by Brian Lumley
But if sight of the time-clock was a glad thing, not so the other secrets prised from the ice-priest's ravaged brain; secrets which, when the Warlord knew them, drove all else from his mind in a passion of horror and fear -
Fear not for himself but for Armandra, the Woman of the Winds, wayward daughter of Ithaqua the Wind-Walker. Armandra, on her way to Dromos right now, at this very moment, and closely pursued by her mon-strous father!
For this was what the Warlord had most feared - that lthaqua had deliberately brought the time-clock to Dromos solely in order to trap Armandra - and now his fears seemed fully realized. He saw how the ice-priests had blocked Armandra's every telepathic attempt to contact her man, how they had insinuated their own doom-laden suggestions into her mind until she suffered continually from hideous doubts as to Silberhutte's well-being. Finally, when her spirit had been at its lowest ebb, then they had sent out a desperate cry for help, a cry cut short before Armandra could discover their deception, that this was not the Warlord who cried out in distress.
And of course the Woman of the Winds had not hesitated for a single moment but had set out at once to walk those eerie winds that constantly blow between the words. That act which Ithaqua had never once managed to persuade her to perform - despite his countless enticements, his myriad threats - she now undertook without a second thought. For she went, or so she thought, to the aid of her beloved Earthman, caught up in some nameless evil.
Silberhutte saw how well the plot had been laid and executed, and he heard the cynical, sniggeringly gleeful laughter of the ice-priest whose mind he had forced to reveal these things. He heard that laughter - heard it turn to a mental shriek, a cry of horror that went on and on, threatening to tear his living soul from him and drag it down to hell -
- And then de Marigny was pulling him away from the pit, away from the headless ice-encased thing whose thin blood drenched his hands and arms and pinkly patterned the broad blade of his axe.
'Hank!' de Marigny cried, 'what in all - ?'
'No time, Henri,' the Warlord answered, his voice a cracked whisper, his eyes suddenly deep sunken in a chalk-white face. 'No time for explanations. Armandra is coming here - Ithaqua, too - and before they get here, we have to find the clock. I know where it is, and it's close. But remember: there are two more of these creatures on the loose down here. If we meet up with them . . . then we must kill them by whatever means are available to us. And be sure about one thing, Henri,' he gripped the other's arm fiercely. 'They must be killed; we daren't leave one of them alive! The universe will never be safe or sane as long as things like the ice-priests live . .
6 The Last Ice-Priest
The trio of adventurers hurried from the shattered lair of the ice-priests, along the blue-glowing tunnel and out into the great gallery. As they went, the Warlord related all he had seen in the secret inner mind of the ice-priest. De Marigny immediately grasped most of what his friend had to say, but Moreen found Silberhutte's revelations much harder going.
The girl had no experience of Armandra, the Warlord's mate, and so found the idea of a mere woman walking on the winds that blow between the worlds hard to accept. And yet perhaps it really was so; indeed Moreen was not yet over the amazing way in which she herself had been transported between worlds; and had not that, too, been the work of this daughter of Ithaqua, this Armandra? But there would be time later, she told herself, for the pondering of such problems; for the moment it was an effort merely to keep pace with the two men, who seemingly raced against time itself.
Hurrying one-third of the way around the gallery's perimeter and ignoring several lesser burrows that branched off from it - including the one where the illusory insect-hounds had held Moreen and de Marigny prisoners - the Warlord unhesitatingly plunged headlong into a tunnel whose arched, icicle-festooned entrance was somewhat taller and wider than the rest. Racing along behind him, de Marigny and the girl followed the winding corridor of ice until, suddenly, they found themselves on a declining gradient down which it was as easy to slide as run. In a little while the sloping floor levelled out and then, coming around the final, gradual bend -
At first there was a reddish glow that lighted the ice walls and drowned their blue sheen in bronze tints, then a wash of heat that set the air to shimmering and caused the icicles of the high ceiling to drip as they slowly melted, and finally the bend was behind them while ahead they saw — the time-clock!
