A Fortune for Kregen

by Alan Burt Akers

  With a scraping whispering furtiveness the strewn treasures began to replace themselves within healed boxes and cupboards. Chests turned upright and refilled with spilled gems. The whole mausoleum filled with the glint of gold and the glitter of gems and the rustle of scuttering treasure. As for the magic items

  — ghosts, wraiths, call them what you will, the cabinets filled and resumed their accustomed places.

  “The cramph of a Moder-lord considers we are finished,” said Loriman. He spat and hitched up his shield and sword.

  “There is still a chance,” I said. “There were two men in Jikaida City reputed to have returned from the Humped Land with treasure and with magic. Can they best us?”

  “It is not they who will best us—”

  “No. I think the monster will climb out of the tank the next time we open the gate—”

  “Agreed!”

  “So we must open wide and all press through, fast — fast! It must be done.”

  Kov Loriman the Hunter, a rough, unpleasant slave-owning man, a player of Execution Jikaida, said, “I shall, of course, go last.”

  I said, “Kov, tell me. What did you say to Master Scatulo when you lost at Execution Jikaida?”

  He stared. “You were there?”

  “I was there.”

  “I told him that he had one more chance and then I would send him to take the place of the Pallan of the Blacks.”

  “Very good. I shall go through last.”

  “Do you wish to fight me for it?”

  And then the incongruousness of the situation came to my rescue. I didn’t give an adulterated copper Havvey for him. Did I? Whatever path his honor made him tread, my path lay in the light of the Suns of Scorpio and of the well-being of Vallia.

  “Of course, of course. With my compliments — you may go last,”

  “As is right and proper.” And he fingered his sword and looked back with a black look at the octopoid monster.

  Other intrepid adventurers had come here and gone through the gates loaded with treasure. Mayhap this Moder was different from others, and those two successful men of Jikaida City had plundered an easier tomb. For, of course, we were all grave robbers — although the stakes were raised to a rarefied level.

  But, still, other men had succeeded here, I felt sure. The tentacled monsters could be outwitted. That could only mean worse things awaited down the Shaft of Flame.

  “Now?” said Loriman.

  I couldn’t say I liked him. But he had been — useful — in his uncouth way. And I didn’t know from whence on Kregen he hailed. He had carefully not said.

  I looked at the last men waiting. I shouted. “When the gate opens — run! If any man stumbles he must be pushed aside and tail on at the rear! So, doms — do not stumble!”

  Loriman shouted, “I shall stand at the gate. If any man attempts to push out of place, him I will strike down!”

  Prince Tyfar looked a trifle green about the gills. I walked across. “Prince — go out with your men first

  — we will close the gate.”

  “But—”

  “Do it!”

  He looked crestfallen, like a chastised child. I turned away and gave him no room to argue further.

  “All set?”

  “All set!”

  The gate swung open. The men began to run through, quickly, plunging out of view, shooting like peas from a pod. Tyfar went. His men followed. The lines ran up, men panting, frightened, pushing on, keeping in line, shouting. Loriman stood at one side of the gate, his sword raised, his face hateful.

  I prowled the other side, urging the men on, encouraging them.

  With a monstrous hissing the tentacled octopoid, immense, writhing, slimy, toppled from the tank and scuttled for us.

  “No brainless bunch of guts is going to beat us!” roared Loriman. “No matter that it is invulnerable to honest steel. Run, you hulus, run!”

  Shrieking, a man stumbled and I seized his neck and hurled him on. Out of sight through the silver gate they crashed, two by two, hurling on. Hissing, writhing, the monster raced swiftly over the marble toward us. No treacherous pattern of that floor engulfed it. The tentacles swirled, slimy, reaching out...

  Only a half dozen more... Nodgen and Hunch were through... Two more — then the last two... I swung to face Loriman.

  In that moment he stood there, exalted, his face a single ruby flame, his eyes murderous. I thought he would stay and challenge the monster out of the sheer joy of hunting.

  I grabbed his arm and pulled as a clansman pulls a vove up over a fire-filled trench. Together, we roared through the silver gateway and I slammed the portal shut. Its clang sounded like sweetest music.

