He was helpless, he knew that. For himself, he would have dared a dozen daggers, but he could not risk the witch-woman's life. His fingers tightened on Frostfire's shaft so that the skin showed white above the knuckles as he stared hard at the seaman crouched above Red Lori.
"Let her go, man,” he cried hoarsely. "There'll be no magic, no wizardry performed on board this ship if you do. You have my word for it.”
The other seamen jeered at him, shaking fists and brandishing daggers of their own. Ugliness glared at him out of their eyes and hard faces.
“The Witch dies!”
“We want no part of her spells!”
"We be honest sailors, we don't hold with deviltry.”
Red Lori was very still. Only her eyes were moving, turning toward Kothar where he stood in agonized helplessness on the deck. Those eyes pleaded with him, begged him for rescue. He felt them touch him, appeal for his help.
Think, man. There must be away to save her. At another time, he might have turned away from those green eyes that stared at him so fearfully. But that was when Red Lori had hated him. Now—she felt differently toward Kothar the barbarian. She had lain in his arms, very loving, very affectionate. He could not shake the taste of her kisses, the ardor of her body, from his mind.
"Hand over your sword, mate,” yelled a sailor.
"Aye, the sword. Toss it here!”
They clamored, their voices hoarse and savage.
Kothar shrugged. “All right, then—take it!”
He drew back his arms to toss it. But instead of the easy throw they expected, his arm flashed downward. And as his moving arm came down he hurled Frostfire straight at the scarred man. Like an arrow it sped through the air.
Kothar followed it, leaping of his feet. The blade went deep into the chest of the kneeling man. At the same instant, the barbarian slammed into three of the seamen, toppling them backwards. As they went over on their backs, Kothar dodged sideways, barreling into the legs of two men who were bending to sink their daggers into his flesh. His big hands reached out, caught at two legs, yanked their owner sideways and into the bodies of two other seamen.
He was on his feet, big hands balled like clubs and striking as hard. Red Lori was up and running, he saw from the corners of his eyes. A dagger slashed his arm, another opened the flesh of his thigh. In another few seconds he would be buried under men and a dozen daggers would be drinking his blood.
Then the captain was beside him, lashing out with a capstan bar, and Flarion stood on the other side of him, blade darting, thrusting.
Three sailors were down, motionless. Two others were reeling back, hands clutched to wounds, blood seeping between their fingers. The rest gathered into a group, snarling, their own daggers bloody. The captain nursed a slashed chest. Flarion moved the fingers of his sword-hand, all blood red from a cut on his forearm.
“Give them amnesty,” called Red Lori from the quarterdeck.
“Never,” snarled Kothar. “A boat, captain,” cried the witch-woman, leaning across the deck rail. “Allow them the longboat and food. They can reach the coast of Tharia in a good two days and nights.”
“A boat, a boat,” the men shouted.
"And food Biscuits and meat, with cheese!” Grovdon Dokk nodded his head. “Aye, aye. But what of us, lady? Those of us left aboard can't sail this ship!”
“No matter,” shouted a big seaman. The men ran across the deck, bare feet slapping wood, and laid hands on the ropes and davits from which hung the single lifeboat of the brigantine. An instant later, with a creak of pulleys and the hum of cording, it was swaying downward toward the water. Kothar stared at the men, tumbling over one another in their eagerness to get down into that boat.
Three of the more longsighted of the crew ran to the galley, carrying back sacks filled with meat and bread, and a few wine-skins. Cook was with them on their last trip, the barbarian noted.
Then oars were being shipped and the longboat was pulling away through the waves, lifting and dropping. A ragged cheer went up from the throats of the men crowded from its prow to the rounded stern. Grovdon Dokk watched them go, and spat to windward.
"Cursed rebels,” he snarled and glanced at the dead bodies littering his deck. “I have to give them proper burial,” he muttered.
"Flarion and I will help,” the barbarian offered.
All that afternoon they sewed canvas sacks to wrap about the bodies of the four dead men. Toward sunset, as the captain read from the Book of the Ten Gods, one by one Kothar and Flarion let the bodies slip into the sea, weighted down by leaden balls. Cybala came to stand in the after deck companionway, wrapped in her paenula, eyes dark and brooding, but Red Lori was nowhere to be seen.
