by Dave Duncan
Sir Lancelot was now marooned on the island of cockatrices.
Chapter 33
He tried to sit up and rapidly decided that standing would be a lot more comfortable, provided that the rambunctious wind would let him stay upright. His shinbone was not broken, but it hurt even more than his back, which was bleeding in at least two places. The storm was fiendishly erratic, going from dead calm and salty-tasting mist one minute to hurricane winds driving needle-sharp rain the next. He could make out white surf on one side, which he decided to call north, and red fire on the other, although the source of the flames was hidden by a nearby ridge. The ground was jagged, painful even for elfin feet, and it trembled constantly. He could not tell if it was being shaken by the volcanoes or the impact of the surf or both.
Shelter would definitely be a good idea, and an impenetrable blackness at the base of the nearest rock pile looked like it might be a cave. He hobbled across the jagged lava in that direction, struggling to keep his balance as the wind wrestled and needled him. Happily the cave was real, and deeper than he had expected. Unable to see the ground in front of him, he took three cautious steps into the opening, and then stopped to think. Nice to be out of the wind and rain, even if the air stank most horribly of sulfur.
But now what?
One of his amulets might help, if he knew which one and how to use it. Cockatrices attacked on sight, Cheleb had said, but nothing would be able to see very well on a night like this, unless of course its dinner volunteered by coming to stand in the front door, silhouetted against what little light there was outside. He looked back uneasily. Nothing was visible inside the cave, but of course that meant little.
He was doomed unless Saidak returned, and it could not possibly locate him unless Starborn Cheleb had some magical means of doing so. He could not remember if he had spoken his helmet’s name since he’d last put it on, but if he had he’d be invisible to any magic the mage might use. He removed Meissa and replaced it.
“Where did you come from?” asked a quiet voice behind him.
He painfully stubbed a toe in his haste to turn around.
The girl was sitting on a stool five or six meters deeper into the cave. She was on lower ground than he was and visible only because she was faintly luminous.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Were you carved out of moonlight, or do you bathe in phosphorescent seas?”
She laughed. “You must know who I am, or you would not have risked coming here. Why are you blindfolded?”
He laughed, embarrassed. “In case you turn out to be a cockatrice in disguise.” He left the basilisk mask on.
“Are you elf or Greek?” Her voice was so soft that it should not have been audible over the storm and the volcanic activity. Her image kept flickering and changing—one minute she had elfin ears, the next she seemed more like a young human. Her clothing kept flickering back and forth between a full-length gown and nothing whatsoever. In earthly terms she might be fourteen.
Greek? Her stool had three legs. “You’re a pythia!”
“The Pythia!”
“One of a kind? Like the Minotaur? You expect me to believe you are the same ancient priestess who sat on a tripod in Delphi in Greece, to prophesy for kings and rulers of cities? Don’t answer that,” he added hastily. Prophecies were traditionally limited to either one or three per person, so he must not ask the wrong question by mistake. What was the right question? “I suppose the same immortal essence of prophecy could materialize in more than one place, especially if some elf imagined you here after he… or possibly she, you understand, no offense intended… Where was I? Don’t answer that either. I mean you could be an imagined replica, like Canopus isn’t the same Canopus.”
“You are quite the strangest petitioner to come calling on me in ages,” the Pythia said, solidifying slightly to peer up at him. She floated closer. “And I do mean ages. Where is your rich offering to Apollo?”
Thunder rumbled in the storm outside.
“I think I must have left it behind,” Rigel said vaguely. There was something he ought to be thinking about, if he could only remember what. “Apollo will have to do without, poor guy. I was going to ask you something, but it escapes me. Hadar escaped me. Probably it was about Saidak, the royal barge or royal mermaid. Or both. I need to know if she’s going to come back and pick me up. That was a rhetorical question. There’s no point in asking you that, is there? If she or they either isn’t or aren’t going to come and get me then I’ll die as soon as the cockatrices or basilisks or creepy crawlies find me. I ought to ask you something useful. Ask something useful, I mean, something that you can answer usefully. Usefully for me.”
