“Hold!” Elak’s breathless whisper halted the wizard’s voice. “Hold! I see rescue, Zend.”
“Eh?” The wizard screwed his head around until he too saw the short, ape-featured man who was running silently across the room, knife in hand. It was Lycon, whom Elak had left slumbering in the underground den of Gesti.
The knife flashed and Elak and Zend were free. Elak said swiftly, “Up the stairs, wizard. Repair your magic globe, since you say its light will kill these horrors. We’ll hold the stairway.
Without a word the gray dwarf sped silently up the steps and was gone. Elak turned to Lycon.
“How the devil—”
Lycon blinked wide blue eyes. “I scarcely know, Elak. Only when you were carrying me out of the tavern and the soldier screamed and ran away I saw something that made me so drunk I couldn’t remember what it was. I remembered only a few minutes ago, back downstairs somewhere. A face that looked like a gargoyle’s, with a terrible great beak and eyes like Midgard Serpent’s. And I remembered I’d seen Gesti put a mask over the awful face just before you turned there in the alley. So I knew Gesti was probably a demon.”
“And so you came here,” Elak commented softly. “Well, it’s a good thing for me you did. I—what’s the matter?” Lycon’s blue eyes were bulging.
“Is this your demon?” the little man asked pointing.
Elak turned, and smiled grimly. Facing him, her face puzzled and frightened, was the girl on whom Zend had been experimenting—the maiden whose soul he had been about to unleash to serve him when Elak had arrived. Her eyes were open now, velvet-soft and dark, and her white body gleamed against the silver-black drape.
Apparently she had awakened, and had arisen from her hard couch.
Elak’s hand went up in a warning gesture, commanding silence, but it was too late. The girl said,
“Who are you? Zend kidnapped me—are you come to set me free? Where—”
With a bound Elak reached her, dragged her back, thrust her up the stairway. His rapier flashed in his hand. Over his shoulder he cast a wolfish smile.
“If we live, you’ll escape Zend and his magic,” he told the girl, hearing an outburst of sibilant cries and the rushing murmur of the attacking horde. Yet he did not turn. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Coryllis.”
“’Ware, Elak!” Lycon shouted.
Elak turned to see the little man’s sword flash out, shearing a questing tentacle in two. The severed end dropped, writhing and coiling in hideous knots. The frightful devil-masks of monsters glared into Elak’s eyes. The children of Dagon came sweeping in a resistless rush, cold eyes glazed and glaring, tentacles questing, iridescent bodies shifting and pulsing like jelly—and Elak and Lycon and the girl, Coryllis, were caught by their fearful wave and forced back, up the staircase.
Snarling inarticulate curses, Lycon swung his sword, but it was caught and dragged from his hand by a muscular tentacle. Elak tried to shield Coryllis with his own body; he felt himself going down, smothering beneath the oppressive weight of cold, hideous bodies that writhed and twisted with dreadful life. He struck out desperately—and felt a hard, cold surface melting like snow beneath his hands.
The weight that held him down was dissipating—the things were retreating, flowing back, racing and flopping and tumbling down the stairs, shrieking an insane shrill cry. They blackened and melted into shapeless puddles of slime that trickled like a little gray stream down the stairway….
Elak realized what had happened. A rose-red light was glowing in the air all about him. The wizard had repaired his magic globe, and the power of its rays was destroying the nightmare menace that had crept up from the deeps.
In a heartbeat it was over. There was no trace of the horde that had attacked them. Gray puddles of ooze—no more. Elak realized that he was cursing softly, and abruptly changed it to a prayer. With great earnestness he thanked Ishtar for his deliverance.
Lycon recovered his sword, and handed Elak his rapier. “What now?” he asked.
“We’re off! We’re taking Coryllis with us—there’s no need to linger here. True, we helped the wizard—but we fought him first. He may remember that. There’s no need to test his gratefulness, and we’d be fools to do it.”
He picked up Coryllis, who had quietly fainted, and quickly followed Lycon down the steps. They hurried across the great room and into the depths of the corridor beyond.
