The Fantasy MEGAPACK ®

by Lester Del Rey

  “The plan is in motion. It’s all in your hands now.”

  “What’s all in my hands?” she said, turning to face him, though he made nervous motions for her to stand as she had been.

  “As well as being a conspirator, this priest Zostris is a fanatic. He believes that the original shrine of Dath still exists somewhere in the cavernways.”

  “It’s possible; I’ve seen many remnants of Those-who-came-before in my wanderings through the tunnels.”

  Shem was nodding. “Good, good, tell him just that.”

  “I’ll be glad to, when I see him, which with any luck at all will be never.”

  “It will be sooner than that.”

  Riska’s hand again began to itch for the hilt of her weapon. “Tell me my part in this, or—”

  “Zostris has already been informed that you have knowledge of the caverns. When his men come to capture you, you must fight only a little, enough to convince them but not enough to get yourself hurt; then afterwards, when you lead Zostris deeply into the passages, it should be an easy thing for you to lose him there. Once the head of the Dath cult is gone, it should be simple enough to disband his followers.”

  “Is this Morrien’s plan?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Call it off.”

  A gigantic figure lurched from behind the vendor’s booth, and when Riska looked for Shem he was gone. It was a moment before she realized she was facing the man who must have played the part of Dath in Zostris’ ceremony. He was immense, his shoulders gnarled so that his neck and head thrust out forward, his eyes empty, his mouth lax enough so that spit gathered at one corner and dribbled down his chin. He held huge hands out before him as he lumbered toward her. “Fight just hard enough so they’re not suspicious,” she muttered under her breath, and was about to turn and run when something tickled across her face. Her fingers caught in the delicate webbing as she reached up, and then the catchnet was drawn tight about her waist, pinning her arms. She saw that a shave-pate priest had crept up behind her. Now she had no choice but to be hauled along the street with the skinhead on one side and Zostris’ creature on the other. She wasn’t even allowed to curse in protest because every time she let an oath slip, the priest raised a stout ivory staff menacingly.

  She was brought into a dim, cool room with whitewashed walls where the catchnet was loosened but not removed. She stretched her cramped arms as much as she could and tested the strength of the net. It was fine but tough enough to have cut into her flesh when she’d tried to struggle. The priest went out, calling back over his shoulder the command, “stay,” to the monster that tried to slouch along at his heels. For a moment he stood chastened, head down, then his eyes lit on Riska and he brightened. He lurched toward her, froth forming on his lips as he tried to form a word. Unable to move her arms, she backpedaled until she came up against a wall. Huge hands closed on her shoulders and she brought her knee up as hard as she could.

  Zostris was stopped short as he entered by the bellowing cries of his creature as it thrashed about on the floor. Riska saw him at first as a radiant figure, graceful as a dancer, his delicate, pale skin setting off the deepset darkness of his eyes, then she remembered that Shem had something about the drug she’d been given having a residual effect with regard to perception of Zostris, and she fought to see him as he really was. By stages she saw the pale, haggard face, eyes harshly outlined in kohl glittering with what seemed a barely suppressed madness. As he approached she saw that his skin was soft as a girl’s and thought that he must use bleaches and unguents to make it so. A voluminous white robe enveloped his form, with bony wrists and hands emerging from the wide sleeves to make her think the rest of him was similarly skinny,

  “Galk, get up,” he said to the creature still whimpering on the floor. It shambled to its feet at the sound of his voice and stood eyeing Riska warily. “If you like her, though one could scarcely think why, maybe she’ll be yours later on.”

  “If that’s for my benefit, don’t bother,” said Riska, “and I suppose it must be, since Galk seems to understand only basic commands and those only as an animal understands them, by gesture and tone of voice. I know what you want from me, my knowledge of the caverns, but this is a poor way to begin negotiations.”