They saw it . . . across a river of sluggishly moving lava!
De Marigny was stunned, brought up short beside the Warlord where he had skidded to a halt on the wet ice not ten paces from the oozing flow of molten rock. The channel the lava followed entered the tunnel from a low, wide archway to the right, cut straight across the floor at right angles, and disappeared under a similar arch on the left. It was all of forty feet across, with a surface of powdery pumice that continually quivered and formed cracks, from which hissing clouds of steam emerged and an occasional tongue of red fire greedily licked.
Beyond the lava stream, leaning against a low mound of rocks and pebbles, with de Marigny's flying cloak in a heap at its base, the clock stood and seemed to waver in the heat haze rising from the lava barrier. De Marigny gazed longingly at the clock and knew it to be completely beyond his reach. He took a pace forward as if to defy the heat that already was searing his legs.
'How solid is that stuff?' he spoke over his shoulder to the Warlord. 'I mean, would it take my weight if I - '
'No way,' Silberhutte answered, placing a hand on the other's shoulder. `Look.' He quickly shrugged out of his fur jacket and twirled it round his head, then let the heavy garment fly out over the lava to fall in the middle of the stream. It alighted, glowed instantly red at its fringed edges, burst into flame even as the scum of surface pumice quivered and parted beneath its weight.
The sight of Silberhutte's jacket sailing out across the molten rock had given de Marigny an idea, however, and now he moistened his dry lips as he turned to the Warlord. `Armandra's little winds!' he exclaimed. `If they could lift my cloak, float it across here -'
Now the Warlord was interested; a gleam of hope came into his eyes as he gripped de Marigny's shoulder. 'Right!' he cried, turning to left and right, lifting his face and casting about in the sulphurous air for Armandra's familiar winds, finding - nothing.
`Not here?' de Marigny's voice echoed his disbelief, his disappointment. 'Then where are they?'
Hearing his words, the Warlord started as from some sudden shock. The haggard look came back into his eyes as he turned to his friends. 'I haven't contacted Armandra since we arrived on Dromos,' he said. 'At first I didn't want to, for if there was going to be trouble, I didn't want her following us here - better if she knew nothing of how things were. Now - well, she's coming anyway, called by those damned deceiving ice-priests. Yes, and she must be pretty close at that. Why else would her familiars leave us?'
`You think they've gone off to meet Armandra?' said de Marigny.
The Warlord nodded. 'They must have. Wait - ' He closed his eyes and a frown of mental effort gradually grew on his face.
De Marigny, not wanting to disturb the Warlord's concentration - knowing that he was attempting to contact Armandra telepathically, that the outcome would probably be vitally important - signalled Moreen's silence and himself kept perfectly still.
With the passing of a few more seconds the lines of effort on Silberhutte's face changed to lines of puzzlement, then of anger. Under his breath he said: `There's interference . . . those damned ice-priests . . . but I'm reaching her . .
In the next moment the words, 'Ithaqua - damn his black heart!' burst from Silberhutte's lips as, galvanized into frantic activity by what he had seen through Armandra's mind, he sped away back down the ice tunnel.
So as not to leave his friends completely in the dark as to his intentions, before passing out of sight around the curve of the frozen walls, he hoarsely called back: 'Stay here, Henri. Do what you can. Armandra is almost here - but
Ithaqua is closing in on her fast! I must see what I can do.' Then he was gone, but echoing back to the two at the edge of the lava river came his final words: `Good luck . . . !'
'Luck, Hank!' de Marigny yelled back, frustration and a clutching sickness welling up in him that there was nothing he could do to help the situation. In desperation he turned his attention once again to the lava barrier that alone kept him from the time-dock.
For locked in that machine, built into it by Kthanid the Elder God, was a weapon whose power could stop even the awesomely powerful Great Old Ones - the Cthulhu Cycle Deities themselves, of which Ithaqua was one. If only there were some way to cross this slow-moving flood of molten rock, then the rest would be a matter of the utmost simplicity. But there was no such way across .. . was there?
