archway, quivered, fell atop the lintel stone.
“By Dwalka's war hammer!” thought the Cumberian, sagging against the stone altar. "It was a near thing, that.”
His eyes touched the altar, the coffer. From that great strongbox his stare went to the statue behind the altar. It was crudely fashioned, of whitish-blue stone and carven to resemble a man. Perhaps five feet in height, it was little more than a thick stone column with arms and legs cut into its roundness, and a head which was a stone ball set atop the indentations that represented shoulders. It had been that eidolon against which his sword had clanged, filling his body with its eerie power.
The head was faceless. Yet there was a brooding power in the thing, a sense of stone inhabited by something—a god? a demon? a nameless power?—that made the barbarian tense.
This thing had helped him, he told himself. It could not be evil. Yet his barbarian senses shivered as if to the touch of staring eyes. Something, someone, was in that stone and—staring at him.
The water around him was very cold, his blue coloring was fading. He reached for the coffer, gripping it by one of the metal rings set into each end. Coffer in hand, he kicked upward.
He had to swim hard, for the coffer was heavy, and his sword was not so light. He might have made it to the surface quite easily with either the strongbox or the sword, but not with both. Yet enough of that alien strength was in him so that he popped upward into sunlight.
Red Lori leaned across the rail, fifty yards away. At her cry, the longboat was lowered and sailors began to row toward him.
Their hands lifted the coffer onto a thwart. Kothar gripped the moldboard, let himself be towed through the waves toward the ship. The witch-woman herself came to the rail where the plank was fastened, reached down and caught his hand. Flarion was there also, fingers grasping.
He stood on the deck, dripping water. Red Lori handed him a tankard with steaming rum, heavily buttered. He drank deep, draining the mug.
"I almost never came back,” he growled as Flarion placed his cloak about his dripping shoulders. "If it hadn't been for a statue down there, an eidolon without a face—“
"Oh!” gasped Red Lori, clutching his arm. "Was it the gift of Belthamquar, the father of all demons? Legend says Afgorkon and Belthamquar were partners in wizardry, fifty thousand years ago. That the demon—father made a faceless idol out of stone, giving it to Afgorkon so that the spirit of the great mage could inhabit it and peer between worlds. . . .”
"I know nothing of that. But when Frostfire hit it as I lifted it for a stroke—I was fighting a great Kraken, it must have been the thing that killed the divers—my body turned blue.”
Red Lori made a sign in the air, crying out. "I am a strong man, but never have I been that strong! I glowed like an oil lamp, and my sword did the same. Now I could cut into the Kraken, and I went at it until I slew it.”
"It is the eidolon of the demon-father. I know it! You must fetch again, Cumberian. Bring it up to the deck.”
"Not I. I’ve had my fill of watery deeps.”
“Please, Kothar! I beg you!” Her green eyes ate at his stare. They seemed to swell, to grow larger and larger. They swallowed him up until he stood in a green haze, helpless and without a will of his own. Strangely, his flesh was no longer cold but warm as if the desert sun baked him.
He nodded, unable to prevent his saying, "I shall go for the statue.”
“Now, Kothar! Now!” He turned, without Frostfire and still in that strange-daze, to the rail. His cloak fell from him as he stood on the moldboard and leaped. Once again the waters swallowed him up.
Behind him, Lori made a gesture at two of the sailors. “Throw over a rope so he may make a loop from it. Quickly, quickly!”
Kothar sank swiftly, like a stone. He came down past the limp body of the dead Kraken where it sprawled across the lintel stone, and his bare feet touched the tiles of the dead wizard's chamber. The statue, was where he had left it, brooding across the altar as it had for the past fifty, thousand years. He walked toward it, lifting his hands to clasp its sides.
It weighed heavily, so that he was forced to mount to the altar to lift it even an inch, “I can never rise to the surface with this,” he thought. "I'm on a fool's errand.”
Then he saw the rope dropping toward him and took it. Making a loop he a fixed it to the statue. He tightened the coil about the eidolon, jerked twice on the rope.
