by James Silke
Slowly she circled him, holding the two vials in one hand, touching his arm and back and wrist with gentle fingertips, then reappeared facing him. His blood glistened on her thumb. She studied it thoughtfully and tasted it, then said, “It is written in the scrolls of the ancients that one day a man will walk the earth with the power to bring down nations and raise up mountains, to remake the earth until north is south and the deserts are blue seas. A man of such courage and strength that where he walks the legends will walk.” Her voice became breathless with anticipation. “A man greater than kings and magicians who is made from both good and evil… a man whose heart’s love is capable of bringing the White Veshta back to life, and whose seed of lust can make the chosen of the Master of Darkness into the Black Veshta incarnate.”
He hung silently in place, glaring.
“Do you know what that would mean? Have you any conception of the measure of power such a man could unleash?” She shook her head. “I doubt it. They are beyond even my imagination. But the man I can imagine, and measure… and you are that man.”
Gath laughed at her, small and bitter and short. She smiled in reply. “Save your laughter, large one. We will soon see which one of us is right. You, the next Lord of Destruction, or me, the Nymph Queen of Pyram.” Her smile sank back into her savagely beautiful face. “You see, I am the chosen of the Lord of Death.”
Cold terror ran through Gath’s veins, and he thrashed against his chains.
Once more she waited until his strength was wasted, then used her teeth to uncork each of the vials, spitting the corks on the floor. With black light spearing from the vials, she lifted them to his face, saying, “Raise your head.”
Despite Gath’s efforts, the helmet obeyed, and she emptied a vial into the mouth slit. He gulped and choked, trying to reject the bitter taste, but a heat rushed through him and the helmet took control. It whipped his head about in a frenzy of hunger, then held still as she poured the second vial into him. The helmet jerked and drops of the thick black wine spattered and sizzled on its hot metal. She stepped back, tossing the vials aside, and the helmet leaned for her, its flames licking hungrily at her body.
She laughed throatily. “You see who he wants now, Schraak?” She untied her scanty apron and dropped the leopard skin to the floor. Slowly, flames flickered under her walnut flesh, centering in her breasts and groin, then spread throughout her body until she looked like molten fire sheathed in the body of a woman.
Gath writhed against his chains, reaching for her. Fire consumed his eyes, and he could scent the heady perfume of her youth and heat, but then it became vague and distant, and she seemed suddenly immense, a cloud of undulating flesh that pressed into him. He felt as if he stood atop a mountain, and that the mountain was his own body. It was moving beneath him like quaking earth. Utterly beyond control.
“It’s no use, you are mine now.” Her voice whispered the words, and the whisper was deafening. Then she snapped, “The locks, worm. Quickly!”
The small man bolted to his feet and unlocked the chains. Gath could feel his mountainous body drop free and land solidly on the floor. The noise and impact dizzied him, and when his head cleared he saw Tiyy’s smile as she whispered to the small man, “Don’t bother with the chains! Get out!”
The little man did not have to be told twice, and was out the door before she finished, slamming it behind him.
The Nymph Queen undulated like fire, and the mountain moved. Chains rattled through iron loops in the wall, coming free, and clanged to the floor. His arms reached for her, massive hands spanning her waist, and he hauled her violently into his arms, the lengths of chain flailing and clanging against wall and floor. The mountain had more strength than his imagination could have fashioned, and the heat inside it was volcanic. Impatient. Fire wanting to mate with fire.
“Yes! Yes!” she groaned. “Now! Now!”
He crushed her to him, and her legs straddled his hips, the fires merging as she took him standing, in the manner of the Dark Goddess, consuming and defeating him in the manner water defeats the sword.
Then his mind was gone, and there was only bone and muscle and sensation.
