Iced on Aran

by Brian Lumley

  A DAY IN THE LIFE …

  One of those perfect summer days, in fact. With the sun searing the sky until it drips down in shades of blue melt and merges with the sea; and the occasional fish leaping almost as if the water were too warm for him, leaving slowly fading ripples; and a solitary cloud, like a dab of cotton wool, drifting almost lonely over the central peaks of the Isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea. In the little villages flanking the seaport Baharna, nets would be drying in the sun, evening meals being given consideration, donkeys standing in whatever shade they could find, and nobody—nobody doing anything much.

  Neither were Hero and Eldin.

  They had vented flotation essence, come down out of the sky and dropped anchor off a tiny uninhabited knob of rock, the peak of some mountain of which the main range formed Oriab, and here as afternoon crept toward evening they’d got out their lines and were now hard at it, fishing. Except “hard at it” probably paints the wrong picture. Later, tonight, they might well be “hard at it,” but that’s a different story.

  They lay, each with his back to the low structure forming the cabin, Eldin to port and Hero to starboard, with legs bent at the knees and feet scarce projecting over the sides. Quester was a small sky-yacht and her masters were big men. Both were naked from the waist up, bare-footed, lines tied to their big toes. They were brown as berries, quietly simmering, content as any pair of dreamers could be. Almost. But when Eldin felt sleepy and contented, Hero usually, had something on his mind, and when Hero was feeling all at one with the dreamlands, then Eldin would be astir.

  In fact he was astir now, inside his head, anyway.

  “I had an odd dream last night,” he said, breaking a long hot silence, his deep voice drifting lazily over the top of the cabin-cum-galley and settling like a soft lasso over Hero’s mind.

  Hero said nothing, concentrated on his toe, which hadn’t twitched in a half-hour. The fish seemed too idle to bite. He didn’t blame them.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” said Eldin.

  “Oh, good!” Hero returned. “I’ll look forward to that.”

  “It’s been on my mind, that’s all. In fact, sev’ral things have been on my mind.”

  “What, all at once?” said Hero. “Braggart!”

  “Like, f’rinstance”—Eldin ignored his sarcasm—“Inquanok

  Hero sighed. “How many times do I have to say it?” he asked, bad memories returning in a flood. “Man, I’m still trying to forget Inquanok!”

  “No, no, no!” Eldin protested. “I’m not talking about what happened there. It’s a word-game I’ve been playing, that’s all. A mental diversion.”

  “Oh?” Hero was dubious. “Look, tonight we’re dining with Ula and Una in Bahama. Afterward … well, won’t that be diversion enough?”

  “Purely physical!” said Eldin at once. “But this … brain food!”

  Hero snorted. “All right,” he said, “I’ll fall for it. What are you raving on about?”

  “Tell me,” said Eldin: “what would you call the men of Inquanok?”

  “Idiots!” Hero replied. “Before our first—and last—visit there, anyway. Since then, not quite so daft.”

  “No, no, no!” Eldin was getting repetitious. “I mean their actual name, as a race. Like a man of Dylath-Leen is a Dylath-Leener, and the men of Serannian are Serannionians.”

  “And a man of Celephais is a Celephasian, and dwellers in Ilek-Vad are Ilek-Vadians?”

  “Exactly!” said Eldin. “So what’s a man of Inquanok called, eh?”

  “Never thought about it,” said Hero.

  “So think.”

  Unseen, on the other side of the cabin, Hero shrugged. “An Inquaknocker, I suppose.”

  “Eh?” said Eldin. “A bit sexist, that, isn’t it? I meant the people of Inquanok as a whole, not just the girls.”

  Hero couldn’t repress a grin. “Then I suppose that rules out Inquaknackers, too, eh? What about Inquanauts?”

  “They’re not all seafarers!” Eldin protested. “Me, I’ve reached a decision. From now on I call ’em Inqublots.”

  “Good!” said Hero. “Anything for peace and quiet, that’s what I always say …”

  There was silence for two full minutes. Then:

  “Dreams,” said Eldin. (Hero groaned inwardly.) “Do you believe in ’em?”

