by Brian Lumley
1 Ice-Planet
Wrapped safely in a bubble of air formed of the substance of Armandra's familiar winds, the trio sped down the eye of the fantastic waterspout-cum-tornado. The journey would be shorter this time, for the distance between Numinos and Dromos was not so great. In the almost complete darkness the inner wall of the twister was a bluish sheen of incredible motion viewed beyond their protective bubble; and now, recovering from the heart-stopping, strangling effects of nightmarish acceleration, de Marigny comforted the girl in his arms and tried to explain, as best he could, what they were about.
They each took a pinch of Annahilde's warming powder, and as it gradually took effect and apprehension of the unknown waned a little in Moreen's heart, so she began to question de Marigny, to absorb and believe the many wonderful things he told her. Then, surprised at her rapid recovery and acceptance of her present position, he asked her if she were not afraid.
`Afraid?' her voice was tiny in the darkness. 'There are so many things I don't understand, and Annahilde used to say that ignorance is fear. In that way I suppose I'm afraid. But afraid of flying to Dromos and of what we might find there? No, I think not. Should I be afraid when you are here with me, who came from the Motherworld to fetch me out of the Isle of Mountains?'
Noreen,' he began, 'you should know that there may well be dangers ahead, and that —'
`Dangers we will face together,' she put her fingers to his lips. 'You and I and the Warlord, until we find this box you seek so urgently. And of what dangers do you speak? No creature of flesh and blood will harm me, nor you when you are with me — except perhaps evil men or Lord Ithaqua . . .' She paused and de Marigny felt her shudder where she lay weightless in his arms.
'I have flown with him, too,' she finally continued, 'in the skies over Numinos. But he is not like you. No one — no thing — is like unto Ithaqua.' She found de Marigny's mouth and kissed it.
Then for a while they were silent, Annahilde's powder producing warm sensations of well-being within them, and soon de Marigny became very conscious of the girl's lovely body pressed tight to his, of her form that clung to him and set his flesh tingling despite the thick fur garment he wore.
Moreen, too, for all her innocence, felt the fire that burned in her Earthman's blood. Now she knew him for a real man, and her pulse quickened to match his. Then —
Breaking the spell, coming to them from the darkness close at hand, faint stirrings and a sighing groan!
'Hank!' de Marigny whispered, horrified at the thought of what would happen if the Warlord should inadvertently waken from his telepathic trance and lose control over the vast funnel that bore them through the void. Tor God's sake!'
`No panic, Henri,' came the Warlord's waking rumble. `Armandra has it in hand. She only needed me to help out with the takeoff — to supply a one-hundred-percent location statement and to get things started. Now she's completely taken over. She'll get us to Dromos, all right, and help set us down safely, too — but from then on we're on our own. Dromos is too far out, at the very extremes of her reach. You may as well know it right now: if we fail to find the clock, we're stuck.'
Sighing his relief that all was well, at least for the moment, de Marigny answered: 'And meanwhile Ithaqua just sits somewhere out there and watches us wriggle, right?'
That's the way I read it, yes. Right now, if he wanted to, he could take me, you, Moreen — all of us and the time-clock too.'
`Then why doesn't he do just that?'
`There's something else he wants.'
'Armandra?'
'Right — but that's not going to happen.'
'Armandra?' came Moreen's voice in the darkness. `She is your woman, Warlord?'
`Call me Hank,' he answered. 'She's my woman, yes, and a daughter of Ithaqua, too. He wants her more desperately than all three of us together. But he'll never have her, not while I live.'
Silberhutte paused, and when next he spoke his tone had lightened somewhat: 'About our destination, Henri. Now is as good a time as any to tell you what I know of Dromos — possibly the only chance I'll get. Moreen, you'd best listen in, too, and learn what you can .. .
`Armandra tells me that Dromos is an ice planet, and that the habitation of its dwellers lies far below the surface in huge caves of ice in the bowels of a vast, near-extinct volcano. That's one of the reasons she won't be able to help us leave when the time comes, for we'll probably be deep underground — or at least, under ice.
