by Brian Lumley
‘And that offended you?’ Tarra stared straight into the other’s eyes.
‘Some,’ said Ghenz, uncomfortably.
‘But not so much you’d risk running off and trying your luck on your lonesome, eh?’
‘How run off?’ Ghenz suddenly snapped. ‘What, and end up with a Yhemni bolt in my back? You’ve seen how Cush Gemal deals with troublemakers! But I’ll tell you something: me and the other three Hrossaks, we’ve tended our lizards and that’s it. No murder, no rape, no brutality of any sort toward the slaves or the girls. Gys Ankh was the only really rotten apple, and he’s gone now. Anyway, what makes you so holy?’
‘Calm down,’ said Tarra evenly. He looked casually all about, made sure no one would overhear their conversation. ‘How’m I to know these things until someone tells me, eh? So where do the Northmen come into all of this?’
‘They were recruited in Grypha, too,’ Ghenz replied. ‘—for their riding skills. With those ponies of theirs they could ride down runaways, act as scouts, form a fast-moving rearguard if necessary. Aye, and they were paid well for their labours, half in advance – enough to ensure they’d stay on right to the end, anyway. Moreover, they were promised equal shares of all plunder taken, like the rest of us, and women galore along the way. Any woman they wanted – except Black Yoppaloth’s brides. Those were to be the pick of the crop, taboo, strictly untouchable. As Gorlis Thad discovered the hard way!’
Tarra was silent for a while, then: ‘Did you understand when you started out how you’d be finishing up in Shad?’
‘No,’ Ghenz shook his head, ‘nor will we. We see the big lizards safely across the water to Shad, get paid off there, and Gemal lends us a crew of blacks and one ship to sail us back to the mainland. That’s Hrossaks and barbarians alike.’
Tarra slowly nodded, picked a while on the bones of his fish. And quietly he said: ‘And you believe he’ll do that, do you?’
‘Eh?’ Ghenz raised his eyebrows. ‘But that’s our agreement! I mean, what else would he do with us?’
‘Oh, nothing much,’ Tarra shrugged. ‘Except maybe butcher you, take back whatever he’s given and whatever else you’ve got – including the gold out of your teeth – and feed your carcasses to certain little jungle-bred friends of his! Did you know there are supposed to be cannibals in Shadarabar’s jungles?’
Ghenz went a little white. ‘You mean you think he’ll pay us off with black treachery?’ he hissed.
‘It was just a thought, that’s all,’ said Tarra, standing up and stretching his joints. ‘Me, I’m not much bothered, since I get off at ocean’s rim.’ He made to walk away but Ghenz followed, caught at his arm.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve a jacket for you. Since Gemal seems to think highly of you, that might stand me in his favour.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ said Tarra. ‘But best to take all I’ve said with a pinch of salt. I was just thinking out loud, that’s all.’ He walked with Ghenz to the youth’s wagon, accepted a warm, fur-lined jacket and tried it on. It was a good fit. Ghenz was meanwhile silent, his brows black where they formed a scowl in the middle. Finally he asked:
‘How can we be sure he’ll not deal with us badly?’
‘Dunno,’ said Tarra. ‘But if I were you I’d first observe how he deals with me.’
‘Eh? How do you mean?’
‘Well, he’s promised to make good my losses and my time, let me keep my big honker and turn us both loose when we reach the loch. I figure if he sticks to that, then that he’ll probably play fair by you lads, too. We can only wait and see. But as you’ve seen for yourself, life’s pretty much easy-come, easy-go to him. I’m talking about the butchery in the villages, to which he must have agreed; about Gorlis Thad, who he cut down like a blade of grass, without a backward glance; and about these blacks of his, who fear him mightily – and who I’ve noticed are wont to shrivel and drop dead if they spend too much time in his company …’ And Tarra watched the youth’s reaction to that last.
He wasn’t quite sure just what he expected, but he was sure that what he got wasn’t it. ‘Disease,’ said Narqui Ghenz, shrugging. And his expression didn’t change at all.
‘Eh?’ Tarra’s jaw fell open. ‘What’s that you say? Disease?’
‘Why, yes,’ Ghenz added, matter-of-factly. ‘What else? It’s something out of the jungles, which only takes the blacks. They collapse, dry up, die very quickly and without pain. When did you see it?’