The ship was still anchored above the house and gardens that had been Afgorkon's, long ago. It was motionless here, becalmed, as the moon rose, and flooded the glass-like surface of the waters with its silver radiance.
Grovdon Dokk muttered to the barbarian, "I don't like this stillness, it isn't natural. I begin to wish I'd gone with the others. And how are we to sail Wave-skimmer, two landsmen and myself? Will you tell me that?”
“I can’t guess,” Kothar muttered. He was tired. It had been a hard day, what with his diving and that fight with the Kraken and bringing up the coffer by himself; and later, quelling the mutiny before Red Lori got herself killed, and then stitching up the death bags. He would sleep well enough tonight, by Dwalka! Yawning, he nodded at the captain.
"I'm going to find my bunk," he said. "I'd advise you to do the same.”
“Who can sleep? This is my ship, barbarian. I make my living with it. And she's stuck out here, nine miles from Kantar shoals, with never a bit of breeze to flap her sails. I don't like it. Maybe the men were right, maybe that redhead is a witch with a curse on her head.”
“She isn't. Wouldn't she have used a spell to free herself from the sailors, if she were a witch?”
Grovdon Dokk rubbed his stubbled jaw. "May-hap, And may-hap not. I'm an honest man and honest men don't know which way a witch's mind runs.”
The Cumberian moved along the deck to the companionway. As he passed their cabin door, he heard Cybala and Flarion, arguing. Like husband and wife, he thought. He felt like yelling to the mercenary to throw the girl on a bed and take her and be done with it. It was probably the only sort of argument she really understood.
His big hand turned the knob of his own cabin door. Red Lori crouched before the eidolon, parchments spread across her knees and tossed helter skelter on the cabin floor. She frowned, staring at the words written on those scrolls, and her lips moved from time to time as she sought to understand their meanings.
"Sleep wouldn't hurt you, either,” he growled, getting out of his mail shirt. Seeing she ignored him, he crossed the worn carpeting to peer down over her shoulder.
"You're in my light, Kothar. Go to sleep.”
"Can't you read, witch-woman?” he jeered. She looked up at him. "Not this script, not easily. The language in which these parchments are written is fifty thousand years old. There have been some changes since then.”
"I thought you sorceresses knew all those ancient languages.”
“We know some, yes. These are very old. But I begin to understand them, a little. It is slow going at first. It will go faster, very soon."
Kothar stretched, yawning. He kicked off his war-boots, sitting on the edge of his bunk. Red Lori was lost to him for the night, he could see that. She was bent above those scrolls as if they contained the secret of life and death for her.
Maybe they did, for all he knew. He slid into bed in his under breeks and quilted hacqueton and drew the blankets up to his neck.
In moments, he was asleep. He dreamed he stood in a blue mist, shivering with cold. The mist was speaking to him, whispering strange and "troubling words, the meaning of which he should understand and did not. Red Lori was calling out to him, very faintly, or perhaps she spoke those words; he could not tell. He called her name and began walking slowl
y through the blue mist.
She ran toward him, covered all over with icicles and hoarfrost tinkling to her every stride.
She was weeping bitter tears and as he opened his arms to draw her close, a sharp icicle gouged his flesh.
He woke up.
He was not in the cabin, he was inside a tomb.
The sweat came out, on his sun-browned face. "There was blue light everywhere, demon-light such as had lit the mausoleum of long-dead Kalikalides. Now what made him think of that tomb in far-off Xythoron? As his eyes became more accustomed to the azure radiance, he saw a stone bier and on it a body clad in purple and gold garments. It was the body, of a young—
No, by Dwalka! The body had only the similarity to youth. This was the mage Kalikalides himself, kept eternally young by certain necromantic spells. Its cheeks were flushed, its lips red as if with life. And standing in a corner of this vault—Red Lori!
But wait. If that was Red Lori, who was it who stood naked to one side of his bed, a parchment scroll in a hand, chanting words unheard on Yarth for fifty thousand years? It too, was the witch-woman.