  “Amusing, you come here by force and you talk of negotiations,” said Zostris, “but it’s true, you’re here because of what you know of the passages.” He moved to a small table, draped with velvet as if it were an altar and bearing a silver bell, a few scraps of papery substance and what must have been some relic, a yellowed bone with a bit of brown fur clinging to it. He picked up one of the papery scraps lovingly, and brought it near enough so that she could see that there was some sort of writing on it, characters arranged in lines and a diagram of something that looked like an eight-pointed star covered with more of the alien characters. It looked vaguely familiar to Riska, though she wasn’t sure why.

  Zostris smiled. “But I forget my manners,” he said and lifted the silver bell and rang it. A few moments later an acolyte entered, a child of twelve or so, androgynous with shaven head and in a shapeless garment. He or she carried a tray on which was arranged a series of crystal vials, each containing a different colored liquid and a silver cup. The acolyte smiled sweetly with eyes that were utterly devoid of emotion and stood there holding the tray without moving, an almost sentient table.

  “Dath gives dreams,” said Zostris, beginning to mix the liquids together in the cup. “But I don’t do so badly myself. My sweet little acolytes receive dreams that are enchanting and uplifting, but I’m afraid there’s no sweetness in you. Your dreams might be nightmares. Then when I’ve sufficiently enjoyed the spectacle of you screaming and spitting your rage, helpless at my feet, I may agree to give you release, if you give your will over to Dath, and his purposes.”

  Galk, having been given the command, moved with alacrity to envelope Riska in his huge arms as Zostris came toward her, bearing the cup.

  “I’ve seen the old books you seek,” she said quickly, “and a big altar of carven stone, like an eight pointed star.” She was surprised to realize that this wasn’t a lie. She’d come across them long ago in her travels through the caverns, and had considered the site only a curiosity among many things lost in time in the passages. Galk was closing a huge hand over her jaw, to open her mouth, so she had to hurry the rest. “It was long ago, so to find it again, a clear memory would be important, but if you want to take the chance of clouding my mind, and have those artifacts lost forever…”

  Zostris stood for several minutes, holding the potion, then at last he waved Galk away and after a time set the cup back on the tray. “Only because I believe you’re telling the truth. I believe you have seen the place. Tell me, what of the books?”

  “There were many books,” said Riska, glad to see the fanatic light kindle in Zostris’ eyes. “Many. The secrets in them, once known, would no doubt make a god of any man. I wouldn’t trust anyone when this sort of power is involved.”

  Zostris returned to the altar to gloat over the fragments, looking around with a paranoid gleam in his eyes. “They’ll be mine, and I’ll be able to invoke the god at last, not put on a show for the rabble.” He cursed at Galk and drove him from the room. “We’ll leave at once, in secret.”

  * * * *

  The dank smells and all-encompassing dark were welcome to Riska as she led Zostris deeper into the passages. She was at home here, and it seemed good to get away from the games of power the surface dwellers played. The catch-net still immobilized her arms, but she had no fear of Zostris here.

  “I weary,” said Zostris, seeming to stoop and tighten a sandal strap. “We’ve wandered for hours in darkness and all we’ve found are caverns filled with vile pagan trash.” Zostris had not been enticed by the caches of rare metals, gemstones and intricately crafted artifacts left by whoeve
r had occupied these tunnels in earlier times. Riska leaned against a wall to rest a moment, filaments of webbing cutting into her skin. She was becoming more certain of the way to the place she remembered, but hoped that leading him down a few blind alleys had enhanced his feeling of helplessness, of distance from all that was familiar.

  After a time, she tired of this game, and set out for the place she remembered. If Zostris were to be lost in the caverns for eternity, he might as well spend it with his god, she thought with a wicked chuckle, and no doubt the books and relics would arrest his attention as she slipped out of sight.

  * * * *

  “Here, I think this is it,” she said, after what seemed like endless turnings in darkness. Zostris struck a light and lit what must have been an altar-candle judging from the heavy scent of incense that rose on the stale air. Zostris pulled her forward toward the block of carven stone that seemed more impressive than she’d remembered it. His breath came so quickly he seemed to hiss as he spoke.

