by Brian Lumley
‘A member currently undergoing corrective punishment,’ Iniquiss reminded. ‘Won’t this…this business keep until your term is served?’
Orbiquita shook her head vehemently and sent lava crusts flying all about. ‘No, it won’t. By then Tarra’ll likely be dead, and—’
‘Tarra! Tarra!’ Suquester and Scuth chorused.
‘—and you four will be to blame,’ Orbiquita finished.
‘To blame?’ Hissiliss had a habit of repeating statements for emphasis. ‘For the death of a man? Orbiquita, I’ve been the death of countless men, we all have, and never before suffered “blame”! Would you have us eat stones?’
‘This man’s a wizard, right?’ Iniquiss did her best to understand. ‘He’s put an unbreakable spell on you, for his own lustful or thaumaturgical purposes. Well, if that’s the case, perhaps we can—’
‘It’s not the case,’ Orbiquita groaned, finally lowering her head. ‘Would that’s all it were. But no, it’s worse than that. Far worse …’
For long moments the four lamias where they floated on lesser crusts around Orbiquita’s central island were awed, horrified, silent until Iniquiss inquired: ‘Do you…love him?’
Orbiquita could only nod, while steaming tears rolled down her warty cheeks. The four were stunned, but not for long.
‘That settles it!’ said Suquester and Scuth as one. ‘His life’s in danger, is it? Good! Let him die.’ Hissiliss nodded her agreement, to which Iniquiss added:
‘That were surely for the best, Orbiquita. You’re poisoned, sister, plain to see. Or at least, the human female within you is poisoned. And this slow poison called love – love of and for a man – is the deadliest lamia poison of all! I’ve seen others taken by it in my time, and every one a hopeless case. But if this Tarra were dead—’
‘Do you threaten him?’ Orbiquita looked up, red-eyed, flexed her claws until they sank into and scarred deep her lava island. ‘Do you dare threaten him?’ She looked as if she’d fly in their faces.
‘No,’ said Iniquiss, ‘we do not. Neither do we offer him our assistance – nor yours! Your request is denied.’ She turned to the other three. ‘Sisters, we go.’
The four spread their leathery wings, prepared for departure. But:
‘Wait,’ said Orbiquita, and her doomful tone froze them fast. ‘There remains only one way in which this problem might find resolution.’
‘The “problem”, as you call it, is already resolved, Orbiquita,’ said Iniquiss after a while. ‘In this matter we cannot be swayed. Only be thankful that for all your transgressions, still we allow you to keep your seat on this council! In this way your shame – which is ours – goes no further. What? And should we bring the entire Sisterhood into disrepute?’
‘I would bring the Sisterhood to the very doors of destruction—’ Orbiquita glowered…then trembled in her every fibre, ‘—to prevent harm coming to my Tarra!’
‘Shamelessly ensorcelled!’ cried Hissiliss.
‘Maddened by a man!’ sputtered Suquester and Scuth together. ‘Disgusting!’
‘There is a way,’ Orbiquita insisted. ‘You know my meaning. Do you drive me to it?’
Iniquiss, for all that she was old and wise and felt something of pity for Orbiquita, gave a snort of derision. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Renounce the Sisterhood, and trade five thousand years and more for the short span of a fragile human female? And what is that for a threat, sister? Why, you’d no more renounce the Sisterhood than—’
‘Here and now,’ Orbiquita cut her off, her voice more doomful yet, ‘I renounce the Sisterhood!’
The four were shocked almost rigid. ‘Think what you’re doing!’ Iniquiss howled then. ‘You may say it only one more time with impunity, and if you utter those words a third time—’
‘I renounce the Sisterhood!’ Orbiquita shrank down into herself, shuddering in every limb as she calculated the consequences of what must be done.
For a moment, aghast, the four drew back; then Hissiliss cried: ‘She’s bluffing! Only four foolish sisters in all lamia history have ever—’
‘Damn you all!’ Orbiquita whispered. ‘Only look at yourselves! You are loathsome; I am loathsome; five thousand years of this is no future. I have found a man like no other man. You shall not keep me from him. So hear me now, when one last time I say—’
‘No!’ they all cried out together. But too late.
Orbiquita drew herself up in all her horror, threw wide her wings and cried, quite irrevocably: ‘I renounce the Sisterhood!’
