by Brian Lumley
‘Hail, Moormish!’ cried Teh Atht, settling his carpet to the sand and stepping down before the gaping flap of the squat, dun coloured tent.
‘Begone!’ came back harsh cry from within. ‘Hop back on your carpet and scarper. You’re an intruder here, Klühnite, whose presence will muddle my meditations!’
Ah, well, thought Teh Atht, so much for a welcome! And no use beating about the bush here! ‘Permit me a glimpse – the merest peep – into your shewstone, Moormish,’ he called out loud, ‘and I’ll bother you no more but be off at once.’
Moormish appeared shufflingly from the gloom within. Thin as mountain air, dry as a husk, tattered and grimy, he scowled blackly through deep-sunken eyes and prodded Teh Atht’s chest with a knobbed walking stick. ‘Do you know why I live out here in the wilderness?’ he snapped. ‘No, obviously you don’t or you’d know better than to come. It’s to avoid the “company” – the peeping, prying, overbearing presence – of people like you. And not only people like you, but people like anybody! It’s called the freedom of solitary existence, privacy, a lone retirement. I have chosen to seclude myself. And you have chosen to disturb me. Worse, you’d casually probe about amongst my most precious possessions: a “peep” into my shewstone, a “bite” of my bread, a “sip” of my water. And all of these things left tainted by your touch!’
Now Teh Atht was offended. He’d asked for neither food nor drink and certainly had no intention of tainting Moormish’s supplies. And as for spending a few moments in private with the old claustrophobe’s crystal: be sure Moormish would deny him that privilege to the bitter end! Except Teh Atht had no time to spare, and so was driven to extremes.
The shrivelled sorcerer’s stick was still touching his chest, fending him off. Good! And he sent a dose of Undiluted Deafness down it on the spot, which all unseen, unfelt, and especially unheard, at once blocked Moormish’s eardrums.
‘You’re a crazed old recluse!’ Teh Atht shouted then, at the same time smiling and nodding agreeably, testing his spell’s efficacy.
‘Eh?’ said Moormish, squinting curiously. He put a finger in his ear and wiggled it violently.
Excellent! thought Teh Atht with a grin; and without further ado he uttered the curse of Curious Concretion, so that in a moment Moormish was marbled. Then, leaving the fossilized mage with finger in ear and stick jabbing at nothing – as grotesque a pose as one could wish – he moved past him into the gloomy, smelly tent and sought out Moormish’s crystal.
The shewstone stood alone upon a low, circular wooden table, with several ancient, well-patched cushions piled close by. Teh Atht preferred to remain standing, straightway made himself known. The sphere answered in a simple code which the wizard at once deciphered, making it out to say: ‘Ah, Teh Atht! I’ve heard of you. And is old Moormish dead, then? He must be, or else you’ve stolen me!’
‘No, not dead,’ Teh Atht chuckled. ‘Merely dumbfounded. Or perhaps deaf-founded? Or maybe even stone deaf-founded!’ And he told the shewstone all.
‘He’ll be mad as hell!’ the agitated sphere groaned, its milky screen all astir. ‘And he’ll doubtless take it out on me.’
Teh Atht shook his head. ‘He won’t know,’ he said, ‘unless you yourself tell him. I certainly won’t, not if we can come to some – arrangement?’
‘Scry all you will,’ said the sphere at once. ‘I’m at your mercy.’
After that it was the simplest thing to find Amyr Arn and Ulli Eys, and pinpoint their precise location and direction of travel. And so convenient their bearing and rate of travel that Teh Atht was given to utter a small cry of delight. Perhaps things were falling in order at last.
He thanked Moormish’s crystal and began to turn away…then checked himself to ask: ‘Incidentally, does your master use you as an oracle, too? As diary, calendar, aide-memoire, and so on?’
‘Aye, and other things to boot,’ the shewstone waxed bitter. ‘For when things go amiss with him, it’s me who takes the blame. Only peruse my several bruises!’
Teh Atht had already noted the battered condition of the crystal, the dents and gouges where its picture was wont to blur and go out of focus. He offered his commiserations, said: ‘But of course he’s sworn you to secrecy – that is, in respect of his most private and personal pursuits?’
‘Vows I may not break,’ the shewstone replied, ‘on penalty of being myself broken!’