Thirty-eight
PYRAM
The four riders emerged from the hills side by side, crested the ridge together and simultaneously reined up in the shadows of a spreading oak. Their tunics and cloaks had been redesigned by the hard night trail, and were decorated by thorns, dust and sweat. Their faces were vivid with the rouge of exhaustion and drawn with reckless smiles. Mouths were parted, lips cracked, and the lids of their eyes were red against bloodshot whites. But they sat erect in their saddles, as if with one backbone, like actors eager to battle tempest, fire and flood for center stage.
Brown John was in the middle. Cobra was on his right, and Jakar, with Robin riding behind him, on his left.
Seagulls floated against the grey sky overhead, silently working the cool sea breezes. The same breezes ruffled their cloaks, cooled hot cheeks and filled heaving lungs with heady satisfaction.
The coast road waited not a quarter of a mile dead ahead, and a hundred strides beyond it shallow waves tumbled out of a dark blue sea. Scattered shafts of golden light pierced the dark cloud cover, stabbing the seascape. It beckoned like sparkling silver coins scattered on a blanket of blue-black water.
The Inland Sea.
The riders shifted in their saddles, each eager to rush forward and begin the knockabout with bang and outcry, but like seasoned performers, remained in place and studied their stage.
Awed by the immense body of the ocean, Robin sighed. “It’s so big… so beautiful.”
Brown John scolded her with his eyes, reminding her that they were not here to play a scene of awe and wonder, but one of deadly stealth and raw violence, and she nodded her apology.
They rode forward, and the tree cover siding the road thinned like parting curtains exposing bald shoreline, and an ever-widening vista of untamed nature.
The bukko had never seen bodies of earth and sky and water of such size or stark contrast. Here was a stage on which gods could roughhouse and war, where goddesses passed like mysteries behind watery veils and sunbeams. He reined up again and sighed with wonder. But no one scolded him, and the others stopped at his sides.
The dark turbulent waters and the verdant greens of tropical growth on the far shore spoke of portentous mysteries, and the black castle standing on the hunched back of the huge grey rock rising out of the sea was a chilling spokesman of imminent doom.
“That’s Pyram,” Jakar said evenly. “I saw it from the opposite shore, but there’s no mistaking it.”
The northern walls and towers were dark ruins, and tumbled roughly to the south where towers stood erect amid moats, and valiant and salient walls. They were topped by crenellated parapets, their long black bodies hiding whatever monstrosities might dwell behind them.
The rock supporting the castle was bald at the top, and descended to thickets of carob bean, cork oak and wild olive, then to carpets of heather, rosemary and lavender. Flurries of ravens, warblers and wrens swept over thicket and brush, and swooped down the sheer faces of the cliffs past bright patches of snapdragons, periwinkle and broom flowers lining the runnels in the rock.
The landscape approaching the castle was low and rugged, and swept in a crescent toward the northern end of the huge rock. A dirt road turned off the coast road, wandered through the rough ground and crossed a shallow bridge of land joining the continent to the rock. There it meandered up the gentle western slope toward the southern end of the castle, and entered it via a port of arms, an outwork which bisected the valiant wall. Flags waved on the wall, and tiny shadows moved along it, sentries of the castle garrison. But the coast road and the road to the castle were empty tongues of dark dirt waiting for something edible to suck into the teeth of the castle.
A fog was drifting out of the Inland Sea. Its tremulous body was rising in concealing mists around the base of the sheer cliffs at the north end
of the rock where waves crashed at the mouths of shadowed caves. Its vaporous fingers probed at the shore, reaching as far as the coast road and promising to reach further. Above the castle, the overhanging cloud tumbled on the wind, falling in billowing folds over towers and ruins like a heavy mourning garment.
The bukko smiled with patient expectation. “We will wait for the fog to cover us.”
They dismounted, distributed the last of their water and provisions, then sat down and watched the fog roll in. When the thick mists reached all the way inland to cover their bodies so they could not see ten feet in front of them, they remounted and moved toward Pyram.
Cobra led them.
Looking warily into the dense concealing fog, Jakar said, “I don’t like it. Why should things suddenly become easy?”
“Patience, lad,” Brown John said. “We can use all the luck that comes our way.”
