by Brian Lumley
“Get some sleep,” the sloop’s master told him, “for you look all in.” And then he went off about his business. A little later they set sail, and since the wind blew fair for Oriab they were soon airborne and out of the chop of waves which still hadn’t settled from the storm. Then, far out over the Southern Sea—with the wind whistling in the rigging, and the flotation engines softly thumping like a pair of great hearts belowdecks somewhere amidships—Chim came down again and gave his cargo a shake.
Hero hadn’t undressed, merely stretched himself out and fallen instantly asleep. Dressed in soft, russet brown leather, which was his usual garb, he wore a short jacket, snug-fitting trousers, and calf boots with his trousers tucked in to form piratical bells. His jacket sleeves were rolled up to show a tanned breadth of forearm, and a slightly curved sword of Kled hung from his belt on his right hip, loosely tethered to his leg above the knee. But asleep he tossed and turned, and mumbled to himself a bit, grimacing now and then and balling his fists.
For not only had he fallen asleep but straight into dreams within dreams: mental phantasms which, for all that they were only a repetition of what had gone—or what had probably gone—before, were exceedingly weird dreams indeed. His mind was exhausted, doubtless from worrying about the Wanderer, because of which it was perhaps only natural that his dreams should concern themselves with that selfsame worthy.
Eldin in trouble, aboard a storm-lashed Quester; Eldin hurled overboard, tumbling down through leagues of sky to the heaving bosom of the Southern Sea; Eldin sinking through weedy deeps, ogled by fishes, finally feasted upon by crabs.
And Kuranes’ voice sounding harsh in Hero’s mind, saying very un-Kuraneslike things, such as:
“He’s not dead, just resting his bones a bit. Now, leave him be, pull yourself together and be off to Baharna. You’ve a quest, remember? Seek out and slay me this vampire and I’ll return Quester to you—aye, and this dozy, drowned old duffer of a Wanderer, too!”
“Watch who you’re shouting at!” Hero mumblingly returned. “And especially what you’re shouting at him!”
But casting about he discovered there was no king there at all—no ocean floor or recumbent, crab-nurturing Eldin—only a windswept, mountainous place where ghosts of vanished dreamers cried out to him for vengeance.
“Sucked dry!” they moaned. “Taken in our prime! With all substance drawn off, what are we now but fast-fading memories? Give us back our flesh, David Hero. Give us back to those who mourn us, and yet fear us for the voiceless wraiths we are become …”
Voiceless? They seemed to Hero to have voices enough! He might even have ventured to say so, but in another moment—
—He stood on the gently rolling deck of a ship. It was night now; ah, but he could tell by the feel of things that the night was unquiet! And sure enough, true to his instinct, a scarcely luminous ghost came striding toward him; burly and bearded it was, a sailor, by its rolling gait. And yet the stars shone through its insubstantial outline where it paused to peer at Hero, then put up a hand to its palid eyes to gaze far, far out to sea. Finally the ghost turned back to Hero and with a worried, puzzled expression, but quite conversationally, said: “The worst of it is, I can’t seem to remember! My dreams have all been eaten up; and what’s a dreamlander without his dreams, eh?”
“I—” Hero gaped, his eyes wide, astonished and not a little afraid of this conversation with a ghost. “I—”
“You?” the apparition frowned with faint-etched eyebrows. “Was it you took all I had been away from me?” Ghostly fingers—which yet felt real enough—reached to grasp Hero’s shoulder and shake him. He gave a great start—
—Started awake!—sat up—saw Chim Nedlar there and gasped, remembered, then flopped down on his back again. But in a little while he once more sat up.
Chim Nedlar was a little overweight for a sailor, Hero thought, quickly recovering his wits. Somewhat puffy in the face and heavy in the frame, but jolly enough for all that. And there was that of the waking world about him, too, which seemed to add to his substance. He had loose lips, green eyes, dark hair parted in the middle and plaited down to his chubby shoulders, wore a shirt like a tent hanging loose to his shoes, which were wooden clogs with soles of rough hide to grip the decks. In height he came up to Hero’s chin.
As Hero’s heart quit hammering, so the other perched himself on the bunk opposite and said: “I could see you were nightmaring and so woke you up. Forgive me if I startled you.”