  The shaft of fire rose before us, lifting from a stone-walled pit. Men were running forward, following the one ahead and vanishing out of sight down between flame and wall.

  “We’ve done it!” exulted Loriman. He swaggered toward the pit from which rose the Flame. “The cramph of a monster has been beaten!”

  A gigantic hissing belched up behind us, like a volcano bursting. We swung about. We stared up, appalled.

  Tentacles appeared over the top of the insubstantial iron wall.

  A gross form rose into view. Red eyes like flame, the size of shields, stared wickedly down upon us. A yellow serrated beak clacked. Deliberately, the monster lifted over the wall, balanced, fell clutching down toward us.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Fight over Vaol-Paol

  Dread of that primeval horror exploded in my skull. Two thoughts clashed in my head. The monster was impervious to steel. And other men had escaped from this awful place.

  Squirming with coiled animate energy the monster rushed swiftly across the stone toward us as we fled for the Shaft of Flame. Between that supernal white light and the lip of the stone pit a narrow opening offered the way of escape. Stone-cut steps spiraled downward within the confines of the pit. Another monster flopped over the wall and, hissing, propelled itself on those wriggling serpent-like tentacles toward us.

  Men pushed on down the steps. The slot between wall and flame was perhaps just wide enough for my hulking shoulders. A man toppled. Screaming, he pitched from the steps. His body entered the flame.

  Spread-eagled, his pitiful bundle of loot flogging free, he drifted down as though suspended against a blast of invisible force, and as he fell he dwindled and burned. We shuddered and hurried down the stone steps, treacherous with slippery moss and slimy with fungus.

  Looking back past Loriman, who thumped down with a look of ferocious distaste on his florid features, I saw the monster’s red eye appear, festooned with coils of slimy writhings, saw it lash futilely down after us.

  Loriman bellowed, jerking his head back. “The thing is balked! Ha! We have bested the monster!”

  But the monster launched itself into the column of pure white light.

  Like thistledown, it floated. It sank. Its arms writhed and its eyes glared, its beak clacked, and it dropped down and down within the Shaft of Fire.

  Loriman switched up his sword.

  “If we are to die,” he shouted, hard and venomously. “I will strike and strike until I am dead!”

  I thought of that poor devil who had fallen through the Flame. “Look!” I shrieked. “Look — the thing shrinks!”

  And it was so. As we hurried down and the monster sank within that supernal radiance, so, we saw with thankfulness, it dwindled in size and shrank until it was no larger than a coiled mass of rope such as would be found on the deck of a swordship.

  That shrunken bundle of horror still held menace. It drifted in to the steps and as we hurried down so it fastened upon the arm of a Rapa. He shrieked, his feathers all stiff with horror. He slashed with his sword, and the steel bounced, and the dwindling monster pulled him free of the stone steps, and he sank with his death into the shining whiteness.

  Up there other monsters launched themselves into the Shaft of Flame.

  As we hurried with desperate cauti
on down those slippery steps I knew that no magics we might have found above would preserve us from this danger. And, also, I was convinced that nothing the Moder-lords with all their thaumaturgical arts could provide would prove of any use to me in my dealings with the Star Lords or the Savanti. The Moder-lords dealt in illusion and horror and fear. But they were mortals. Their reach of dread power had its limits.

  Looking down the spiral stone stairs one could see only the bobbing heads of the men in front, curving away out of sight beyond the radiance of the Flame. The stairs went down widdershins. How far the pit sank into the ground, no one could tell.

  To our left the shrinking monsters drifted down through the Flame. Their hissing ceased. The only sounds were of men’s breathing, and the slip and slither of feet upon the stone. Down we went and then I saw the men below me turning into a low stone opening, arched in the wall at our sides. The steps down trended on and down and out of sight. Thankfully, Loriman and I ducked into the opening, to stand erect in a wide chamber and see the rest of the expedition waiting for us.

  The babble of greetings and the quick question and answer as the fate of comrades was disclosed went on like a surf roar. Light of a sickly green fell from a roof away behind the dazzle.

