A HUNDRED yards up, the path opened into a clearing, in the center of which was a large mango tree. Close by was a pool, fed from the river through a shallow channel, and on its inky surface floated the jambuka image. On the bank several fish had been placed in a row.
Cummins examined the place for footprints—fruitlessly. At last he kicked the fish back into the water, gathered up what dry wood he could find, and burned the crocodile image, waiting until the “curio” was a mass of glowing embers.
“Palaver finish,” he muttered. “If this business had gone on much longer I’d have been bowing down to graven images myself.”
They would have to turn out all the villagers, he reflected, and scour the bush until they found Koreing. After that, the engineer would be sent back to civilization and sanity. As for the missing child . . . Cummins hastily dismissed the horrible thought that had come to him. After all, there were a hundred ways one could meet death in the African jungle.
But none of the villagers was willing to have anything to do with the sick ibo. Cummins’ offers of bribes were met with dull stares. He wished he had kept the D.C. with him, but the young man had seemed to think that a missing white civilian was none of his business.
“Sorry, old chap,” he had said. “I can’t spare any more time. Got to write up my blasted reports. According to that head-man of yours, all your friend has done lately is swim in the river and catch fish.
No law against that, you know. You’ve probably got a touch of fever yourself, Mr. Cummins. Better take some quinine.”
Cummins had been so disgusted by the D.C’s attitude that he had entirely forgotten to demand cooperation from the villagers.
“We go catchum white massa—you, me,” he told Twalo.
Twalo growled a decided negative, much to his master’s surprise.
“More better we go ’way one time, Massa Cummy. Me fright too much for look.”
Argument was useless. Cummins saw he would have to do the job himself. After all, there was no telling what further degradations Koreing might commit to imperil the white man’s prestige, and the fewer witnesses the better. What a fool he had been not to have borrowed the D.C’s rifle! It would be no fun sitting in a swamp with those murderous reptiles all around.
Taking only his mosquito net and a bottle of whiskey he went back to the clearing. Surely Koreing would visit the place again to recover his wooden plaything! What his reaction would be on finding it destroyed, Cummins could not guess—perhaps, he hoped, a return to sanity. Anyhow, the man was almost certain to drink some of the liquor which Cummins meant to leave under the tree—whiskey heavily doped with sleeping-powders.
On a long vigil one eventually becomes almost oblivious to one’s surroundings. Cummins was in that state when a slight splash in the pool made him sit up alertly. A crocodile was crawling up the bank. Another followed, and another, till there must have been nearly a dozen. The last to appear was an enormous brute, fully twelve feet in length. It advanced a little further from the water than the others.
A fetid, musky odor filled the air, but Cummins scarcely noticed it. For instead of the usual somnolent attitude of saurians on land, these brutes seemed to be waiting for something with tense expectancy. They kept their heads raised, and occasionally one would give a slight flick of his tail.
Presently there was a slight rustle in the bushes. An indistinct form came into view, halting at the base of the mango. The waiting reptiles shuffled closer. The patriarch in the lead opened its huge jaws; then shut them with a loud snap that startled Cummins. The vague blur in the shadow dissolved into two parts. The foremost straightened up and advanced a few paces.
It was Koreing—Koreing covered with the black ooze of the river and bearing no likeness at all to a white man anymore, or, indeed, to a human being. The light was too vague to make out details, but it seemed to the watcher that Koreing was searching for something. He padded around the opened space with hunched shoulders, ignoring the bottle of whiskey, plainly visible in a patch of moonlight. When he reached the spot where Cummins had burned the fetish he dropped to his knees and began groping in the ashes.
Now was the critical moment. Would this beast-man recover from his strange malady, freed from the evil influence of the crocodile image? Or would he—Cummins held his breath.
But Koreing showed no more emotion than the reptiles around him. He squatted motionless for several minutes. The big crocodile made a sweep with its tail, and as though at a signal the others crawled closer, their short legs moving together in a kind of awkward rhythm.
Koreing put his head down till it was almost on a level with that of the beast. Then, apparently remembering something, he clambered over the back of the giant saurian and on all fours returned to the mango tree.
