Iced on Aran

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Iced on Aran Page 12

by Brian Lumley


  “Gan,” said Hero, “my friend was having a little private joke, that’s all, but your joke’s gone far enough. Just what are the charges? Why are we here? You know who we are, also that Kuranes of Ooth-Nargai won’t let us rot in one of your cells. Do you intend to risk a diplomatic clash with Serannian, Celephais, Ulthar and Ilek-Vad? Do the city elders even know you’re holding us? The way I see it, we may have charges to answer—which we will, given the chance—but this show of high-handedness can only do you harm.” Hero frowned in genuine puzzlement. “Just what is this all about, Gan?”

  The Chief Regulator sighed, narrowed his eyes, sank down a little in his chair. If the questers were acting, then they were very good at it. Could it really be that they were here “by chance”? Coincidence, at this time? Raffis Gan wasn’t much given to believing in such coincidences. On their own admittance they were Kuranes’ questers, his agents in the lands of Earth’s dreams. And had they talked to the seer with invisible eyes “by chance”? And the seer himself known to be another agent of Kuranes! These women of theirs, these twin sisters, Ula and Una Gidduf: hadn’t they been right there with this pair of rogues in the War of the Mad Moon? Were they, too, spies for the Southern Sea’s coastal cities?

  Just how much did Kuranes know? It was important that Raffis Gan find out. He could play this game soft or hard, however they liked it—or didn’t. Very well, first hard. “Charges?” Gan straightened up in his chair. “All right, try these for size:

  “One: that you, David Hero, or Hero of Dreams if you insist, stabbed a Kledan with a poisoned dart when he went to the assistance of a previous victim, the charlatan mystic known as the seer with invisible eyes. Two: that you, Eldin the Wanderer, hurled a man—another Kledan, as it happens—through a wall into the harbor, where doubtless he drowned. Certainly his body hasn’t been found yet. Three: that both of you, making your escape from the scene of these murders, savagely attacked certain of the customers of one Lipperod Unth a licensed waterfront taverner, Unth himself, his son, and numerous innocent bystanders. Four: that to facilitate your escape, you deliberately vandalized the Craven Lobster, a tavern, to such an extent that it fell into the harbor! Charges? And how are they for starters? I could lock you in a cell, melt the key and drop it in the canal, and even your best friends wouldn’t want to know about it! Kuranes? He’ll consider himself lucky to be rid of you!”

  Gan looked at Eldin’s scarred face and believed he saw the Wanderer’s nerves fraying a little. What he actually saw was a growing impatience and frustration, but he couldn’t know that. As for Hero … the younger quester’s eyes had narrowed more yet, were keenly aglint. And:

  “You know, Chief Regulator,” said Hero, “I didn’t see a man-jack in the Craven Lobster I’d ever have guessed was one of yours. And if there had been, he’d know the truth of it, and these so-called ‘charges’ wouldn’t even arise. Also, you couldn’t cram half an hour between the, er, incident and the time you picked us up. So how’d you come by your information so quickly, eh?”

  Gan went white, got slowly to his feet, leaned on his desk with knuckles shiny where the skin stretched across them. And: “Are you trying to say something, David Hero?” he hissed. “Making some sort of accusation of your own? That sort of tack won’t answer the questions I’ve got lined up for you, and it won’t get you anything but a cell to rot in!”

  “I think it’s already got me something,” said Hero, relaxing a little and nodding knowingly. “It’s told me something, anyway: that there’s a hell of a rotten stink in Bahama’s Regulating Branch!”

  Gan went whiter still, leaned right across his desk, opened his mouth to say something—and too late saw his danger. In the heat of the moment Eldin hadn’t been able to resist. He stepped forward, looped the chain of his handcuffs over Gan’s head, dragged him bodily across the desk.

  The Wanderer had no plan; perhaps at best he hoped to hold Gan as a hostage, but he didn’t get the chance. More used than their boss to the ways of hard men, Gan’s pair of Regulator thugs jumped in, brandishing teak truncheons. Eldin was chopped behind the ear and never knew what hit him. He fell into a pit of stars with no sides and no bottom, like a comet rushing through the outer void.

  Hero, hurling himself furiously to his friend’s assistance, joined him a moment later. There was more than enough room in that interstellar pit for both of them.

  The first thing Eldin saw when he came to was Hero, red-eyed and haggard, glowering at him across the width of a tiny cell. They were both hanging in chains, manacled, feet on the cold stone floor—barely.

