by Chris Turner
The companions, distraught, fled deeper into the knitted darkness while the giants outside seemed to labour on, unearthing rock, flinging stone and soil high in the sky. The giants’ toil quaked the earth. Dull thuds rocked the tunnels and the fugitives looked behind in terror. Their nail-torn fingers clutched at the rocky sides, cold and rough to the touch. The caves were an infernal warren of knife-edge turns and dead ends—sometimes hardly a bow stave in height, two paces wide—narrow pathways that jumped out of nowhere, impeding their progress, heightened by the ancient stalactites that thrust down like spikes in their path, once formed from the raw seepage of an ancient river.
In sheer mockery, they lost the garland. It slipped from Risgan’s grasp, tumbling down into a yawning pit. They halted in horror on the edge of the black chasm, breath suspended in sick dismay. Down, down the golden treasure tumbled and the pride of Mirdask fell with it, lost forever...
With the deprivation of the prize, their bargaining chip fell with it, and the opportunity to redeem themselves fled away on the night. Their knees buckled in defeat. They crouched quivering on the cold stone, blinking under Risgan’s lonely, flickering light.
They cursed their idiot’s luck.
Risgan rallied them. Skirting the chasm, they groped blindly for a passage that might lead around its black maw and to a place of safety. After a dozen false starts, they were brought back around to the precipice they had left, after many winding ways. They were hopelessly lost and were ready to lie down and die. Moeze suddenly gave a glad shout. A patch of light revealed itself in a far off tunnel beyond several spidery hanging cave formations. Risgan could smell the waft of fresher air. A sea of stars blinked back against a dark sky.
They stumbled closer. From the welcome patch came the night sky and a whiff of freedom!
Risgan parted lips and halted before the cranny, rubbing his grimy beard. They had come out of the black labyrinth and the back of the ridge, somewhere near the bottom of the caves at the desert’s floor. With all the prayers to the gods, they squeezed through the slit and sucked in fresh air. They lay on their backs rejoicing.
Risgan urged them on. Down into the ghostly valley they staggered—for the bloody work of Evref’s giants was hardly over.
* * *
As much distance as possible had been put between the haunted ridge and Evref’s death-dealing minions by morning. The exhausted travellers gazed blinkingly into the reddish-yellow glare, out upon a blaze of endless plains flat as the sea. The ridge was far behind them, a broken blot of brown waste etched on a shimmering horizon. There was no sight of the stone men. Evref’s terrors seemed to have abandoned them.
For now.
Fearing possible assaults by ghoulmen, the treasure-hunters lengthened their stride. Balael was convinced that in their mad dash through the night, they had passed far north of the ghoulmen’s haunts, likewise, the sacred way of Vhaud’s columns. “If ghoulmen are about here,” he remarked stoutly, “we shall know soon enough.”
That dire thought remained a mirthless echo in their aching heads.
For two long days the vagabonds travelled, surviving on undercooked isk meat and a fear of the returning stone men. Kahel had felled isks and scavenging hyenas. A sabre-hacked dagbar branch and an angling of the sun’s rays through one of Risgan’s clear glass beads, had built them a crude fire, on which they fried their grizzled meat, which was edible at least, though bitter and requiring force to slide down the gullet.
* * *
By pure luck, they came to the brink of an impossibly-high embankment overlooking an ancient riverbed. Could it be the one Evref mentioned in passing? The plateau spread far north and south where the sun beat down on them mercilessly. Like a relentless scourge, waves of heat plunged the plain in baking death. Shimmering heat lines wavered like ripples of water. The hard packed earth was cracked, parched and no rain had fallen here for years. They found Lim-Lalyn, in that blaze of dawn: a ruined array of sarsens fixed in a triangular configuration. It stood atop a network of synchronized mounds. Boulders lay geometrically poised at the edge of an impassable canyon, just as the magician Evref had foretold.
