by Brian Lumley
“When you have spoken to the elders, return to me,” she hurriedly said. “Make what arrangements you must—do what must be done—then come back.” She opened her mind to me: visions of lurking, half-formed fears and fierce, tumultuous passions!
“I am your warrior, Armandra. your champion, but not yet truly your husband. What of the plateau’s rules? The ancient codes?”
The flush left her face and disbelief replaced it. Thunderheads darkened her brows and lightning flashed in her eyes. “Dare you make excuses when I have offered—?”
“But the ancient codes!” I protested, unable now to contain my laughter.
“Codes! Rules!” she started to flare up, then burst out laughing with me when she realized I was playing. Suddenly we both sobered, and I saw that her eyes were now wantonly seductive, Icelandic pools beneath which volcanic fires roared. “We will have to forget the rules, Hank.”
“Armandra—”
“No!” she broke away from me. “Go to the elders now, then come back to me.”
On my way to the Hall of the Elders I found myself shadowed by two lean, powerful Indians who took up a steady, loping walk at my heels. I began to feel alarmed when it dawned on me that these could be two more of Northan’s men, left behind to take care of me.
After they had followed me for at least half the distance to my destination, when it seemed that they were stealthily closing the gap between us, I turned on them. I drove my elbow deep into the stomach of the one on my right, snatching his handaxe from his belt as he doubled over, retching. Dropping to a crouch and twisting into a good position to deliver a low, killing kick at the second of the two, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of the man prostrate upon the tunnel floor!
I took away his handaxe and hauled him to his feet, demanding to know what was going on. He had a fair grasp of English, speaking to me rapidly, babbling while his companion slowly managed to compose himself. They were my personal bodyguards and messengers, sent by Oontawa to attend me.
I offered my apologies and clumsily attempted to brush the winded Indian down. He assured me that he considered himself the recipient of a great honor; he could now claim to have seen and experienced the lightning ferocity of “Sil-ber-hut-te” at first hand. His children’s children would talk about me, and he, Kasna’chi, would be a part of my legend. He would doubtless have gone on had I not stopped him. It is disconcerting to say the least to find oneself growing into a living legend!
And so, with Kasna’chi and Gosan-ha close at my heels, I eventually arrived at the Hall of the Elders. The Indians waited outside while I went in to see the elders and their prisoner.
Other than the ten elders, two Eskimo guardsmen were also present in the great cave, The latter pair held between them a man who had plainly been of French-Canadian extraction. They were not so much detaining him as holding him up. I mention him in the past tense because quite simply he was no longer—anything; whatever he had been, he was no longer.
Though his body showed few of the normal signs of age, his face was deeply lined, his hair visibly graying. His eyes bulged and stared blankly and a slack grin or grimace made his lower lip seem to droop. Saliva ran down his chin. He babbled quietly, incoherently to himself. Armandra was quite right. No one would ever again get any sense out of this man.
I had him taken sway. His guards were to give him into the hands of those who would do what could be done for him. Useless to punish a man who could not remember his crime, could remember nothing at all.
Then I spoke to the elders, placing emphasis on the plateau’s near invulnerability, making light of Northan’s defection and stating that we were all now better off without him. I told them I doubted the ex-warlord’s immediate ability to attack us, that for the moment we had nothing to fear from him. While I was delivering my pep-talk, Charlie Tacomah caught my eye. When I had done he drew me to one side.
“I see what you are doing,” he told me, “and it is good, but I hope you are not fooling yourself. Northan knows all of the plateau’s intricacies, its strong defensive positions and its weak spots. Until now we have been fortunate; the great majority of the Wind-Walker’s people have been weak-willed and ignorant. Northan is neither of these things. At last Ithaqua has an ally he can use.”