Cummins strained his eyes to see what would come next. Unfortunately it was not possible to follow Koreing’s movements without shifting his own position, and he had no intention of frightening Koreing away now. He waited.
Again Koreing came into the moonlight. This time he was erect and carrying something in his arms, something that seemed to struggle feebly. Cummins, shocked into forgetfulness of his own danger, stood up, moved forward out of the mangrove thicket.
But none of the crocodiles took the least notice of him. Their dull opaque eyes were fixed on Koreing’s burden—a feebly struggling native child.
Too dazed to scream, the boy—obviously the one who had disappeared from the village—could only express his fear in choking sobs. Koreing raised him high and commenced a chant in a throaty animallike gibberish, swaying his body from side to side, increasing the tempo with every dip.
THE action roused Cummins; he leaped, forgetting the monsters underfoot. In his haste he tripped and fell over the giant tail of the nearest saurian. For a moment he lay, blinded with the sticky ooze and half asphyxiated by the nauseous odor that clung close to the ground. Around him jaws snapped and heavy bodies squelched through the slime. When he cleared his eyes and struggled to his feet he found Koreing gone.
The crocodiles were milling around at the foot of the bank, which was about four feet high. On the verge of the incline the native child lay, wide-eyed and frozen with terror. Behind the boy something crouched, something that Cummins did not at first recognize. Then a cold sweat broke through his pores; he stood rooted in mud, staring up blankly.
The thing was neither brute nor human. Its dull eyes passed unseeingly over the watching white man and the hideous crocodiles waiting below. Whether it was imagination or the fantastic effect of moonlight and shadow through the overhanging jungle Cummins never knew, but it seemed to him as though the creature lying belly down opposite him underwent a metamorphosis. The streaks of dirt on the once white body seemed to assume the reticulated appearance of scales, and the bowed head, hidden in shadow, seemed oddly malformed and inhuman. The arms were grotesquely bowed, pointing outward at the elbow like the limbs of the monsters beside the pool.
“K-Koreing!” Cummins called hoarsely, forcing the word through parched lips.
There was no answer, no sound save for the shuffling of the crocodiles as they moved to and fro in restless impatience.
CUMMINS plunged through the mud and gained the bank. He snatched the child and ran for the tree. But he had reckoned without the beast-man.
Koreing—if Koreing it was—snarled savagely and struck at Cummins. His teeth clicked together audibly. The loose dirt on the bank gave way.
Perhaps it was this that saved Cummins. Koreing was momentarily distracted. The fallen earth formed a slope up which the crocodiles could climb, and the monsters moved forward swiftly. Hampered by the child-, Cummins almost lost his balance; he flung himself forward desperately. From the corner of his eye he saw the deadly circle closing in. Something stirred in the outspread branches above his head, and a naked arm shot down.
“Massa, me catchum!”
Twalo! Cummins did not hesitate. He thrust the little black body upward, grunting with relief as Twa
lo clutched the child.
“Massa, you go ’way one time.” Good advice, but not easy of accomplishment. All around Cummins horny bodies were twisting and squirming; huge snouts nuzzled at his legs as the horrible creatures slithered back and forth uneasily. The thing that had once been Koreing had retreated to the edge of the mangroves. Cummins shuddered as he noted the lusterless eves, now glazed and bestial and inhuman. Whatever slight veneer of civilization had clung to the man up to this moment had vanished completely. Koreing was back in the dim past—a past that reached into a period long before the first ape-man left the trees to battle the lesser beasts for supremacy.
Dripping with sweat, his breath rasping hoarsely in his throat, Cummins stepped back involuntarily. His leg rasped against an armored hide; something swished through the air, and he was flung headlong into the bushes. Darkness took him.
“Massa, you fit walk?”
Twalo was bending over him. The moon had disappeared; a gray mist was creeping up from the river, sure precursor of dawn. Cummins raised his stiff body from the ground, groaned as a blinding ache shot through his head.
“The picanin and—and Koreing?” he gasped.