The treasure-hunters gaped in wonder at the remains of a valiant caravan, crafted of ivory and teakwood—it was some desert convoy long lost, laden with once unspeakable treasures over which they had made their last stand. The withered bones of the many defenders lay parched in jumbled heaps—skulls, femurs, forearms, digits, many still clutching their rusty weapons. The last guards had erected their half-finished fane here before they had perished defending it. Aside the rotten wood and the ivory ribs of a once-beautiful caravan lay a dozen skulls and an assortment of broken chests untouched for centuries.
“Well, what have we here?” mused Risgan.
There was no treasure here now, only emptiness and gloom, grim memories suffused with sorrow. The ark-cradle was gone. The legendary trove of fused gold, diamonds, rubies and pearls, as described by Phon the wizard and the geographer was long vanished.
Though the companions searched and dug and poked about the dry soil, no treasures could be unveiled—long had they been spirited away.
“Well, here we are, come all this way for nothing,” sputtered Kahel miserably. “Are you happy now, Relic Hunter? We have journeyed all these leagues—for only bones and sorrow.” He gave him a bitter shove.
“Perhaps not, archer. There may be something lingering about in this rubble.” Risgan kicked savagely at the bones. Digging with a fugitive hope, he wished that his comrade could be wrong.
But the hope was a vagrant one.
“There is nothing here, Risgan,” echoed Hape sorrowfully. “It seems we have come all this way for naught.”
“I can’t believe it,” muttered Risgan, shaking his head.
The troupe peered disconsolately over the naked rim of the valley. They saw miles of scrub, sun-scorched boulders and dead dryness as far as the eye could see.
“Speaking of the end of the line—did you hear something?” growled Jurna.
The distant thud of stone spoke of marvel below. They peered down over the rim of the embankment to spy the seven stone giants, carefully threading their way toward them from the other side of the riverbed.
Risgan reeled back in terror. Down the ravine the giants plodded steadily. Through the scarred, cracked gulch like mechanical ghouls of some far-off dream, scions of the naked shale itself.
The echoing thuds were real. Could he be dreaming? Would Evref’s campaign ever end?
Risgan cursed Kahel. “What folly have you and your dimwit crony got us into?”
With fright and loathing, he fled with the others, their feet hot puddles of lead in their boots, already aching miserably from the far trek across the barrens.
A mile passed. The companions dropped in utter exhaustion. Despair washed over them and leadened their tortured limbs.
Hape hissed out in his delirium: “Perhaps we can coax Evref to forgo his vendetta—perhaps by offering up the rattle?”
Risgan gave a hoarse croak of laughter. “Evref will never stop his vendetta. He will slaughter us regardless of whether we give him the rattle or not. Recall, the garland is lost. ’Twas the only thing he cared for.”
Kahel grunted his agreement. Beyond human efforts the five picked up their feet. Now they skirted the canyon on a path south, parallel to the cliff. Not far ahead appeared places of breakage in the embankment—perhaps a spot to make a crossing?
Risgan glared. The cliff fell to manageable heights. The giants, notably, were beating a difficult path up the steep face of the canyon. In a ploy to keep them busy, Risgan kept up their pace along the riverbed’s rim, luring the megarets to a back-breaking ascent.
* * *
Time passed; the giants they left behind. For days the companions wandered a stark region of eerie rock formations, around whose contours came soft moans as small breezes coursed through their ranks. Risgan and his company stared at the dull peg-maze with dull fascination: discs, saddles,
volutes, spirals, a million inscrutable labyrinthine forms, as if the wind had carved them by caprice. Stumbling through an oasis of sandstone, they felt like puppets in a dusty dream. On isks they preyed, which roved the sky, though Kahel’s arrows were running short. The doomed men seemed only to have survived the persecutions of desert tribes and marauders by their lack of pack-beasts and didors which would make them easy targets from a distance. When one such unhappy incident occurred, it was only through Risgan’s quick thinking that he shook the Negir ceremonial rattle and sent the twenty or so Huag tribesmen howling off in terror on their turlyns.
