VII
THEY WERE BEGINNING to think they might complete the passage through the Teeth (or at least to the end of the river) without mishap. Long days of idle drifting, the boat carried smoothly by the current, had lulled the fears they’d acquired on the Swordsward.
Pog, his hearing more acute than anyone else’s, was first to note the noise.
“Off key,” he explained in response to their queries, “but it’s definitely somebody’s idea of song. More than one of whatever it is, too.”
“I’m sure of it.” Caz’s long ears were cocked alertly toward the northern shore. They twitched in counterpoint to his busy nose.
It was several minutes more before the humans could hear the subject of their companion’s intense listening. It was a rhythmic rising and falling, light and ethereal as an all-female choir might produce. Definitely music, but nothing recognizable as words.
It was occasionally interrupted by a few moments of vivace modulation that sounded like laughter. Jon-Tom could appreciate the peculiar melodies, but he didn’t care for the laughter-chords one bit.
Bribbens interrupted their listening, his tone quiet as always but unusually urgent. “Tiller’s not answering properly.”
Indeed, the boat was drifting steadily toward the north shore. There was a gravel beach and rocks: not much of a landing place. Muscles strained beneath the boatman’s slick skin as he fought the steering, but the boat continued to incline landward.
Soon they were bumping against the first rocks. These obstacles poked damp dark heads out of the water around the boat.
Flor stumbled away from the railing on the opposite side and screamed. Jon-Tom rushed to join her. He stared over the side and recoiled instinctively.
Dozens of shapes filled the water. They had their hands on the side of the boat and were methodically pushing at it even though it was already half grounded on the rocky bottom.
“Steady now,” said Talea warningly. She stood at the bow, her knife and sword naked in the glow-light, and pointed to the land.
A great number of creatures were marching toward the boat. They were identical to the persistent pushers in the water. All were approximately five feet tall and thin to the point of emaciation. They were faintly human, memories of almost-people parading in unison.
Two legs and two arms. They were nude but smooth-bodied and devoid of external sex organs. For that matter they displayed nothing in the way of differentiating characteristics. They might have been stamped from a single mold.
Their white flesh was truly white, blank-white, like milk and bordering on translucence. Two tiny coal-pit eyes sat in the puttylike heads where real eyes ought to have been. There were no pupils, no ears or nostrils, and only a flat slit of a mouth cutting the flesh below the eye-dots. Hands had short fingers, which along with the legs looked jointless as rubber.
In time to the music they marched toward the ship, waving their arms slowly and hypnotically while singing their moaning, methodical song.
Jon-Tom looked to Clothahump. The wizard looked baffled. “I don’t know, my boy. None of the legends says anything about a tribe of albino chanters living in the Throat.” He called to the marchers.
“What are you called? What is it you want of us?”
“What can we do for you?” Flor asked, adding something unintelligible in Spanish.
The singers did not respond. They descended the slight slope of the beach with fluid grace. The ones in the lead began reaching, clutching over the railing.
Two of them grabbed Talea’s right arm. “Ease back there,” she ordered them, pulling away. They did not let go and continued to tug at her insistently.
Several other pale singers were already on the deck and were pulling with similar patient determination at Jon-Tom and Mudge.
“’Ere now, you cold buggerers, take your bloody ’ands off me!” The otter twisted free.
So did Talea and Jon-Tom. Yet the pale visitors wordlessly kept advancing, groping for the strangers.
Another sound quietly filled the cavern. It seeped across the river and dominated the rise and fall of the expressionless choir. A deep, low moaning, it was in considerable contrast to the melody of the white singers. It was not at all nice. In fact, it seemed to Jon-Tom that it embodied every overtone of menace and malignance one could put into a single moan. It issued from somewhere back in the black depths, beyond where the singers had come from.
“That’s about enough,” said Bribbens firmly. He hefted his backup steering sweep and began swinging it at the singers stumbling about on deck. Two of them went down with unexpected lack of resistance. Their heads bounced like a pair of rubber balls across the deck. The black eyespots never twitched and they uttered not a word of pain. Their singing, however, ceased. One of the skulls bounced over the railing and landed in the water with a slight splash, to sink quickly out of sight.