“You did, and I do,” said Hero. “Indeed, I thank you!”
Chim smiled, nodded. “So it’s off to Oriab, eh? On king’s business, too! I’ve heard of you, David Hero. Hero of Dreams, they call you, and you’re a quester for Kuranes!”
Hero wasn’t especially interested in conversation right now; though his dreams were fast receding, he still had his own private thoughts to think; but the vessel’s captain was only being polite, and Hero could find no fault in that. “A small thing,” he answered with a shrug. “We’re the king’s men, aye, me and … and a friend of mine.” He fell silent.
“Eldin, aye,” the other answered gravely. “Eldin the Wanderer. Heard of him, too, and know that you’re a pair of bold adventurers with many a tall tail to tell. And taller because they’re all true! Me, I’m the wrong shape for derring-do, or maybe I’d have joined Serannian’s sky-navy under Admiral Limnar Dass. But active service, me?” He jiggled his belly, gave a shrug. “Alas, no. So I sail the Shark’s Fin here and there out of Baharna, finding what trade I can. I suppose we’re a ferry, really. But I do get to meet some interesting folks, and I do like to listen to the tales they tell.”
Hero yawned and at once apologized. “Knackered,” he excused himself. “And I’m sorry, but I’ve no stories for you. Not now, anyway. Maybe we’ll have a drink together sometime, and then we’ll see.” He carefully lay down again.
Chim Nedlar seemed a little disappointed. He sighed and said, “Ah, well—maybe I’ll catch you in Baharna. Where do you pull your corks?”
Hero shrugged again, put his hands behind his head and suppressed another yawn. “The Quayside Quaress, usually,” he finally answered. “Buxom Barba’s place on the waterfront.”
“Know it well.” Chim chuckled. “A favorite haunt. Maybe I’ll catch you there, then. The drinks are on me.”
“Indeed?” Hero offered a weary wink. “Why, then you’ll be welcome at my table any old time, Chim!” He closed his eyes, drawling: “Aye, and I daresay we’ll meet there one night, in the old Quayside Quaress.” And lulled by the vessel’s gentle roll, he slowly drifted back into sleep. This time, however, there were no dreams within dreams …
IN BAHARNA, via a chandler’s shop in the harbor, Hero made for Lippy Unth’s place, the Leery Crab, standing squarish and squat as its namesake at the end of an ancient stone quay. Once upon a time the proprietor, Lipperod Unth, had owned another, similarly unsavory place, which as the direct result of a night’s affray was wrecked and submerged in a scummy, disused part of the harbor. The Leery Crab, unlike its Craven Lobster cousin, was built of stone, not timber, and its door was guarded by Lippy’s large son Gooba and an equally impressive friend. They stood one to each side of the entrance, young, olive-black Pargans, towering like gleaming, meaty monoliths in the dusk as Hero approached along the stone-flagged quay.
Recognizing him at once, Gooba stepped forward, grunting: “You’re not welcome here, Hero.” And he set himself squarely in the quester’s way.
“Don’t talk daft, lad,” Hero growled. “Why, it was my money that built this place!”
“But my father preferred his old place,” Gooba answered, showing his teeth in a snarl as he and his similarly mountainous friend fell into defensive crouches. “The one that you and Eldin the Wanderer sank!”
Hero paused only a few paces away. He carried a small sack which now he dipped into, coming out with a bomb as round and black as a cannonball, and a flint striker which he held up in plain view. He grinned humorlessly at
their expressions, and low in his throat said, “Gooba, I still owe your old man a little something for feeding me to the scabfish. You remember? And a crab’s much the same as a lobster to me—crusty old crustaceans both. Now, I’m not looking for trouble, but if you don’t ease up and let me pass I swear I’ll light this fuse and lob all hell right in through that door.”
Gooba and friend blinked, looked at each other, seemed to shrink a little. Creases showed in their black brows.
“I’ll count to five,” Hero pushed. “One …”
They stepped aside and he proceeded, or would have except now Lippy himself stood in his way.