‘A pity,’ said Teh Atht. ‘I had wondered if perhaps Moormish sought immortality, and if so how close he’d come to finding it …’
‘But don’t you all seek it?’ the crystal seemed surprised. ‘Small secret that, Teh Atht! And how close are you?’
For answer the wizard merely sighed.
‘Then go in peace, happy at least in the knowledge that Moormish is no closer. More I dare not say.’
Teh Atht went. Outside the tent shadows leaned more slantingly and the air was cool. A kite sat upon Moormish’s shoulder, observing him curiously, perhaps hungrily. It pecked at his ear and squawked abrupt complaint, then soared aloft in search of softer fare.
Eradicating his footprints in the sand where they led from mortified magician in and out of tent, Teh Atht placed himself before Moormish and reversed the runic restrictions. Moormish blinked, withdrew his finger from his ear, said, ‘That’s better! …Or is it?’ He blinked again, gazed all about, suddenly staggered and let fall his stick where Teh Atht leaned his weight against it. He frantically rubbed at his eyes.
What’s this?’ said Teh Atht in feigned concern. ‘Are you ill?’ He took a pace forward but Moormish backed hurriedly away.
‘My ears,’ said the other. ‘And then my eyes. You seemed to flicker just then, and suddenly it’s grown quite dim!’ He shivered.
‘Dim?’ said Teh Atht. ‘It’s merely the sun slipped behind a cloud there in the west.’ He tut-tutted. ‘But don’t your symptoms bother you, my friend?’
‘Symptoms? What symptoms?’ snapped the other. ‘And don’t call me your friend. As for my shewstone: I’ll show you the knob of my stick! He stooped to snatch it up. ‘Now begone!’
Teh Atht shrugged. ‘So be it,’ he said, moving his mouth with vigour but merely whispering the words. And returning to his carpet he added, again in a whisper: ‘But if I were you I’d have it seen to.’
‘Eh?’
‘There you go again!’ Teh Atht now shouted. ‘Deaf as a post, eyesight playing tricks with you, and shivering as in some alien ague! Aye, and apparently loss of orientation, too. It’s all this sand and solitude, Moormish. You need the company of men – a closer proximity of persons, anyway – and you could do with seeing a physician. I’d head for Klühn if I were you. And now, while you still may.’ He tut-tutted again, bade his carpet rise and proceed north by north-west.
Below and behind him, Moormish of the wastes cocked his head on one side and glowered this way and that, rubbed his eyes again, finally stumbled uncertainly back inside his tent and lowered its flap. He might guess the truth eventually, but little he’d be able to do about it. It was sad but Moormish really was failing, and his magick with him. The wizard where he flew away considered that in the circumstances he’d given the hermit best possible advice.
After that …
…There had been other matters Teh Atht must attend to – the first of which being to place himself in the path of silver-skinned man and maid. No great difficulty there, for he’d known the region through which they travelled well enough. Aye, and he’d also known that Orbiquita’s castle lay directly in their way!
Evening was settling when the five long wagons formed their accustomed circle in the timeless sand. Tarra fed his beast; he played ‘work and reward’ games with the huge creature, using greenstuff tidbits as prizes when the lizard ‘understood’ his gestures and whistles and answered promptly to his instructions; he finally climbed up on its head and oiled behind the eye-flaps and the delicate scales which protected vestigial gills. The monster accepted him now as its master, possibly even as a
friend, and made no complaint when he stood upon its lower lip to knock crusts of sand from the rims of its blowhole nostrils. The other Hrossak drivers made much the same ado of their own huge mounts, but Tarra’s care was that much more special. He didn’t merely desire a beast who’d work for him, but one who’d die for him if necessary. For it might just possibly come to that.
Meanwhile the slaves were fed, and Tarra noticed that their portions were bigger tonight and their water measures more nearly adequate; what’s more, there were even small, sweet apples on the menu! He scratched his chin and nodded to himself: the trek was coming to its close, and supplies being balanced accordingly. Things must have worked out well, that food was still so much in evidence.
