Iced on Aran

by Brian Lumley

  Great slabs of rock thundered down on to the staging area, were buried in a landslide of smaller rocks, soil and sand. Yath-Lhi and her party staggered this way and that under the shuddering and roaring of the avalanche; likewise the others in her vicinity, gradually unfreezing as the sudden assault upon their senses began to subside. Several Kledan overseers had disappeared under the fallen mass; the rest had been safely forward of the danger area.

  “All of that from a small cannon?” Ula’s jaw hung open.

  “That rock face must have been very brittle,” Hero answered. “It was like taking a hammer to a slab of slate!”

  Ham Gidduf had given himself a shake, was now leaning over the rail shouting: “Una, grab a ladder. And you, great thug—give the girl a hand!”

  On the ground Eldin came to life. He grabbed up Una, thrust her aloft to where rope ladders dangled.

  “Oh-oh!” Hero’s eyes stood out like marbles. He’d suddenly noticed that the crippled Kledan ship, its hull and sails gouting great sheets of flame, was foundering directly toward the trench of piled gunpowder kegs. “Ham!” he yelled, jabbing his forefinger down toward the danger.

  The barrel-like, rock-hard merchant gave a gasp, then roared: “Engineer—let’s have some elevation! Full-throttle on the pumps and fill those flotation bags brim-full, d’you hear?”

  Below decks, the thumping of the ship’s flotation engines became a rumble of thunder; slowly, the merchantman lifted, agonizingly slowly. On the ground Eldin made a desperate flying leap—caught hold of a rope and held on for dear life as he was whisked aloft.

  “WHAT?” Yath-Lhi was still confused. Someone had ignored her mind-command, had slipped the telepathic leash? Someone had actually threatened her? She turned this way and that, gazed here and there. Regulators, Kledans and slaves, all had now seen the danger, were scurrying to put distance between themselves, the death-filled trench and the tunnel entrance to the labyrinth.

  “WHAT?” the Black Princess repeated, her mental fury lashing outward. “WHO DARES DEFY THE—?”

  At which point, the blazing slaver’s keel crashed down into the trench, and shattered masts hurled fire everywhere.

  Night became day as the trench dug itself that much deeper. First one keg exploded, then another; five together, then ten. A mighty chain reaction of an explosion! Even on high, Ham Gidduf’s ship reeled, and reeled again from a succession of concussions. Yath-Lhi and her party, isolated now on the elevated ramp in front of the half-blocked entrance to the labyrinth, staggered to and fro, fell, got up and fell again.

  On board the merchantman, Ham Gidduf gave a cry of joy and hauled his second daughter to safety, hugged her almost to breaking point. Eldin, smoldering a bit round the hem of his jacket and looking like a chimneysweep, was left to fend for himself. He came sprawling over the rail, choking on upward-sweeping sulphur belches from the inferno below, singed and coughing, and cursing for all he was worth. Hero had meanwhile got hold of a spyglass, and now commenced a running commentary on the scene below:

  “That trench isn’t just a trench!” he breathlessly reported. “This seems to have been the one area in which Gan planned well. Where the ground rises toward the barrow, the trench becomes a tunnel. Right now it’s blasting away like a great cannon, hurling out ball after ball of fire!”

  Eldin joined the younger quester. “There it goes!” he rumbled. “The level area in front of the barrow is falling into the tunnel. The channel to the lake is almost complete.”

  “And there go Yath-Lhi and her lot, clambering up the sides away from the hot stuff!” said Hero. “They’re not very good at it—still very stiff from their sleep of ages.”

  “They’re also too late,” Eldin pointed out. There came a final mighty blast and tons of earth were tossed skyward right at the water’s edge. Yath lake boiled down the fire-fashioned channel, lapped at Yath-Lhi’s heels where she and her five soldiers scrambled desperately in raining rocks and smoking earth.

  “Too late?” Hero repeated his friend. “What do you mean, too—?” By which time he could see for himself.

  “Vampires, of a sort,” said Eldin. “And you know what running water means to a vampire. For Yath-Lhi it has to be even worse. What is she, after all, but a bag of century-old dust? A good torrent will cleanse a fouled gutter every time, Hero my lad!”