“I like your helmet! Alcibiades had one just like it. The brush was red, though.” The Pythia rippled unsteadily, like a reflection in water.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “You’re making me queasy. Didn’t you answer questions for the sphinxes last night?”
“Is that really what you want to ask me? Either way, I do wish you would hurry up and then go away. You look awfully sexy in that helmet, Rigel Estell, and I’d hate to see you die here.”
“You really can foretell the future?”
The Pythia laughed again. Her laugh was very loud and bold for someone so insubstantial. “I foresee that I won’t answer that. I usually give indecipherable answers that would be very useful if you happened to understand them in time.”
“I thought you just spoke gibberish, and the priests interpreted however they fancied. I read a book that said you sat on a tripod in the temple of Apollo and breathed in a seepage of ethylene gas, which made you hallucinate.”
The Pythia boomed out her great laugh again. “Are you sure you’re not hallucinating now, young Alcibiades? You’re kneeling there on all those sharp rocks and babbling about inhaling gas. Hydrogen sulphide paralyzes your sense of smell, you know? It’s as poisonous as cyanide gas, but at least it keeps you laughing.”
“Not laughing gas. Ethylene. Male version of ethyl gas.”
“It echoes like Dionysius’s Ear. Now, do you want to ask me for a prophecy, and then go, or will you just lie there and die?”
Wasn’t sulfur-hydrogen-whatever heavier than air? Rigel struggled to his feet again. “All right, let’s presume or assume that I’m going to be rescued, okay? Because if I’m wrong it won’t matter. Isn’t that logical, Pythia? Take that for granite. Prophesy for me, pretty Pythia. Peanut butter sandwiches. Tell me how best I can serve my adored Talitha Starborn, because I really do want to get laid as soon as possible?”
“That’s a very honest question,” the Pythia said, clapping her hands inaudibly. She was fading to black. “So I’ll give you an easy answer: It is mightiest in the mighty. Now get out of here, Rigel Halfling-Estell, because the barge is returning, and this is your last chance.”
Chapter 34
A few minutes out in the storm cleared Rigel’s head, leaving behind a thundering headache and an overpowering sense of shame. How idiotic could a man be to crawl into a volcanic crevice and not remember that H2S was poisonous? Not to mention the millions of other gases that were no doubt down there.
The Pythia had been an interesting hallucination, though. Had she been anything more than a warning generated by his own subconscious and memories of what Sphinx Praecipua had said? “What was mightiest in the mighty” might be nothing but plain old stupidity, and even the unmighty, like him, could be catastrophically stupid. He was still debating whether his headache or his nausea was worse when Saidak dived out of the night sky at him like a sounding whale.
For one moment of horror he thought he was going to be swatted flat by the gangplank and the solitary passenger clinging to it, but the wind slackened and the mermaid regained control at the last possible instant. Whoever the starborn on the end of the plank was, she did not lack for courage or strength, because she slid over the edge feet first, and then dangled there. The moment she came within reach, Rigel caught her ankles, and she let go.
They hit the ground in a heap, and what felt like the same rocks that had hit him upon his own landing struck him in what felt like the same spots on his back. His cry of pain did not quite hide the sound of a rib or two breaking.
“Well done,” Cheleb said, scrambling off him. “Up! Quickly!”
It was all very well for her to say that, but somehow he obeyed and was able to help catch Talitha. He set her down gently as the barge swooped away and disappeared into the murk.
“What a horrible place!” Talitha said. “Oh, you’re hurt! Let me—”
Cheleb pulled her hand away. “No, wait! Let him bleed a little more. Unless you want to walk a hundred stadia over this glass heap? The wind is erratic, but it seems to be blowing more or less landward, and cockatrices are attracted by the smell of blood.”