  “Thank Havil we are all safe — save for those poor unfortunates who succumbed.” Prince Nedfar betrayed determination. He issued his orders in a hard voice. “We have discovered a passageway and a long corridor leading upward. This must be the way out. But — we go carefully.” That, we all knew, was a remarkably redundant piece of advice and betrayed the state of our nerves no less than those of Prince Nedfar’s.

  “We go on in the same order.” He looked meaningfully at Loriman and Tyfar and the rest of us latecomers. “It has been a long and trying wait down here.”

  I looked about among the people.

  “Where is Master Quienyin?” I shouted, pushing through the throng.

  But Quienyin, Ungovich and Yagno were missing.

  “I believe they went on ahead, to spy the way,” said the lady Ariane. “Let us go on!”

  Her face had lost a great deal of that high color. But what she said made sense, although Nedfar might have thought differently. We started up the corridor, and all of us, from time to time, cast apprehensive glances backwards.

  “By Tryflor!” panted Hunch. “This place has scared me witless.” He shook with fear.

  Nodgen tried to bolster his courage with a bellow. “You Tryfants are all the same. Only good for running!”

  “True,” moaned Hunch. “Too true!”

  We pressed on and soon we recognized that the sequence of corridors and rooms matched those through which we had first passed when we entered the Moder. Nedfar shouted that this was a good sign. “The way out mirrors the way in! Courage! Onward!”

  We trended upward and when we reached a chamber draped in solemn purple we stopped, dismayed.

  No doorway broke those somber walls.

  Men rushed about pulling the purple curtains aside. All they found was a small secret door beyond which stood a lever. The lever was fashioned of ivory and bronze, and it looked ominous.

  “Pull that...?” said Loriman. “It is a riddle.”

  “We have no time for riddles.” Nedfar looked outraged.

  Tyfar stood near me, and Ariane leaned on the shoulder of her numim.

  “The three who went ahead,” I said, “they must have riddled this riddle aright — or where are they?” I looked at Ariane. Her face flushed, bringing her color back to that rosy red. She stamped her foot. I said, slowly, “Did they go ahead, lady?”

  “Yes!” she flared. Then: “No — I do not know. I did not see them. I think they went on down the stairs of the pit.”

  The transparency of the lie could not soften my feelings.

  “I shall go back for Quienyin.”

  “I shall come with you, Notor Jak—” said Tyfar.

  “No, prince. Better not — you should stay to take care of the lady Ariane.”

  He looked at me. His spirit was up. The diffidence had gone, at least, for a space.

  “No, Notor Jak. I think not.”

  “Pull the Havil-forsaken lever!” roared Loriman, “and have done!”

  Nedfar snapped out, sharply, “Not until we have examined everything thoroughly, three times over!”

  “There is,” put in Kov Thrangulf, swallowing, “the matter of the ninth part of the Key—”

  “Yes, kov,” sang out Lobur the Dagger. He stood very close to the Princess Thefi. “You are right, by Krun! Now how could we have overlooked that weighty matter?”

  I turned away sharply. I went back along the corridors through which we had just toiled. The scene I left was not to my liking.

  Through the corridors I hurried and crossing a nine-sided room with curlicued marble floor inlaid with the symbol for vaol-paol, The Great Circle of Universal Existence, I stopped stock still. Against three of the walls stood tall glass cabinets. In each cabinet and plainly visible through the glass glowered a Kildoi warrior. On each, the four arms and tail hand grasped weapons.

  Now I could have sworn those cabinets had not been there when we hurried past this nine-sided room.

  Then, with a resounding Makki-Grodno curse, I pushed on. Mysteries, mysteries...

  The quick shuffle of footsteps in the corridor a few rooms along heralded Deb-Lu-Quienyin. He looked different. And, yet, he was the same.

  We turned together to hurry back, exchanging news.

  “The three mages went on down the pit of the Shaft of Flame. I warned Yagno; but he said he was a Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis. Well—” Quienyin sounded genuinely aggrieved. “What I saw down there, on the ninth level, I will not say, young man. It is not for ordinary mortals.”

  “Did you regain your powers, San?”

