by James Silke
Thrashing and kicking, the stallion tried to rid itself of the man, then suddenly surrendered. The red glowing eyes of the horned helmet looked directly into the stallion’s wild eyes. Slowly they quieted, then Gath let go and they stood facing each other. Heat mingled between them until they smelt the same, a pungent but binding aura.
The horse snorted, then lowered its head to the man. Gath pressed his face against the horse’s nostrils, and they breathed each other’s breath. The stallion neighed softly, pushed its cheek against the rough chain mail.
“You are mine,” Gath whispered. He glanced down at the dead officer, looked off at the vultures, then said to the horse, “I will put him in the ground for you.”
The stallion slowly lowered its broad-necked head to the body of its former master, then backed away.
Fifty-two
TWO DRAGON TAILS
It was turning dark when Brown John’s wagon pulled up in front of the fort. The gate stood open, like a giant mute mouth. Its silence was chilling, unnatural. Bone flicked the reins resolutely, and the wagon proceeded into the fort.
Inside he reined up, and Brown John and the strongmen stared openmouthed at the scene being played at center stage.
Gath of Baal stood in the middle of the yard currying a magnificent black stallion. A black enamel saddle with gold inlay was propped against a pile of rocks from which a horsetail standard protruded. It appeared to be a fresh grave.
Brown John ordered Bone and his men to secure all food and weapons, then drove the wagon slowly toward his champion as he glanced warily at the dead bodies, the empty fort, the stallion.
As the old man reined up, Gath turned and, with an uncharacteristic lift in his voice, asked, “What do you think of him? He’s a fine one, isn’t he?”
“Fine,” exclaimed Brown John, “is not the word. He is superb! And he suits you.” He glanced pointedly at the grave. “I presume there is no need to ask how you acquired him?”
Gath laughed roughly, and its hollow ring startled the old man, made the horse bolt. “Hey! Settle down, friend,” Gath crooned. “Settle down.”
To Brown John’s amazement, the stallion returned to Gath, lowered its head and nuzzled the arm of his intimidating new master. Looking at the horse, Gath said to Brown John, “I did not acquire him, bukko. These men were dead when I got here. We simply met and made an arrangement.”
Brown John looked down and saw the Fangko spear. “Ah, I see,” he said, then grinned and shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me. Everything you do seems to have an aura of the miraculous about it, particularly today.”
Gath glanced up at him.
“Our ranks grow by the hour. There has never been such unity. You have led our forest tribes to undreamed of success! Now they are not only hungry to free their women and children, but are ready, eager to take revenge.” He hesitated thoughtfully. “But what of you? Is Gath of Baal pleased with his new role?”
With the light tone gone, Gath replied, “I will be pleased when it gets me what I must have.” His eyes met Brown John’s. “She is not here. The fort was empty when I arrived.”
Measuring his words the old man argued, “But this is the butterfly fort the bounty hunter told the Wowells about, and we both knew there was small chance she would be kept here.” He glanced around. “Nevertheless, I am surprised you found it deserted. Perhaps your reputation now does your conquering for you?”
Gath shrugged and picked up the saddle, set it gently on the steed and began to adjust the cinch. “I saw dust to the south and started to follow it, but then it vanished, and I could find no tracks in the sand.”
The old wizard nodded. “They’re there, if you know what to look for. It’s three days to Bahaara, maybe longer, depending on the winds. So there is still a chance for two riders moving at a strong, steady pace to overtake them. If she’s with them, you’ll soon have her back.” He smiled at the stallion admiringly. “You’ve provided superbly for the chase.”
Gath picked up his axe, slung it over his back and mounted carefully. The stallion shifted sideways, adjusting to the heavy weight. Gath rested an arm on the animal’s mane and looked down at Brown John expectantly.