Following which, there was nothing anyone could do about it …
VIII
SHIPS OF SORCERY
The Salt Sea! Oh, this was only a loch, green where it met the shoreline and brackish, a long scummy finger of water pointing inland from the vast ‘hand’ of the true ocean, but it was salty and tidal. Coming down from yellow dunes onto a shore whose salt-crystal pools sparkled white under a blazing sun, the ‘caravaneer’ Cush Gemal saw it lying there and shielded his jet-black eyes against its incredible blaze of blue water, stretching eastwards away and away. And he led his wagons right down to water’s rim.
The wagons were lined up where the beach sloped seaward, and stones were put under their wheels to keep them from rolling. Then the big steppes-lizards were unhitched, canvasses thrown back, tailboards let down. And now the five Yhemni boats stood at last all in open view, cradled on their shallow-draft wagons where the great wheels came three-quarters up their strakes. The slavers fed themselves and then the slaves, and the latter were loosened from the respective wagons but kept in batches, chained together. And now it was time for the launching of the first boat.
This was no big deal, indeed its mechanics were rudimentary. the stones were yanked away from the lead wagon’s wheels and a gang of trotting, then galloping Yhemnis guided the shafts into the shallows, wagon rumbling along behind, until only wheels stuck up and flat-bottomed boat drifted free. Then an anchor tossed overboard and the boat lying waiting, with its former vehicle now forming a platform ’twixt sand and sea.
Five times this happened, and Tarra Khash watching all: seeing slaves driven aboard the boats and chained to their oars, masts hauled into position and sails readied, four big honkers herded protesting and with no small degree of Hrossak skill aboard their boats. Now the craft they’d hauled would carry them, right across the sea to Shad. Four of the five, anyway.
The fifth boat in the water, which had been aboard Tarra’s wagon, was Cush Gemal’s; now he came striding in his spindly way, with a handful of blacks behind him leading bevy of stolen virgins. ‘Well, Hrossak,’ said Gemal to Tarra where he stood patting the stumpy foreleg of Old Scaly, ‘and now it’s farewell. A pity I couldn’t have known you better, but perhaps for the best in the long run. Here, this is yours. It will more than repay anything I’ve taken from you.’ He thrust a leather pouch into Tarra’s hand, stood waiting while the steppeman checked its contents.
Tarra weighed three small golden ingots in his hands, glanced admiringly at a large fistful of glowing, flawless gemstones. ‘Repayment?’ he said. ‘Well, it seems I haven’t much to complain about on that score. After all, what have you had of me? A few days of my freedom? Others before you took far more than that. My labours? But what are muscles for if not for working? As for my camel, lost when first we met: why, the tenth part of these gemstones could buy me a whole caravan!’
‘You’re well satisfied, then?’ Gemal smiled in his skull-like fashion.
‘But then there’s my sword,’ said Tarra, almost as if Gemal hadn’t spoken. He inclined his head toward that weapon where it swung at Gemal’s hip. ‘And the fact is, I’ve become somewhat attached to that. It’s stood me in good stead in many a fight, and I really feel naked without it.’
The smile slipped from Gemal’s face. ‘Haven’t I paid you enough? Are you bargaining with me?’
‘There was a time not long ago, in your tent, when you said you liked my company because I bargained with you,’ Ta
rra answered. ‘Have you changed your mind, then?’ And before Gemal could answer, he gave him back the heavy sacklet. ‘Keep this, Cush Gemal, for I’ve no need of it. Oh, I know there’s plenty more where this came from, but keep that too. Keep all of it, for it’s only stolen wealth anyway. What I’d really appreciate is that curved scimitar, which is rightly mine.’
Gemal kept his rising anger under rein. ‘What I take stays taken,’ he finally answered. ‘No deal, Tarra Khash. And anyway, the sword pleases me. There’s something about it …’ Again he held out the pouch. ‘Now take what I’m offering and go.’
Tarra sighed, shrugged. ‘The sword’s yours then,’ he said. ‘So maybe I can bargain for something else?’
Gemal looked puzzled. ‘Such as?’
‘There’s a young slave I’ve grown fond of, name of Loomar Nindiss. If you could see your way to letting him go free with me …’
The slaver’s frown lifted at once. ‘One slave? That were a simple matter.’ He looked toward the boats. ‘If you’ll just tell me—’
‘Two slaves,’ Tarra cut him short. ‘He has a sister, Jezza.’
