by Brian Lumley
Then I turned my eyes again to the sky, to the bloated figure of Ithaqua and the tiny shape of his daughter as their aerial confrontation continued. But that battle, too, if such an unequal contest could rightly be termed a battle, was almost done. Exhausted, Armandra seemed to waver in the sky, her eyes dulling and brightening spasmodically, while her father waxed ever more triumphant in his mockery of her efforts.
Now there was a complete absence of movement on the roof as every eye followed Armandra’s struggle. I was on the point of reaching out to her with my mind to offer whatever mental assistance I could, when above the crazed howling of the wind and following immediately in the wake of yet another deflected bolt of lightning, I heard Whitey cry, “Hank—I’ve got it!”
He was making his way to me across the death-strewn roof with Jimmy and Tracy on his heels. In his hand he carried his secret weapon, its fatal head held well out in front of and away from his body. And it was at that very moment that Ithaqua suddenly reached out and snatched Armandra out of the sky. Drained of all her strength, she made no effort to escape him but seemed simply to collapse, a doll in the fist of a giant.
“Armandra, hang on!” I cried out with my mind. She heard me, even though she was no longer strong enough to answer me, but what I had not reckoned with was that her father would also hear me. He did, and he must also have seen in my mind’s eye a picture of the weapon I intended to use against him.
The Wind-Walker immediately turned to face me. He looked down upon me, and upon Whitey as he came rushing across the plateau’s roof toward me. The monster’s eyes slitted as they followed Whitey, then he lifted his free hand to the sky and thrust it into the lowering gray clouds.
“Whitey—look out!” I yelled, but my friend had also seen and knew what was going to happen. He knew, and on this occasion needed no precognition to tell him his fate.
Ithaqua moved closer, looming large over the roof as he hurled his ice-bomb. I saw it—saw Paul White’s horrible but mercifully instant death beneath ten tons of ice that smashed down upon him like a meteorite—and I also saw his last heroic action in defiance of his destroyer. Not a second too soon, he slid the spear with its star-stone tip in my direction.
Skidding across the roof that weapon came, finally to slide to a halt at my feet. I stared at it for the merest moment, almost uncomprehendingly. Then, no longer fearing the stone sigil of Eld tied to the spear’s blade—I was so numb with sick horror that I no longer felt or feared anything—I snatched it up. And as I felt the unevenly balanced shaft in my hand, so the sickness and the horror went out of me, driven out by murderous hate and a lusting for red revenge!
I drew back my arm and aimed the spear at the Wind-Walker, who seemed suddenly to lose coordination. As I hurled the spear, he began to bring his hands up to guard his face.
What happened then, is not an easy thing to tell. It seemed to me that the spear moved through the air in a sort of slow motion, and that Ithaqua’s hand moved even slower, so that when the weapon shot in through the flinching slit of his left eye I could easily trace the disappearance of its length into his head. Then things began to speed up again. The dull roar that had been growing in my ears burst into a howl of approval from the warriors on the roof; the sky seemed to bend downward; the back of Ithaqua’s head flew open and a stream of molten gold flooded out, through the midst of which the spear with its star-stone sigil continued its curving flight out over the plateau’s rim.
It had passed through him just like the tracers we fired at him from the plane’s machine gun (how many centuries ago?) during our first encounter, but with much more devastating effect! For while bullets were of no consequence to Ithaqua, the seal of the Elder Gods was very different.
The Wind-Walker reeled like a man struck in the forehead with a hammer. For a second I thought he would topple out of the sky as he fought wildly to regain his balance. Then something fell from his hand as he lurched erratically to and fro. It was Armandra, spiraling down like an autumn leaf, the dull pinkish flush emanating from her more dully yet as she slowly sank, until at a height of about twenty feet the glow blinked out and she fell like a stone.
As I ran toward her still form I saw Ithaqua throw up his hands to his swollen, pulsating head. I saw him striking his temples with the flat of his hands in a mad frenzy, while the stream of golden sparks continued to issue from his left eye and the wound at the back of his head, and then I “heard” a cry of what could only be described as purest alien anguish. It was his mental voice crying out against unbearable psychic stress, to which I automatically closed my mind lest I too feel his agony.
By the time I reached Armandra and knelt beside her, the Wind-Walker was lurching away down aerial paths, heading for the lonely sanctuary of his pyramid altar. But in contrast to his previous lordly stridings on the wings of the wind, now he moved with the spastic jerks and twitchings of a singed moth. He might well recover, but I knew that he would never forget.
IV
The Last Transmission
(Recorded through the Medium of Juanita Alvarez)
And for the present, Juanita, there is little more to tell. I believe I have already told you that Armandra may be crippled. There seems to be some injury to her spine; Jimmy and Tracy, however—they at least are safe. Jimmy received a few cuts from the ice-bomb that killed poor brave Whitey, but nothing serious.
When we left the roof, Jimmy and Tracy went off together to mourn in private while I returned to Armandra’s chambers. Of course, she was not there; she had been taken to be examined by the plateau’s greatest doctors. I stood on the high balcony looking out over the white waste and waited for news. I stayed there, in what must have been a state of delayed shock, for five or six hours.
