“And,” shouted Hunch, “the lever did two things—”
“The ninth part of the key in a secret cavity!” shouted Nodgen.
“—and the keyhole in an onyx wall — there!”
“And now,” said Nodgen, “they are fiddling about putting the bits of the key together. That is brainy work.”
A triumphant shout racketed down from the far wall. Nedfar waved the completed key aloft, his face radiant. “We have it!”
Everyone felt that we must hurry. Urgency drove us on, for we were all confident that at any moment fresh horror would prowl down upon us. The purple draperies were pushed aside to reveal the onyx wall and the keyhole. It had to be a keyhole! There was no other way.
“Something dire will happen when that key is turned,” said Prince Tyfar. He looked excited and wrought up in a way far different from his usual diffident manner.
Ariane shuddered and drew away from him.
Lobur the Dagger held Princess Thefi close. Retainers and paktuns held their weapons ready, a forest of steel blades. We looked about the chamber and back to Prince Nedfar and the onyx wall with the keyhole. He placed the key in the lock. He paused. Then: “In the name of Havil the Green!” He pushed the key in and turned it.
The purple draperies vanished in puffs of smoke. The odor of charred flesh gusted. The solid wall peeled back to reveal a colossal statue of Kranlil the Reaper, a full hundred feet tall, crowned, ferocious, malefic, wielding his flail.
Between the mammoth columns of his feet a narrow door groaned open, bronze bound, crimson, double-valved, the door slowly opened.
A long upward slope was revealed. And — at the far end, tiny and distant — light! Daylight! As our eyes made out the drifting shapes up there we saw clouds and the streaming mingled radiance of the Suns of Scorpio.
And then, as the first mobs broke through, shrieking their joy, a whirling darting maddening cloud of stinging insects broke down about our heads. They poured from the opened casket in the claws of Kranlil the Reaper. They tormented us as we ran, stinging and lacerating and driving us mad.
The vial of yellow poison kept my skin partly immune, so that I felt the stings as light prickles, like nettles.
Men were screaming, and flailing their arms, and running, running, tearing madly up that long narrow corridor.
Tyfar screamed and caught at his collar. I grabbed him and twitched out the little horror that was clinging to his neck. It was banded in yellow and green, gauzy-winged, and its sting was black and hard and tipped with a globule of moisture. I threw it away. I could not see Nodgen and Hunch in the bedlam.
We pushed on and Logu Fre-Da and his twin, Modo Fre-Da swiftly assisted Ariane along. Her hair was covered with insects. She screamed, trying to beat them free. Modo let out a yell and fell, clasping his legs. Both limbs crawled with the insect horrors. Logu bent to him.
“Leave him, you fool!” screamed Ariane. “Help me!”
Shrieking, Ariane stumbled. Tyfar caught her, helped her up. He was covered with the stinging insects.
He choked, trying to go on, and fell. Quienyin grasped my arm, shaking, beating at the air. Tyfar was on his knees, looking up imploringly, still gripping Ariane’s white dress which crawled with banded green and yellow.
“Ariane — princess—”
“Let go, you rast! I do not care a dead calsany’s hide for your life! Let me go !”
She struck Prince Tyfar. She wrenched free and ran screaming and sobbing up the slot, pushing and beating at the backs of the people struggling on. The two hyr-paktuns watched her go.
Quienyin said, chokedly, “Let — let them go — the insects will follow—” He let go my arm and beat at himself. “I am on fire!” The hideous uproar persisted, a cacophony of torture.
Barkindrar the Bullet and Nath the Shaft sprang to the side of the prince. All three hummed and buzzed with insects.
“We must go on!” I shouted.
We staggered and stumbled on. We were the last. The two Pachaks struggled along side by side, helping each other.
Our little group fought a way through the swarming clouds of insects. Hunch and Nodgen, trying to shout and making mewling noises, lurched on up the slope. Up there the daylight showed, bright and welcoming. The glory of the ruby and jade light fell into the opening, and irradiated the walls, and we fell and crawled on, afire with the poisonous stings from the winged furies.