“And I have allies, too, Charlie,” I answered. “You are one of them. The elders will have to do without you from now on. Tactician you once were, tactician you will be again. You are more use to me right now than to the elders.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to start by having a good look at the plateau’s defenses. Find me all the weak spots and devise ways to protect them. And I want to know our vantage points and cave entrances which can be made impregnable, but from which special forces might make telling forays. I need to know these things in order to prepare a plan of defense. In fact I want you to prepare such a plan, and the sooner you get started the better.”
His eyes had taken on a keen glint as I talked; a new fire now shone out of them. “Do you think that the attack will come soon?”
“As soon as Northan can turn Ithaqua’s rabble into an army, yes. They have their rough edges, the wolf-warriors, but those can soon be hammered out. I’ve seen them in battle and I was impressed. Led by Northan, backed up by the Wind-Walker’s hellish powers—oh, yes, it’s certainly coming, Charlie. I want us to be ready, that’s all. If only there was a way we could get those star-stones back.”
He shook his head at that. “If they have been left in the forbidden tunnel as we fear, then they cannot be recovered. They must—simply—remain—” He checked himself in midsentence, brightening. “But wait! Haven’t I heard your sister say that—”
“Forget it!” I snapped. “She may not he afraid of the tunnel but I certainly am, for myself and for Tracy. If there’s something down there that can do what we’ve seen done to a man—something that turns my bones to jelly just standing at the entrance to its lair—then I’m not asking my sister to face it!”
“Of course not,” he quickly replied. “It was a stupid thing to suggest.” After a pause he added, “I have a lot to do now, and you will be even more occupied. If you will excuse me—”
“Yes, Charlie. And let me have the answers as soon as you know them.”
After Charlie left the Hall of the Elders I had a few more words with the council before setting out to look for Whitey. It dawned on me that I had not laid eyes on him for four or five days. I wondered what he was up to, and I wanted his advice. He was my hunchman, and if anyone ever needed a few decent hunches it was me.
I found myself wondering: what kind of a hunchman was Whitey anyway? Oh, he’d warned me often enough about Northan, certainly, but there had been nothing specific, nothing definite. Whitey must be losing his touch. Soon enough I was to find out just how right I was.
Then, realizing that I need not look for Whitey myself, I sent Kasna’chi to find him, keeping Gosan-ha with me when I went to the roof of the plateau for a breath of fresh air.
All around the great flat roof, massive battlements had been cut from the solid rock. Behind them, spaced at intervals of about one hundred yards, keen-eyed watchers observed the white waste from this supreme vantage point. The scene to the front of the plateau was one which, despite its monochrome sterility, perhaps because of it, seemed starkly beautiful to me. Only one thing marred it: the obscene fingers of the distant totems pointing at a leaden sky, circling the pyramid altar like dancers frozen in some evil ritual.
And the being atop the pyramid seemed frozen too, as he motionlessly surveyed the strangely littered terrain of his territory, the white waste. A rage quickly built up in me and I had to force myself to carefully put down the binoculars, clipping them to my belt. It wouldn’t do to drive the Wind-Walker into another frenzy, not while I was up here.
My mind was a muddle of conflicting thoughts, all of them having to do with the plateau’s safety and future. Finally I left the roof. I walked with my
thoughts, measuring the rock corridors until, almost without realizing it, I found myself on the penultimate level. There, at that entrance where Eskimo guardsmen stood in rich ceremonial robes with their bears shuffling behind them, I awoke to my surroundings. Deep in thought though I had been, busy with mad flights of heroic fancy as well as very real plans for the protection of the plateau, my feet had led me back to Armandra.
I dismissed Gosan-ha there, leaving orders with the guardsmen that I was not to be disturbed unless it was a matter of the gravest urgency, and then I went on along the richly furnished corridor.
The next morning, Oontawa awakened us. She was shocked and it showed on her face. Armandra took charge of the situation at once, saying, “Oontawa, do you disapprove? This is my husband that fought for me in the Choosing of a Champion. Yes, and I love him.”