He rose upward, the statue following more slowly.
When he came to the deck, he found half the crew engaged in tugging at the free end of the rope, Kothar grinned, showing his strong white teeth.
"Fifteen men to raise that thing,” he said to Red Lori, "and you'd have had me do it by myself. Give me more of the buttered rum.”
Cybala went to fetch the tankard with the steaming liquid. The barbarian drank slowly, eyeing the witch-woman. She seemed changed, prouder and more arrogant; her chin was high, her green eyes blazed triumphantly. He felt vaguely disturbed and uneasy.
Then the eidolon was bumping the hull and she ran to direct its lifting, her own hands reaching out to clutch it, keeping it from hitting the ship. Her wise eyes scanned its bluish-white stone when it was placed upright on the deck, her fingertips quivering as they almost caressed it.
"Take it to my cabin,” she ordered.
It took ten men with a leather sling to move the statue, to bump it down the companionway and into the cabin Red Lori shared with Kothar. The sailors set up the statue between two bulkhead supports, where a hanging lamp creaked on its chains.
Red Lori sat before the eidolon, chin on fist, studying it. At her feet was the enameled coffer. The barbarian was in a far corner of the cabin, slipping back into his clothes.
“I didn't think it existed,” she sighed at last. He came to stand beside her chair, buckling on his sword-belt. “And what are you going to do with it, once you're done with your mooning?”
"It can make me the most powerful woman on all Yarth, barbarian. This eidolon can look across the gulfs of time and space, search out secrets for me that are lost to our mightiest wizards. For the eyes of this thing, and its face, are in the spaces between worlds, in demon lands and magical countries. It can see things no man knows, and report them to me.”
He glowered down at her red hair. "And what will you do with such secrets? I believed you were done with wizardry.”
She turned her lovely face up to him, and she smiled. “What would you have me be, barbarian—a milkmaid on a farm or a shepherdess on a grassy hillside? No, no. Long ago, ever since I was a child, I have been delving into the books of the necromancers, I have cast spells. I almo
st gained what I wanted from Markoth, but you prevented that, and Queen Elfa hung me in her silver cage.”
She shook her head. “My first problem is to ... but never mind that. Go you and eat. Leave me to my dreams.”
With a growl, he went to the galley and ate, and there the captain found him. Grovdon Dokk was a worried, anxious man. He held his seaman's cap in his hands as he flung himself onto the bench opposite the barbarian.
“You look like a good man in a fight, Cumberian,” he growled.
Kothar grinned at him, hoisting Frostfire between his legs. “I’ve done my share and more, true. What enemy do you, expect to meet out here? Pirates from the isles?”
“My crew, man. They're talking mutiny.”
Kothar paused with the last bit of bread and sausage halfway to his lips. His blond brows rose. “Mutiny? Now, why should your men rebel against you, captain?”
His thumb jerked over his shoulder. “It's your woman in the cabin, barbarian, That coffer she brought abroad, with the faceless statue, is upsetting the crew, that's what.”
“I’ll go talk to them.”
"Best have that long sword of yours handy when you do. The men are afraid, and frightened men don't reckon odds, Can the lady cast spells?”
"She could, but whether she can now, I wouldn't know.”
"Too bad. She might have charmed them with a cantraip or two. As it is—”
A sullen roar broke the stillness of the seas. A woman screamed. Kothar vaulted the table and traced for the door, yanking his steel free as he ran. Up the companionway steps and onto the deck he raced, only to slide to a halt.
Red Lori was being held high above the heads of half a dozen brawny seamen, half naked, the clothes torn from her writhing, struggling body.
“Kothar,” she screamed. “Aid me!”
He rasped curses as he leaped forward. "Stay back, mate, yelled a scarred forecastle man.
They dropped Red Lori to the deck, and the scarred man fell to a knee, beside her, dagger out, point touching her soft throat. The Cumberian scraped his war-boot soles on the deck-planks as he game to a stop.
Kothar and the Wizard Slayer Page 6