  “Now there’s a silly bloody question if ever I heard one!” Hero burst out after a moment’s thought. “What? Here’s us, dreamers, adrift in the land of Earth’s dreams, and you ask me if I believe in ’em? I mean, should I say no, and then express mild surprise when our boat turns to mist, and you and I gradually fade out, and the entire scene turns to shimmering dust-motes and leaves our shrieking, shrinking ids to wander in eternal oblivion?”

  “That’s a bit strong!” muttered Eldin. “What’s more, it’s not what I meant. I meant do you believe that dreams are prophetic?”

  Hero frowned, jerked his toe as his line went taut, scowled as it immediately slackened. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  “Dreams are,” said Eldin. “I mean, they’re damned queer things, dreams. There we were, presumably, dreamers in the waking world, fashioning dreams like mad, never believing for a moment that they were real, with people living in ’em and stuff! Then one day we died, I suppose, and came here. And here, what do we do but dream! At least I do, and damned strange ones at that. So—if you see what I’m getting at—I find the whole thing quite fascinating. I mean, they go inward and outward, probably for ever.”

  “Eh? Inward and outward?”

  “What I’m asking is this,” said Eldin. “When we were in the waking world, was somebody on some higher plane dreaming us?”

  “Ah!” said Hero. “And someone higher still dreaming him, d’you mean? And do the dreams we dream now give life to some ulterior world? Like sitting in a barber’s chair where there’s a mirror fore and one aft, so that you see yourself seeing yourself seeing—”

  “Yes!” said Eldin excitedly.

  “Or the world as an atom of some greater world, the macrocosm, and every atom of the world a universe in its own right, composed of even smaller universes. Inward and outward.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “Or two bees looking at each other, reflected in each other’s myriad-faceted eyes, and each facet’s facets repeating a myriad bee ogles, and—”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Eldin was ecstatic.

  “Shouldn’t think so,” said Hero.

  Eldin got a bite and gave his toe a massive jerk. Hero, too, and likewise.

  “Well, it’s my belief that they are prophetic,” said Eldin. “Especially the one I had last night.” He hauled on his line.

  On the other side of the boat Hero had his own fight going. “Lord, have I got a fish here!” he cried.

  “A sprat compared to mine!” Eldin’s voice was high with excitement.

  Hero leaned forward, caught up his line and gave it a steady pull terminating in a yank—and the fish yanked back! It yanked hard. He was hauled upright, flew forward, nearly shot over the side before he could get his balance. Then, as he felt the line tighten again—

  —He threw himself flat, face down and head over the side, legs stretched along the gunnel—and had no sooner assumed that position than he heard Eldin’s cry of outrage as his line went slack and his head cracked against the cabin’s planking.

  “Ow!” said the Wanderer. “But this is a fish with fight in him!”

  Hero scowled thoughtfully, tugged tentatively at his line, and—

  “There he goes again!” yelled Eldin.

  “Whoa!” Hero cried in something of desperation as the other hauled.

  “Eh?” Eldin suspected that the whoa had been directed at him. “What? I should desist? Are you joking? But this is a big bugger!”

  “Too true, he is,” Hero readily agreed. “And if you don’t stop hauling on that line of yours you’re going to pull his bloody toe oft!”

  There was a long, awkward s
ilence; then they cut their tangled lines and watched them slowly sink, and at last climbed to their feet to confront each other—finally collapsing in tears of laughter on the deck. They’d earlier lowered a bottle of wine by its neck into the water; now they brought it up, drew the cork, took long pulls. And:

  “Ah, well,” Hero sighed after a while. “I suppose it’s up-anchor and heigh-ho for—”

  There came a flapping of roseate wings and a stir of air as a pink temple pigeon rotated and braced himself for a landing on the cabin’s roof. Tied to his leg, a tiny silver cylinder with a cork stopper. Eldin scooped the bird up as soon as it landed, untied the message cylinder, took out the stopper. He began to slide out the tight-rolled scrap of paper curled within, but Hero stopped him.

  “Hang on,” said the younger quester. “Not so fast. You know what’ll happen if we read that, don’t you?”

  Eldin raised his eyebrows, looked over his shoulder, said: “Who, me? Am I clairvoyant or something? How should I know what will happen if we—?”