Twalo gestured toward a nearby bush. “Picanin sleep,” he said, and hesitated. “Massa Koreing, he live for the Banga, long time.”
“Banga? The village where he got the fetish—what fool talk this, Twalo? You no see dem palaver under tree?”
The native shook his head stubbornly.
“No see palaver, on’y jambuka. Me no lie. You go lookum self.”
Cummins complied. The clearing was deserted. Beast and man had gone. Nothing remained save a broken bottle and the tracks of many crocodiles. Nothing—save for two narrow furrows close together that ran across the bank and disappeared into the pool. Cummins glanced up quickly, his face white beneath the tan, and Twalo met his eyes.
“Jambuka pullem dem—dem meat under water,” he mumbled. “Croc eat croc.”
THE CITADEL OF DARKNESS
Black Arts and Necromancy Flourish in Ancient Forests When a Prince Pits Himself Against Astrological Gods!
Hearken, O King, while I tell of high dooms and valorous men in the dim mists of long-passed aeons—aye, long and long ago, ere Nineveh and Tyre were born and ruled and crumbled to the dust. In the lusty youth of the world Imperial Gobi, Cradle of Mankind, was a land of beauty and of wonder and of black evil beyond imagination. And of Imperial Gobi, mistress of the Asian Seas, nothing now remains but a broken shard, a shattered stone that once crowned an obelisk—nothing is left but a thin high wailing in the wind, a crying that mourns for lost glories. Hearken again, O King, while I tell you of my vision and my dream . . .
—The Tale of Sakhmet the Damned.
CHAPTER I
The Sign of the Mirror
FOR six hours the archer had lain dying in the great oak’s shadow. The attackers had not troubled to strip him of his battered armor—poor stuff compared to their own forged mail, glittering with brilliant gems. They had ridden off with their loot, leaving the wounded archer among the corpses of his companions. He had lost much blood, and now, staring into the afternoon dimness of the forest, he knew death was coming swiftly.
Parched lips gaped as the man gasped for breath. Once more he tried to crawl to where a goatskin canteen lay upon the glossy, motionless flank of a fallen war-horse. And again he failed. Sighing, he relaxed, his fevered cheek against the cool earth.
Faintly a sound came to the archer’s ears—the drumming of hoofs. Were the raiders returning? One hand gripped the bow that lay beside him; weakly he strove to fit an arrow to the string.
TWO horses cantered into view—a great gray charger and a dun mare. On the latter rode a tall, huge-muscled black man, his gargoylish face worried and anxious.
The gray’s rider seemed small beside the Nubian, but his strong frame was unwearied by hours in the saddle. Under yellow, tousled hair was a hard young face, bronzed and eagle eyed. He saw the shambles beneath the oak, reined in his steed.
“By Shaitan!” he snapped. “What devil’s work is this?”
The dying man’s fingers let the bow fall.
“Prince Raynor—water!” he gasped. Raynor leaped to the ground, snatched a goatskin, and held it to the archer’s lips.
“What’s happened?” he asked presently. “Where’s Delphia?”
“They—they took her.”
“Who?”
“A band of warriors took us by surprise. We were ambushed. We fought, but—they were many. I saw them ride south with Delphia.”
The archer of a sudden looked oddly astonished. His hand reached out and gripped the bow that lay beside him.
“Death comes,” he whispered, and a shudder racked him. His jaw fell; he lay dead.
Raynor stood up, a hard, cold anger in his eyes. He glanced up at the Nubian, who had not dismounted.
“We also ride south,” he said shortly. “It was a pity we fell behind, Eblik.”
“I don’t think so,” Eblik observed. “It was an act of providence that your horse should go lame yesterday. Had we been trapped with the others, we’d have died also.”
Raynor fingered his sword-hilt. “Perhaps not. At any rate, we’ll have our chance to cross blades with these marauding dogs.”
“So? I think—”
“Obey!” Raynor snapped, and vaulted to the saddle. He set spurs to the horse’s flanks, galloped past the heap of bodies beneath the oak. “Here’s a trail. And it leads south.” Grunting his disapproval, the Nubian followed.
