by James Silke
She nodded. “Be careful.”
He darted into the shadows of the cliff and started up the gash toward the crest.
Cobra watched him, shaking her head and asking, “Just what do you think you can do, Brown?” She turned to him. “Go to Pyram? Storm the castle with four people?”
“Yes,” he said evenly, “and you will lead the way.” He smiled knowingly. “You still know it, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I know the way. But it is useless. They would see us coming for miles. And even if we got inside, we would stand no chance against Gath. The helmet would sense our presence and hunt us down.”
“But if we could get to the jewels first, there would be a chance, correct?”
“Brown,” she said tiredly, “Pyram is not one of your stages. It’s real, and dangerous. The jewels are held deep within its dungeons. We would have to have the luck of the Good Goddess herself to even reach them.”
Brown John took hold of her shoulders and grinned. “Then you agree? There is a chance we could reach them?”
“Yes, a chance, but…”
“And if this nymph bitch does control Gath, the jewels can free him from her, right?”
She started to reply, and stopped herself, then said, “I don’t know.”
“You were sure before,” he said accusingly.
“I know, but, well… maybe I was dreaming, just filling my head with wishful thinking.” She turned away, then glanced at Robin. “What about you? If this crazy old man goes to Pyram, are you going with him?”
“Of course,” blurted Robin.
“Why?” asked Cobra, her voice flat and hard. “You don’t need the jewels. You’ve already not only cured Jakar of his bitterness, but made him fall in love with you! What do you need them for now?” Robin blushed. “I don’t know if what you say about Jakar is true or not. But that doesn’t count, not now. Gath needs us. And we’ve got to try and help him no matter how small the chance of success.” Cobra moved face-to-face with Robin, studying her, then said bitterly, “You’re lying. You want the jewels for yourself! That’s all you’ve ever wanted.” Robin’s mouth fell open in shock, and she looked from Brown John to Cobra, gasping, “That’s not true! I… I…”
“Never mind, Robin,” Brown John said calmly, “you don’t have to explain anything.” He turned to Cobra. “There’s no need to take your frustrations out on her. That won’t help anything.”
Cobra-stared at him, empty of expression, and sat down on the side of the cliff staring at the dirt. Brown moved to her, but hesitated for a moment before he spoke.
“One more question. Can the jewels free Gath from this Nymph Queen’s control or not?”
“I can’t promise it, Brown,” Cobra replied without looking at him, “but yes, if everything is as it appears to be, yes.”
“Then we do have a chance.”
“If we can reach the jewels, yes,” Cobra said, looking up. “But that’s impossible!”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But if you will forgive me for saying it myself, I tend to excel at times of extreme hopelessness.”
Cobra couldn’t repress a grin, and shook her head as Brown John squatted facing her. “Don’t shake your lovely head, woman. We stand at the bottom of a pit of doom, so our only recourse is to look up with soaring spirits. It is the only thing that can lift us out.”
“You realize, of course,” she said, “that you’re quite mad.”
He nodded affirmatively. “It is a point of honor with me. If there is a cliff, I must jump off it… just in case I should chance to fly.”
She smiled, and the sounds of horses were heard down the road. They rose, and Jakar rode out of the darkness leading two horses. Robin sighed with relief and raced to greet him as Cobra turned to Brown John.
“You see,” he said, “already our luck changes for the better.”
“Or for the worse,” she said soberly.
He shook his head. “Trust me. I see things coming, remember? And you and I, woman, have only started down our trail, believe me. Our time has only begun.”
She hesitated, a madcap rush of girlish hope showing behind her eyes, then her voice surrendered. “Brown, I think you’re becoming contagious.”
“Oh, yes,” he said with a profound grin. “That you can count on.”
Thirty-six
THE BLACK LIGHT
Clutching her leopard-skin wrap tightly, Tiyy looked over a spotted shoulder with flaring nervous eyes. Thick mustard- and lemon-yellow fumes swirled around her, filling the air in Pyram’s underground altar chamber, and her orchid cheeks flamed behind them, blushing her face to the corners of her scarlet lips. She was slick with sweat. Every nerve and sinew strung tight with sensual expectation. A budding goddess in heat.