“Yes, Armandra,” the Indian girl began, “but—”
“There may be very little time left for us,” Armandra interrupted. “In the battle that must soon come we may be the losers. It is not a thought I want spread among my people but the possibility exists. You are just a maiden, a girl who has been friend and companion to me and who loves me. I love you too, for your innocence. Though not too many years separate us, our minds are centuries apart. I am old in strange wisdom and you are innocent. In your innocence I have seen you smile favorably upon a certain brave. Is it not so?”
“It is so,” Oontawa bowed her head and flushed.
“And is he not the handsome brave that keeps the bears for our warlord? His name is—”
“Kota’na, my princess.”
“Just so. Then I repeat that time is very precious, Oontawa. I suggest we arrange a Choosing of Champions for you. As of this moment you are dismissed from my service, but I know you will remain my friend. Go, girl, and find your happiness, as I have found mine.”
Oontawa bowed again and when she lifted her head there were glad tears in her eyes. She turned to me. “Lord Sil-ber-hut-te, your friend Whitey waits to see you. He is with Gosan-ha and Kasna’chi. They wait where the guardsmen stand with their bears.”
I smiled and nodded. “I will come.”
Oontawa waited on the far side of the curtained doorway that closed off Armandra’s rooms, and when I was ready we walked together to the guarded end of the corridor where Whitey and my bodyguards waited. She left me there to go in search of Kota’na, taking him the news that Armandra had ended her service so that the Keeper of the Bears could take her to wife.
I walked with Whitey, slowly pacing the fantastic labyrinths of the plateau and talking to him while my bodyguards kept a discreet distance to the rear. Whitey was up-to-date on everything, had heard of my new office, was pleased that Armandra had placed the might of the plateau in my hands. He said as much, and yet I sensed that something was bothering him.
“I feel I’ve kind of let you down this time, Hank,” he finally said after a long period of silence. “Something—I don’t know what—isn’t right.”
“How do you mean, Whitey?”
“It’s hard to explain, a funny thing. And yet not so funny, if you follow me. All my life, even before I was fully aware of this power of mine to, well, to gauge the mood of the future, so to speak, before I was a hunchman proper, I could kind of sense the existence of tomorrow. I was as much aware of the reality of the future as other people were of the past. Tomorrow was as certain to me as yesterday.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “I suppose it must be a difficult concept for anyone who’s not a hunchman. Anyway, as I’ve grown older the impressions of tomorrow have occasionally been clearer. Such flashes have been my hunches, of course, the end results of the special talent that made me valuable to the Wilmarth Foundation. Until recently …”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Well, go on, Whitey. What’s the problem?”
He shrugged resignedly. “It’s a worrying thing, Hank. I feel like I just lost a leg or something. You know what I mean?”
“No more hunches, eh?”
“Right the first time. Sorry, Hank.”
“But how could it happen? Have you any ideas?”
“Yeah, I have an idea,” he grimly answered. “My idea is, how can I see tomorrows that aren’t going to be?”
“Not going to be? There’ll always be tomorrows, Whitey.”
“Sure!” he said. “But will we be here to enjoy them?”
III
The Lull Before the Storm
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
The next fortnight was one of frantic activity. Working to Charlie Tacomah’s suggestions I garrisoned soldiers close to the plateau’s outer walls, in temporary cavern-barracks from which they could rapidly deploy to defensive positions. The plateau’s weak spots—several large and easily accessible entrances opening straight into the guts of the plateau from the plain—were specially strengthened and fortified to my orders. Quarriers worked nonstop to cut and lever massive blocks of stone into place. We did a similar job with the snow-ship keeps, those fjordlike, frozen reentries where the great ski-borne battlecraft were harbored. These tasks, wherever possible, I personally supervised. If I was not available, Charlie was there in my stead. With each and every person in the plateau realizing the urgency of the situation, the work went ahead with very few complications; the plateau peoples were all right there behind their princess—yes, and behind their new warlord, too.