“Your sympathy is touching, starborn,” Rigel said.
“Impertinence! You must be wearing a coagulant amulet, or you would be bleeding much more.”
“Would it help if I cut an ear off?”
“It would help if you kept your mouth shut,” the mage shouted.
“You brought me along as bait?”
“You are well qualified. You did offer to help any way you could, so stand there and keep your eyes open. Stay upwind of him, Talitha dear, and be ready to throw fire.”
For the first time in the Starlands, Rigel felt truly cold, though some of his shivering was undoubtedly from terror. His feet, leg, and back hurt abominably, and he was surrounded by jagged boulders, any of which might conceal predatory monsters. Just when he thought things were as bad as they could be, hail began dancing off the rocks in all directions like tousled white fur. It rattled deafeningly on his helmet, needled against his bare skin, and cut visibility to a few meters. He felt a sudden tingle at his wrist. Then the gauntlet and sword suddenly sprang into being, and a cockatrice charged out of the hailstone fog.
It was far bigger than he had expected, a horse-sized ostrich at least three meters tall, with outspread wings and a beak that could bite his head off, helmet and all. Its eyes burned bright with evil, painful to look at even through his protective mask.
Saiph cut its head off. Rigel leaped aside as the huge corpse dived into the ground. It somersaulted over him, but a leathery wing swept him off his feet. He landed on the rocks again, and this time his brains would have been smashed out if he had not been wearing Meissa.
Talitha crouched beside him. “Are you all right?”
“Been better,” he admitted. “Try to be faster with that fire next time. But—” He gasped as he tried to sit up. “Now that you’ve got better bait, can you do something about my ribs? And my leg?”
She made a light and cried out at what she saw. “Cheleb! Come here and heal Rigel.”
“You do it,” the mage said. “We’re going to have cockatrices all over us any minute.”
“I’ll watch for them. Come here and heal Rigel!”
Nice to feel appreciated…
The headless cockatrice was still flopping and flapping in its death throes, bleeding exorbitantly. If Rigel’s few spoonfuls of blood had brought forth that monster, the torrent spilling from its neck stump ought to fetch the entire cockatrice population of Tarazed.
Grumbling disapproval, the mage came to tend to Rigel’s injuries, although from the odd way she walked, he suspected that her feet were not touching the ground. She banished his pain and staunched his bleeding with a few gentle touches and some rapid incantations.
“That will have to do for now,” she said.
The hail had stopped. The wind died down, as it did periodically. Two cockatrices attacked almost simultaneously, charging into the light cast by the starfolk’s amulets. Cheleb’s fireball got one and Talitha’s got the other. Hit with purplish flames, the monsters staggered and sagged to the ground.
“Hold its head down!” the mage shouted to Talitha. “Come here, halfling! Get on this one’s back.”
That was easier said than done. Apart from its rooster head and thick, feathered neck, the monster was scaly and slippery. Its two long legs ended in bird-like feet with dagger claws, and there was a vicious barb at the end of its reptilian tail. It lay sprawled at an angle, one side higher than the other, and only its outspread wings kept it from rolling over.
Still, Rigel followed Cheleb’s directions and scrambled aboard, wrapping his legs around the beast’s neck and gripping its fleshy comb with his right hand. His face was pressed against the beast’s feathers, which stank horribly. As long as he forced its head down, it would be unable to move—so the mage said, anyway, and for the moment the cockatrice seemed to believe her. Rigel had no doubt that it was many times stronger than he was, and could flick him off with a shake of its head, but for the moment it just twitched and made harsh piping noises.
A surge of lavender fire announced the arrival of a fourth monster. Cheleb disabled it and then scrambled aboard, but it needed time to recover, and others were arriving fast on its heels. Talitha stunned two, and two more began feeding on the corpse of the one Rigel had killed.
“Prepare for flight!” the mage shouted. “Heads up!”