A shocked Bribbens paused to stare at the decapitated corpses. There was no blood.
“Damn. They aren’t alive.”
“They are,” Clothahump insisted, struggling awkwardly in the grasp of three singers who were trying to wrestle his heavy body off the ship, “but it is not our kind of alive.”
“I’ll make them our kind of dead.” Talea’s sword was moving like a scythe. Three singers fell neatly into six halves. They lay on the deck like so many lumps of white clay, motionless and cold.
Jon-Tom hurried to assist Clothahump. “Sir, what do you think we…?”
“Fight for it, my boy, fight! You can’t argue with these things, and I have a feeling that if we’re taken from this boat we’ll never see it again.” He had retreated inside his shell, confounding his would-be abductors.
Above the shouts of the boat’s defenders and the singsong of their horribly indifferent assaulters came a reprise of that ominous, basso groaning. It was definitely nearer, Jon-Tom thought, and redoubled his efforts to clear the deck.
He was swinging the club end of his staff in great arcs, indiscriminately lopping off heads, arms, legs. The singers broke like hardened clay, but the dozens dismembered were replaced by ranks of thoughtless duplicates, still droning their eerie anthem.
“Get us out in the current!” Talea was trying to keep the white bodies away from the bow.
With Mudge shielding him from clutching fingers Bribbens put down his oar and returned to the main sweep. Though he leaned on it as hard as he could, and though the current was with them, they still couldn’t move away from the shore.
Jon-Tom leaned over the side. Using his reach and the long club he began clearing bodies from the waterline. White hands pulled possessively at him from behind, but Flor was soon at his side swinging her mace, cutting them down like pale shrubs. Most of them ignored her. Possibly it had something to do with her white leather clothing, he mused.
He concentrated on swinging the club in long arcs, knocking away heads or pieces of boneless skull with great rapidity. Their slight resistance barely slowed the force of his swings.
When the heads were knocked loose the bodies simply ceased their shoving and slid below the surface. A few bobbed on the current and drifted like styrofoam down the river.
The singing continued, undisturbed by the bloodless slaughter, by screams of anger or despair. Rising louder around the boat was that rich, bellowing moan. It had become loud enough now to drown out the chorus. A few fragments of rock fell from the cavern roof.
Finally enough of the bodies had been swept from the side of the boat for it to drift once more out into the river. Like so many termites supple white singers continued to march down toward the water. They walked until the water was up to their chests and began swimming slowly after the boat.
Breathing hard, Jon-Tom leaned back against the railing, holding tight to his staff for additional support. All of the original swimmers who’d forced the craft in to shore had been knocked away or decapitated. Now that they were out again in midstream, the current kept them well ahead of their lugubrious pursuers.
“Paddle, man! Paddle for your life!”
“What?” Jon-Tom looked back at the shore, expecting to see the horde of singers clumsily stumbling after them across the rocks.
Instead his gaze fastened onto something that stifled the scream welling up in his throat and turned it into that peculiar choking noise people make at times of true horror. A vast, glowing gray mass filled the cavern shore behind them. It came near to touching the ceiling. Where large formations rose the gray substance flowed over or around it, displaying a consistency partly like cloud and then like lard. Its moans rattled the length of the cavern and echoed back from distant walls.
It looked like a fog wrapped with mucus, save for two enormous, pulsing pink eyes. They stared lidlessly down at the tiny fleeing ship and the stick figures frozen on its deck.
Bits of its flanks were in constant motion. These portions of mucus slid toward the ground. As they did so their color paled to a now familiar white. Tumbling like the eggs of some gigantic insect, they dropped off the huge slimy sides onto the rock and gravel. There they rolled over and stood upright on newly formed legs. Simultaneously a section of their smooth faces parted and a fresh voice would join intuitively in the awful mellifluous chorus of its duplicates.