‘Back at our last stop,’ said Tarra. ‘In the storm? And as for that storm – did you ever see weather like that before? That weird green glow round Gemal’s tent? Two frizzies went in there with him, just before that “storm” broke. Gemal himself went in looking fit to die, and came out full of fight! But when we moved out of there I was last in line, and I saw the other two. They weren’t fit for anything but a shallow grave.’
Still Ghenz was unconvinced. ‘That makes eight of ’em, then,’ he said. ‘Two where we met their ships out of Shad, at the salt loch; two more on the fourth night, after we’d done our first village; another two on the seventh night, just before we picked you up; and now—’
‘—They’re falling faster, then?’ Tarra cut him off.
‘Eh?’
‘This “disease” is gaining ground, picking up speed, burning through ’em ever faster. And always taking them in pairs …’
Ghenz thought about it. ‘So it seems. But why concern yourself, since it’s only the blacks?’
Tarra almost answered: And what happens when Gemal runs out of blacks? – but he thought better of it. What he did say was: ‘Me, I took one look at that freakish storm, that cold green fire in the heart of the twister around Gemal’s tent, and I thought: magick! And when I saw those corpses, well, that sort of confirmed it.’
Ghenz laughed. ‘Then you’d be better off speaking to the Northmen,’ he said. ‘They’re the ones for the spook stories!’
Tarra partly understood the other’s point of view. Ghenz was a young man, open as a book and straight off the steppes (where wizards were given short shrift, and had been ever since the days of ill-legended Loxzar of the Hrossaks) and he wouldn’t have come across much in the way of the Dark Arts. Not yet, anyway. But Tarra’s own far-flung adventures had bent his beliefs to the contrary – very much so. And as for that peculiar storm and the green fires accompanying it … well, Tarra had been witness to much the same sort of thing once before. And not so very long ago.
That had been in Klühn, at Gorgos’ Temple of Secret Gods, and it had heralded the very Blackest Magick imaginable! Tarra remembered it well, would never forget it: those weird energies building over Klühn, patterned like the webs of giant, lightning-spawned spiders, with strands of fire spun down like alien silk to the dome of that temple of horror. Thromb energies, they’d been, which opened gates in space and time to let in Forces from beyond the stars – or would have, if Tarra Khash and Amyr Arn hadn’t cut them off at source. That source had been Gorgos, gone now back where he belonged – or what remained of him, anyway.
‘Are you all right?’ Ghenz had taken his arm. ‘Staring at the stars like that, with your eyes all vacant …’
‘Was I?’ said Tarra. He sniffed the air, said: ‘I was gauging the weather, that’s all.’
‘Oh?’ Ghenz was interested, doubtless in respect of forthcoming voyage to Shad. ‘Well, what’s it to be? Fair or foul?’
‘A bit of both, I think,’ said Tarra. And to himself: changeable, at best. Then he excused himself and headed back to the fires.
‘Fancy a game, Hrossak?’ called out one of three Northmen where they tossed coins in the firelight.
‘Gambling’s for them who can afford it,’ Tarra ruefully replied. ‘Me, I’ve only the jacket I wear on my back, and that’s where it’s going to stay. But I’ll watch awhile, if it doesn’t bother you.’ It didn’t, and Tarra stood watching. In just a few more minutes one of the three pulled a wry face and turned out his pockets, signifying that for him the game
was over. Never good losers, Northmen, he stooped and snatched up the square Khrissan gaming coins, bent them one at a time between thumb and fingers and tossed them down. Undaunted, the two remaining players took out new coins and began a two-sided game of pitch-and-toss all over again. One of the two would end up lucky, or unlucky depending how the other took it. Meanwhile Tarra and the sulking, hulking loser went off to sit together and stare into a fire.
‘Gambling’s a damned fool’s game,’ growled the Northman in a little while. ‘And I’m a fool born!’
Tarra nodded his agreement. ‘I’ve lost my shirt on occasion, too,’ he admitted.
‘Oh?’ the barbarian hardly seemed interested. ‘And what’s your poison?’
‘Dice,’ said Tarra.
‘Hah Not likely!’ the other was vehement. ‘What, dice? Too easily loaded, for my liking.’
‘As I discovered,’ said Tarra, scowling into the dying embers.
‘But what the hell,’ said the Northman, shrugging. ‘All life’s a gamble.’
‘True, very true,’ Tarra nodded again. ‘And Yibb only knows that the stakes are high enough, this time around.’
‘Eh?’