Gemal’s head snapped round and his black eyes fastened on Tarra’s. ‘What? One of Black Yoppaloth’s brides?’ He looked at the girls where they stood chained in their misery, waiting to board the boat. And: ‘Which one is Jezza?’ he called out.
Jezza hung her head, stepped forward. She was a beautiful flower, scarce opened, not yet fully in bloom. Her hair was black silk flowing onto her shoulders, her eyes blue as the sky, skin delicate as milk. Gemal looked at her for long moments, finally turned back to Tarra. ‘It were your death if you so much as touched one of my master’s brides,’ he growled. ‘Especially that one!’ And before Tarra could make further comment: ‘Now listen. You’ve twice refused my money, and all you have left is your lizard and your life. Don’t bargain yourself into an early grave, Hrossak. Go now, while still you may.’
Again Tarra’s shrug. ‘Well then, since I’m broke again and you’re bent on taking my young friend and his sister with you to Shad – not to mention all the rest of the people on those boats – it seems there’s only one thing for it. I’ll just have to come with you!’
Gemal shook his head in astonishment, then tilted his lacquered cockscomb to peer at the steppeman slantwise. ‘I’ll never fathom you, Hrossak,’ he said. ‘But haven’t I told you that Shad’s no place for the likes of you? Didn’t I say I felt it in my bones we’d both be sorry if ever you came to Shad? I can’t see any good coming out of it; I don’t even like the feel of it! No, I’ll not take you.’
He turned to his blacks. ‘Get these girls aboard,’ he ordered. But when he turned back…still Tarra stood there, his expression unaltered. ‘What now?’ The slaver’s tone had risen a notch.
‘Do you remember our contest in your tent?’ Tarra gazed at him unflinching. ‘The knife, which you reached first?’
‘What of it?’ Gemal was curious in spite of himself.
‘I’ve been practising,’ Tarra scratched his chin, tried to control a nervous tic tugging the flesh at the corner of his eye. ‘Now let me try to make one last bargain with you. Or if not a bargain, perhaps a small wager?’
By now all the boats bar Gemal’s were fully loaded, waiting, sails slack where they were held side on to the breeze. Only Tarra himself, Gemal and two of his Yhemnis remained on the shore. And of course Old Scaly. ‘You’ve nothing to wager with,’ Gemal pointed out.
‘Oh, but I have,’ said Tarra. ‘You said it yourself: my lizard and my life.’
Gemal laughed, but a trifle shrilly, almost desperately. ‘And you’d really gamble the latter? Against what?’
‘Against a trip to Shad, with you, in your boat there.’ And again Tarra’s shrug. ‘I always was a wanderer, Cush Gemal.’
‘Madman!’ Gemal hissed. ‘I think you’re mocking me!’ He stood erect, scowling, then quickly made up his mind. ‘Very well, what’s the bet?’
Tarra took a step closer, lifted his hands chest high, thumbs pointing in toward his body. And Gemal knew what the bet was, for he saw the Hrossak’s eyes where they peered at the jewelled hilt protruding from the scabbard at his hip. ‘I’ve been practising, like I said,’ Tarra repeated. ‘And now who’s fastest, Cush Gemal? Shall we see?’
Gemal’s black lieutenants also stepped closer. Tarra looked at them, then at their master. Gemal had likewise lifted his hands chest high. ‘My sword?’ he said. ‘But you can’t possibly win, Tarra.’ His voice was soft as the sand underfoot. ‘Why, I’ve only to let my hand fall, and—’
‘Ready when you are,’ said Tarra. And in the selfsame split second Gemal made his move. His hand blurred down toward the jewelled hilt, came to rest on top of Tarra’s, jerked back in shock and disbelief!
The eyes of Gemal’s frizzies popped. They drew long, curved knives – but Tarra’s was longer. It slithered from its scabbard in a whisper of steel, came to rest with its point tickling Gemal’s windpipe. ‘And how’s this for bargaining?’ The Hrossak’s turn to whisper.
Gemal’s blacks backed off. The clatter from the ships had died down in a moment. All was silent, with only the slaps of sails, the occasional grunt of a honker and the hush, hush of wavelets on the strand to disturb the electric atmosphere.
‘What do you want?’ The knob of Gemal’s throat bobbed only half an inch from needle tip of scimitar.
‘At the moment, staying alive’s my only concern,’ Tarra answered.