  “NO!” Yath-Lhi’s mind-shriek echoed up to them. “NO-Ooooo!” They watched her melt down into the swirling, gurgling waters. She and her five guards crumbled and sloughed away like snowmen in a great furnace. And a moment later:

  “Gone!” said Ula with a shudder, hugging Hero’s arm.

  “The Black Princess, all gone,” Una agreed, sighing her relief against Eldin’s great chest.

  “Aye,” said their father, gruffly, “and the renegade Raffis Gan gone with her. And these accursed ruins swamped forever. Well, we’ve all a bit of explaining to do, I think. So now you four had better come along with me to my cabin.”

  Down below, Yath continued to send a surging brown stream gurgling into what would soon become a weedy, watery labyrinth of aeons …

  As for explanations: there weren’t so many after all.

  Glibly, the questers had started to tell how they’d come to Oriab to see Ula and Una—

  “Only to ‘see’ them?” Ham scowled dangerously.

  “Well, actually, er, to make plans,” Eldin engaged in some mental scrambling, searching for a way out.

  “Marriage plans!” Ula gleefully seized the main chance; and, “Soon!” Una clinched the thing.

  Hero had then cast murderous side glances at Eldin; the Wanderer had choked up and reddened a bit; Ham Gidduf had positively beamed!

  “How soon?” he’d wanted to know.

  “In the, er, future—” Hero had answered. And guided by Ham’s rapidly changing expression: “The far—er, not-so-far, er, would you believe near?—future.” With Eldin hurriedly adding: “But just plans at this stage, of course …”

  And then the questers (smiling fixed, frozen smiles) and the girls (joyously hugging their arms) had listened to Ham’s side of the adventure.

  He’d had business in Baharna and decided to look up his daughters at their tiny house in an upper-class hillside suburb. They’d not been at home, but a busybody neighbor had heard that just last night they’d been arrested “with a pair of gentlemen friends, loutish fellows, apparently” by the city’s Regulators—arrested and “taken in”! Ham had exploded, gone to see a friend of his on the Council of Elders who lived in the vicinity; together they’d stormed Regulating HQ, and there …

  Two young ladies? And their men-friends? Yes, Chief Regulator Gan had brought them in—for questioning, presumably. Odd, for there was no written record of charges … Er, but they had spent the night here, yes. And less than an hour ago Gan had taken them away with him in the official launch. Something about discreet investigations … ? This information from the Duty Sergeant. But Ham had wanted to know: “Did Gan take all of them with him—all four?”

  The sergeant made hasty, flustered inquiries, and: “Er, actually, only two. One male, one female.”

  “That ‘female’ was one of my daughters!” Ham had started to thump the desk. “Which means that my other daughter, her sister, is still here! Here, locked up like a common criminal! Where?” Accompanied by the now completely unnerved sergeant, Ham and the Elder Councillor had then searched the place cell by cell and top to bottom. To no avail. But at least Ham had seen the severity of the cells, and he knew that his daughters had spent the night in one of them …

  Then, just when the powerful merchant was on the point of violating several city ordinances, an experienced junior officer, Inspector of the Watch, had come forward. He’d spoken to the two VIPs in private, voiced certain fears, made certain cautious half-allegations.

  “It’s probably my job on the line if I’m wrong, I know, but …” And he’d told something of a tale about Gan’s peculiar obsession with the ruins on Yath’s shore, and of
the Chief Regulator’s apparent friendship with—or at least his relaxed attitude toward—an inordinately large number of visiting Kledans.

  Ham Gidduf’s high-ranking friend had found all of this very interesting and not a little disturbing, and again in confidence, he too had voiced his concern. He didn’t know just how Ham’s daughters fitted into the picture, or their quester friends (Kuranes’ men, weren’t they?—good sorts, if a bit unorthodox), but for some time now Gan had been acting strangely and, indeed, was under a gathering cloud of suspicion. No charges had been brought against him as yet, he was not being investigated, but …

  What?!—Ham Gidduf’s daughter in the hands of a man who rubbed shoulders with Kledan slavers?

  Now Ula’s and Una’s father was a man of action; while the Elder went off in a hurry to seek advice from his fellows on the Council, Ham went and spoke to the captains of three of his ships, unloading their cargoes at that very moment on Baharna’s docks. Likewise, he approached the captain of a warship out of Serannian, in the yards for repairs. Hero and Eldin were celebrities (some might say characters of notoriety) in the sky-floating city, and of course there was a degree of chivalry in respect of the ladies, and so the captain at once agreed to the loan of certain items of ship’s hardware—to wit, cannons!