She pressed back against the shiny obsidian walls, her flat belly convulsing, and spoke in a breathless voice.
“Careful! Careful!”
The high priest and his two acolytes could only nod in reply. They were scurrying back and forth and around a black stone table from which the fumes emanated, making precise adjustments in the apparatus. Their naked chests glittered with sweat, and their bare feet splashed in puddles of it. They were monitoring stills, flasks, tubes of green glass, furnaces and scorching pans joined together in a bubbling maze on the table. Flame pots flickered under the glass instruments, and vapors convulsed through them, spewing fumes from loosely luted joints and elbows.
The high priest added a teardrop of vitriol to a beaker of boiling blood-red liquid, as the acolytes, using spatula and scoop, added powder to a flask and stirred the fires. Then they held still, waiting.
Inside the tubes, the vapors thickened to a yellowish mist and surged toward the bizarre culmination of the apparatus, a bronze tube as thin as a straw. At its tip, a drop of liquid gathered slowly, then fell into a clear-glass vial no bigger than a baby’s cup. It was one-third full of a turgid vermilion elixir.
A joint in the tubing near the middle of the maze came loose. Mustard fumes whooshed into the room, and drops of the precious elixir splashed on the table, sizzling.
“Fix it!” Tiyy shrieked.
The three men pounced on the break. The acolytes picked up the hot tubes in gloved hands and fitted the joint together. The high priest quickly coated it with a mixture of clay and straw, then propped the tubing on a stand for added support. They watched it for a moment, and the fumes swirled, continuing through the joint without escaping.
Tiyy relaxed slightly, then turned sharply as a heavy wooden door swung open beside her, and Schraak emerged. A low guttural growl followed the small man out of the door, and Tiyy grinned with a surge of power, knowing the sound came from the magnificent Barbarian she now held prisoner in the adjacent cell. Schraak stopped, facing her, and bowed as he spoke.
“He won’t eat or drink, your magnificence. And I cannot remove the horned helmet.”
“Leave it,” she said breathlessly. “The prospect of a masked lover pleases me.”
“Lover?” The worm’s eyes were startled. “But… but he is not strong enough! The heat of your sacred fire will bum his flesh. Kill him!”
“He will be made strong.” The wantonness in her eyes was gaudy.
Schraak was stunned. “You’re… you’re going to feed him the black wine? Make him a Lord of Destruction?”
She nodded.
“But he’s only a man!”
“Yes, but a man like no other there has ever been before.”
“But he stole the master’s helmet! He must die!” She shook her head, and the bristling spears of her yellow hair shivered. “The master did not mean him to die, but to serve. And he will.”
“But… but if he wears the helmet while you embrace him, he’ll…he’ll…”
“Perhaps,” she said, and her voice trembled with a mix of fear and anticipation. “I know the danger. It will be like embracing the master’s flame, but soon now, very soon, I will be ready to take that risk.” Shuddering, Schraak looked about the labo
ratory. The high priest was gently taping a tube where the fumes inside appeared to be blocked, and they tumbled apart, flowed forward. One of the acolytes was coaxing a syrupy glob of elixir along another tube by passing a dish of fire under it, and the other one, having unraveled a parchment yellow and flaking with age, was reading an ancient word formula aloud.
Tiyy said, “You should pray for their success, Schraak. Because if they aren’t successful,” she put her scorching eyes on him, “you are going to crawl back into the ground where you came from.”
He staggered back a step.
“You failed me a second time, worm. You brought me the carcass of an Ikarian savage, not the girl!”
“But… but it was her blood! It had to be!” he stammered. “I saw her aura!”
She nodded. “Yes, it was her blood. The carcass was clotted with it. But did you look at her carefully? Was she the same young, finely made girl you once saw in Bahaara?” He hesitated, and she knew he had not checked the body carefully. “I thought not.”