`As for the inhabitants of Dromos — they were men, once.'
`Were men?' de Marigny questioned. 'What are they now?'
`Surely men are men,' Moreen added. 'What else could they be?'
'I honestly don't know,' the Warlord replied. 'I know only as much as Armandra has told me. I'll try to explain.
The ice-priests of Dromos were first taken there millions of years ago by lthaqua in his youth. Like all men, they had their origin on Earth the Motherworld, but at a time predating the dinosaurs. If Atlantis was yesterday, their world was years ago! They were of a primal continent at the dawn of Earth's prehistory, lost in such unthinkable abysses of the past that you could never convince any modem scientists back home that they ever existed at all.
'All of these things Armandra plucked from her father's mind when she was a child and he used to tempt her with telepathic tales of his deeds and his wanderings between alien spheres. She even learned the name of that primal continent, and that of the city which the ice-priests ruled with cruelty, terror, and through their skill at casting monstrous visions, mass hallucinations with which to confuse the minds of the common people.
'The land was called Theem'hdra, and the city of the ice-priests was Khrissa, a place of massive basalt slabs in Theem'hdra's frozen northern regions. There the ice-priests conjured their evil illusions and worshipped dark gods, among which was this same Ithaqua we know now. And indeed all of this was so long ago that the Wind-Walker himself has all but forgotten the details. For while he is very nearly immortal, ageless, yet all of this was in his youth.
'Of the ice-priests themselves: they were a tall, thin, hairless race, white as death and cold and cruel as ice itself. They set themselves up as the saviours of Theem'hdra, saying that only their black prayers could keep the ice at bay, that great wall of ice that crept down from the north each winter and grudgingly retreated as the seasons waxed warmer. But those must have been monstrous prayers indeed, for in company with them the priests would kill off hundreds of women, human sacrifices to propitiate their hideous gods.
'And you ask, Moreen, how men can be other than men? I don't call such as these things I've described men.'
Here de Marigny asked, 'And Ithaqua brought these ice-priests to Dromos, you say? How many of them and why?'
They could almost sense the Warlord's shrug in the darkness. 'I'm not sure; but you may be certain he had his reasons. Armandra tells of a great war that raged between certain of Theem'hdra's barbarian nations and the people of Khrissa, when the city lay under seige for many years while the barbarians bided their time outside the massive basalt walls. Perhaps that had something to do with it — perhaps Ithaqua took his priests out of the doomed city as repayment for their tainted worship. Who can say?
'At any rate, there's little more to tell. As I've said, Dromos is an ice planet, perpetually frozen, but it wasn't always so. Armandra tells that simultaneous with the coming of the ice-priests into Dromos, Ithaqua wrought a fantastic climatic change in the moon. Prior to that time there had been a great volcanic belt about Dromos, which was not to the Wind-Walker's liking; he finds all sources of warmth abhorrent.
'As time passed, however, the volcanoes became extinct until only one remained: the hugest cone of all, still rumbling threateningly, with a throat that went down almost to the moon's core. When he brought the ice-priests from doomed Khrissa, Ithaqua made it a condition of his mercy that they become instrumental in damming up that last great vent, thus turning Dromos into the frozen world which it is now. How he or th
ey achieved this, I'm at a loss to say; but as we all know well enough, Ithaqua defies all Earthly laws and sciences . .
Following Silberhutte's narrative, for a few moments there was silence, then de Marigny said: 'Well, if that's Dromos as you've described it, it sounds like a pretty inhospitable place to me. And I can't say I much fancy the idea of these ice-priests, either!'
'Neither them nor their priestesses,' added Moreen. Priestesses!' de Marigny repeated her, surprise showing in his voice.
`The facts of life, Henri,' came the Warlord's humourless chuckle. 'Your girl has a head on her shoulders. Perhaps the ice-priests are less inhuman than we picture them.'