Something hard and unyielding struck Jon-Tom in his midsection. Looking down he saw the hardwood oar Bribbens had shoved at him. The glaring frog face moved away, to pass additional oars to the rest of his passengers.
Then he was back at his sweep, rowing madly and yelling at his companions. “Paddle, damn you all, paddle!”
Jon-Tom’s feet finally moved. He leaned over the side and ripped with the oar at the dark surface of the river. It was difficult going and the leverage was bad, but he rowed until his throat screamed with pain and a deep throbbing pounded against his chest.
Yet that horror lurching and tumbling drunkenly along the shore just behind them put strength in weakened arms. Talea, Flor, Caz, and Mudge imitated his efforts. Pog had hidden behind his wings, where he hung from the spreaders, a shivering droplet of black membrane, flesh, and fear. Clothahump stood and watched, watched and mumbled.
A thick gray pseudopod reached across the river, emerging from the slate-colored moving mountain. It slapped violently at the water only yards from the stern of the fleeing vessel. For all its nebulous horror, the substance of the monster was real enough. Water drenched those on board.
Black almost-eyes glistened wetly as white grub-things continued peeling from the pulsating bulk of the beast. Jon-Tom frowned; someone had spoken above the reverberant bellowing. He looked across at Clothahump.
“The Massawrath.” The wizard noticed Jon-Tom staring at him, and he repeated the name. “I have seen it in visions, my boy, suspected it in trances, but to have located its lair… Is it not appalling and unique? Do you not recognize any of this?”
“Recognize…? Clothahump, have you gone mad? Or have we all? Or is it just that… that…”
He hesitated. For all its utterly alien appearance, there was truly something almost familiar about the apparition.
Again the pseudopod slapped at them. There was a broken groan from the boat. The tip of the massive appendage had struck just to Clothahump’s left, tearing away railing along with a bit of the deck. The turtle had instinctively withdrawn and rolled several yards bowward. There he stuck out arms and legs once more and struggled to his feet while Bribbens rowed harder than ever and quietly cursed the abomination pursuing them.
Several partly formed white shapes had fallen from the end of the pseudopod. They lay on deck, their uncompleted limbs thrashing slowly. Among them was a head that had not grown a proper body and a lower torso the chest region of which tapered to a point.
Jon-Tom pulled in his oar and began kicking the disgusting things over the side. The last one clutched and pulled at him. It had arms but no legs. He was forced to touch it. Somehow he kept down his nausea and pulled it away from his legs. The white, rubbery flesh was cold as ice. He lifted it and heaved it over the railing, its weak grip sliding along his arm. It splashed astern while the Massawrath hunched its way over boulders and stalagmites, pacing just aft of the racing ship and gibbering mindlessly.
“If the river narrows and brings us in reach, we’re finished.” Talea spoke in a high, nervous voice and wrestled with the long oar.
“What is it?” Jon-Tom wiped his hands on his pants but the clamminess he’d picked off the flesh wouldn’t dry. He raised his oar and shoved it back into the water.
“The Massawrath,” Clothahump repeated. His hurried tumble across the deck apparently hadn’t affected him. “She is the Mother of Nightmares. This is her lair, her home.”
Jon-Tom tried not to watch the loping gray slime. Bits of congealed white, animated puddings, continued to drip from those vast flanks, climb to their feet, and march for the water. They remained at least twenty yards astern though they kept up their pursuit. They did not have the muscular strength (if they had muscles, Jon-Tom thought) to overtake the boat. An army of fellow singers surged and marched around the base of the Massawrath. Some were indifferently squished beneath the vast mass, others shoved aside into the water.
“And what are the white things?” Flor forced herself to ask.
Clothahump peered over his glasses at her in evident surprise. “Why child, what would you expect the Mother of Nightmares to produce, except nightmares? I asked if you recognized them. Having no dreams to invade they are presently unformed, shapeless, incipient. Here in their place of birthing they are partly solid. When they pass out and into the minds of thinking creatures they have become thin as wind. Their lives are brief, empty, and full of torment.”