They traveled the length of the coast road, only passing an ox-cart and driver barely visible in the fog, and turned onto the dirt road. Crossing the narrow bridge of land, they heard distant voices high above on the battlements, but met no one. At the base of the rock, Cobra silently indicated they should turn off, and led the party through boulders to the shoreline. There they hid the horses in a shallow cove, and Brown John and Jakar strapped sword and crossbow to their backs. They crossed the base of the giant rock for nearly a mile, until they were well away from the shore and the incoming waves were drenching them, and stopped.
In front of them, forty feet of sheer cliff plunged into the turbulent surf. Slick shale. Impassable. At its far side, the waves splashed into the darkness of a small cave.
Cobra removed her cloak, raised it in a bundle over her head and moved down into the onrushing water. The others, in like manner, followed. They waded ten feet further along the base of the cliff, then had to swim the rest of the way. At the cave, waves tossed them about, and they were banged against boulders repeatedly before they made the floor of the cave. Scratched and bruised, they crawled into the shallow opening and lay gasping as they watched Robin’s cloak, which had been ripped from her grasp, toss fitfully on the frothy waters as it was slowly dragged out to sea.
The cave was wide but only three feet high, and they had to crawl through shallows of ebbing and flowing sea water to dry ground. There they wrung out their clothes, then crawled some more. They moved in the manner Cobra had instructed them while on the night trail, making as little noise as possible. The faintest click or thump of falling shale echoed deep into the dark, sinister body of the rock.
They passed through horizontal tunnels made by sea water and climbed up through vertical ones made by rain water. Vague daylight, drifting in from side tunnels, illuminated their passage from time to time, but most of it was spent, in total darkness. Nevertheless, Cobra led the way with assurance.
Brown John smiled unseen as he followed her, his hand maintaining contact with her shoulder. She had told him she had been raised in Pyram, and that as a young girl her constant dream had been to one day possess the sacred jewels. Consequently, she had spent much of her youth crawling through each tunnel and passage until she found the dungeon cell in which the jewels were held. But they had been heavily guarded at all times, and she had never seen them.
Now, as they moved deeper and deeper into the rock, Cobra’s pace became strong and quick with growing excitement.
The air became hot and humid, and Brown John and the others began to sweat and gasp. They began a long descent through a narrow tunnel, and at the bottom, a cool sea breeze wafted over them. Here Cobra stopped and turned to Brown John. Her voice was quiet but rough, almost wild with anticipation.
“We’re almost there. From here on, the passage is narrow. We’ll have to crawl.”
The bukko passed the word, and they lowered themselves to the moist rock flooring, breathing deeply.
Cobra said, “Hurry now,” and began to squirm through a ragged hole in the rock.
Brown John, Robin and Jakar followed.
Puddles of sea water shared the floor of the tunnel with them, and clusters of stinking sea urchin and tiny crabs. They were pinched and bitten, then emerged in a sizable tide pool and stood gasping with relief.
Waves crashed through a tunnel at the opposite end of the pool, their foaming spilling bodies lit by torches guttering in wall embrasures behind the ledge on which they had emerged. It spanned one side of the pool. Through the green water, they could see the whitish bottom of the pool, and a jagged hole in its floor opening onto shadowy depths. An iron-grilled door was positioned beside the hole; it was attached to chains which could pull it over the hole, sealing it. Whitish scrape marks showed in the floor where it had been recently dragged.
Robin shuddered, and Jakar and the bukko unstrapped their weapons. The group put their dry cloaks back on and followed Cobra across the ledge. An entrance tunnel opened off the ledge at the far edge. They followed it half its length and stopped, pressing their bodies into shadows.
Torches flickered at the opposite end, and shadowed figures passed in their light.
When the figures vanished, Cobra hurriedly led the group into a side passage. It led to a stairwell, and they ascended it, moving quickly now despite the difficulty. The stone stairs were alternately dark and illuminated by flickering oil lamps set in brass embrasures. The sounds of the ocean grew fainter and fainter far below. At the top, the stairwell opened on a horizontal tunnel. It was low and narrow and undulating, offering no view of what waited at the end.