“You may have been Prince of Sardopolis,” he muttered, “but Sardopolis has fallen.”
That was true. They were many days’ journey from the kingdom where Raynor had been born, and which was no longer a home for him. Three people had fled from doomed Sardopolis—Raynor, his servant Eblik, and the girl Delphia—and in their flight they had been joined by a few other refugees.
And now the last of the latter had been slain, here in unknown country near the Sea of Shadows that lay like a shining sapphire in Imperial Gobi. When Raynor’s horse had gone lame the day before, he and Eblik had fallen behind for an hour that stretched into a far longer period—and now the archers were slain and Delphia herself a captive.
The two rode swiftly; yet when night fell they were still within the great forest that had loomed above them for days. Raynor paused in a little clearing.
“We’ll wait here till moonrise,” he said. “It’s black as the pit now.” Dismounting, the prince stretched weary muscles. Eblik followed his example. There was a brook near by, and he found water for the horses. That done, he squatted on his haunches, a grim black figure in the darkness.
“The stars are out,” he said at last, in a muffled tone.
Raynor, his back against a tree-trunk, glanced up. “So they are. But it’s not moonrise yet.”
The Nubian went on as though he had not heard. “These are strange stars. I’ve never seen them look thus before.”
“Eh?” The young prince stared. Against the jet curtain of night the stars glittered frostily, infinitely far away. “They look the same as always, Eblik.”
But—did they? A little chill crept down Raynor’s spine. Something cold and indefinably horrible seemed to reach down from the vast abyss of the sky—a breath of the unknown that brooded over this primeval wilderness.
The same stars—yes! But why, in this strange land, were the stars dreadful?
“You’re a fool, Eblik,” Raynor said shortly. “See to the horses.” The Nubian shivered and stood up.
“I wish we had never come into this black land,” he murmured, in an oddly subdued voice. “It is cold here—too cold for midsummer.”
A low whisper came out of the dark.
“Aye, it is cold. The gaze of the Basilisk chills you.”
“Who’s that?” Raynor snarled. He whirled, his sword bare in his hand. Eblik crouched, great hands flexing.
Quiet laughter sounded. A shadow stepped from behind an oak
trunk. A giant figure moved forward, indistinct in the gloom.
“A friend. Or at least, no enemy. Put up your blade, man. I have no quarrel with you.”
“No?” Raynor growled. “Then why slink like a wolf in the dark?”
“I heard the noise of battle. I heard strange footsteps in the forest of Mirak. These called me forth.” A glimmer of wan, silvery light crept through the trees. The moon was rising. Its glow touched a great billow of white hair; shaggy, tufted eyebrows, a beard that rippled down upon the newcomer’s breast. Little of the man’s face could be seen. An aquiline beak of a nose jutted out, and sombre dark eyes dwelt on Raynor. A coarse gray robe and sandals covered the frame of a giant.
“Who are you?”
“Ghiar, they call me.”
“What talk is this of a—Basilisk?” Eblik asked softly.
“Few can read the stars,” Ghiar said. “Yet those who can know the Dwellers in the Zodiac. Last night the sign of the Archer was eclipsed by the Fish of Ea. And this night the Basilisk is in the ascendancy.” The deep voice grew deeper still; organ-powerful it rolled through the dark aisles of the forest. “Seven signs hath the Zodiac! The Sign of the Archer and the Sign of the Fish of Ea! The Sign of the Serpent and that of the Mirror! The Basilisk, and the Black Flower—and the Sign of Tammuz which may not be drawn. Seven signs—and the Basilisk rules tonight.”
MEETING the brooding stare of those dark eyes, Raynor felt a nameless sense of unease.
“My business is not with the stars,” half-angrily he said. “I seek men, not mirrors and serpents.”
The tufted eyebrows lifted.
“Yet the stars may aid you, stranger, as they have aided me,” Ghiar rumbled. “As they have told me, for example, of a captive maid in Malric’s castle.”
Raynor tensed. “Eh?”
“Baron Malric rules these marshes. His men captured your wench, and she is his prisoner now.”
Collected Fiction Page 94