“Wha-at?” Caz swallowed, tried again. “What does the blasted thing want with us?” The fur was as stiff on his neck as the nails of a yogi’s board.
“Nightmares need dreams to feed on,” explained the wizard. “Minds on which to fasten. What the Massawrath Mother feeds on I can only imagine, but I am not ready to offer myself to find out. I do not think it would be pleasant to be nightmared to death. Mayhap she feeds on the loose minds of the mad, carried back to her by those fragments of nightmare offspring that survive longer than a night. It is said the insane never awaken.”
It continued to trail them, roaring and moaning. Pale things fell like white sweat from her back and sides. Occasionally a fresh appendage, gray and wet, would extend out toward them. It did not again come close enough to contact the boat.
Jon-Tom remembered Talea’s frantic warning: if anything forced them nearer the Massawrath’s shore they would be better off killing each other.
Another worry was the vibration he’d been feeling for more than a few minutes. Though it steadily intensified, it seemed to have no connection with the pursuing Mother of Nightmares. Soon a vast thunder filled his ears, powerful enough to reduce even the Massawrath’s moan to a faint wailing.
Still it grew in volume. Now the maddened gray hulk struck out at the boat with dozens of pseudopods of many lengths. They raised water from the river and dropped dozens of slimy nightmares behind the boat.
The roaring grew louder still, until it and the vibration underfoot merged and were one. Exhausted from wrestling with the steering sweep, Bribbens leaned across it and tried to catch his breath. Then he frowned, staring over the bow. Several minutes went by and an expression of great calm came over his face.
Jon-Tom relaxed on his own oar and panted uncontrollably. “You… you recognize it?”
“Yes, I recognize it.” The boatman looked happy, which was encouraging. He also looked resigned, which was not. “Every boatman knows the legends of the Sloomaz-ayor-le-Weentli. It could only be one thing, you know.
“At least the Massawrath will not have us. This will be a cleaner, surer death.”
&nb
sp; “What death? What are you talking about?” Talea and the others had shipped their own oars as their pursuer fell back.
Bribbens reached out with an arm and gestured across the bow. Ahead of them a thick fog was becoming visible. It boiled energetically and spread a cloud across the roof of the great cavern.
“Clothahump?” Jon-Tom turned back to the wizard. “What’s he raving about?”
“He is not raving, my boy.” The stocky sorcerer had also turned his attention away from the fading horror behind them. “He told you once, remember? It is why the Massawrath cannot follow and why she flails in rage at us. She cannot cross Helldrink.”
Thunder deafened Jon-Tom, and he had to put his hands to his ears. He felt the noise through the deck, through his legs and entire body. It pierced his every cell.
Fog and roaring, mist and thunder drew nearer. What did that say? It’s speaking to you, he told himself, announcing its presence and declaring its substance. It was familiar to Bribbens, who’d never seen it. Should it therefore also be recognizable to him?
Waterfall, he thought. He knew it instantly.
Hurrying to the storage lockers, he tried to think of a saving song. The duar was in his hands, clean and dry, waiting to be stroked to life, waiting to sing magic. He draped straps over his neck, felt the familiar weight on his shoulders.
One final time long cables of gray mucus reached out for them. The Massawrath had extended itself to the utmost, but its reach still fell short. Quivering with frustration, it hunkered down on the rocks now well behind the boat, the volcanic pits of its eyes glaring balefully at those now beyond its grasp.
Ahead fog boiled ceilingward like wet flame.
Jon-Tom stared mesmerized at the mist and hunted through his repertoire for an appropriate song. What could he sing? That they were nearing a waterfall was all too clear, but what kind of waterfall? How high, how wide, how fast or… ?
Desperately he belted out several choruses from half a dozen different tunes relating to water. They produced no visible result. The boat’s course and speed remained unchanged. Even the gneechees seemed to have deserted him. He’d come to expect their almost-presence whenever he’d strummed magic, and their absence panicked him.
The Hour of the Gate: A Spellsinger Adventure (Book Two) (The Spellsinger Saga) Page 10