We neared the top and the way to freedom.
Slaves, paktuns, retainers, notables, passed out through the opening and faintly we heard their yells of exaltation and triumph.
We pressed on.
Almost — almost we reached the opening.
Then the slab fell clashing down, stone on stone, and the blackness descended upon us.
We were shut in, denied life, trapped within the Moder.
Chapter Twenty-one
Of the Powers of a Wizard of Loh
Trapped... And all that ghastly catacomb of the Moder as our tomb...
“Back!” I yelled, savagely. “Out between the legs of Kranlil before that door closes!”
Scrambling, shouting, we raced desperately for the lower door. We came shooting out into the purple-draped room, and the double doors, crimson, bronze bound, groaned shut at our backs.
“But it is no use!” cried Tyfar. “We are doomed—”
“The insects are gone,” I said. “We have our lives still.”
Quienyin looked at me and shook his head.
“It is a long way—”
“Yes. But the only way, now. We must return through the Moder and make our escape the way we came in.”
We stared one at the other with frightened eyes. We knew what we had been through...
“We are a choice band,” I said. “We can win through if we bear up and trust in ourselves.”
“But, think of it. . .” whispered Hunch. Then he shouted, “I will not think of it! It is too frightening.”
“It is,” agreed Nodgen. “So best think of something else and just come along.”
Yes, they were a choice band. Prince Tyfar and his men, Barkindrar and Nath. Nodgen and Hunch.
Logu and Modo Fre-Da. And Deb-Lu-Quienyin, a Wizard of Loh whose powers would return only when he was safely out of here. A choice bunch, indeed, to venture back through this Castle of Death.
They were all scratching themselves. My vial soothed away their stings; but we still itched uncomfortably.
“It is a mortal long way,” observed Barkindrar.
“Look,” said Nath the Shaft. “I wager you I can shoot out the right eye of that damned statue before you can sling out the left. Is it a wager — for an amphora of best Jholaix when we sit in The Scented Sylvie?”
“Done,” said Barkindrar.
Sling whirled instantly, bow bent at once — leaden bullet and steel-tipped bird flew. Both of those staring green eyes clipped out, sparking, tinkled away somewhere.
“Mine, I think—”
“Ha! Mine, of a surety!”
I said, “I am surprised they allow ruffians like you in The Scented Sylvie. By Hanitch! What Ruathytu has come to!”
They gaped, then, and Tyfar suddenly burst into a laugh.
“You know the Sacred Quarter, then, Notor Jak of Djanduin?”
Nodgen and Hunch stopped arguing to stare at us like loons. The two Pachaks gave up hunting for the fallen eyes of Kranlil.
“Well enough to know I intend to spend a pleasant evening and night there again. You may not be a Bladesman, but I wager your axe sings a sweet tune.”
“And I shall share that evening and night with you!”
“Done!”
“Now we must make our way back,” he said, airily. “There is a charming tavern on the Alley of Forbidden Delights — The Sybli and the Vouvray, it is called.” He started to walk out of that dolorous chamber and along the corridor. We all followed. “I shall have great pleasure in taking you there, Notor Jak.”
“You do me the honor,” I s
aid, walking on.
Well, at least, this was one way to anchor the mind to sanity. What we faced was like to test us to the utmost. And there was an intriguing fact I had not overlooked. As we marched on I counted us again.
Yes, I was right.
Nine.
We were nine adventurers, challenging the sorcery of the Moder.
As we walked the twin Pachaks talked to each other and then, respectfully, they addressed Prince Tyfar.
“Prince, we request that you witness our formal severing of our nikobi to the lady Ariane nal Amklana.”
Tyfar’s face pinched in. But all he said was, “I so witness.”
We went on toward that spiral stair up the pit of the Flame. I took the opportunity to say to the two hyr-paktuns, “You would do me a favor, and confer honor if you were to look out for Master Quienyin.