  “Ow!” Eldin groaned. He wanted to finger the lump behind his ear, but of course couldn’t.

  “‘Ow’?” Hero echoed him. “Is that all? Only an ‘ow’? In that case you’re lucky. Me, I don’t think my cranium can take much more of you!”

  “Not now, lad,” Eldin quaveringly protested. “I deserve it, I know, but upbraid me later. Only not now. Give me a chance to think straight first.” And, after a moment: “What month is it?”

  “Septober,” said Hero, “—or maybe Octember. It’s morning, anyway.”

  Dawn’s light, feeble down here in Baharna’s guts, drifted in through the bars in cold, clinging wreaths of mist from the canal. The wall opposite the barred window featured a stout oak door with its own iron-barred hatch. Nothing else. No furniture, no amenities; nothing at all other than stone walls, floor and ceiling. “We’ve hung here the night?” Eldin turned his head this way and that, tenderly, his eyes slitted and deeply wrinkled at their outer corners.

  Hero gave a painful nod. “Certainly feels like it,” he said.

  “And the girls?”

  “Too late to worry about them now. Just hope that Gan’s been a bit more lenient with them than he’s been with us, that’s all.”

  “Huh!” grunted Eldin. “Lenient? What did they do? Come to think of it, what did we do—except long overdue civic duties at a well-earned launching? Slum clearance, I call it—with a bit of pest control thrown in. And all for free. That Chief Regulator, he’s got things up his sleeves.”

  “So many, I’m surprised there’s room for his arms!” Hero agreed.

  “But what in hell’s it all about, eh?”

  “Dunno,” Hero shook his head—carefully.

  There came a fluttering from beyond the bars at the window. Something pink perched a moment, squeezed its way into the cell, soared straight for Hero and settled on his head. A temple pigeon, message cylinder and all. “P-coo, p-coo, p-coo!” it said, complainingly.

  “Couldn’t agree more, old chum,” said Hero, “we’re damned hard to find, I’m sure. But see, we’re sort of tied up right now.” He tried in vain to get his hands on the bird, remove its message.

  “Now if only Kuranes would consider parrots,” said Eldin, “we’d—”

  There sounded footsteps from outside, bolts were thrown back, and the door clanged open on its hinges. It was Raffis Gan and his bodyguards.

  Gan took in the scene inside the cell at a glance. “Get that bird!” he snapped.

  “Shoo!” Hero yelled, shaking his head wildly to dislodge the bird—which made him feel he’d dislodged his head. “Run, flap, flee, fly!—damn you!”

  Too late. The bully-boys were into the cell, one blocking the window, the other snatching at the pigeon and knocking it from Hero’s head. To give the bird credit, even half-stunned it flapped for the window—straight into the ham fists of the Regulator there. He grabbed it out of the air, twisted its neck till it snapped. And wrenching the silver cylinder from a still twitching leg, the gray-clad lout tossed the poor lifeless body down.

  Nostrils flaring, Hero and Eldin looked at each other. The faces of Gan’s sidekicks were already well-etched on their memories, but now the questers committed them firmly, in minute detail. The one who’d killed the bird was squat, thin-lipped, bald, with a head like the sharp end of an egg. The other—the one who’d held Una’s head a little too high—was taller, but bandy-legged, bull-che
sted, with eyes so close-set only the bridge of his nose kept them apart. With Gan, they made a most unlovely trio.

  Meanwhile Gan had taken the message-cylinder, removed the tiny wad of paper tucked inside and opened it out. He gazed eagerly at what was written there; blinked, and stared harder. Then his pale lips curled in disgust and disappointment. “Coded!” he snapped. Which told the questers that it was very important and highly secret. It wasn’t often Kuranes used the olden glyphs of dream (which Eldin had a knack for) but when he did …

  Now the Chief Regulator looked up, came forward. “So I was right,” he said. “You are spying for Kuranes. But what’s he after? What is it you’re here for, eh?”

  Hero shrugged (to the tune of rattling chains) and answered: “Maybe if we could read that message we’d know.”

  “Oh, you’ll read it soon enough,” said Gan slyly. “Be sure you will.” And suddenly furrows appeared in his pallid forehead. He gave a little start, said: “Has anyone searched these two since we picked ’em up?”

  His men looked at each other, shrugged.