  “Yes, this is it.”

  Light played across a rack that held what must have been hundreds of scrolls of the papery material, and Riska heard him hiss again as he saw them. “Praise, praise to Dath. He shall reign over men for ten thousand years, and all shall remember Zostris as their deliverer on the seventh of Esrunn.”

  Riska took note of the date as when the coup was planned; unfortunately for Zostris, he wouldn’t be there for the riots. He still held the catchnet loosely, but she sensed he was no longer thinking of her. As he moved the candle, light spilled more widely and showed a cage of some silvery metal, much tarnished and twisted awry by some ancient cave-in, the bars broken where once they’d been embedded in the stone. “What’s that?” she asked as her eyes caught a glimpse of something, tried to trace its shape. “Over there, turn the light over there again.”

  The object in the cage was a dry, organic lump of dust-powdered fur. Something curled-in upon itself, dessicate and dead, perhaps for long ages.

  “It’s nothing, just some debris,” said Zostris. As Riska stood there, her attention taken for a moment by the thing in the cage, she felt a numbing impact that expanded into pain. She reached reflexively for her own hidden weapon as she collapsed on the stones near the shattered cage. She felt a foot turn her over and saw Zostris’ white face like a floating mask, a narrow-bladed dagger in one skinny hand. She felt her mouth working, but there was too much pain to form the words telling him that he was a fool, since he needed her to find his way out.

  “The secret of the shrine must remain with me,” he said, and as if reading her mind, he drew from his robe a bit of organic matter that resembled the dried cap of a mushroom. “You think you’re the only one with knowledge, but the priesthood also has its secrets.” He closed his hand tightly and waited a few moments to open it again. When he did the pinch of powder on his palm was beginning to glow with dull green phosphorescence. “There is now a trail of light to lead me back to the Temple and to my destiny.”

  When she turned away from his mocking face, she saw a dark liquid pooling beneath her, running into a little groove cut into the stone. She thought it was a curious thing that the groove led directly into the cage, and she pondered this a moment before she realized that the dark liquid was her own blood.

  Her vision had begun to blur, but she saw Zostris busily piling up a number of scrolls to take back with him. After a moment he paused, turned round. “What’s that sound? Haven’t you stopped breathing yet?” There was a susurration of breathing, loud in the silent chamber; she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think it was her own. She saw him stare beyond her, drop the scroll he was holding. Just before he dropped the candle, too, his shriek rattled about the cavern in raucous echoes and she heard the rapid pounding of his feet as he fled.

  Hair prickled at the back of her neck, for now it was pitch dark, and she could still hear that regular rasp of breathing, and she was certain it wasn’t her own because she had stopped, for the moment. But after a while she’d grown too weak even to lift her head from the cool stone, and she felt herself ebbing away. Death wasn’t as bad as she’d thought; there was no struggle in it. After a time it almost seemed she was warmly enfolded, and then the dreams came.

  * * * *

  Her eyes opened on darkness and the vague solidity of stone onto which water dripped blackly. Light flickered feebly through the rock-walled chamber from a dancing flame in a lamp of antique design. Her hands were free; she moved them over her head, but she was too weak to do anything else. She saw a clay bowl beside her, half full of something oily, and an odd-shaped container that had been sealed but was now raggedly torn open. She recognized the latter as one of the stored-food containers left by those who’d used the caverns in earlier times. She knew that some of the food in them was still good. A pain, as she moved, reminded her of her wound, but when she reached back to touch it her fingers encountered a sticky, clotted mass. She pulled off a few strands of it, and saw that it was masses of cobweb; an ingenious dressing under the circumstances, but she didn’t know who could have come upon her here, this deep in the caverns.