“Oh yes,” Brown John said. “I will accompany you and point out the trail. By all means. There are dangers in the sands a forester like yourself will not even see. But first you must understand what has happened here.” He pointed at the horsetail standard over Yat-Feng’s grave. “The man buried here was not merely a general, but the commander of the Kitzakk Desert Army. The man second in command only to their warlord, Klang. He was no doubt executed because he had been irredeemably disgraced by today’s defeat. To avoid a similar fate, Klang will now have to send not only regiments against you, but magicians as well. You will need my skills.”
“Just find me their trail.”
“Oh no,” Brown John protested, “I can be of far more assistance than that. If we find they have already carried Robin to Bahaara, then I will be as invaluable to you as that spectacular helmet. I am familiar with the ways of the cult of the Butterfly Goddess. And I know Bahaara’s shadows.”
The helmet was silent, but the stallion’s hooves pattered restlessly.
“Good,” said Brown John. “I am glad to know there is some room within that headpiece for reasonable thought. Because I must also know why you are so desperate to rescue this girl. If they are already devising some method of turning her magic against you, I can not help you unless I know what it is.”
“We have no time for that now.”
“Come, come, my old friend,” the old man coaxed. “It is far past the season for mysteries and shadows.”
Gath turned and trotted toward the desert gate. Without looking back, he muttered brusquely, “If you are coming, come.”
Brown John tossed his hands up helplessly, then hurried off and found a saddle. With Bone’s help he unhitched and saddled his strongest horse, then ordered Bone to wait for Dirken and the army, telling him that, after the army had watered and eaten, he and his brother were to supply every tenth man with a torch and proceed into the desert following the trail he would mark. Brown John then mounted nimbly and galloped swiftly out the desert gate to join Gath. In the night shadows he looked twenty years younger.
Fifty-three
THE BATH
Dang-Ling glided across the floor through the dense steam, opened the hall door and smiled effervescently under his glossy pink lids. His voice swooshed, “Come in. Thank you for coming. We are bathing her now.”
Klang stood impatiently outside the door in the polished black corridor of Bahaara’s Temple of Dreams. The commanders of the Guards and Executioners stood behind him. All three wore combat armor. The warlord glanced at the high priest with disgust, as if he were an overly sweet desert, and entered.
Dang-Ling closed the door firmly in the faces of the two commanders, and plucked a large bamboo fan from a hook in the stone wall. Waving the steam aside, he proceeded into it. “This way. She is in the bath now. But watch your step. Before we drugged her she had a terrible fit, splashed water about everywhere.”
He guided Klang through the steam to a large, circular, vaporous pool set in the center of the stone floor.
A huge black mute, Baak, stood waist deep in the water holding Robin’s limp body under one hairless arm as he lathered her dyed hair with soapy bubbles. A dark stain swirled in the water around her head.
Klang looked intently at the young, unblemished girl.
Robin’s lips were parted. She was breathing in rapid erratic gasps. Her eyelids trembled, sometimes fluttering open to reveal glazed unfocused eyes.
“An absolutely exquisite subject, don’t you think?” Dang-Ling asked. “Gazul brought her, and was paid quite we’ll. He is a true professional, that man. He had dyed her hair and dressed her in rags. But I, of course, recognized her immediately.”
Dang-Ling motioned with a limp hand, and Baak lifted Robin out of the water with his huge hands. He turned h
er slowly so that her glistening smooth body could be seen from every angle: slender arrowlike legs, flat brown tummy, high firm breasts with their nipples pinkened by the heat, and luxuriously dripping red-gold hair. As submissive as a glove. Klang was visibly impressed.
Noticing this, Dang-Ling’s milky face turned florid, and a tremor ran through his voice. “Have you ever seen such a fabulous creation?”
“She’s still a child.” Klang snapped turning on the high priest. “What possible power can a child have over this savage killer?”
Contempt curled Dang-Ling’s lips, but he disguised it with unctuous words. “My lord, it is a puzzle to me as well, but I am certain she has some magic which will be the key to his destruction.”
“Then find its nature, priest. Quickly!”