  “But you do, you do!” Hero cut him short, taking the cylinder from him. “This bird’s from Ulthar or Celephais, Serannian or Ilek-Vad. From Kuranes or Atal or some other person of their estimable ilk. And it carries a summons, a command, most likely a quest—for us!”

  “So? But that’s how we earn a living, isn’t it? We are questers, aren’t we?”

  “Not tonight, we’re not!” Hero denied it. He drew out the tiny curl of paper, dropped it carelessly over the side of the boat.

  “What? What?” Eldin went wide-eyed. “But that’s … that’s …”

  “It’s very sensible,” said Hero. “If it was important there’ll be another bird tomorrow. If it was very important there’ll probably be two.” He took out a scrap of paper and a sharp shard of charcoal from his pocket (he wrote the occasional line of poetry, much to Eldin’s disgust) and scribbled: “Sorry, message dropped overboard by fumbling, drunken elder quester before it could be read. Please repeat instructions.” Then he quickly rolled it up, inserted it into the cylinder and recorked it, tied it to the patient bird’s leg.

  “What did you write?” Eldin queried as the bird soared aloft.

  “Told him—whoever—that you were drunk and dropped it overboard,” said Hero.

  “Oh!” said Eldin, nodding affably. And a moment later: “Eh? You did what?”

  Hero held up placating hands. “This squares it for your lapse,” he explained.

  “What lapse?”

  “We had a choice,” said Hero. “In three months’ time—if Ula and Una still wanted to see us then—you’d have to explain how you messed up tonight by reading that message and going off a-questing instead of a-whatevering. Or tonight you can tell ’em how you saved the day—or night—by dint of your quick-wittedness. I simply assumed you’d prefer the second option.”

  Eldin thought it over. “Well that’s damned decent of you!” he eventually remarked. “Your logic’s a bit lopsided, for which I’ll probably clout you later, but for now … did you have to say I was drunk?”

  Hero sighed patiently. “Of course!” he said. “I mean, what sort of idiot would commit such an enormity sober, eh?” He went below, started up the flotation engine.

  Later, airborne and dripping water from their keel as they climbed skyward and turned for Oriab, Eldin said: “Anyway, it gives me a chance to check out my dream theory: that they’re prophetic, that is. See, this dream of mine took place in Bahama, in Lippy Unth’s place, the Craven Lobster. We were in there, having a drink, when who should I spot but the seer with invisible eyes.”

  “Oh!” said Hero. “Him again. You’ve told me about him before: you look into his eyes and see nothing. You see their rims—craters on each side of his nose—but nothing in ’em. The spaces between the stars, empty voids, nothingness.”

  “The same,” said Eldin, nodding. “Anyway, we went over to speak to him and he looked at us sort of funny.”

  “With his invisible eyes?” said Hero.

  “Right. And then—”

  “Well?”

  “He fell face down on the table, dead!”

  Hero frowned. “And that’s it?”

  “Not quite. Before he died, he thrust out his hand. In it, a crumpled scrap of paper. I took it, smoothed it out on the table top … and woke up!”

  Hero took a deep breath, tut-tutted, sighed, said: “You know, sometimes I feel I’ve spent half my life listening to you say daft things! I mean, what the hell—?”

  “But it was so damned real!” Eldin insisted. “A prophecy of some sort, I’m sure.”

  Hero gazed long and hard at the other, detected no note of humor or leg-pulling, finally narrowed his eyes. “That settles it,” he eventually said. “We’ll have a drink tonight, by all means, before we meet up with the girls. But not in the Craven Lobster!”

  “You think there’s something in it, then?” Eldin was eager.

  “No,” said Hero, “but I’m not about to take any chances with it either. I mean, why tempt fate, eh?”

  Why, indeed?

  In the deeps of the Southern Sea, full fathom five and still descending in lazy, undulating spirals, like some mindless, paperish flatfish, Kuranes’ message was destined never to be read by mortal man or dreamer. Couched in his own crabbed script—in the clean glyphs of dreams, in which Hero and Eldin were both now fully versed—its legend was this:

  Hero & Eldin—

  Proceed at once to Baharna on the Isle of Oriab, and there seek out the seer with invisible eyes in the tavern of Lipperod Unth, which is called the Craven Lobster. Speak to the seer and hear him out, but DO NOTHING MORE until you have further instructions from me. To investigate his tale lacking possession of all the facts would almost certainly prove fatal!