‘No one will harm you, so long as I’m not harmed,’ Gemal husked.
Now would seem the best chance Tarra had had, possibly the best he’d get; there was nothing he couldn’t demand and win. But how long would he keep it? And anyway, that hadn’t been his deal. Whatever Cush Gemal had or had not done, so far he’d played fair with the Hrossak. And what if Tarra did demand Jezza and Loomar’s release, and a trio of ponies to carry them out of here? By the time all was arranged and the ponies off the boats, someone would have put a bolt in him, be sure. Even now he could hear small splashes as frizzies, coming out of their stupefaction, slipped overboard of the boats to swim ashore. All of these thoughts taking but a moment to pass through Tarra’s mind. Then—
He let fall the tip of the scimitar, direct into the mouth of its scabbard, then tilted the hilt and slid the weapon rattling home. Gemal’s jaw fell open and his eyes disbelievingly followed the length of the curved blade as it went home in leather; then those same astonished orbs turned themselves on Tarra. ‘Totally insane!’ he declared.
‘What?’ said Tarra, his face open and completely innocent. ‘But it was only a game, sort of. Or maybe a lesson. A lesson in trust, in faith.’ Gemal’s very words, as he’d spoken them in his tent that time.
‘You mock me!’ The slaver’s black eyes were round as saucers. ‘Do you think you can teach me anything?’
‘Not you, no,’ Tarra told him, shaking his head. ‘But it might teach those men you travel with a thing or two. Take me with you to Shad and they’ll see you’re a man of your word, a man of honour. They’ll have faith in you. But only have me killed…their trust dies with me. A very bad move, for a man whom so many various people seem to trust beyond all normal bounds.’
For a moment the tableau held: the two staring at each other on that narrow strand, Gemal’s men starting to creep forward again, and the ships on the loch silently waiting. And then the slaver chief threw back his head and laughed. And mercifully, there wasn’t an ounce of malice in all his gales of laughter.
‘Tarra Khash,’ said Gemal when at last he could, ‘truly I believe you’re the first man – the first true man, mind and muscle – I’ve met in too many years! Very well, then, Shad it is. Aye, and we’ll make room for your big lizard, too. Except—’ and his eyes narrowed and grew sterner, ‘—don’t ever tell me I didn’t warn you …’
All of this, through the eye of his marvellous shewstone, Teh Atht observed in private in his apartments overlooking the Bay of Klühn. And he marvelled at Tarra
Khash’s audacity and skill in side-stepping (what were for any other man) certain death, and he wondered at the Hrossak’s penchant for flirting with that Ultimate Opponent Invincible. Invincible, to anyone not already immortal.
As for Tarra’s perversity – and how else might one describe his apparent determination to crawl into the jaws of hell? – the wizard was torn two ways. On the one hand he feared for Tarra’s life…but on the other he was mindful of his own prime objective, to discover Black Yoppaloth’s most secret secret. For if indeed the steppeman should reach and penetrate jungled Shad’s barbaric splendours, be sure Teh Atht would be right there with him – in mind at least, if not in the flesh.
And so the wizard sat in the room of his astrologarium, with his back to the whorl and reel and interminable turmoil of fortune’s myriad stars, planets and moons, and watched (but carefully, so as not to become himself subject of some other’s scrutiny) the events aboard Cush Gemal’s five boats, where now they bore out through the mouth of the loch and into the Eastern Ocean, bearing very nearly south for Shad.
He saw the land recede in the wake of the boats where they ploughed the waves abreast, and the darkening of the sky as stormwinds drove clouds from the east. Ah, but these were strange clouds, bred of forces outside of Nature!
Until now the boats had gone but slowly, with only sufficient of wind to propel them as made rowing unnecessary; but as the sky darkened so the wind freshened, and it was a wind that blew against the ships, which reared up the waves and made the going rough and roaring. Then – a wonder! Even in Teh Atht’s eyes – an astonishing sight!
Far overhead the storm clouds fetched a halt, colliding a while in a mighty confusion before turning and racing in a new direction – in the direction of Shad itself! And now, still amazed, the white mage of Klühn turned his wary gaze on the black tent of Cush Gemal where that smallest of pavilions had been erected and made fast in the very prow of his boat. And he saw the scintillant green fires which fell from the sky to flicker in its scalloped eaves and along its ridges, and drip like flaming incense from its tassels.