"Gods of Thuum,” he breathed. For Red Lori was singing, and the other Red Lori, the one in the dark corner, clad in the blouse and fringed skirt of the Mongrol plains woman, was floating toward her double. Her feet did not touch the ground, it was as if she drifted between worlds. There was a nimbus of light about her and her eyes were wide and staring, yet she came nearer to the redheaded woman with the parchment scroll, nearer, nearer!
The barbarian shivered, aware of some vague voice in his mind bidding him leap to prevent the joining of these two woman-shapes. There was danger here, dread danger, of a kind he did not know, being no sorcerer. Yet he felt it with his animal senses.
"Red Lori," he croaked. “Give over your wizardries!”
She paid him no heed, but went on chanting. Now Kothar could see the outlines of objects inside the cabin, the eidolon close to the bulkhead, the lamp hanging from its chain nearby and under it, bathed in its light, the coffer with the enameled sigils on its top. Aye, and the bunk where the witch-woman was wont to sleep when she was not sharing his own, and the shirt of mail and his war-boots where he had discarded them.
The tomb was here, as well, the bier plain to see, and the body on it. There was a blending of two spaces, the barbarian realized, the tomb and the cabin. He was here on the Outer Sea, yet he was inside the black crypt of the dead magician.
He did not understand how this could be, except by necromancy. His eyes saw the decorations on the mausoleum, his nose smelled the charnel odors of the grave, his ears heard Red Lori singing.
The other witch-woman floated closer, closer. Soon they would join, these women who were but one.
The cold sweat stood out on Kothar's forehead. He reached for Frostfire, but in this double-space his fingers could not grip its shaft. He sat here on the bed, but his sword was forbidden him.
And so he watched.
The Red Lori in the Mongrol garb touched the naked Red Lori. Her hand went into and around that other hand, as her shoulders and hips became one with her simulacrum. Legs and breasts and belly, the two women merged together.
The cabin was warm, suddenly. Gone was the grave chill, the noisome smells, the dampness. A fire glowed in an iron brazier and by its light, and the radiance of the lamp above the coffer, Kothar could see Red Lori clad in the tattered Mongrol garments she had worn when he had sealed her inside the crypt in Xythoron.
She turned and, laughing softly, saw him watching her.
"Aye, Kothar! I am—myself! Free of the mausoleum where you imprisoned me. A live! and—free!”
"You’ve been free ever since I took you out of Kandakore's tome.”
“No, barbarian—no! It was only my image which has traveled with you these past weeks.
My astral self, which I drew from another plane of existence and brought into our own."
He glowered at her. "So that's why you wanted the coffer. It wasn't to free me from any curse of Afgorkon, not at all.”
Her white fingers went into her long red hair, lifted it high above her head as she pivoted, dancing a few steps about the cabin. Her laughter rose upward, softly mocking.
“I am myself, I am Red Lori,” she sang. “And Kothar is my slave!” She pointed a red-nailed finger at him. "Yes, barbarian. You are mine, you belong to me. We are not finished, you and I. I have a further need for your big muscles and your magic sword.”
“You can't command me. I—“
“Ah, but I can. I can, Kothar! Before I could not, my astral image lacked the power-which explains why I was so sweet to you, so loving. I twisted you about my little finger, I gave you kisses and—more than kisses—to make certain that you were no more than a love sick fool!”
He sought to rise from the bed; could not. It was as if invisible chains held him motionless. “You see?” she cried gleefully. “I possess many of my old powers, now. There is no need to wheedle and cajole. No longer!”
She came across the floor on light feet. Her hand slapped his cheek, back and forth. His head rocked to her blows. Between her teeth, she snarled, "I am your mistress You are my slave! My slave, Kothar the mighty! You are less than a lapdog, no stronger than a midge—without me.
"Oh, yes. You shall obey me. Without question, without argument. When I say run, you shall run. If I say kill, you and that sword of yours shall kill in my name. You cannot help yourself.”
She stopped hitting him, brought her hand to her mouth and licked its smartings with her tongue, her green eyes impish as they regarded him. She smiled suddenly and held out her stinging palm, reddened from her repeated slappings of his cheeks.