They followed Cobra through it, almost running now, and it opened onto a large cave with dusty walls of dense black earth rising thirty feet high. Crawl holes pockmarked the curving walls, and the mouth of an arched tunnel was set high to one side. A staircase descended from it, following the curved wall, growing wider and wider, then turned into the cave, ending at its center. The staircase faced a wide polished wall of obsidian blocks. The black rock glittered with flickering orange light from a large oil lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling.
Brown John looked about uncertainly, then at Cobra. Her face was white, and her mouth hung open. She was gasping, teetering in place. Then she staggered to the obsidian wall and moved along it, mumbling incoherently, and frantically exploring it with outstretched arms and probing fingers. When she turned to him, her voice shook with heedless panic.
“It was here! I know it was! The dungeon cell was right here! Behind this wall. But it’s been sealed up!”
“Are you sure this is the right cave?” the bukko asked.
“Of course!” she gasped. “But it’s walled up!”
Brown John, Robin and Jakar shared an alarmed glance, and edged toward the wall, studying it. Sudden fear had drawn their flesh tight over their jaws, and their bodies were unsteady on feet spread well apart.
“You’re absolutely certain?” asked Brown John, not wanting to hear the answer.
“Yes! Yes!” Cobra groaned. “The door was right here!” She pounded the rock wall. “Right in the middle!”
Jakar turned to the bukko. “Let’s go, Brown. I smell a trap.”
The old Grillard lifted a hand telling him to wait. He could not bring himself to agree so quickly. He looked around again, then wished he hadn’t. The clang of iron bars rang throughout the room, and they swung around facing the sound. An iron-barred door had descended over the entrance tunnel, blocking their retreat to the tide pool. Behind it stood a small man in a breechclout, oozing fetid slime.
Robin recoiled into Jakar’s arms, and Cobra gasped, “Schraak!”
The worm man bowed in reply from behind the bars and laughed.
Cobra staggered behind Brown John and clung to his back, staring over his shoulder in shock and terror. “No. Noooooo!”
“Oh, yes,” Schraak said, and lifted a thick finger, pointing up at the top of the staircase.
Their heads lifted, and their eyes widened.
A fog was drifting out of the arched doorway at the top of the stairs and gathering a
gainst the ceiling. Then shafts of black light struck through it, and it billowed, filling the ceiling, threatening to fall on them.
The four backed up, holding each other, and bumped against the obsidian wall. Shaking her head, Cobra collapsed against the bukko.
“What’s happening?” Robin moaned. “What is it?”
“A trap,” Jakar said, as if describing nothing more startling than a stage device. “It’s all been a trap. The fog and the black cloud above the castle were put there deliberately, just like the fog we’re looking at now, to make us believe we could enter unseen.”
“But how?” Robin pleaded.
“Black Veshta,” Brown John said in a whisper, and Cobra shuddered agreement.
Robin looked at the bukko, trembling with confusion, then looked back up into the billowing fog and screamed shrilly, sinking to her knees.
Flaming eyes had appeared within the dark mist, and now the horned helmet emerged from it. It resided on the head of a huge man clothed only in a black loincloth and boots. The body seemed to be Gath of Baal’s, but the carriage was brutish and bent by demonic appetites. Beastly. The Death Dealer as the Master of Darkness had originally conceived of him, as a Lord of Destruction.
Jakar and Brown John both stepped in front of Robin protectively, their weapons ready.
A rough growl instantly ripped out of the helmet, and the beast’s body heaved, with the helmet blasting flames through the thinning mist.
Jakar and the bukko raised their arms, and the helmet’s fire speared down across the room, singeing their garments and flesh, driving them away from Robin. The flames promptly abated, and the helmet hung low between the ponderous shoulders, content to glare down at Robin with impatient hunger.