“Forgive me,” he pleaded, “I was so anxious to…”
“Arrrrggg! If you had used your head, we could have saved hours. As it is we’ve spent most of the day removing the dried flakes and dissolving them, coaxing them back to life.” A flicker of fear passed behind her eyes, and her breath quickened. “If her Kaa is as strong as the serpent queen claimed it was, it will still be alive. But if it isn’t!”
The threat in her tone made him groan, and he drew a soft cloth from under his belt, dabbed at the scum gathering on his eyebrows and lips. Then his quavering voice asked, “Is… is there enough?”
“Nearly,” she said. “The vial is almost full.”
He glanced at the clear-glass vial collecting the vermilion liquid, sighed with some relief and turned to his queen. “I’ll order the hunt to begin again. The girl will not escape a third time.”
“There is no need for that,” she said.
His eyes widened, not understanding.
A grin blossomed on her florid heart-shaped face. “Once the Barbarian is in my control, I will send him to hunt her. That way her capture is assured. No one who threatens the master can hide from the horned helmet.”
The small man nodded and again dabbed at his face with the soft cloth.
The high priest moved to the end of the table and stood beside the filling vial.
“Hurry! Hurry!” Tiyy growled.
The high priest allowed three more drops to fall into the vial, then closed the spigot. Using both hands, he lifted the tiny vessel and brought it to Tiyy. She straightened regally and shrugged off her leopard-skin wrap, clasping the vial with both hands to her nude body. Her only garments were a sheen of heat and a narrow leopard-skin apron.
Taking a deep breath she followed the high priest to the black stone altar at the deepest portion of the laboratory. They mounted its three circular steps to a cube of shiny obsidian at the top. It measured three feet high, coming to Tiyy’s waist, and supported a large ball of black stone which rested in a perfectly matched depression in the top of the cube. Tiyy set her feet apart for balance and held the vial out in front of her, her arms fully extended. The priest wrapped his arms around the black stone ball, gathered his strength and rolled it aside. A shaft of white light, no bigger around than the Nymph Queen’s small finger, shot up out of a small hole at the center of the depression. It speared straight up, splitting the darkness like a knife.
The high priest, holding the heavy stone ball against his chest, backed away from the blinding light, averting his head.
Schraak and the acolytes cringed behind the laboratory table.
Tiyy held her place.
The muscles along her arms pulsed and rippled, and her clenched fingers squeezed tightly around the vial, as if it were trying to escape. The shaft of white light had ricocheted off a mirrorlike polished black rock set at an angle in the ceiling and descended into the mouth of the vial. There it stirred and heated the elixir, and whiffs of dark smoke emerged from the mouth like fingers of the dead.
Moisture formed around Tiyy’s parted lips. Her temples dripped sweat. Her breasts and belly heaved. Her legs corded with muscle, but she held still, fighting to keep the vial in place. Then she wavered, weakening, but still held the vial in the light’s path. It churned and rocked inside her grip. Vermilion fumes spewed out of the mouth and flowed up the sides of the beam of white light, coiling around it.
The savage nymph’s face flinched with a smile, and she stepped back, cradling the vial against her breasts. The white light bounced off the stone steps, caromed across the room and hit the far wall, exploding in a hundred tiny beams that shot and spiraled through the chamber.
An acolyte was burnt on the cheek. Flasks and tubes were split and cracked. Streaks of fire broke out on the shiny walls where the light passed over it. Schraak took a blow on the hip and fell to the floor groaning and clutching the wound, his grey flesh smoking beneath his thick fingers.
Tiyy ignored the streaking light. She drew the vial to her lips, and poured the elixir into her mouth. She took it in gulps, feeling it bum her stomach. Glowing with pleasure, she licked her lips as power spread like a contagion into her soul.
Schraak, flinching and ducking bolts of light, cried to her, “Stop it! Stop it!”
Tiyy glanced over a naked shoulder, watched a flask explode in a blaze of light, then saw Schraak on the floor pleading with her. One of her acolytes was sprawled unconscious across him, his tunic on fire. She glanced at the base of the altar. There the high priest lay on his back still holding the stone ball in his arms. The white light had hit the ball and driven the heavy stone into his chest, crushing him.