"Kiss it,” she ordered. And Kothar touched his lips to her flesh. His soul writhed in his body, but he was helpless against her green eyes and her powers. There was an aura about her, much like that blue nimbus in which his body had been clothed when Frostfire had struck the eidolon in time to save his life beneath the surface of the Outer Sea. He could not resist it, nor her commands.
She ruffled his blond hair, suddenly. "Oh, I'll treat you well, for the most part. A master is good to a valuable slave. You are valuable to me, Kothar. So I shall be good to you.”
Red Lori turned away, moving with swaying hips toward the cabin door. She opened the door, walked out. Kothar felt the thralldom fall away from him. With a snarled oath, he bounded , from the bed, snatching up Frostfire. He ran for the doorway and into the narrow passageway. On bare feet he raced up the companionway and out upon the deck. The witch-woman stood with upraised arms, the sea wind toying with her hair. Her eyes were raised to the clouds scudding across the sky, through which the two moons of Yarth peeped, round and silvery like demon eyes. There was a faint radiance about her body, a bluish glow that snapped and crackled to the ears in the stillness of the night.
"Io k'harthal mollonthal! Pthond kathondal pha benth.” Her voice rose up in a series of ululating sounds that made the-short hairs rise on his neck. There was an eerie quality to her voice. Those sounds seemed made not by human vocal chords but by those of some alien being; they held Kothar paralyzed.
“Great god Poseithon, whose breath comes to our world as wind and gale and storm, heed my prayer! Io k'harthal mollonthal! Send your breath to me, to this corner of Yarth, according to my need. And gently honored be thy name, lord Poseithon!”
There was a distant moan in the night, a faint whisper of sound that stirred the waves in tiny ripples on either side of the brigantine. The barbarian could see Grovdon Dokk crouched on the main deck, staring at the woman encased in the crackling blue glow. The Wave-skimmer had lain becalmed. The surface of the sea around them had been glassy, still as any woods pond. Yet now the ripples grew larger, larger, and the ship lifted to the waves that formed. It rose gently, fell easily. And the moan grew louder, louder.
A breeze brushed Kothar, stirring his golden hair, ruffling the fur that trimmed his kilt, The wind was warm, heavy with exotic scents from th
e Southlands, almost musky. Above his head the riggings rattled and the sails shook weakly. The breeze became a wind, filling the sails. Grovdon Dokk cursed faintly, stirred from his position and ran up the after-deck companionway. The helm was swinging idly, turning this way and that as the waves caught it, as the canvas filled and drove the ship forward. His big hands went to the whip-staff, caught and held it. Forward surged the ship on a steady course, its prow cleaving the gathering waves with a faint gurgle of rushing waters.
The blue radiance faded. Red Lori let her arms drop. She stood a moment head-bowed, as if exhausted. Then she lifted a hand, brushed fallen locks of red hair from her eyes. She turned, saw Kothar; stood still, smiling faintly.
“We go to Zoane,” she said softly. “On the way, I shall prepare the necessary spells that will animate the eidolon. Come you with me, barbarian.”
Her green eyes looked at him as she spoke; they were enormous, staring. He had no will to resist them. He nodded and waited until she crossed the deck-planks to fall into step just behind her.
The cabin was lighted by the single lamp hung on chains from the beamed ceiling. In its golden glow the faceless eidolon stood silent, ominous. The barbarian felt the mute menace of that grim statue, his flesh crawled at the thought of what it represented.
Red Lori crossed the cabin floor, lifted a parchment from the coffer. Unrolling it, she knelt before the eidolon. Softly she began to read from the ancient writings. The room grew cold, there was a smell of the grave and rotting cerements in the air. Kothar growled and put his hand on Frostfire.
To the Cumberian, the statue seemed to writhe in protest, to move its stubby arms and legs. It was a trick of the light, he told himself, for the ship was rising and falling to the surging waves as it cleaved a path toward Zoane.
A whisper in the air touched his ears. “Who calls Afgorkon? Who comes to disturb his sleep after five hundred centuries?”
“I call, great mage, lord of the fifty worlds of Kafarr, worlds of your own creation I seek your help for your brother magicians, victims of assassins in this land of Yarth; which you knew long ago.”
Kothar and the Wizard Slayer Page 7