  In no time at all Ham’s merchantmen were unloaded, armed and airborne; by then, too, the Council of Elders had agreed to lend their assistance, consisting of orders to three platoons of Regulators, all tried men and true, eager to scratch a previously inaccessible itch. As the population of Bahama gaped and gawked from its various levels down upon Regulating HQ, so those worthies had gone aboard the three sky-ships up rope ladders suspended directly over the balconies of their canal-hugging establishment, and then Ham’s rescue force was fully manned and under way.

  They’d come across Yath without lights, had seen the Kledans moored low over the lake. More, they’d seen the campfires and the large parties of slaves sleeping ashore, watched over by their Kledan guards. Then those guards had in turn seen Ham’s ships against the stars, when but for quick thinking, the advantage were lost. Since the Kledans were quite obviously in flagrante delicto (keeping, selling, or otherwise using slaves was strictly forbidden now in Oriab) and since slavers were normally armed to the teeth, direct and violent action was the only recourse.

  Venting flotation essence for all they were worth, the merchantmen had dropped down to the level of the Kledan vessels and opened fire on them. One of the enemy, half-crippled, had fled for Kled, another had tried it but got flanked over Yath and forced down; as for the rest of it, the questers and their ladies had seen that for themselves.

  “But what,” Ham then wanted to know, frowning, “did Gan want with you lot?”

  “Er, p’raps he thought we were spying on him,” Hero replied. “I mean, Eldin and myself. And the girls were with us, so they got roped in, too.”

  “But you were spying on him, weren’t you—for meddlesome old Kuranes?” Ham frowned.

  “Ah!” Eldin put in, holding up a stiff finger. And not unmindful or incapable of a measure of diplomacy: “Well, not quite. We were here simply to … to offer our services to Baharna’s Council of Elders!”

  “Oh?” Ham Gidduf found that just a bit suspect. He grinned a sharp-eyed grin. “And there was I thinking you’d merely been visiting my daughters—which in fact is why you told me you were here. Hmm! Anyway, when we’re all finished here you can tell it to the Council of Elders for yourselves, for that’s where I’m taking you.”

  And he did.

  The Elders were mainly a dour lot; doddering, most of them—but to a man honest and honorable. After the preliminaries of a hearing, their spokesman asked:

  “And is it your business, questers, to go interfering in the internal affairs of Serannian’s neighbor states and countries? We’d have brought Raffis Gan to book sooner or later without your assistance, you know.”

  “Later, most likely,” Eldin mumbled, only half to himself.

  “Eh? What’s that?” the gray-pate wasn’t totally deaf.

  “He said ‘Of course, sir, quite right’!” Hero quickly spoke up.

  Ham Gidduf, however, was more outspoken and knew nothing of diplomacy. “Hah!” he snorted. “What? You’d have sent out warships, would you, to drag the dog back from Kled or wherever? And what of my two daughters by then, eh?”

  “Merchant Gidduf,” said the spokesman, raising an eyebrow, “you must surely be aware that Oriab has no warships.”

  “Of course I’m aware of it!” Ham was scornful. “And so is wily old Kuranes in Serannian or Celephais or wherever. So he sent these two buckoes to advise you how best to handle the affair. Spies? They’re allies, and a good thing for all present, too!”

  “In fact, sir,” Hero added, thinking quickly, “Kuranes was sure you already knew of Chief Regulator Gan’s bent—that is to say, that he was bent—and only sent us because of our, er, tactical experience. In the event of hostilities, that is. Before we could report to you, however, Gan picked us up.”

  The Elder nodded. “Hmm! Well, it seems we must thank you for these timely revelations concerning Raffis Gan. And certainly we’re in your debt—you and all concerned—for the, er, dissolution of Yath-Lhi. But since it appears that there was no treasure, and so no more treasure-seekers, bent or otherwise, she at least is a terror that can never rise again.”