`Yes,' the other replied, equally dryly, 'but then again, perhaps they're not . .
Not long after, their journey came to an abrupt end. On this occasion, however, de Marigny was ready for it, was prepared at any moment to use his cloak in the manner accustomed, so that it came as no surprise when the vast and whirling tube fell apart around them.
Down they swept through the debris of the collapsed funnel — which drifted as shimmering ice-crystal curtains and flurries of fine snow — toward glacial Dromos. The air was thin and icy, though mercifully no winds blew, and so the surface of the world a mile below was crystal clear to their eyes in every minute detail. Had the scene been other than utterly barren and white, then it might have been beautiful. It would be beautiful, but not to any lover of life. For Dromos, at least on the surface, was quite dead.
What little light filtered its way out here from the sun, or down from the weirdly lucent heavens, was reflected in millions of tiny points of light from the frozen surface. Great drifts of snow — forming white and blue dunes whose slopes scintillated dazzlingly, with crests miles apart — marched to the distant horizons and formed the only topographic features to be seen . . . almost.
For as they dropped down closer to the surface, they now saw against the horizon a series of distant mounds silhouetted against the subtly auroral backdrop of the sky. Since these huge domed hills were obviously not merely gigantic snowdrifts (which everywhere else seemed perfectly uniform in height and formation), they must be rounded mountains, perhaps the range of dead volcanoes for which the trio searched.
And so for more than an hour they followed in silence the cloak's strange shadow across the deep snows, buoyed up and assisted on their way by Armandra's small friendly winds; until at last they were in the frozen white foothills that led upward to vast, extinct volcanic cones. They flew high above a range of six such bowls, each one filled to its craterlike brim with drifted snow, before spying some miles ahead a dome almost twice the size of any of the others. This could only be — must surely be — that final prehistoric vent into whose throat, in countless ages past, Ithaqua had transported the Khrissan ice-priests. And according to Armandra this was where the ice-priests dwelled to this day.
And now, as they gained elevation to fly across that looming crater wall at a height of many thousands of feet, they saw . . . an impossible sight!
For here was no great bowl of drifted snow but a spiralling ice-cut stairway that coiled down and down into that terrific throat and finally disappeared far below in a dark blue gloom. Hardly daring to believe their eyes, the cloak-fliers descended into that mighty blowhole, and as they drifted slowly down past the first of those Titan-carved steps — each one of which had a rise as tall as a tall man — so their senses once more were astounded.
Not by sight this time but sound!
Or was it purely physical sound? No, not sound as ordinary men know it; though certainly Silberhutte recognized the phenomenon at once, and his companions took only a little longer. For it was a voice they heard — a deeply booming, clinically cold and correct voice — and while it seemed to have its source deep down in the volcano's throat, the trio knew now that they heard it only inside their heads!
A voice, yes — a telepathic voice that said 'Welcome, strangers — welcome to Dromos. The ice-priests await you, as they have waited since the dawn of time!'
2 Beneath the Volcano
Beckoned on by the voice that called in their heads from unknown depths below, the trio drifted down past tiers of descending, colossal steps that swept around the perimeter of a vent all of a mile across. After 'hearing' the voice that first time, they had heard no more, but still eerie mental echoes reverberated in their minds.
To say that the three were wary would be to severely understate the apprehension they felt, particularly Silberhutte. For the Warlord was experienced in telepathic communication, and he had detected behind the voice's welcome certain sinister undertones. 'The ice-priests await you,' the voice had said, which was to admit knowledge of their coming. Who, then, had foreseen and foretold their eventual arrival on Dromos, when they themselves had not known of it for a fact until so recently?
Who else but Ithaqua himself, when he deposited the lure here, the time-clock, knowing that they must follow on behind sooner or later! Little wonder that the Wind-Walker had been so crazed with lunatic glee when last they had seen him high over the plateau, his mighty fist clenched about the time-clock.