Lippy as a nickname didn’t derive entirely from Lipperod, nor as one might erroneously surmise from any great love of talking. On the contrary, Lippy wasn’t much for talking; he was far more a man of action. But when he was annoyed, then he’d pout with his great black lips and thrust them out ahead of him like a warning trumpet; and when Lippy Unth looked like that … someone or ones was or were in big trouble! Hero had witnessed Lippy’s metamorphosis from bartender/owner to incredibly destructive device on more than one occasion; he had determined never to see it again. Not if he could avoid it.
“No trouble, Lippy,” he said now, studying the other’s huge olive face and brown, rolling eyes.
“Ah!” said Lippy. “No trouble, you say? But it seems to me I’ve heard that before. And didn’t I just now hear you threatening the Crab with sudden and quite unwarranted annihilation?” His eyes settled on the bomb in Hero’s hand, mirroring it, which turned them to great black marbles that stared accusingly out of his head. “Also,” he continued, “you mentioned an unsettled score.”
“Only to bolster my argument,” said Hero. “In fact I consider all old scores settled, and scars heated—or I will once this is over. Lippy, I’d no more enter here than dive headfirst into the jaws of hell. But I’m looking for Eldin and there might well be a certain customer of yours who can tell me where he is.”
Lippy let his eyes slowly wander beyond Hero, along the quay. “The Wanderer’s not with you?”
“See for yourself,” said Hero.
Lippy’s shoulders, which had been hunched up almost as high as his head under his stained, straining shirt, now relaxed a very little. He narrowed his eyes. “Very well, you can come in—but the bomb gets dumped in the harbor.”
Hero shook his head. “Call it insurance,” he said. “It not only gets me in but out again—unscathed! Then I’ll toss it in the harbor.”
“Hero—” Lippy rumbled warningly, his shoulders starting to hunch again. Worse, his great lips began to pout. Hero was aware of Gooba and chum straying fractionally closer on the flanks, knew it was time he restated the stakes.
“I’m short on time,” he said, his voice very dangerous sounding. “So our little chat’s over.” He hefted the bomb, held his striker close to its fuse. “Now do I get in—or does everyone who’s in get out?”
Lippy’s lips retracted. “Who is it you’re looking for?”
“The Seer with Invisible Eyes,” said Hero.
“Huh!” said Lippy, at last standing aside. “Aye, he’s here—damn his eyes!”
“They’re already damned,” said Hero, carefully stepping round the huge Pargan, through the door and into the Leery Crab’s smoke-wreathed, muth-reeking gloom.
The Crab, like the ill-fated Lobster before it, was appointed in something less than opulence. The bar consisted of a stout, square wooden framework in the center of one huge room, from which Lippy, his wife, and massive son could take in the entire place at a glance. As for its clientele: They were hard men, loners, ex-pirates, sea captains from unknown parts on the lookout for a crewman to shanghai, seadogs and peglegs and others of a like ilk gathered to tell their tall tales, which got taller with every telling. But unsavory? It could be downright unhealthy!
But the place did have its good points. In high season, for instance, there would never be any overcrowding down here. There’d always be room to sit at a bench without tangling elbows; you’d rarely have to shout to make yourself heard; you wouldn’t be bothered by ladies of the night. The things that used this place couldn’t be called ladies of any description. And the proprietor, Lippy himself, demanded and maintained good order at all times. Or at least tried his best to do so. “Come and go in peace,” was his motto, “or in pieces, as you choose.”
Booze? It wasn’t good but it wasn’t the worst. Lippy’s license was still intact, anyway. The muth-dew was watered (probably a good idea), the spirits tasted fishy, or at least of the salty element in which fishes swim, the ales had ailed somewhat and you could pickle eggs in the wine. But on the other hand it was very cheap, provided you had a cast-iron constitution. Most of Lippy’s customers had, though for how much longer was anybody’s guess.
In short, the Leery Crab wasn’t the sort of place in which you’d expect to find one of Kuranes’ most trusted foreign operatives, which was one of the two reasons why the Seer used it—the other being that he simply loved it! He was funny like that, the Seer with Invisible Eyes.
Funny in all sorts of ways, thought Hero, casting about in the glow of ceiling-suspended lanterns. But he very quickly found who (what?) he was looking for. The S.W.I.E. sat in one corner, with his back to the wall, hunched over a mug of muth. A good safe seat, Hero reckoned, sidling up and sliding onto the bottom-polished wooden bench behind its bolted-down table, ending up only a foot away from the silent Seer. He placed his bomb before him but kept the striker ready in his hand. Gooba came over, kept a respectful distance, inquired: “Are you drinking, Hero?”