‘This trek, I mean,’ said wily Hrossak. ‘What? And here’s you and your lot – aye, and my lot, too – all sailing off to Shad with Cush Gemal, and not a lad of you knowing a single thought that’s in his head. And how’s that for playing with loaded dice?’
‘Eh?’ said the other again, frowning.
‘I mean,’ Tarra was patient, ‘what if he’s playing you false? D’you think you can bend him like a thin Khrissan gaming piece? Not on your life! And once you’re in Shad, why, then you’re at his mercy.’
The Northman scowled in his beard, slitted his eyes and stared hard at Tarra, finally shook his head. ‘I don’t follow you,’ he said, and Tarra could see that he really didn’t. And for the first time he began to understand something of Cush Gemal’s power.
‘You’re not worried,’ he said, but more slowly and carefully, ‘that you might end up marooned, or worse, in Shad?’
‘You know,’ the other replied, ‘Gorlis Thad used to sound much the same as you; used to say much the same sort of things. Likewise Gys Ankh. Trouble-makers, both of ’em. Well, you saw what happened to the Thad, and as for Ankh – who knows? But when that bronze bastard went missing, you didn’t see Cush Gemal making much of a fuss over it, did you? ‘Ware, steppeman! That tongue of yours could do for you.’
‘Do you take his word, then,’ Tarra pressed, ‘that he’ll see you safe home again once he’s shipped you to Shad?’
The other thought about it, finally nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said, simply as that. ‘Oh, he’s a queer ’un, be sure: black as squid-slop and cold as ice on the moon. And yet somehow warm, too, at times. But … I think I trust him. Indeed, I think we all trust him; and it seems there’s a sticky end for them that don’t. So if I were you I’d give it a little time, steppeman, and see how he grows on you.’
‘I think I know what you mean,’ said Tarra, slapping his knees and driving himself to his feet. ‘He is growing on me!’ —like a wart, and you know how hard they are to get rid of.
Moving back toward his big lizard and its wagon, where already the slaves were bedded down, he almost stumbled over a heap of cooked fish, untouched, still smoking in the night. He took up an armful, some meat, too, and distributed the food to the chained unfortunates. Then he sat beside Loomar Nindiss and watched that ever-hungry lad wolf his portion. Done at last, Loomar asked him:
‘Well, what have you found out?’
‘Nothing much,’ Tarra shrugged. ‘Except that tomorrow you sail for Shadarabar over the Straits of Yhem. I’ve tried to sway this lot against it, but—’ And he shrugged again.
‘And you?’ Loomar’s eyes shone soft in moon- and starlight.
‘Not me,’ Tarra shook his head. ‘Cush Gemal’s warned me against it. And when someone like that utters a warning, I reckon men should heed him …’
VI
AMYR AND ULLI
Amyr Arn and Ulli Eys were Suhm-yi (indeed, they were the last members of that never numerous, especially insular race) and therefore mentalists; they had their own tongue and were natural linguists, but they were equally at home with telepathy. The latter mode required a certain familiarity; it improved with use and proximity; in the old days, it had never been used without mutual consent. It need hardly be said that in two such as Amyr and Ulli, all codes and conditions were well satisfied.
Now, travelling by the light of the stars in the Desert of Sheb – where only the wind gave voice, and then low and moaning – the Suhm-yi man and maid found themselves unwilling to break the silence, and so conversed by mind alone and sparingly.
‘A light ahead,’ said Amyr voicelessly, ‘in that jut of deeper darkness there.’
From the back of their single beast, where Ulli had the better view: ‘I had noted it, husband,’ she likewise replied.
‘These are strange lands,’ he said, ‘and often threatening. We’d best be prepared for whatever lies in wait.’
‘Ulli,’ smiled down on him where he loped ahead, leading their plodding yak, and he felt her smile on the back of his neck, which gleamed something less than its customary silver under the stars. ‘I know you will be prepared, Amyr,’ she answered. ‘And while I am with you, I know no harm will befall. Or if it should, then that it will be a greater thing than our two hearts together, which is a size beyond my imagining.’