“You heard her, Gruesome!” Rigel hauled back his mount’s comb. It struggled and staggered to its feet, tilting almost vertical so that for a moment he was virtually hanging free, alarmingly high above the ground. When he tugged on its right wattle—copying what Cheleb was doing—it turned to face the wind and spread its giant wings. Then, with surprising grace, the cockatrice rose into the air.
To Rigel’s relief the three cockatrices did not immediately scatter into the night, which suggested that they naturally traveled in flocks, but Gruesome wanted to lead and did not favor the direction that Cheleb did. Nor did it want to fly very high. Fortunately the mage was a skilled rider, and she literally flew rings around the other two, shouting out orders like a drill instructor. After a while Rigel mastered the knack of wrenching his mount’s head to the correct angle, and then he could lead the expedition on its way across the fiery wastelands of Tarazed with only an occasional shouted course adjustment from Cheleb.
Hot updrafts from lava fountains made for extreme turbulence, and once something that might have been a wyvern or small dragon tried to contest their passage—or possibly grab a halfling snack on the wing—but the combined stare of three cockatrices sent it tumbling into the fiery lakes below.
The mage had not explained where they were going, but her aim was true. A long climb, a wheel of cloud below them, a dive through cold dampness, and the cockatrices emerged above the surface of a calm and moonlit lake. Tarazed was gone, leaving only a lingering sense of horror, like a too-well-remembered nightmare.
Again the cockatrices had to be coaxed to climb into the sky, although they obviously disliked such heights. Even by elfin standards it was cold up there among the stars. The moon was nearing the horizon and dawn would not be far off. They had to make haste. Invading Phegda to rescue Izar would be dangerous enough in darkness; by daylight it must surely rank close to suicide.
Rigel recognized a cryptic cloud gyre ahead as another link and braced himself for the jump.
And another, this time very high…
A vast snow-capped range glowered like a march of specters in the last rays of the setting moon. At first glance Rigel thought the great marble monolith ahead was one of the mountains. Then he realized that most of what he was seeing was a single building. It stretched along a high ridge, true, but he could not even guess at its dimensions or how many thousands of rooms it must contain. The only thing he had ever seen that looked remotely like it was a photo of the Dalai Lama’s palace in Tibet, the one at Lhasa.
“Land on it,” Cheleb shouted, her voice growing hoarse now, “somewhere high up, near the middle.”
“Heads down to land?”
“Of course. Head level now, and glide.”
Gruesome was probably as tired as its rider; it seemed happy enough to stop flapping and float down onto the staggering stone pile—balconi
es, towers, endless staircases, and multitudes of empty-eyed windows. Rigel let the cockatrice choose its destination, and it selected a flat rooftop terrace as a suitable runway, spreading its talons. Being as inexperienced at manned flight as its rider, it misjudged its loaded momentum and skidded awkwardly on the tiles, but Rigel managed to stay aboard. He couldn’t get the stupid brute to lie flat, though. It stood almost vertical, so his weight rested entirely on his thighs and he had to cling to the creature with his legs, which were not designed for such exercise. His knees ached, but he didn’t dare straighten them.
Talitha was able to land quite close to him, and Cheleb ostentatiously came down exactly halfway between them.
“Well?” she said.
“Yes,” Talitha said. “No doubt about it.”
“Then where do we try next?”
“No doubt about what?” Rigel demanded angrily.
“Izar’s location amulet,” Talitha explained. “It’s here, in Phegda Palace.”
“It is?” It would take years to search a place this size.
“So Izar isn’t.”
Rigel’s expression must have revealed his confusion, because Cheleb said, “Oh, work it out, boy. The first thing big, bad Hadar would do after stealing Izar away from his mother would be to take off the boy’s ear stud so that she couldn’t find him. And if the bad man thinks a certain bold but dumb knight will show up to steal Izar back again, and he wants to get a hold of that knight’s sword, then he’ll set a trap for him using the ear stud as bait, now won’t he?”