  Gan made a tutting sound. “Maybe they’re carrying orders, instructions! Do it now while they’re hung up. And be thorough!” While his men set about their task, the Chief Regulator paced to and fro, shaking his head as he studied Kuranes’ glyphs.

  Hero, submitting to the search (there wasn’t much else he could do), wondered why Eldin suddenly seemed subdued. True, he was subdued, but now there was also a sheepish look about him. Then the egg-headed thug reached into the Wanderer’s jacket and brought out a second scrap of paper—at which Eldin groaned, and not from the pain of last night’s lump.

  “Eh?” said Hero, finding himself suddenly out of his depth. “What? Eldin, is there p’raps something you should have mentioned?”

  “Er, I did mention it—sort of,” the Wanderer cringed. “Aboard the boat, remember? After we’d been fishing? My dream?”

  His dream! Hero rolled up his eyes and let his head loll back gently against the wall. Eldin’s prophetic dream. Oh, yes, Hero saw it all now. And thinking back on the affray in the Craven Lobster, sure enough he remembered how the Wanderer had straighted up the seer’s lifeless body—which must have been when he took this scrap of paper from him.

  But now Raffis Gan had that fragment, and his normal pallor became that of a dead man as he read it. Wide-eyed, he glared at Eldin, at Hero, even at his scowling Regulator henchmen. And to them:

  “Wait outside!” he hissed. And when the gray-clads were out of earshot and the heavy door closed behind them:

  “This,” Gan ground the words out, “is not couched in glyphs. Of course you already know what’s written here, but I’ll read it aloud for you anyway, so that there can be no further misunderstanding between us. It says:

  “‘YATH—YATH-LHI—TYRHHIA—TREASURE’!”

  If Gan had expected a reaction he was disappointed. Hero did react, but the wrong way. The younger quester was expressionless for a moment, then blinked vacantly, then gave a chain-clanking shrug. “So?”

  And as for Eldin: “Puzzling, isn’t it?” said the Wanderer. “Hero, lad, that’s why I didn’t mention it. Oh, I would have done, eventually, but since it didn’t seem to make much sense … why let it spoil the night, eh?”

  Gan’s eyes bored into the Wanderer’s. “You took this from the seer, right?”

  “He … gave it to me”—Eldin looked uncomfortable—“sort of.”

  “Kuranes sent you to see the seer with invisible eyes, who in turn gave you this piece of paper,” said Gan. “I see …”

  “Well I don’t!” said Hero. “First, Kuranes didn’t send us—we came of our own free wills to see the girls. Second, meeting the seer was entirely accidental. If the Quayside Quaress had been open, we never would have seen him. And third—”

  “Yes?” said the Chief Regulator.

  But how could Hero tell him about Eldin’s prophetic dream? That would be seen to be a deliberate lie—even though it wasn’t! “Third, it was the Kledans started the ruckus at the Craven Lobster, not us. We only, well, finished it …”

  Gan nodded, sourly added, “Disastrously!” He held up the coded message taken from the bird. “And this?”

  “A message from Kuranes,” Eldin shrugged, trying to muffle his chains as he did so. “We are the old King’s questers, after all! P‘raps it says: ‘Report to me in Celephais,’ or some such. We won’t know till we’ve read it, now will we?”

  Gan turned to Hero. “What do you know of Yath-Lhi? Tyrhhia?” Still looking for some sort of reaction, he snapped the words out.

  Hero looked blank for a moment. “Nothing,” he said, honestly believing that he spoke the truth.

  The Wanderer’s memory was better, however. “Well, we do know a little,” he said.

  “Oh?” Gan smiled thinly. “You do know ‘a little,’ eh? Go on, then, tell me.”

  “I mean, it’s no secret, is it?” Eldin raised his bushy eyebrows. “It’s recorded in certain of dreamland’s olden tomes, a story out of the immemorial past, a tale told by grandams about roaring winter fires. At best a legend, almost certainly a flight of fancy, a myth.”

  “Say on,” said Gan.

  Eldin glanced across at Hero for his approval. “Oh, by all means!” Hero sighed, gave his chains a feeble clank. “Let’s have a story, since we’ve nothing better to do than hang about here!”