With tyrannical casualness, Tiyy dropped the vial, and it clattered down the steps as she turned and faced the altar. Hesitation flashed across her large eyes as she watched the spear of white light streaking up in front of her, its glow turning her orchid cheeks a pale pink. Then she took a breath and boldly thrust a hand over the shaft of light, about a foot above the hole in the black cube.
The white light came to an abrupt stop against her palm, and the shafts bouncing about the room dissipated, vanished.
Schraak shoved the acolyte’s body off, and rose to his hands and knees, staring at his queen with dumb awe.
Her hand had turned to white light, and the light was advancing up her arm. It edged past her elbow and became diffused, mixing with the lustrous walnut of her skin. Then it slowly retreated back down her arm. When it passed her palm, it seemed to flash through her fingers, then departed from her body. For a long moment her hand held steady against the shaft of light still spearing up out of the hole, then trembled with effort, battling it. Her body rippled muscularly under her dark flesh, and beads of sweat trailed down her glossy sheen. A shaft of black light slowly emerged from her palm at precisely the point where the white light hit it. The black light edged down into the white light, forcing it down and down, until the white light vanished back inside the altar stone.
“The ball,” Tiyy whispered harshly. “Quickly!”
Schraak and the surviving acolyte came to their feet and hurried to the altar. They hesitated at the sight of the dead high priest, then crouched over him. They took the ball away from his clutching arms and heaved it onto the edge of the altar. Tiyy removed her hand, and the ball rolled into place before the white light could again show itself.
Grinning with giddy power, Tiyy moved to a shelf, almost trotting. She plucked a vial of Nagraa off of it with each hand, glanced back at Schraak’s exhausted body sitting on the step of the altar and shouted, “Get up, you worthless lump. Bring the keys!”
She hurried through the open door by which the dwarf had entered, passed through a narrow passage with earthen walls and stopped short in the open door of a small stone cell facing the Barbarian.
Thirty-seven
DARK GODDESS
Gath, lit by guttering lamp light, hung lifelessly between chains at the back of the cell. His arms were fully e
xtended and his legs spread apart, with shackles binding his wrists and ankles. They were chained to the side walls so that he was suspended clear of the stone floor. His helmeted head hung between his shoulders, and tiny bites speckled his body, which was pale under its sun-darkened blood smeared flesh.
Slowly the helmet lifted, and the shadowed eyes behind the eye slits studied the savage nymph.
Nearly naked, breathing rapidly and glistening with the heat of some hard effort, she held two vials in her fists. A small slick man came out of the tunnel behind her and stood obediently to her side. He was shaking so badly that the ring of keys in his hand jangled noisily.
Gath growled, low and instinctively, and a smile lifted the nymph’s cheeks. She said, “Welcome to Pyram, large one. I am Tiyy, the Nymph Queen, and high priestess of Black Veshta. I presume you have heard of me?” Gath made no reply, and her eyes thinned. “I like that. I am partial to proud, defiant men, and you are easily the proudest of the lot. That’s why you are still alive. I am going to give you a chance to see who you prefer… me or the girl.” Gath pulled on his chains but could summon little strength, and the shackles cut into wrists and ankles, causing the drumming pain to throb loudly against his skull. He became dizzy and his eyes closed, fire flooding through his brain into his eyeballs. When he reopened his eyes he knew they glowed with fire.
Tiyy had advanced to within three feet of him, and her body was flushed, instinctively responding to his heat with its own.
The helmet tried to turn away from her, but Gath would not let it, and watched her warily.
“I am amazed,” she said quietly, “that the man inside you still refuses to submit to the helmet. I would not have believed it possible if I was not seeing it with my own eyes. But I am glad.” Her words purred with pleasure and power. “I have never made a Lord of Destruction from a man before. There was never one strong enough. Until now.” Gath thrashed violently against his chains, flames shooting from the eye slits, and Schraak had to sit down to keep from falling. But Tiyy did not move or flinch, only waited until he sagged helplessly in place, his chest heaving and dripping sweat and blood.