Heartening as all this was, over that same period of time there were worrying things happening out on the white waste in the vicinity of the Wind-Walker’s temple. The watchers on the roof of the plateau had reported the activity; I myself had seen it enlarged in my binoculars. The Children of the Winds had gathered from far and wide, were exercising in orderly military maneuvers across the frozen terrain of their territory. Northan was flexing his new and savagely powerful muscles, making a vast and disciplined fighting body out of the entire nation of Ithaqua’s worshippers. And always the Snow-Thing watched over the ex-warlord’s progress, and always the tension heightened.
Then, during the third week, there were two new developments. Ithaqua departed yet again, walking away across the winds and disappearing over Borea’s rim, and Jimmy Franklin brought me news of that which I could only consider an act of sheerest lunacy. The latter concerned Tracy.
It was midweek and I was with Armandra, who was trying to explain to me her alien father’s eternal wanderlust, his apparent inability to remain in any specific sphere for any appreciable length of time, which she explained as being simply one of the conditions of the limited freedom allowed him by the Elder Gods, when Jimmy came to us. He breathlessly told us his story.
He and my sister had been walking together through the complexes of the plateau when their wanderings had taken them to the forbidden tunnel. They had stood together at that dark entrance, and suddenly he had noticed a new light in Tracy’s eyes. She was aware, of course, that her star-stones were believed to be somewhere in that sinister burrow, left there by Northan’s now incurably crazed underling.
Realizing what she intended to do, Franklin had tried to stop her but discovered he was neither physically nor mentally strong enough to do so. His wounds had healed, true, but his strength was not yet back to normal. When she broke loose from him and ran off down the tunnel, bearing with her a torch snatched from the nearest flambeau, he had tried to follow her but was held back by the dreadful power emanating from that hideous shaft. It had been as if he threw himself against the solid wall of some castle of evil, while a brain-eating acid was dripped upon his head from the unseen battlements.
Finally, reeling and clutching at his sanity where the power had brought him to a halt just a few paces inside the nightmare entrance—knowing that to remain would certainly mean succumbing to madness—he realized that he could do nothing at all to help Tracy. She would not return until she either found the star-stones or satisfied herself that they were not there. Then Franklin crawled from the place on all fours, and as soon as he had recovered he hu
rried to me.
We returned to the forbidden tunnel immediately, Armandra and my bodyguards with us, and on our way I obtained a slender spear. Seeing that I had armed myself, Armandra clung desperately to my arm and I felt her mental fingers worriedly probing the edges of my telepathic consciousness. I closed my mind to her, though already she must have known what I intended to do—what I would at least attempt.
I expected objections but at the tunnel mouth no one tried to stop me; it would have been futile to do so. I simply ran into the tunnel, a burning brand in one hand, my spear in the other, shouting Tracy’s name. And immediately the power was there pushing against me, trying to hold me back with fingers of fear that worked in my brain, so that with every step I felt I was leaping from a precipice, or hurling myself down the living throat of some primordial reptile. And the echoes of my cries came back to me: “Tracy! … Tracy! … Tracy!”
And then I was on my knees, pushing forward, spear and torch before me, with shadows leaping on the walls and ceiling like mad demons while fear tore at my insides. And I knew I was going to go mad with fear. I knew it.
And I would have gone mad if I had forced myself on—but I didn’t have to. From around a bend in the tunnel It came, waves of fear beating out from It, the horror that the plateau dreaded, hitherto unseen, unknown. Manlike It was, an inky anthropomorphic blot that dripped namelessly; but small as I could never have expected It to be, this Thing that radiated such fear!
As It came closer I backed away on all fours, dropping my torch from nerveless fingers, feeling the fear eating my brain. And then I remembered Tracy.
“Monster!” I screamed, I got to my feet, drew back my arm and balanced the slender spear, which the instinct for self-preservation had made me hold on to, aiming at the thing’s heart—
And the monster spoke!
“Hank? Is that you? Are you all right?”