  He gave a half-despairing, half-amused laugh. “Yes and no. I found what I sought, as San Orien had promised. The Moder-lords do not allow Wizards of Loh into their Moders. That is a fact. But I was no longer a real Wizard of Loh. So I found that which was needful.”

  “Wonderful — but, in this place, there is a catch?”

  “There is a catch, Jak. I will only regain my full powers when I am safely outside the Moder.”

  “Then that is all right. They are searching for the last part of the key now. They have found a lever. We will soon be out.” Then, I said, “And Yagno? And Ungovich?”

  “Yagno was — no, better I do not reveal that. As for Ungovich, he disappeared, and I fear he shares the same fate as Yagno.”

  “So — unhappy though it is, we do not wait for them?”

  “By every Queen of Pain who ever reigned in Loh,” he said, and surprised me by that word, “no. It is useless to wait.”

  We entered the nine-sided chamber with the inlaid motif of vaol-paol in the floor. Quienyin halted. The three glass cabinets opened. The three Kildoi stepped forth. They glared at us.

  No time to think. No time to understand that these three were Kildois, just as Mefto the Kazzur was a Kildoi, with four arms and a tail equipped with a fist, superb fighting men, tremendous in their strength and skill. Mefto had bested me at swordplay. No time, no time. No time even, with the flashing memory of Seg Segutorio heartening me, to bring the great Lohvian longbow into action and shaft the first of them as he rushed upon me.

  Quienyin shouted something, and I caught the tailing words: “...the Kazzur!”

  The Krozair longsword ripped free.

  In my two fists and gripped in that cunning Krozair hold, the brand gleamed in the unwavering beams of the black candles in their golden holders... The Kildois hurled themselves on.

  The first gripped thraxters in his right upper and right lower hands. His lower left hand slanted a round shield. His upper left hand wielded a spear. And in his tail hand that wicked daggered steel glittered as his tail swept in high above his head.

  No time to delay. No time for fancy work. As I had fought the overlords of Magdag on the swaying dec
k of a swifter I would have to fight now. It was all hard, merciless, practical fighting and none of your fancy academy fencing...

  The thraxters slashed for me. The Krozair brand blinded, whirling like a living bar of light, chunked through the shield, bore on to score a deep wound all down the Kildoi’s chest. Before he had time to yell, before he had time to fall, I bounded away and swung into action against his fellows. They bore in from each side, cunning, clever, supreme fighters. And as these superb Kildois attacked they did not understand they faced an old Krozair Brother, a Krozair of Zy — who knew more tricks than the Krozairs, by thunder! The longsword swept dazzlingly. A thraxter scored across my right shoulder and then the first Kildoi was down, minus a tail he had flung unavailingly across to protect his throat. Tail blade, tail hand, throat, vanished in a welter of purple blood.

  The second flung himself forward, shield up, spear aiming for my eye. I slid his blow, brought the Krozair brand around, quick, quick! Ah, the Krozair Disciplines teach a man how to stay alive, by Zair!

  Whether they were real Kildoi retainers of the Moder-lord or whether they were illusions, I did not know. But their steel would kill.

  The fight was over. Three dead Kildois lay on that inlaid representation of the symbol for vaol-paol, and their purple blood dripped thickly. I stood back. I panted only a little.

  “By the Wizard of—!” said Quienyin, shaking.

  “By the Black Chunkrah! Now that opened the old pores a trifle! Let us, San, hurry on — and get out of here!”

  As we came up to the purple-draped chamber and the noise of the people of the expedition arguing away at the top of their voices — as usual — I said, and I admit rather slyly, to Quienyin, “San, tell me

  — that Bracelet of Blades you wished me to wear — how would it have worked there? For all three Kildois? Or the first one only?”

  He gave me a look along his nose. “You are a hard man, Jak.”

  “Aye — to my sorrow.”

  Hunch and Nodgen appeared glad to see me and the Wizard of Loh still alive. They told us that the lever had at last been pulled, that a wailing pack of Lurking Fears had writhed out, that the warriors, although quaking with supernaturally-induced terror, had managed to slay all the Lurking Fears.