When Oontawa came to me in tears I thought at first that she brought terrible news, but that wasn’t it. She only wanted me to go with her to where her man, Kota’na, was lying in one of the plateau’s hospitals. They had only just found him near the gates of the central snow-ship keep. He had been brought in with a pitiful handful of wounded men. His injuries were severe but not fatal; he needed rest but would not submit either to the physician’s wishes or their drugs until he had seen me. I went with her, hurrying down into the bowels of the plateau.
Kota’na, who had a small room of his own befitting his rank and status, was hanging onto consciousness waiting for me. When he saw me a grim, tired smile creased his handsome Indian features. His arms were caked with blood and he bore terrible scars on various parts of his body, but he was in no way about to die. It was as Oontawa had told me; rest and recuperation were all he required to bring him back to complete recovery.
Now Oontawa translated as I bent over Kota’na’s bed.
“Lord Sil-ber-hut-te, I beg your forgiveness.”
“My forgiveness! For what, Kota’na? You fought for the plateau, for its princess, and for your woman, Oontawa. You fought well and commanded the bears and the men who handle them. You have no need to beg forgiveness of me.”
Then he lifted up his hand from where it hung unseen on the far side of his raised pallet. His fingers were clenched in hair that was full of clotted blood, black hair rooted in the roughly severed head of Northan, which hung from Kota’na’s fist and stared at me with wide, glassy eyes.
“Forgive me, Lord, for I knew that you would want him for yourself—and knowing it, I killed him. I tried to take him alive, but he would not let me. Take his head, it belongs to you.”
“No.” I shook my head at his offer. “The trophy is yours, Kota’na. Let it hang in your lodge so that your children will know of my debt to you, that their father killed Sil-ber-hut-te’s great enemy, the traitor Northan,. For this deed, I thank you.”
Five minutes later, after accepting a drugged drink, Kota’na fell asleep and the physicians were able to begin washing him and cleaning his wounds. But it took them as long again to pry open his hand and remove Northan’s head.
As for Ithaqua; he too appears to be resting. The
monster crouches atop his pyramid altar and cradles his head in his hands. His left eye is half closed—yellow sparks drip from it like pus—and a dark spot is visible at the back of his head. Since his wounds were not fatal, I can only assume that he is recuperating. He has shrunk down into himself somewhat, though his size is still four or five times greater than that of a man. Even now I can see him as I gaze out across the white waste through my binoculars, and—
What was that?
Strange, I thought for a moment that—
But no, I must have been mistaken. Did you feel anything, Juanita? It seemed as though someone were listening in on our conversation. You didn’t? Good. And yet I could have sworn that just for a moment I saw Ithaqua turn his head to peer evilly at the plateau out of his good eye …
A messenger has just arrived, sent by the physicians who attend Armandra. He seems to be quite delighted but I can’t understand a word he says. It appears I am to accompany him.
I’ll contact you again as soon as I have news.
NOTE:
The time was 5:50 p.m. on June 6 when Juanita Alvarez recorded that last hopeful message from Hank Silberhutte. His telepathic vibrations were then absent for some two hours, until, at 7:45 p.m., Juanita made the following final brief contact with him.
“Juanita, I’m back.
“Everything is going to be all right! I’m back on the balcony now, but I’ve just finished tidying up Armandra’s—no, our—chambers, getting the place ready for her. She’s conscious and they’re carrying her up here right now. She’s going to be fine, but she’ll need a lot of rest and quiet. All she wanted when she awakened was to be with me. God, Juanita, but you must be able to feel how happy I am! It’s as if a terrible black cloud were suddenly lif—
“again! And this time there can be no doubt about it. I was watching Ithaqua through the glasses while I talked to you. It was him, listening in, and suddenly he turned and looked at me—and he smiled in a terrible way!
“Juanita, I think he saw right through me—to you!
“But what in the … this? There seems … sort … interference. It’s him! Ithaqua is scrambling my … losing you! And now … the altar and limping off across the sky. He looks back at me and … hideous laughter! … revenge? My God, it’s you, Juanita. He can no longer hurt us, so he’s coming for you!
“Tell Peaslee he has to look after you. Tell him—”
FINAL NOTE: For three long months, into the middle of September, Juanita stayed at Miskatonic and spent every minute of every day trying to reestablish contact with Hank. She never heard from him again, and having turned down my offer to take up a position with the Wilmarth Foundation, she left Arkham in the third week of the month.
When she went she took with her one of the star-stones of ancient Mnar, a genuine stone found with others by our African expeditions in 1959. We kept in contact until early the next year. When last I heard from her she was making wedding arrangements in Monterrey.
In March of the new year I learned how, along with her husband, she was killed in an automobile accident near Regina, Canada, where they were honeymooning. The car had been blown off the road and down a sheer drop in a “freak storm.” I made inquiries and discovered that they had been returning to their hotel after a show. The gown Juanita, was wearing had a plunging neckline—not the kind of gown she could wear her star stone with.
As for Hank Silberhutte, his sister Tracy, and James Graywing Franklin: so far as I am aware they are still on Borea, a world at the edge of strange dimensions, somewhere out in remote regions of space and time.
My telepathic team at Miskatonic still occasionally try, without reward to date, to reestablish contact with Hank, and I personally will never give up hope.
Wingate Peaslee.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
SPAWN OF THE WINDS
Copyright © 1978 by Brian Lumley.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
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eISBN 9781466818439
First eBook Edition : March 2012
ISBN 0-312-86868-5 (pbk)