Yes, there was, but it made de Marigny's mind, his soul and entire body cringe merely thinking of it. He knew if he dwelled upon it too long that he could never bring himself to face it. But face it he must, for there was too much at stake here.
He turned from the river of lava and took twenty deliberate paces up the ice corridor before halting and turning back. Moreen saw his intention and ran toward him. 'You can't,' she cried, 'you can't! No man could leap that distance - it's too far.'
'A hop, a skip, and a jump,' he answered, gritting his teeth. 'I could have done it once; perhaps I still can.'
Trembling with horror, she stood back from him. 'You'll broil your legs - the lava will strip them to the bone! - and what if you slip and fall?'
'Don't, Moreen!' he almost snarled. have to try.' He faced the lava river, went into a half-crouch, and -
'No!' came a sharp mental command, booming and echoing in de Marigny's mind. 'No, Earthman, you are not to die here, not now. Ithaqua would not wish it so. He has his own plans for you - and for the girl.'
Maintaining his crouch and whirling into a defensive position, de Marigny's wide eyes found the crimson orbs of the ice-priest where the spindly giant had stepped from jagged shadows cast by a row of icy stalagmites. He prepared to launch himself at the gaunt creature, whose hands already were weaving strange patterns in the air; but a freezing coldness, a numbing paralysis was rapidly spreading through his limbs. In a moment the metamorphosis was complete; and with his muscles frozen into immobility, he toppled forward and crashed to the floor like a stone statue.
Now the ice-priest turned to Moreen, trapping her between himself and the molten rock river. Before he could fix her with his crimson eyes, however, or fascinate her with the mesmeric motions of his hands, she spun away from him and sped toward the lava. He swiftly followed, his eyes bright with a timeless lust, only pausing in his bony striding when the girl skidded to a halt close to the Warlord's discarded axe. She cast one terrified glance at her pursuer, then bent to grasp the great axe with both hands.
Laughing hideously in her mind, the ice-priest came on. She was a mere girl and could hardly lift the axe, much less put it to any use. Thus the incredibly ancient being believed, and possibly that was the way girls had been in olden Theem'hdra. This was why he now resorted to purely physical methods to take her, when he might easily have caught her by spinning a telepathic mind web.
But he had not reckoned with Moreen's desperation, her determination.
As he came up to her, the girl straightened, turning to face him and dragging the axe with her. Such was the weapon's weight that she had to lean backward to control it as, rising up with her turning, the axe pulled her arms out straight. The great blade passed in front of the ice priest's middle and pulled the girl around with it. He moved closer, intending to throw his arms about her and put an end to this farce - until at last he saw his danger.
She had increased her rate of spin and already the blade was flashing around again, faster, inexorably, to the point where it would make a deadly connection. The ice-priest saw this and could not believe his eyes - saw, and the evil smile of triumph died on his monstrous face - died even as he was to die. The blade of the axe, still sharp for all its grisly work, came leaping around and sliced into his side, crippling him and knocking him from his feet. Before he could do more than writhe in agony on the floor, Moreen hauled the axe free and used her last ounce of strength to swing it at his mushroom-domed head, splitting it like an overripe melon .. .
Moreen was still being sick when de Marigny limped up to her, his face a mass of bruises and small cuts. He paused to touch her shoulder - then looked beyond her with eyes which could no longer credit the truth of anything they saw. For when the ice-priest had died, so too had died the illusory river of lava!
A few paces away, Silberhutte's jacket lay on the frozen floor of the tunnel untouched by fire. The clock, its four hands moving on their great dial in completely incomprehensible patterns, seemed almost to wait in silent sentience beyond. But at last its waiting was at an end.
Silberhutte had entered the great ice gallery and was on the point of plunging into that tunnel which led back to the volcano entrance to the frozen underworld. Such were his exertions that his breath came in great gasps and his legs and arms moved like massive pistons. All the time he sought mental contact with Armandra, but telepathic intrusions from some undetermined source close at hand kept interfering. Then, suddenly, his and his woman's minds locked onto each other, became as one, and he skidded and slid to a halt just within the mouth of the tunnel as Armandra herself came around a curving wall of ice toward him..