  Your employer,

  Kuranes.

  A fish, ogling by, glimpsed the feathery, slowly disintegrating scrap and perhaps thought it a flap of human skin or flake of flesh, or some other item of edible debris from above. It took an instinctive bite—tore off a single word—and swallowed, found the paper not especially palatable, turned away in search of a more substantial meal.

  Thus “Kuranes,” like Jonah in a different world and time, and on a slightly higher plane, was swallowed by a probably mythical fish. The only difference being that no one made any fuss about it.

  A-MAZED IN ORIAB

  Fancying belly-dancers (Eldin was a “jiggly-bits” addict), the questers made for Buxom Barba’s Quayside Quaress on Wharf Street. Because of Bahama’s precipitous aspect—its streets were piled almost vertically one upon the next, joined by steep alleyways climbing inexorably wearisome to more lofty and opulent suburbs—safe moorings for sky-ships were few and far between. Emphasis on “safe.” Around the lower squares and markets were ample posts where a boat might be anchored (tied fore and aft, so as not to swing about in a sudden gust and collide with other vessels), which was fine for craft with larger crews, when there would always be a man or men aboard. But dodgy to leave a boat like Quester trussed thus, for urchins would scamper up the lines to sample whatever goodies they might find in a small, deserted, obviously foreign boat.

  For this and other reasons of security, the pair had moored their vessel within the bay, something less than a quarter mile out, to the mast of some old wreck where it projected slantingly from the sea. The unknown hulk was marked as a hazard with a buoy (bearing a notice which read: “’WARE SCABFISH!”) bobbing over the scummy harbor water.

  Scabfish were eel-like wreck-denizens with very antisocial habits; if a man should touch one a scab would develop at point of contact, only falling off when new, clean skin had formed beneath. No city brat was likely to come a-swimming here! Nor, for that matter, were David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer.

  Since the wind was in their favor they’d gone ashore suspended beneath a spare flotation-bag, venting essence as they neared the wharves and so arriving in Bahama pristine and not a bit damp. And not a little thirsty, either. Leaving their
deflating bag in the care of a net-mending pegleg, and paying him a tip nipped from one point of a triangular golden tond for his trouble, they’d headed for the Quaress.

  Alas!—closed, shut down: no colored lanthorns glimmering, though evening drew toward night, and no swirly music to announce the fact that the belly-dancers were at it. For in fact, they weren’t. Disbelieving (What? Buxom Barba absent or remiss on a fine summer night like this, and the city aswarm with sightseers, sailors and other spenders—not to mention the odd quester or two?), Eldin rapped sharply on the carved, suddenly unfriendly-seeming door, yelled: “Wake up in there, Barba—the boys are here!”

  “One boy, anyway,” Hero murmured, “and one elderly buffoon.” And louder: “Can’t you see she’s closed?”

  “My heart’s set on it!” Eldin insisted. “Naked navels all a-wobble!” And: “Ah!” as the door suddenly opened outward.

  A sailor emerged, Celephaisian by his looks, wobbly at the knees and decidedly glazed of eye. He was propelled out into the street by an Amazon the questers knew of old. Big and of gleamy bronze, but clad now for the street and not the stage, Zuli Bazooli—who danced with snakes and did other things—showed her teeth in a smile like a bar of light in the shadow of the silent tavern.

  “Hero and Eldin!” she exclaimed, holding her sailor aloft by his collar, like a puppet. “So the tide’s washed you two up again, eh?”

  “Barba’s late opening,” Eldin frowned, making to enter. Zuli blocked the way.

  “Not tonight, my lads,” she declared, her voice almost as loud as the Wanderer’s own. “With luck, tomorrow—but not tonight.”

  “Explain!” cried Eldin, all visions of jiggly-bits receding. “Is Barba sick?”

  Zuli shrugged, carefully locking the door behind her. “You might say that,” she said. “Ship out of Celephais, docked at noon. Six bow-legged lads came ashore, good drinking men all. They challenged Barba to a bout and she took ’em on. I’ve just put her to bed. We’re shut.”

  “What?” Hero was skeptical. “Buxom Barba beaten in boozing bout?”