As the frizzy with the basket of bread and fruit finished distributing to the slaves of Tarra’s wagon, so the Hrossak approached him for his share; but the slaver shoved him away, grunted something unintelligible, pointed to where fires were being lit and spits set up in the centre of the circle. Tarra got the message at once; after all, it seemed hardly right that a man who had broken bread with Cush Gemal should continue to eat with slaves …
He wandered to the rim of the inner circle of fires and stood looking on, his mouth fairly watering. Then a young Hrossak driver spied him standing apart, called out for him to come and join the mongrel crew gathered there. Apparently he’d been accepted. He went, watched small joints of meat go onto the spits and start sizzling, noticed out the corner of his eye a pair of Northmen riding in from the east leading a spare pony all laden down with baskets. He’d seen them ride on ahead some hours earlier, at which time the baskets had been empty. Now they were full, and the pony who carried them feeling the strain a bit; and as the dusty, bearded, broadly grinning pair reined in by the fires, so Tarra guessed what was the beast’s load. Fruits of the sea, yes! – that great Eastern Ocean whose salt tang he now realized he’d been smelling all day long, which suddenly was quite unmistakeable – the baskets were full of large gleamy fish!
Expert fishermen, the Northmen hardly needed to brag how they’d netted this lot in a single cast: by simply walking into the loch, spreading a long net between them, and then walking out again! But they did anyway. True or false, Tarra cared not at all. Not while he knew he’d have a fine bit of fish for his supper tonight.
Then the wineskins came out, sour stuff but palatable enough after the first swig, and the joking, tall storytelling and gambling commenced. Tarra staying just a little apart and speaking when spoken to, and Hrossaks and Northmen alike all seeming in much lighter mood tonight, though for a fact the frizzies were as doleful and ‘black in the face’ (Tarra kept both thought and word to himself) as ever. Ah, yes: trek’s end in sight, and this lot plainly glad of it.
Tarra found himself a stone to sit on, listened to various tall tales from the Northmen, whose range and wit were astonishing. In gay mood they made for sparkling companions, these bristle-manes. A pity they were so untrustworthy, so volatile and, when roused, so notoriously bloodthirsty. Hrossaks, too, a humorous bunch, if a little dry and thoughtful about it. The steppemen were ever careful not to insult, because they themselves rarely forgave the insults of others.
Eventually the last rays of a setting sun stuck up like the spokes of a golden fan in the west; indigo spread across the sky from the east, darkening a blue in which the stars gleamed so much brighter; and Gleeth, the old moon-god, probed with his waxing horns from behind the far distant silhouette of the Eastern Range. A gentle evening breeze sprang up, not so much a trouble as a relief, and settled westward toward the lochs and the sea; and at last the meat was ready. Tarra settled for fish, lobbed a beauty expertly from spit onto his stone, stood fanning his hot fingers and listening to his belly rumble while it cooled a little. Then, with a warm place to sit, he broke open the crisped scaly skin to let out the fish’s steam in splendid gusts. And as the slave-takers ate and relaxed from the day’s drive, so silence descended. This was partly because mouths now found work chomping, mainly because Cush Gemal had put in an appearance, tall, spindly and gleamy red and black in the firelight.
Most of Gemal’s Yhemnis kept to a fire of their own some little distance away; those who deigned to eat with the white- (and bronze-) skins stood up to show Gemal their respect – their fear? Hrossaks and, reluctantly, barbarians followed suit.
‘Sit,’ said Cush Gemal with a wave of his hand. ‘You’ve done well, all of you, so be at your ease. The salt lochs are only hours away – an early start tomorrow and we’ll be there ’twixt dawn and noon, and well under sail by the time the sun slips from zenith. See how the breeze favours us? It’s off the land, blows for the Eastern Ocean. Only let it keep this up and we’ll sail all the way to Shad, and never an oar dipped! Now I’ll walk alone with my thoughts awhile.’
He strode away, then paused and turned. ‘Watchkeepers, don’t drink too much. I fancy we’re followed, however discreetly. So far our mission’s a success – let’s keep it that way. We want no problems so close to ocean’s margin.’ Finally he glanced at Tarra. ‘Hrossak, someone should find you a jacket, to keep the sand out of your cuts. Aye, and there’ll be flies to lay their eggs in you, by the time we reach the ocean’s rim.’
Tarra shrugged. ‘I’m quick to heal,’ he said, ‘but for a fact it does grow chilly nights.’
Gemal nodded and walked away.