  “True,” said Hero, blinking rapidly. “She’s gone, melted away forever.” But at the mention of treasure his hand twitched almost of its own accord toward his pocket …

  “Ahem!” Ham Gidduf then ahemmed. “And now, if I may take the opportunity: I finally wish to offer the freedom of my home, of my home town Andahad, and of all Oriab—including Baharna”—he looked all round the chamber, waiting until the Councillors had nodded as one man—“to this fine, upstanding pair of utterly fearless questers!”

  “Indeed! Indeed!” came reedy chirrups and dry rustles of approval.

  “Also,” Ham wasn’t finished, “I am pleased to announce the double engagement of David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer to Ula and Una Gidduf respectively! Of course,” he spoke now directly to the questers, “you’ve brought suitable tokens of the tryst with you?”

  “Eh? Tokens? Tryst?” Eldin felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, and not solely at the prospect of appearing tokenless.

  Hero gripped his elbow. “Certainly!” he replied. “Of course, there’s much for us to be doing between times, but as tokens of our respect, our fidelity, our, er …”

  “Foolhardiness?” prompted Eldin in a whisper.

  “Our affection and esteem—” Hero produced from his pocket a magnificent pair of emeralds, each as big as the end of his little finger. “This one for Ula”—he handed it to the half-swooning girl—“to wear in a pendant round her neck, to lie against her breast and remind them—er, remind her—of me; and this one for Una, to wear in a ring upon her finger, binding her to Eldin forever!”

  As one man the Elders creaked to their feet and applauded; Ham Gidduf too. They were still at it when the questers and their ladies sneaked out and away into Baharna. And because the girls were with them Eldin couldn’t clout Hero, and for the same reason Hero couldn’t kick the Wanderer.

  They had their fight later—verbal, over a pint of muth—in the Quayside Quaress. But that was much later.

  First there’d been a message to get off as quickly as possible to Kuranes (a priest at the Temple of the Elder Gods had obliged with the loan of a pigeon), and then there’d been two whole idyllic days (and nights) spent in the company of the twins. That had come to an end when Ham, his delayed business now all done, turned up to spend some time with the girls himself. Not to be denied his jiggly-bits, however (forbidden fruits were ever juicier), Eldin had insisted that before they set sail for Serannian, they must go and pay their respects to Buxom Barba. And to her belly-dancers.

  And while they sat there bickering, boozing, and never batting an eye for
fear of missing something while Zuli Bazooli did many wonderful things on stage, with and without her pythons, who should park himself at their table but:

  “B‘gods all!” Eldin gave a start, sent his drink flying. “It’s—”

  “The seer with invisible eyes!” Hero gawped.

  “Aye-aye!” said that worthy, winking each empty orb in turn.

  “You’re dead!” Eldin accused.

  The s.w.i.e. looked hurt. “I may pong a bit, but—”

  “You know what we mean,” said Hero.

  “Oh, that poisoned dart. Immune!” he told them, with a mostly invisible grin. “Well traveled in Kled, I was, as a boy. Jungle-spawned poisons can’t kill me. It merely knocked me down for an hour or two.”

  “You didn’t drown when we sank the Craven Lobster ?” Hero still couldn’t believe it.

  “Do I look drowned? No, I came to draped across a barrel bobbing in the bay,” the s.w.i.e. answered. “Been draped across one ever since! It all worked out all right, then—for you two, I mean?”

  “Apart from a promise or two we can’t possibly keep—at least not yet awhile—it worked out perfectly!” Eldin slapped the seer’s shoulder. “All’s in order and we’re squared up all round.”

  “Difficult, that,” said Hero. “To be square all round.”

  “Ah … not quite!” said the seer.

  “What Hero said or what I said?” Eldin wanted to know. “Explain.”

  “Lippy’s after your blood. He’s even offering a reward. To whoever breaks one of Hero’s limbs, a week’s free boozing on Lippy’s five-star muth. Same goes for you, Eldin, except he drinks free for a month!”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Hero shrugged it off. “Right now we’re the ones doing the drinking. And it’s good stuff we’re drinking, not Lippy Unth’s filth!” He grinned. “Anyway, he’ll get no takers on a deal like that. What, a man should work us over—hazardous exercise at best—for the dubious privilege of damaging his brain on Lippy’s guk? But this”—he tapped a fingernail on the bottle on the table—“this is the real stuff! Will you join us?”