“A small ale,” Hero told him. “And if it tastes even slightly weird I’ll be very annoyed. When I’m annoyed my thumbs twitch, see?” One of his thumbs twitched, anyway, and sparks flew from the striker—some of them passing dangerously close to the bomb’s fuse. Gooba went off at a run to fetch Hero his ale, and several wise patrons seated nearby stood up, blinked or yawned in their fashion, then quickly put distance between and removed to more solitary areas of the great room.
Through all of this the S.W.I.E. had said nothing. Now Hero glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. As usual, the Seer was wrapped in a bundle of rags with the hood thrown up to make a shadowy blot of his face. All that was visible of the man within this cocoon of rough cloth was a pair of scrawny wrists and clawlike hands with long, sharp nails; these protruded from his tattered sleeves, trapping the mug of muth where it sat before him. He had seemed oblivious of Hero’s approach, oblivious of all else, too; but Hero had noted that when he put his bomb on the table the Seer had visibly started. Now, however, he merely chuckled.
“A neat ploy, that,” he commented without stirring, his voice like the scurry of mice in a bone-dry granary. “When is a bomb not a bomb? When David Hero is up to his—”
“—Neck in it, if you don’t keep your voice down!” Hero hissed, out of the corner of his mouth. “What are you trying to do, get me crippled?”
The Seer shrugged. “No one can hear us.” And then, straight to business: “What’s on your mind?”
“Eldin the Wanderer. He’s on my mind.”
The Seer’s head lifted a little and turned fractionally in Hero’s direction. For a moment light fell on his face, which was gaunt, hollow cheeked, invisibly eyed. The sockets where those eyes should be contained an emptiness as deep as the spaces out beyond the stars, and certainly they looked just as cold, too. Never give this one the old two-finger treatment, Hero told himself, or for sure you’ll be left with a pair of crystallized stumps!
The Seer winked, and for a moment one of the holes in his face vanished behind an eyelid. Then it was back again, deep and mysterious as ever. “Aye, aye!” said the Seer.
“Eldin,” Hero repeated impatiently. “He’s gone missing.”
“And you want me to scry him out for you?”
Hero sighed. “Of course!”
“Better tell me about it, then. The dreamlands are vast and I’m not omniscient
. Points of reference may help narrow it down a bit.”
Gooba brought Hero’s ale and retreated, and when he was back out of earshot Hero told the entire tale of Eldin’s disappearance. When he was done the Seer grunted, “Huh! He deserves it—and so do you. What? You’re like a pair of big kids, you two. Booze and birds, that’s all you ever seem to think about!”
Astonished, Hero drew back a little. “Why, you callous old … this is Eldin we’re talking about! He and I, we’re like one person. A team. A well-oiled machine!”
“Too well-oiled!” snapped the Seer. “And far too often. I really can’t see what Kuranes sees in you. Not even with these invisible eyes of mine, I just can’t see it.”
Hero showed his teeth, puffed himself up—and deflated in a vast sigh. “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “All that you said and more—you’re dead right. But even if we don’t amount to much, still I’m only half as much without him. I’ll be like a machine without an engine, doing nothing, going rusty. Also, I …” He fell silent.
“You love him?”
“Hell, no!” Hero was scornful, or tried to be. But he knew he couldn’t deceive the S.W.I.E. “Of course I do,” he finally admitted. And quickly added: “Er, in my way. The big … heap!”
“A heap,” the Seer repeated, nodding. He cocked his head on one side a bit. “Yes, I can see that, now that you come to mention it. But we’re wasting time. Now, listen: this right invisible eye of mine occasionally scans the recent past, and the left can sometimes scry on the immediate future. So since this is all very sinister, or at least fraught, that’s how we’ll go—sinistrally! Now tell me, what do you see in my left eye?” He closed the right emptiness and Hero gazed deep into the other. But there was nothing there, just a great yawning void that whirled and expanded until he felt he was being sucked into it. Suddenly dizzy, he looked away, shook his head to clear it of the rush and reel.