And five minutes later they were sprawled at full length under a tree in one of San-Mu’s numerous parks. Elak had snatched a silken robe from a balcony as he passed beneath, and Coryllis had draped it about her slim body. The stars glittered frostily overhead, unconcerned with the fate of Atlantis—stars that would be shining thousands of years hence when Atlantis was not even a memory.
No thought of this came to Elak now. He wiped his rapier with a tuft of grass, while Lycon, who had already cleaned his blade, stood up and, shading his eyes with his palm, peered across the park. He muttered something under his breath and set off at a steady lope. Elak stared after him.
“Where’s he going? There’s a—by Ishtar! He’s going in a grog shop. But he has no money. How—”
A shocked thought came to him, and he felt hastily in his wallet. Then he cursed. “The drunken little ape! When he slashed my bonds, in the wizard’s palace, he stole the purse! I’ll—”
Elak sprang to his feet and took a stride forward. Soft arms gripped his leg. He looked down. “Eh?”
“Let him go,” Coryllis said, smiling. “He’s earned his mead.”
“Yes—but what about me? I—”
“Let him go,” Coryllis murmured….
And, ever after that, Lycon was to wonder why Elak never upbraided him about the stolen purse.
Beyond the Phoenix
1. A KING DIES
And the torchlight touched the pale hair
Where silver clouded gold,
And the frame of his face was made of cords,
And a young lord turned among the lords
And said: “The King is old.”
—G. K. Chesterton
“I WON’T KILL you quickly,” said Lycon, a fierce grin of satisfaction on his round face. “No. I’ve suffered your insults too long. I must bring an offering each day to the altar of your stinking god, eh? An ear for that!”
He brought down his sword in a vicious sweep.
“Good! Now your nose, Xandar—you’ve sniffed out too many victims with it already. Thus—” Again steel flashed.
“And an eye, Xandar—see? I remove it with the point. Very carefully. For a copper coin I’d make you eat it.”
“Drunken little fool,” Elak said, coming over to the table. “Leave the roasted pig alone. It won’t be fit to eat after you’ve finished carving it.”
Lycon looked down at the succulent brown carcass on the great wooden platter. “I’ve not hurt it,” he said sullenly.
“You’ll be having us swinging by our necks if you keep yelling threats against Xandar. I don’t like him any more than you do. But—under the king—he rules Sarhaddon.”
This, unhappily, was true. Since the two adventurers had come to Sarhaddon, a little-known city in western Atlantis, they had risen high in the service of king Phrygior, eventually attaining posts in his personal bodyguard. But they had more than once incurred the dislike of the high priest, Xandar, perhaps because they were outlanders who had come from the seaport city of Poseidonia. At any rate, Xandar disliked the two, and took pains to make this clear. It was within his power to levy tribute from any citizen, and therefore Lycon’s purse was usually empty. He stole as much as was safe from Elak, but the latter had lately become suspicious.
“I don’t like this,” Elak said now, his dark wolf-face set in harsh lines. “We’re supposed to be with the king now. Always, when he’s asleep, his men guard him. Yet the captain sends us down here to the kitchen to wait for—eh? A message, he said.”
“This is as good a place as any,” Lycon obs
erved, draining a huge drinking-horn. “What foul mead! Twelve cups and I can still walk. It was not like this in Poseidonia.”
Elak turned away in disgust. He went to a mullioned window and stared down at the lights of the city, spreading over Sarhaddon Valley. Gaunt granite cliffs rose all about them, and a silver tracery nearby marked the course of Syra River. It flowed under the castle, to disappear, so the tales went, into the Gates of the Phoenix, a place in which Elak did not believe, but in which every other inhabitant of the city did. He knew, of course, the traditional death-ceremony of the kings. Their bodies were placed aboard a royal barge, and set adrift on Syra—and returned, as the tavern stories went—to the land of their fathers beyond the Phoenix Gates.
Elak grunted softly and touched the hilt of a slim rapier that hung at this side.
“I’m going back,” he said. “Wait if you want. I’ve a feeling—”
Without finishing, he hurried into the hall and up a winding stone stairway, followed by Lycon, who was gulping mead from a horn as he came. The staircase was a long one, for King Phrygior slept in a high tower that rose above the gray stone battlements of the castle. And the sound of furious battle came to Elak and made him whip out his rapier, snarling a bitter oath.