Is this acceptable to you?”
They nodded solemnly. They did not give their nikobi — not yet. But I felt a little easier for Quienyin.
We were going to need stout hearts and hard fists to get out of here. Hunch was a weak link, possibly, but I fancied Nodgen and I would handle him.
I do not propose to detail all our struggles and torments as we battled our way back up the Moder. I will say that we found Kov Loriman’s discarded picks and sledgehammers and simply bashed our way out, as he had bashed in. We did take a number of magical items indicated to us by Quienyin in the spirit that we had earned them the hard way. We plodded on, encountering monsters and vanquishing them by sorcery or by steel, and so went on and up.
We found ourselves taking a different way fairly soon, and we saw no sign of the lake and the sunken ships and the quicksands.
Corridor after corridor, room after room... They blurred after a time into a continuing progression of horrors. But we went on. We were nine adventurers and if we were not hard-bitten when we began, we were hard-bitten enough at the end, by Vox!
Another interesting fact was that, going up as we were instead of down, we ran into traps from, as it were, the rear. Monsters, too, seemed a trifle put out that we did not appear from the right direction. I can say we left a trail behind us that would have done credit to a raging boloth in a potter’s yard.
We came to a corridor which curved gently out of sight ahead. Low golden railings separated each side from the main passageway. Within these golden railings stood or lounged or reclined on sofas hundreds of the most beautiful women of many races. They smiled seductively. Their eyes lighted on us brilliantly.
Lasciviously they beckoned to us. Some played harps and sang. The whole impression was of a single gigantic offering to passion.
Hunch and Nodgen stopped. They licked their lips.
Most of the women were half-dressed in exotic and revealing costume, attire calculated to drive a man wild with desire. I pointed at the long rows of carved skulls set back from the golden railings, each some four or five feet from the next.
“You are not in the Souk of Women now, you famblys.”
“No, but — look at that one!”
“And look at her!”
“Look — that is all.”
A Kaotim prowled along just then, a figure of a skeleton of a Rapa with his big beak glittering. He seemed surprised to see us. Quienyin whiffed him into ashes with a sprinkle of powder from a jeweled box taken from the Hall of the Flame. “Over a hundred pinches of powder left, friends,” he reported.
The Undead drifted away in a dribble of ash.
Kao is only one word for death in Kregish, which is a language rich and colorful.
“But,” said Hunch, “only to look...”
“You are in a Moder. You know what mod means, Hunch?”
He shivered, and took his longing gaze away from the sylvie who smiled lasciviously, beckoning, sweet.
“Yes. I know what mod means.”
“Then let us go on.”
So we went along between those wanton women and heard the mewling slobbering cries ahead. We proceeded cautiously.
A man came into view. He had clearly not heeded the warnings implicit here. The women near him were all laughing and displaying themselves and taunting him. From the mouth of one of the skulls a long, thin, prehensile line, like a whip, fastened about this man’s tail. The two whip-tails linked and held, fast locked, knotted.
The man kept trying to pull himself away, and crying, and shrieking, and then falling to his knees. In his hand he held a knife. He was, we judged, insane.
“A Snatchban,” said Quienyin. “He will never cut that.”
On the floor lay two swords and a dagger, sundered into halves.
Hunch and Nodgen started forward and then, as the imprisoned man shrieked and swung his knife down and so withdrew it, they halted, as it were, on one foot, and stood staring dumbly.
“If there is one thing they fear above all else,” said Tyfar, “it is to have their tail cut off.”
“Yet, if he doesn’t cut if off, he will perish here, miserably.”
“Would you cut it off — for him?”
“Me?” I said. “Well — I might.”
Quienyin did not say anything.
Nodgen and Hunch came to life. Each took out his knife.
“We will cut it off for him, notor.” Then Nodgen said, “Perhaps it would be better if you went ahead a little?”