Dang-Ling bowed stiffly, unable to conceal his bruised feelings. “If you will permit me to proceed, I will take her to my laboratory and begin the examination now.”
“Not yet, I am not finished.” Klang’s suspicious eyes riveted on the black man.
Dang-Ling bowed, saying petulantly, “He can not hear you. Baak is deaf and mute.”
Silence was between them, then the warlord said, “I have ordered the army to maintain a position between the Barbarian Army and this city, and delay its advance, but not engage it.”
A strained tenseness entered the high priest’s eyes.
“I am going to delay the battle until you, Dang-Ling, place in my hands the magic that will destroy their leader. Do you understand? The Fangko spear is not going to rip my heart out. I am going to kill him in personal combat.”
The high priest sputtered, “Whatever my lord commands, but… but personal combat! There are such risks! Unaccountable risks. An accidental fall, a spill of blood in the wrong place! There are just no guarantees, and your safety is the safety of us all.”
Klang placed a hand on the high priest’s shoulder, and squeezed it painfully as he drew the soft albino closer. “There will be guarantees, priest. You will see to them. In addition to whatever this child has to offer, you are going to find me an invincible weapon. Do you understand?” There were a hundred nefarious, even sacrilegious, meanings in his tone.
Dang-Ling, understanding the one he meant, suddenly relaxed, but was careful not to make it apparent. “I understand, my Lord,” he said evenly. “And fortunately your demand comes at an opportune time. My informants tell me that the unholy Master of Darkness himself wants this demon destroyed.”
“Informants?”
“Acquaintances, professional magicians. One in particular, a sorceress, is sometimes able to arrange for his help.”
“Then deal with her. Get me the strongest weapon he has.”
“Everything will have to be done in total secrecy.”
“Of course.”
Dang-Ling bowed slightly. “I will inquire as soon as she arrives, which should be shortly. I am sure she will be eager to help, as will he. The Lord of Death will be honored to assist a great and powerful leader such as yourself. But his price can be terribly high.”
“Do not instruct me, priest,” Klang snapped. “I am fully aware of the nature of his transactions.”
Dang-Ling bowed, and Klang strode through the steam, went out slamming the door behind him.
Dang-Ling grinned, rushed to the side of the pool and clapped his hands. The huge mute carried Robin’s dripping body up the sunken steps and through the steam to the far corner of the room. Dang-Ling pulled a lever hidden in the wall, and a huge stone lifted up off the floor. Flame-tinted clouds of smoke billowed up, encircling them, and they descended into it. Firelight ran riot in Robin’s wet, red-gold hair, then they were gone, and the stone lowered back into place.
Fifty-four
THE GLASS CAGE
The smokey stairway descended to the high priest’s workroom. They crossed it and passed through a door beside the workbench, closing it behind them.
The huge rectangular room they entered was a stonewalled underground laboratory. A world of retorts, flasks, beakers, waterbaths, condensers, phials, ladles, crucibles, and corked glass jars holding human and animal organs:
hearts, gonads, livers, penises and tongues. A maze of bottle green vessels were mounted on the tables and connected to each other with glass tubing rising to large colorless crystal tubes suspended from the ceiling by iron bars. Many leaked hissing fumes that dripped to form fuming puddles on the floor.
The crystal tubes wound their way toward a huge, perfectly transparent glass vessel barely visible beyond the clutter of apparatus, the culmination of some mad thaumaturgical scheme.
The neck of the mammoth flask was suspended by iron rings from the ceiling. Its ten-foot bowl dangled into a large circular hole in the stone floor. Baak climbed a ladder to a wooden deck built around its long cylindrical neck. Using a pulley attached to the ceiling, he lowered Robin headfirst down through the neck into the bowl.
Naked, her limp, nut-brown body descended slowly into the crystalline glass. It magnified her to almost three times her normal size, and lust glimmered in Dang-Ling’s watching eyes.
When Robin landed on the bottom of the bowl, Baak climbed down the neck and untied her, then climbed back out and pulled the rope up behind him.