The fugitives grew gaunt and hollow-eyed. A clam-quiet sullenness engulfed their company. When they did talk, bitter words were exchanged, accompanied by quarrels and fist fights. Often blows fell like anvils, and feet fell like ingots, as they resumed their weary march. The effects of privation took its toll. Lack of water had them looking like shrivelled mummies. The relentless sun pounded down on their heads. Indeed, water was the biggest concern for survival in these wastes and only through the greatest struggle, had Hape and Balael stumbled on a small oasis glimpsed from afar. Hape, whose eyes were keenest, claimed it was a gift from the gods. Lying on their bellies, they slurped greedily at the cool liquid, enough for three men each. All sought to carry as much water as they could in their small water-bladders hung at their belts, ruefully dreaming of didors, where-backs and supplies which would grant them passage across the desert back to Xumanthe. It was a tall hope. After many days, they thought themselves at least escaped from Evref’s minions...
Such was an arrogant assumption. Without pack beasts they were at the mercy of the desert. Straw legs buckled and raw-worn boots stumbled ever on over the merciless sands. At the brink of hallucination, the troupe laughed in hysterical unison. Vultures circled close now and blazing-eyed isks, waiting for at last one of them to drop so they could pick his bones. Risgan thought to spy a patch of palm trees ahead and water but his dizzy vision was untrustworthy; always he came back to focus on the endless horizon and sun-baked leagues of emptiness.
Hape, who had faltered often, soon fell and did not get up again. Thirst and exposure had had its way. Risgan mused sadly. His foolish submission to Kahel’s treachery had precipitated his demise. The companions buried their comrade under a crown of rounded rocks at the brow of a low-lying hill. So the buzzards could not gnaw at his bones.
A brief argument arose over what path to choose next. Balael claimed that by peculiarity of their zigzagging course in escaping the giants, they might have come far, far south. The trader outpost lay to the north, so Balael claimed. Jurna and Risgan disagreed: they opted to fare south while Kahel, trusting to Balael’s wisdom over Risgan’s, stuck to Balael’s course due north-east. There they parted ways.
Risgan wished them well. With a crestfallen sigh, he gave the archer a half-hearted salute, and sadly knew that he, Jurna and Moeze would never last long without the grim marksman’s arrows.
A period of hallucinations came in a haze of depression and stumbling vertigo. Blazing heat and sun ever took their victims. Not twelve hours passed before their leaden feet gave out in a final march. Their bleary eyes could take in nothing more, save a fabulous mirage—a fairy castle graced with twelve turrets. It hailed them ever on with delight as they approached their final destination at the edge of this sad world, yet never would they get any closer no matter which way their feet pointed. At the castle’s foot, a patch of cypress stood: a glint of oasis in this utopian vista with beautiful maidens dancing about in delight, tending to every whim a man might want. Jugs of water sat on the maids’ naked shoulders and carnal pleasures to boot. Dancing and merrymaking emanated off every breath of these fair maidens and Risgan was sure he had seen seven stone giants shambling in to crush the fair trees and the women, but curiously, unlike the fairy castle, these objects did seem to grow larger...
Then Risgan did a double take. “Run, you fools!” he cried hoarsely. Tottering to his feet, he stumbled on only to fall down again.
Seven giants rose higher, higher than ever, and taller than the three men in their oppressive shadow—shadows that sent blue-black bands of extinction lapping at their boots. Standing high on the shoulders of the tallest megaret, was Evref: a miniature menace, with arms folded on chest like some lord of the desert. A deathdealer who dealt men’s fortunes like gamblers their dice. The ghost magician glowered sombrely down at them, his nimbus a pulsing green-yellow parasite upon their skins.
Clutching at the wish bone, Risgan pleaded with all his might that the mad apparition may disappear, vanish, wither to dust—but at this juncture, he expected nothing.
The strangest thing happened. The giants stopped in mid-step. The stone sandals seemed lifted in a terrible poise, arms outstretched in last grasping vengeance, just as their log-thick fingers reached down to clutch Risgan and squeeze the life out of him and his band.
Risgan’s last blood and bones pulsed in limbo. Had the guardians passed an invisible threshold and the jurisdiction of their domain? Of their long dead magic? Was it the wishbone’s power? Risgan would be none the wiser, or more surprised if it were true, but where the titans stood, frozen in their original configuration, lifeless blocks of gargantuan stone towered.
Moeze chuckled. “They’re dead! We’ve won!” He clucked out an insane giggle.