Armandra, the Woman of the Winds! And borne up by the very air, she floated into view, inches above the floor of the tunnel, her hair a golden halo that drifted above her, her face a carmine skull that glowed through her flesh, her white fur jacket and skirt alive with eerie motion. She came, and recognizing her man's presence, a shudder passed through her as she settled to the floor and the carmine light died in her eyes.
Then they were locked in each other's arms, locked - physically and mentally, and their telepathic exchange was a barrage of passion and fear, of love and loathing as they told their tales in lightning-fast disorder; until at last the present loomed in on them and only one all-important fact remained uppermost in their minds. The fact that Armandra's awful father was close behind.
`How close?' Silberhutte asked out loud, taking her hand and hurrying her back along the way he had come, across the ice gallery toward the tunnel that led back to his friends, where - to his knowledge - they waited at the edge of a river of lava.
`He keeps his mind closed to me,' she gasped, exhausted by her journey through the interplanetary void. 'I don't know how close he is - but he's close, Hank, so close! I had the feeling he could have taken me at any moment, but that he deliberately held back. Now -
She paused, her now green eyes opening wide as an almost electric shock of horror passed through her. They froze at the entrance to that tunnel whose sinuous folds contained the time-clock and fearfully looked back. A blast of cold air — so cold that even they could feel it — blew snow and ice particles into the gallery, setting the myriad hanging icicles to an eerie creaking, a tinkling and chiming. The temperature dropped further still, plummeted, and the white rime upon every surface visibly deepened, turning the blue glow from the ice walls to a scintillant glare of madly winking diamonds.
`He's here!' she cried, even as an awful shadow fell across the gallery, flowing like ink from the tunnel mouth where so recently they were reunited.
`Close your mind to him!' the Warlord warned. Then, the paralysis broken, he caught Armandra up and ran into the tunnel, ran to where a huge hump of ice loomed up from the floor, and carried Armandra into the temporary protection of its shadow. From that position he watched the gallery, saw the monster Ithaqua — shrunken now but still three times greater in size than any man — stride into view.
Ithaqua! Anthropomorphic, black figure of hell, cold and dark as the spaces between the stars which spawned him, inky blot of a head turning this way and that, carmine eyes gazing — but only for a moment — into the very tunnel where Silberhutte and Armandra h
id from him. Then, when the monster would have passed them by —
'They're here, master, here!' came that treacherous telepathic voice in their minds, in Ithaqua's mind, too, from a source which only now made itself apparent.
It was as if the ice-priest had stepped out of thin air, or out of the walls of ice themselves; but now this sole survivor of his kind cast aside all magic and illusion to show himself, tall and gaunt — and cringing like a whipped dog before his monstrous master! One hand he used to fawningly beckon Ithaqua into the tunnel, urging him to hurry, while with the other he pointed out the hiding place of the Warlord and his woman.
And now Ithaqua came, webbed feet finding purchase on the icy floor, carmine eyes glaring suspiciously and massive fists clenched threateningly where they hung at his sides. He came, and the chill of empty space came with him, riming the walls and floor of the tunnel inches deep with frost in the space of only a few seconds. The ice-priest ran to greet him, held out spindly trembling arms to him in supplication -- was paid for his services with one lightning sweep of the monster's arm that flattened him to the iron-hard ice of the wall like a swatted fly.
Thus the last of the ice-priests died.
7 Eruption!
And as if that sole survivor of the immemorially ancient ice-priests had never existed — as if he had not been born evilly, lived evilly, and grown into the evil priesthood, finally to be snatched from the wrath of honest people and carried here by Ithaqua himself, only now to die so abruptly at the hands of that self-same storm-spawn — so the Wind-Walker ignored his shattered corpse and advanced into the tunnel.