Dang-Ling had moved down a stone staircase that circled around the flask and now peered at Robin’s enlarged body hunting for a mark, numeral, or tattoo of some kind. At the bottom of the hole, he peered up as Robin tumbled over languidly onto her back, then over again onto her stomach. She half opened an eyelid, saw Dang-Ling’s soft boiled eyes glistening wetly only inches from her own, and moaned, collapsed again.
Hours later, after Dang-Ling’s priestesses, two middle-aged women named Dazi and Hatta, had induced various vapors and fluids into the retort, Dang-Ling was sitting tiredly on the staircase staring down at his subject’s wet, steaming body. Earlier, when snarling red smoke had swirled over her thrashing screaming nudity with its stinging bite, he had expected to see fangs or scales appear. Then, when the amber vapors were induced into the bowl, he had prayed for yellow cat eyes and claws to materialize from her flesh. But Robin had remained essentially unchanged. Then white powders nearly smothered the girl, but no insect wings or antennae appeared. And the ritually prepared saltwater which was designed to expose any relation to sea demons had also brought no results.
Robin sprawled on the bottom of the flask exhausted from pain and terror. Dang-Ling, exhausted from effort and frustration, sprawled on the stone floor beneath her. He sighed, then appealed to the worried faces of Baak, Hatta and Dazi, “This is terrible. Have we no other potions? Am I to believe she’s just another pretty girl?”
Fifty-five
CHELA KONG
The vast area between the fort at The Narrows and the city of Bahaara was filled with mountainous sand dunes which moved constantly across the body of the desert. Otherwise it was an empty void as still as death, except for a cluster of upturned rock, clinging to which was the rubble of a village destroyed long before the coming of the Kitzakks. The village had been the desert marketplace for nefarious and dangerous magic totems carved from the rocks. It had been such a successfully offensive market to the ancient rulers of the desert that they had had it destroyed. Since that time its history had long been forgotten except for a few storytellers. All that the Kitzakks and other travelers of the road now knew was that it had been called Chela Kong. The reason underlying the success of the original residents had been forgotten by everyone, but the earth remembered.
The upturned rock was unlike any other in the desert, an eruption from deep in the bowels of the earth. These stones had helped form the surface of the earth before the nature of what was animal, insect, reptile, fish and fowl had been determined, before the nature of what was right and wrong had been considered. Undetected vapors were emitted by the rocks, and they had a peculiar quality. They revealed and magnified the mystical power within the tiniest and weakest totems so that no sorcery could hide in their presence. I
nstead, it was revealed in all its potential might and terror. This phenomenon was most potent after the midnight hour, when the sands of the desert had cooled and cold winds swept unimpeded across the land to summon forth, not only the nocturnal creatures who dwelled in the body of the sand, but the vapors.
Now, as the midnight hour approached, forty nomad slave drivers sat around fires in the midst of the rubble, and drew forth their totems. Descendants of the ancient people who once ruled the sand, they had been privy to the mysterious legends since childhood and, without understanding why, knew that when they camped in Chela Kong the drugs of pleasure they enjoyed were somehow made stronger. As they waited, they stroked and kissed the vials holding them.
They wore desert dust, smears of their own filth, and loincloths over blue-grey flesh. The women had shaggy, filth-laden manes of hair twisted with snakes. All their bodies were distorted by overdoses of Cabalakk. Arms and earlobes were elongated. Here and there a bald head sported short horns, a tail swished, and arms carried webbed, lizardlike fins. The heavy users were dog faced.
Spears stood upright in the soil beside each man. They were long, painted indigo and charcoal, and their blades were serpentined leaf shapes with serrated edges, tridents and axe heads.
The slavers drank a thick dark liquid that bubbled in small brass pans over fires. When midnight arrived, each nomad mumbled a short prayer, emptied his or her vial into the pan and drank the hot fluid down in one gulp. The drug made their blue-grey flesh twitch. Hot spots of crimson gathered in their bony cheeks.