‘UK’ he said, ‘I have forgotten the old ways. No, I have forsaken them. For survival. Peace was ever the way of the Suhm-yi, peace at all cost: a code of conduct I left behind in the Inner Isles when I came to seek you out. I came, found and freed you; but if I’d walked in the old ways, it were a short walk, be sure! You speak of our hearts: mine is full of you, and also full of sin. I desired and took revenge. And I have taken the lives of men. In this Primal Land, I have learned dishonourable ways, at times reverting to a primal savagery. Aye, and truth to tell, it did not disgust me …’
She smiled again, but sadly. ‘Husband, I was stolen from the Inner Isles as a child. I never knew the old laws, the old ways. But I’ve known the wiles of Gorgos, and I’ve read in the minds of men all of their black secrets. Oh, there are good men, but others are putrid in their cores; and it was my lot to discover them for my morbid master.’ She had stopped smiling and even shuddered a little. ‘Dishonour? I hardly think you know the meaning of the word, not even now. And as for evil, you are an innocent!’
‘Still, there is evil in Theem’hdra,’ he insisted. ‘And so I must warn you: I’ll not be still if we’re threatened. And if it should ever come to that, I beg you look away. I’d not have you look upon me with blood on my hands.’
‘You forget,’ she said, ‘how I’ve already seen you smeared in blood of men, and slime of Gorgos! You and Tarra Khash both – and I was not disgusted. I felt only relief: that I was free of fear and foulness, and that a mate had come to find me when I had thought all hope fled. We’ve both suffered taints, Amyr, but that’s behind us now. In the jewel isles we’ll build anew, and temper the laws we pass down to our children with knowledge of the world outside the crater sea. That way they’ll be ready, if men should come again defiling and destroying …’
‘So be it,’ he said, and without looking back gave the merest nod of his comb-crested head.
Now, approaching more closely the dark silhouette lit in one window with a warm, welcoming glow, Amyr saw that the place was a castle or fortress – a manse, anyway, but large, sprawling and high-walled. Well provisioned refuge, doubtless, for whoever dwelled within; and Amyr began to feel the weight and responsibility of his and Ulli’s journey pressing down on him.
Coming from Inner Isles to Klühn, he’d travelled alone and fast, unhindered and driven on by the urgency of his mission. But now he had a future, where before there’d been none; and now, too, he had Ulli to consider, and he knew that the perils of the Primal Land were many.
Three-quarters of the return trek still lying ahead, much of it through badlands – and Ulli Eys more precious to Amyr than life itself, to be guarded and guided each step of the way.
For that reason he’d chosen the route which would seem least populated: out of Klühn and across the rugged Great Eastern Peaks; through the southern bulge of Sheb’s Desert and over the Mountains of Lohmi, then follow the fringe of Ell’s wasteland to the Great Circle Range, beyond which lay the Crater Sea and jewelled Inner Isles. Least populated, perhaps, but for what reason? And where populated, by what?
Lamias, allegedly, in Sheb, where one such was said to have her castle – perhaps that very lair which loomed ahead! Thieves and vagabonds, too, in ruined Chlangi the shunned city, some sixty or seventy miles south. And this only the beginning! The Mountains of Lohmi were home to small but fierce tribes of degenerate, barbarous mountainmen; and in the Desert of Ell, where lay a forbidden city of antique mystery, there dwelled demons and ill-natured djinn.
Aye, numberless miles and dangers ahead, and already Amyr feeling his strength waning, sapped by furnace sun and drawn from his muscles by sands that sank underfoot, making every step an effort of will. And only a quarter of the way covered, with the worst of it still to come.
The night’s chill had freshened Amyr’s Suhm-yi awareness; suddenly he felt his silvery skin prickling, a weird sensation of eyes watching, perhaps as a spider watches the fly fresh trapped in its web. ‘Ulli,’ he said, without speaking. And:
‘I know,’ she likewise answered.
Between the castle and the travellers a jumble of weathered rock protruded slanting from the sands. Amyr led his beast with its precious burden into the heart of the outcrop’s shadow …
In Orbiquita’s castle, Teh Atht sat in his cousin’s Room of Runes and gazed into her shewstone, which must surely be unique in that it was the petrified eye of a Roc! The stone had no voice, and its view was quite vertiginous – bird’s-eye, no less! – but the pictures had startling clarity and depth. Ideal for Orbiquita who, in winged guise, was well acquainted with views from aerial angle; less so for Teh Atht, who’d prefer a picture scried at sea-level. Still and all, he supposed he must count himself lucky that he’d found this most secret chamber (hidden as it had been behind a pivoting slab of stone), let alone the lamia-ensorcelled orb of some sadly defunct aviasaur.