“Curse Lokar for a traitor!” he whispered, blade ready as he bounded up. Behind him the drinking-horn dropped from Lycon’s hand and went clashing and ringing down; but the noise it made could not be heard above the tumult in the king’s apartments. Elak gained the ante-room and stood for a moment staring.
At his side and below him the deep well of the tower dropped down, bounded by the winding staircase. Yet, somehow, it seemed to Elak that as he stared into the room a dozen feet away he was looking into the abyss of a pit even deeper—a bottomless well that stretched beyond infinity. A blackness lay beyond the threshold, almost tangible in its tenebrous intensity. It was as though a jet curtain had been stretched across the doorway, barring entry.
Yet from beyond came the sound of battle, and abruptly the king’s voice in a shout of agony.
Impulse rather than reason sent Elak forward, plunging across the threshold, breaking through the dark veil. For a brief instant the chill of polar lands clawed at his flesh, and he was blind. Then Elak was in the midst of a shambles, his sight restored, and as he saw from the corner of his eye the black curtain behind him had disappeared completely.
The room was a wreck. Priceless tapestries had been torn down and lay in sword-ripped tatters, smeared with blood. Not a piece of furniture was upright. Above the familiar smell of incense rose the acrid odor of sweat and blood, and at Elak’s feet a man lay with his throat torn open, rags of cartilage protruding from the ghastly wound. A dozen corpses were here—few men survived. One of these was Lokar, captain of the guard, who was just swinging his sword down in a stroke that would have decapitated Phrygior, who was clawing at an overturned table in a desperate endeavor to regain his feet.
Elak moved with lightning speed. His rapier, sword-arm and body formed one incredibly swift thrust of movement, and Lokar shouted and let go his sword, which clashed harshly on the stones as it fell. The giant soldier whirled, clutching an impaled wrist from which red spurted. He saw Elak, and bellowed wordless rage.
Ignoring his wounded arm, Lokar sprang for Elak. And Elak made a motion of giving ground, his rapier hanging loose. At the last moment the adventurer leaned forward, bracing one foot on the flagging, and whipped around the rapier-point with flashing, deadly speed. Lokar saw the danger too late. The slender blade ground into his eye, burst through the thin shell of bone, and sheathed itself in the man’s brain.
“Look out—’ware, Elak!” Lycon shouted from the doorway. Elak swung about, teeth bared. One living enemy faced him—an unarmed man. Yet, inexplicably, Elak felt an icy shudder crawl down his spine at sight of this man—Xandar the priest.
He was a hunchback—yet no dwarf. His body, though warped and twisted hideously, was gigantic, and great muscles surged beneath the swarthy skin. Above the flattened, hairless head rose the hump, its horror strangely enhanced by the rich gold cloth that draped it. One side of the creature’s face was a mangled, featureless slab of scar tissue, remnant of some long-past battle. The red lips, singularly shapely on the left side, widened into a shocking lipless hole on the other.
The monster roared, “Ho, you fool! Back! Swiftly!”
“I serve the king, not you, gargoyle,” Elak grunted, and lifted his weapon. At his feet Phrygior stirred, his white beard all slobbered and bespattered with blood. And now Elak saw a dagger’s hilt embedded in the king’s bare breast, center of a widening crimson stain.
Again the priest bellowed, “Back! Back!”
And Elak, moving forward on cat-like feet, hesitated. An indefinable warning tingled within his brain. He paused, staring at Xandar.