The ice-priests await you, as they have waited since the dawn of time.' Since the dawn of time? Merely for the arrival of three mortals come to Dromos on an impossible quest? But then again, perhaps that was it exactly; perhaps any mortals would suffice, would satisfy the needs of the ice-priests — whatever those needs were. Such were the thoughts that passed through the Warlord's head; and because of them he grasped his massive axe, rescued from the debris of battle atop Moreen's peak, more tightly as he hung in his harness below de Marigny and Moreen.
As for de Marigny: he now wore in his belt his original picklike weapon, reclaimed when the Warlord discarded it, and its presence there comforted him inordinately. While he had taken the voice's welcome at its face value, (for the moment at least,) and while he did not have Silberhutte's acumen in matters of mental communication, still he remembered well his friend's tale of the cruelty of the ice-priests. And his arm tightened protectively about the girl whose slender legs encircled his waist and whose arm hugged his neck.
Moreen, too, was full of doubt, but she must now go where the men from the Motherworld went, placing herself entirely in their care. If that meant exploring the bowels of a huge volcanic vent, wherein as yet unknown intelligences - 'men,' perhaps — had their lair, then that must be the way of it. Still, she comforted herself, while Dromos was a strange, cold world and most mysterious, Numinos had never been a paradise. She had known hardships before and would probably know them again before finding that Elysia of which her Earthman had spoken and which he sought so avidly. And, she reminded herself, it was by no means certain that they ever would find Elysia; for de Marigny had told her that there would be dangers, and he had tried to hint that they could well be insurmountable. Well, she had been brave enough when she shrugged his warning off — but now?
Now Silberhutte interrupted the thoughts of his companions to say: 'Henri, if we can be contacted that way by the ice-priests, then it should be just as easy for us — for me at least — to contact them. While it's obvious we can't stay up there on the surface, that we must get on as quickly as possible and find the clock, still I would like to know more about where we're going and what we're letting ourselves in for. So steady as you go arid give me time to get a few answers, or at least time to pose a few questions.' And with that he fell silent.
Knowing his friend to be probing telepathically ahead, searching for the minds of the as yet unknown ice-priests, de Marigny slowed the rate of the cloak's descent to little more than a gentle drift and waited breathlessly for the Warlord's report. And almost immediately Silberhutte's sixth sense detected something in the dark blue gloom below. A mental motion, a purely psychic seething — a lurking presence . . . no, many presences — a conclave of shadowy minds, a cesspit of evil influence!
For a split second he had caught the ice-priests, who or whatever they were, unawares; but that was all the t
ime it took for him to determine their purpose — which was, as the Warlord had feared, nothing less than to snare the three who now descended toward their subterranean lair! A split second only to divine not only this but also something of how it would be done.
These things Silberhutte learned from that single moment of telepathic contact, these and one other: that while the ice-priests may well have been men once long ago in fabulous Theem'hdra, they most certainly were not men now! No race of men could possibly have minds like these, which reeked of an evil as ancient as the CCD themselves.
This was as much as he was allowed to know, for no sooner was his presence felt by the ice-priests than they shut his mind out, blocking his telepathic power as surely as if it had never existed. Silently the Warlord cursed himself for letting the ice-priests discover him, then gripped his harness tightly and turned his face up to look at de Marigny and Moreen where they swung together beneath the canopy of the cloak above him.
'Get out of here, Henri!' the Warlord shouted. 'Take us up, man — before it's too late!'
But a moment later, as de Marigny desperately tried to manipulate the studs that controlled his wonderful garment, he knew the worst: that they were already too late. For now, as if somewhere below the blades of a great fan had begun to turn, air was being sucked down the narrowing bore of the volcano in huge gulps, creating too much of a drag for the already overloaded cloak to defy.
For a few moments de Marigny fought the rapidly increasing suction but then, as the turbulence became such that he was obliged to seek the centre of the bore where there was less danger of being tossed against the steep steps of ice, he gave up the unequal struggle and fought instead to keep the cloak stable as it was drawn down toward whatever fate awaited it