Hunch said, “He may be — violent.”
I said, “We will walk on.”
So we seven walked on between those beautiful women until the curve of the corridor closed in at our rear and the next chamber opened up ahead. Muffled mewling sounds drifted up from the way we had come. We entered the next chamber and set ourselves to read its riddle — backwards. Once we were through the riddle, the way out would be clear, for that was the way in. Presently Nodgen and Hunch rejoined us.
“And?” I said.
They kept their gazes down.
“We talked about it, notor. We felt it would be — undignified — for him to lose his tail. He would probably prefer death.”
“You put him out of his misery?”
They shook their heads.
“Oh, no, notor. It would not be seemly for two ex-slaves to slay him.”
I screwed my face up. I did not blame them. But, all the same. I started for the way we had come in, saying, “Then I will cut his damned tail off.” The entrance closed with a snap.
“There is no way back to him now,” observed Tyfar.
“No...”
“Poor devil,” said Tyfar. “I do not like them as a rule. I wonder who he was?”
“You did not recognize him?”
“No, should I have?”
“I do not think so.” He had — changed. The experience had altered him profoundly. But Hunch and Nodgen and I knew him.
Thus was Tarkshur the Lash left to his fate.
I wondered if they had left him his knife.
We were now running low on food and water; but we made a camp and rested up until we were refreshed enough to continue. How we managed our escape at the top occupied a deal of our conversation, but I found I was going beyond that in my own black thoughts. A very great deal further, by Vox!
The thought that the beautiful Krozair longsword would vanish when we reached the outside had to be faced. I was conscious of the privilege of having it in my fists once more. The Eye of the World, Grodnim and Zairian, seemed a long long way away now.
We were nine. One Tryfant. Two Brokelsh. Two Pachaks. Four apims. Nine.
Chance had brought us together. And we used chance to our own ends. We nine battled our way through the horrors until we stood in an echoing hall where the screams of lycanthropes banished away still lingered, and recognized where we were.
“Through that door, yonder,” said Quienyin, pointing.
“The first thing I do,” began Nodgen.
“That will be the second thing for me,” quoth Hunch.
“I think, my friends,” said Quienyin, “it will go something like this.” He drew hi
mself up and took a breath. In a strong voice he called, “Answer no is there.”
From the room where I had last eaten a chunk of doughy mergem we walked out as the doors opened of themselves. We stood in a hall and the dust coated the floor. I studied the many sets of footprints.
Then I began to walk quietly off to a corner.
“Beware, Jak!” cried Tyfar. “Look at those stains at the ends of footprints which end — abruptly!”
“Yes. But we are not the ninnies who entered here.”
“That is true, by Hanitcha the Harrower!”
“I am not sure I know what you are about, Jak,” said Quienyin, “and if I suspected what it was I am sure I would not want to know. But, let me see...”
He walked across and halted well before the end of the line of footprints I had chosen. The ceiling curved into a bulge here, and the shadows clustered among the cobwebs. Quienyin took a small crystal object the size of a shonage from inside his robe and turned it about. Presently in its pale depths we saw a blue-green glow and the outline of a humped shape. Quienyin turned the crystal until he had the blue-green glow responding most strongly.
He nodded his head and then pushed his turban straight.
“Yes. A Trap-Volzoid. Nasty — serrated teeth that will fasten around your neck — that explains the stains. He’ll lift you straight up. He’s lurking up there somewhere and spying on us.”
“A Volzoid — but—”
“This is a Trap-Volzoid. He can leap for perhaps three or four paces. He is waiting for you to walk into range.”
“Let him wait, notor!” called Nodgen.
Hunch said, “The door is this way.” He started to walk to the portal through which we had entered — a long time ago.
I said, “Will the harpy with the golden hair open it for you?”
The torches still burned above the gates. But they were fast closed, and the iron bars and studs did not look rusty.
“Oh, by Tryflor — have mercy!”
A Fortune for Kregen Page 23