Was it illusion? The monster’s warped body seemed to be growing larger, impossibly increasing in bulk till it seemed to tower within the room. Elak shook his head, cursing. What madness was this? He tried to peer at Xandar, and found himself blinking through a dark, hazy mist that slowly grew thicker. Wavering in the dimness stood the shapeless pillar that was Xandar, now shrinking, now swelling to Elak’s warped vision. Whence the fog had sprung he did not know, but the subtle evil of it tore at the fortress of his mind with warning fingers. There was a danger here—deadly danger. Strong in his nostrils was a sickly-sweet smell, musky, somehow reminiscent of the odor of growing things—but not things that grew in any healthy manner. Rather the disgusting miasma of life that sprang from foul corruption, fungi and lichen bursting from spores and feeding on rotten carcasses…
He heard Lycon’s hoarse breathing behind him, and the sound brought back his courage. Xandar was a vague shadow—but at that shadow Elak lunged, rapier leveled. He felt himself smothered suddenly by a blacker darkness, and found his breath stopped by the horrible, miasmic stench. Then there was the familiar feeling of flesh ripping under his steel, the grinding jar of metal clashing on bone, rippling up the rapier to his hand. From the priest burst a bellow of agony.
And the shout changed to words—a frantic cry in syllables Elak did not recognize, though their unearthly sound made him wonder. Grinning harshly, he once more sent steel arrowing through the shadow—vainly, this time.
And the darkness lifted, faded as though a veil had been withdrawn. Elak stood staring in the center of the room, gasping with amazement. He whirled.
“Lycon! Did he get past you?”
The little man shook his head, glancing at his heavy sword. “Ishtar, no! I’d have split him from pate to groin—”
“There must be a hidden passage in the wall,” Elak said, and dropped beside the king. Phrygior’s bearded lips parted to swallow the wine Elak forced between them. Eyes cold as gray stone looked into the adventurer’s—and a blazing spark leaped into them.
“The priest! Kill him!”
“He’s gone, “Elak said. “The others—”
Phrygior looked down, touched with weak fingers the dagger-hilt in his breast. He said hoarsely, “Leave it. To unsheathe it now would kill me in a moment. First I must—” He fumbled toward the wine-flask. “Esarra—my daughter—summon her.”
Elak made a quick gesture. “Get the princess, Lycon. I’ll guard the king.”
“No need—now. Xandar has—accomplished his design.” Elak held the flask to Phrygior’s lips while the dying man drank deeply, and soon, strengthened, he began again.
“The priest has plotted against me for long, Elak. Some of his dogs were in my guard, and tonight they killed the ones who remained faithful. He has long desired the throne—and Esarra. But he dared not defy the Phoenix—the god of Sarhaddon’s kings. Thus he sought aid—more wine, Elak. My blood drains fast….
“So. Baal-Yagoth—you know not the name. Few remember, yet ages and ages ago when the gods dwelt on earth, Baal-Yagoth was the power of evil, the embodiment of dark lust. He sought to establish his dominion over the world, but in a grea
t battle Assurah, the Phoenix, overthrew him, imprisoned him in the land of the gods… and now Assurah sleeps, and Xandar has called Baal-Yagoth out of the dark lands to rule Sarhaddon. Only a man crazed with venom and hatred would have dared, for the black god can have no power on earth till a human willingly opens up his soul and brain for Baal-Yagoth’s dwelling-place. Within Xandar dwells his god,”
Now Elak remembered what had happened when he had attacked the priest.
The king drank more wine. “My strength goes fast. Unless Esarra arrives speedily—” He stiffened in a spasm of agony. “Elak! I cannot wait! Your arm—”
Elak extended his hand, and Phrygior seized it. From his own wrist he took a bracelet of black stone, on which were carved symbols Elak did not recognize. But on the largest lozenge was the outline of a phoenix, eagle-shaped, rubies and gold aping the mythical bird’s coloring. Swiftly the king snapped the bracelet on Elak’s sinewy arm. It felt curiously cold.
Phrygior touched the phoenix with grotesque, archaic gestures. He murmured a phrase—and his grim face, already shadowed with death, lightened. “Only the Phoenix may unloose the sacred bracelet from your wrist now,” he said quietly. “You must go to Assurah—beyond the Gates of the Phoenix. Listen well, Elak, for my strength ebbs.
“At the foot of this tower a tapestry is on the wall, with a dragon battling a basilisk. Touch the basilisk’s eyes thrice. Once press the dragon’s eyes. A door will open, and you must go through it with your companion, taking Esarra so she will not fall into Xandar’s hands. A barge has long waited at the end of the passage you’ll find—waited for my corpse. I would have you—take me with you. Esarra will guide you. She is of the Phoenix blood—”
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