  She saw a shape bend to enter the small aperture of this chamber. Even though she knew that she had had her wound tended and that she had been fed, evidently by this…thing, its alienness made her cringe away. It was bulky, crouched forward and there seemed to be…too many legs. Her cheek was brushed by fingertips that felt metallic in their cold hardness. “Hush, don’t look, don’t look and it’ll be all right.” The voice, dry, unaccented could not have originated in a human throat. “There now, don’t struggle, I promise—” Two powerful hands were grasping her waist and pulling her against a mass of thick fur. A third hand, smaller, loosened her shirt at the throat, pulled at it, baring her shoulder. The fourth hand cupped her chin, gently steadying her against the mild stinging sensation where her neck and shoulder joined. Just as panic was suffocating her, she escaped again into dreams.

  * * * *

  Long years later, when she would try to bring back the content of those dreams, she could not. They were perfectly clear when she was in them, but upon awakening, she was left with strange half-focussed images and colors without names. The dreams were all that saved her sanity. She knew the thing fed her, and she in turn fed it. After awhile she made out its true shape, two short legs for walking, two longer appendages for balance ending in feet that were really large hands, knotted across the knuckles with callous. The third pair of appendages were true arms with smaller, more delicate hands, the palms black and scaled, each finger tipped with a thornlike protuberance. It didn’t have the eight legs of the cult’s spider-god, but to see it walk-hop about the cavern, she could understand why they might make such a mistake.

  It had been emaciated at first, the fur dry and the color of dust, but as it fed, it grew more agile, the fur darkening. Riska learned to accept that she must stay always a little weak so it could survive, but as time passed, she too began to grow stronger.

  She had just propped herself against the wall and forced herself to take a few unsteady steps when Dath’s strange shape bulked against the light. From two hands dangled the bodies of two large cave-rats. “Now I can hunt,” said the being proudly, “and you, as well as I, can grow strong.” Riska imagined Dath leaping six-legged after the prey, and it was a funny, rather than frightening thought now. Even the leathery, purple-black face with its glittering black eyes and needle-thin fangs always showing a little no longer held terror for her.

  “Soon we’ll go above ground where I can find larger prey.”

  “I can walk now,” said Riska. She slipped on a wet stone and could have fallen except that Dath’s four arms caught and held her.

  “A little longer, you must rest.”

  “No, I have to get back. There’s someone I must warn.”

  “We too had a mission when we first came, my sister-brothers and I, but the aborig
inals captured me. Our group was scattered and I never heard from anyone again. They did me no harm; one of my keepers even taught me your language, but they practiced barbaric rites, killing their own kind to keep me fed, when, as you see, none of that is necessary. Then there was a cataclysm, and they fled, leaving me to starve. Luckily I can estivate when necessary.”

  “A remnant of the same cult has arisen in the city above; they kill children in your name, and are about to begin a bloody revolution.”

  “Enough atrocities have been committed on my account,” said Dath. “I’ll go with you, but not now. Not until you’re strong enough.”

  “All right. I’ll rest…for now. But I’d sleep better if…”

  “I’ve fed full already, but I suppose it’ll do no harm.”

  Furred arms enfolded her and she felt the familiar stinging sensation that she knew would lead to dreams.

  Riska felt the same displacement as she always did when moving from the underground ways to the surface. Where she had been, day and night had no meaning, and the night sky, endless and crowded with pinpoints of brightness, gave her a momentary feeling of agoraphobia. Dath stood beside her, gaping around at unfamiliar sights, an ungainly figure in the enveloping cloak that Riska had found. “We’re lucky it’s night,” she thought.

  “We’re too late!” she said aloud. A swirl of lazy smoke rose from the ruins of a building, and the street was choked with debris, as if defenders had thrown up hasty bulwarks. Here and there in the shadows lay still forms recognizable as human bodies. As Riska watched, a hunched figure moved along the street, pausing at each of these forms, an activity that could only mean the intruder was robbing the dead. She gestured at Dath to move back into the cover of an alleyway, as the figure continued to dart about, moving in her direction. “We must detain him and find out how the battle went,” she whispered.