Risgan rasped out a hiss. “’Tis a magical miracle... well...” But his lips could not find the words.
“Not magic,” rumbled Jurna. “The brutes simply have arrived at the end of Evref’s mad reach. Look!”
Risgan gazed and saw the magician fading, even as they spoke.
True enough, the sad, stern-face of the mage, now peeking over the shoulder of his carrier, shimmered and disappeared from the world of men forever.
The threesome put feet in front of them. Yet none could make another step. They fell in their tracks moaning, shielding their eyes from the sun and the sand. Never would they know what had spared them of Evref or his unrelenting giants.
* * *
A day passed and a stray band of riders heading to Xumanthe found the threesome fallen, lying at the feet of the mysterious statues. None had recalled ever seeing such gigantic minions before. The didor riders hauled the near dead men back on their mounts to Xumanthe and the Fortune Seeker’s Inn and excursions were made out into the steppe to find their missing comrades. But no luck prevailed. Of Balael and Kahel there was not a sign. Risgan feared the worst—that his colleagues had perished—even though they were so close to shelter! Two days at most? Balael and Kahel had perhaps been discovered by nomads and taken in? The prospect was not impossible. Yet... the desert was a desolate place and the isks were known to fly close to men who were on their deathbed. In his weakened condition, Risgan tried to put such thoughts out of his mind, but found it impossible.
To avoid penury, he decided to pawn the ceremonial rattle, but the relic was ill-received by the stringent Xumanthians. “In Bazuur there are suckers to pay good ozoks for such heathenish trash, but not here.”
With slighted pride, Risgan thought to rattle the talisman and spook the sceptics into penitence, but abandoned the idea, recalling Gilmin’s fervency and the doom it had brought upon him. Such a ploy was wasted on the hidebound folk of Xumanthe anyway. Risgan threw the rattle away, caring little for the ominous rumble that shook the distant sky. On second thought, he picked it up again.
In good time he and his band recovered from their starved and emaciated condition, faced with the uncomfortable truth that they were devoid of ozoks and saleable relics. The three paid for their room and board only by serving liquor in the seedy Fortune Seeker’s taproom and scrubbing potatoes in the sweltering back kitchen. So they suffered abuses at the landlord’s hand—shrill chidings and impossibly long hours of work.
As much as Risgan hated to admit it, his grand scheme of exploring the steppes and securing the treasure of Lim-Lalyn had failed. For the hundredth time he pondered the youth-and age-giving relic th
at he had unearthed in the crypt in Zanzuria, and the shameless string of bad luck that had besieged him ever since he had laid fingers on it...
3: The Time-smith of Ezmaron
Moeze the magician and Risgan the relic hunter managed to cobble together enough ozoks after a lengthy period of working at the Fortune Seeker’s Inn at Xumanthe to hire a ride by turlyn to the city of Bazuur to try their fortunes. Jurna the journeyman, not relishing the thought of dish patrol or sneering patrons, had already taken up with a brawny team of caravan riders who were headed northeast to the city of Dharpun along the old trade route of the Esper gold-mongers. He had signed on as scout and guard; the relic-retrieving business had left him high and dry after the near-fatal excursion to Lim-Lalyn, with the deadly stone giants nearly killing them and the loss of Hape and the archer Kahel.
Moeze had managed on first arrival to offend a passing grandee. “’Twas a miscarriage of magic,” the magician protested—and taking Risgan aside—“spawned by a footling attempt to fuse the power of Afrid’s hideous amulet with that of the ceremonial rattle.” Moeze was later apprehended and was presently serving a six-month jail term in the local dungeon, charged for insubordination, reckless endangerment, disturbing the peace, and a moral assault upon an upstanding citizen, all from harmless, though misplaced magic. The incident, which involved a deflated hot air balloon, two gondolas, a winged serpent, two where-backs (also sprouting wings), a flash freak storm and a colic whirlwind, had carried the gentlemen and gondola and where-backs aloft to a neighbouring roof. Risgan, alarmed and amazed, tried to save Moeze from incarceration and the rattle, but was unsuccessful.