The young Hrossak who’d called Tarra over to the fire came and sat beside him. ‘Oho!’ he said. ‘And it seems you’ve made yourself a fine friend! Aye, and chatting with him like a brother! There aren’t many men that skinny black cockscomb will pass the time of day with – or night, as ’twere. I’m Narqui Ghenz. You’re a Khash, aren’t you? A name to be reckoned with on the steppes, once upon a time.’
‘Tarra,’ said that worthy, nodding. ‘I’m a wanderer. By now I’d have wandered home if I hadn’t bumped into this little packet. What’s your excuse?’ And he continued to eat his fish.
‘Huh!’ said Ghenz. ‘You’re fortunate in that you can still go home. Me, I took a wife too many. It’s my head – or a couple of even worse bits – if I go back! Depends how you look at it, and who gets to me first. Me? I think I’d rather they took my head …’
Tarra stared at him. ‘You hardly seem old enough to have taken one wife, let alone two! A bit daft, wasn’t it?’
‘It was,’ the other grinned, ‘but not in the way you’re thinking. They were other men’s wives I took, not mine!’
For the first time in days, Tarra laughed. ‘Say no more,’ he said, ‘for I’ve been a bit of a ladies’ man myself in my time.’ Then his grin turned to a frown. Yes he had, but that was before a certain female kissed his neck one night in the badlands near Chlangi the Doomed. A rare and fearsome female, that one, called Orbiquita; and yet…Tarra hadn’t given much thought to women since then. A man seared by the sun doesn’t stand greatly in awe of a hearth-fire. He fingered twin blemishes on his neck, white specks against the bronze, and his blood tingled in a strange, even a morbid fever. Then he saw Ghenz watching him wonderingly and came back down to earth.
‘That explains why you’re not in Hrossa,’ he said, ‘but not why you’re here with this lot.’
Ghenz shrugged. ‘Have you ever been to Grypha?’
‘In my time,’ said Tarra nodding. ‘When I was maybe your age. A Hrossak youth runs away from home, he heads for Grypha. A man gets himself banished, and his first stop’s Grypha. It’s been a refuge, of sorts, for exiled steppemen ever since they builded it there. Grypha the Fortress, it was once called, for its peoples warred a lot with us Hrossaks in those days. Also, it had something of strategic value: it stands on the Luhr and so guards the west, and looks across the Bay of Monsters on Yhemni jungles and Shadarabar. Many of its olden fortifications are still standing, however battered; ah, but not so much warriors as wharf rats have inherited it now! A cesspool built on a swamp, whose stink is washed by the Luhr out into the Southern Sea. But even a river can’t clear it all away. What, Grypha? Why,
it’s a byword for shady deals and shadier dealers – like some kind of steaming, sophisticated Chlangi, but not all that sophisticated!’
‘That’s what I meant,’ said Narqui Ghenz. ‘Chased out, I headed for Grypha – and discovered it to be the sinkhole of Theem’hdra, with villains black, white, brown and bronze all intermingled there like…like lumpy soup! Oh, there’s money to be made there, for those who don’t much care, but I’m a Hrossak and I like clean air. Except…where to go next? I’d thought of Thinhla, or Thandopolis way across the world, but they were such a long way off. It costs money to join a caravan west, and even more to take a ship. Work my passage? Out of Grypha? Likely I’d end up chained to an oar forever, or until I could no longer row – and then marooned on a rock somewhere to live out my life on crabs and seaweeds. So there I was in a bit of a quandary.
‘Then, when I was all spent up, I heard of a fellow Hrossak recruiting lizard-handlers for some sort of trek. That was Gys Ankh, by the way – though devil only knows what’s become of him! He seemed a decent sort at first, turned out to be a black-hearted bully. I’m glad he’s gone.
‘Anyway, there was to be a small down-payment – for services to be rendered, you know? – and a big lump of cash when the job was done. But all hush-hush and no questions asked. So I signed up. By the time I found out something of what it was all about we were meeting Cush Gemal and his Yhemnis at the inlet of a salt loch north of the Straits of Yhem, fifty miles or so south of where we are right now. Gemal and his blacks had brought their long wagons with them, in pieces in the boats, which all of us joined in to put together again. We Hrossaks had taken our lizards with us (Ankh had somehow stolen them out of Hrossa), they were soon hitched up, and then we headed for the villages along the east-facing side of the Great Eastern Peaks. Then, too, we discovered for sure what we’d become – slavers!’