  “Yath-Lhi was known as the ‘Black Princess,’” Eldin began. “Black as Zura of Zura, maybe even worse. But ‘black’ describing her nature, you understand, and not her color. Back in the pre-dawn dreamlands, when dreams were young, she ruled in Tyrhhia, a walled slave city—the richest city in all the lands of Earth’s dreams! For even the spires of Yath-Lhi’s palace were of silver—not leaved with the stuff, made of it! Anyway—”

  “Ah, now I remember!” Hero cut in. “Of course! We had some of it from Aminza Anz, up there in the Great Bleak Mountains, that time we found our way into the Keep of the First Ones. Tyrhhia, yes. And Yath-Lhi, the Black Princess. And her maze. I remember how Aminza likened the maze within the keep to Yath-Lhi’s maze under Tyrhhia.”

  Gan slowly nodded. “Now, we’re getting somewhere,” he said, sarcastically. “And just see how memories catch fire when someone strikes a flint, eh? So maybe you can finish the story, David Hero. What else is there?”

  Hero sighed again. “I don’t know where all this is leading,” he said, “but … very well, if it will hasten matters.

  “She had very bad habits, this princess. She was greedy, for one thing—enormously so—and she was cruel beyond measure. She sent out her armies in search of treasure, and thus amassed so much of the stuff she’d lie awake nights wondering if it was safe! Eventually she hit upon a scheme, using thousands of slaves to build a subterranean maze deep under Tyrhhia itself. They worked down there under the lash, those poor creatures, and died in droves before the job was done: a labyrinth extensive as the city itself. And at its center—Yath-Lhi’s treasure. Only she knew the way in. When she went in to admire her treasure, or add to it, she would have her bearers slain as soon as she led them back out through the maze. Worse, she even killed the labyrinth’s architect, her own lover, by having him dipped in molten gold and adding his ‘statue’ to her monstrous, ill-gotten hoard.

  “When she died—the legend doesn’t say how, except that in the end she grew old and vanished—her city-nation died with her. Penniless! No one could ever find his way into the maze, let alone discover the treasure at its center.” Hero paused, nodded, said: “That’s it. How did I do?”

  “Admirably!” said Raffis Gan. He gave a derisive snort. “And knowing so much of the old legend, you two, still this note you got from the seer with invisible eyes means nothing to you? Well, we’ll see about that.”

  He approached Eldin—but carefully, staying well clear of his reach—and held up the second piece of paper, the one he’d said was coded. “Well; and what do you make of this?”

  Eldin drew h
is eyebrows close together, peered, read in silence—or would have.

  “Well?” said Gan.

  “Give me a chance,” Eldin grumbled, absorbing everything.

  “Word by word,” said Gan, impatient. “Let’s have it.”

  “What? Word by word? A direct translation? Impossible! Man, this isn’t in code—it’s Ancient Dreamlands!”

  “Eh?” said Gan, his thin eyebrows shooting up. “The primal tongue? And are you telling me you can actually read it?”

  “Oh, damn right he can!” said Hero from across the cell. “What? Why, if he wasn’t a quaint old quester, he’d doubtless be Assistant Curator of the Archives in Ulthar!” His sarcasm bounced off Eldin, failed to impress Gan.

  “Be quiet, you!” snapped the Chief Regulator; and to Eldin: “Well, what does it say?”

  The Wanderer had read and absorbed all. “Hmm!” he said. “Well, it says this: ‘To Raffis Gan from Eldin the Erudite—up yours!’”

  Quick as thought Gan snatched back the note, crumpled it into his pocket, backhanded Eldin a clout that rocked his head and cut open the corner of his mouth. The Wanderer reacted in typical fashion: he went berserk, or would have if he hadn’t been chained to a wall. While he raved and roared, Gan called out to his thugs:

  “Come in, you two. I’ve had more than enough of this!” His bully-boys rumbled in. “Bind their arms securely and shackle their feet, then bring ’em to the well. If they give you trouble—any trouble at all—beat them black and blue!” He stormed out of the cell.

  “You’ve really miffed that one,” said Hero to Eldin. “And you had me worried, too, for a minute or so.”

  “What?” Eldin stopped roaring on the instant, looked with mild reproof upon the younger quester opposite. “You didn’t really believe I was going to tell him what Kuranes said, did you?”

  While the two conversed, Gan’s hoodlums released them one arm at a time from the walls, bound their arms to their bodies with ropes and their thighs together. Against all this restriction of movement, still Hero managed a shrug. “It would’ve been no stranger than not telling me about that note from the seer with invisible eyes!”

 

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