Down to the shelf of the central entrance I went, on past the mighty guardian Vuuns upon their translucent, glowing pillows. They rested, great leathern wings-when expanded they measured two hundred feet or more-all folded along the lengths of ghastly, mottled bodies; necks hunched back upon slate-gray, bone-slick shoulders; and head lying forward upon a breast that resembled nothing less than a monstrous kettledrum. Their hugely gleaming eyes were slitted, hellish red with greenish pupils.
I went then, seemingly in a dream, down the endless corridors to the great hall wherein, upon raised platforms and water cushions, were three great Vuuns; and one was Ap; or mayhap all were Ap!
“I see you, Great Ap,” I mentally said to the center Vuun.
“And so you do. What do you wish, Man-thing?”
“To speak of death-our death, and of what must be done to prevent it.” I then told him exactly what bad happened, withholding nothing, and what I intended doing…
The three of them listened, silent, withdrawn. Their eyes had become fully lidded, the leathern, membranous lids coming up from the bottom. They seemed to sleep. But I knew different I waited, looking again to right and left and down the many passageways all aglow with a Dantean, orange-redpurple light of far volcanic fires. The very mountain was catacombed; each passage Vuun-sized, like subways of antiquity. Around the periphery of the platforms was a small stream cut too from the very rock. Its water was heated, green, and phosphorescent. The temperature was considerable, though not uncomfortable.
“Collin!” The voice, though mental, was stentorian. I turned my mind’s eye instantly to the now opened stare of the monstrous, reptilian Lazarae…
“I hear.”
“We would see for ourselves the Dark One’s work-and so we went there. We do not fathom it. We were bold to ask him what he does, but he would not say. More. He has denied us further sight. And in his domain his power is such that we truly can no longer see; nor will he converse further….”
“I have told you true, Ap, what he will do.”
“We believe you; ‘tis that we searched for error, no more. And too, before access was denied us, we found his thoughts to be-uncertain, fearful. In that alone there is great danger.”
“His ‘gateway,’ Ap, will destroy us all-one way or the other.” I drew a deep, mental breath, to halt the wavering of the ‘scene’, to hold the ‘picture’ of it, and to hold Great Ap and all his creatures to the full power of my thoughts. “As stated,” I continued bluntly, “within the hour I would ask that no less than five hundred of the Vuuns, and with body nets upon which men can climb and ride, begin the flight to Castle Gortfin in Marack. Thirty-thousand of the pick of our Northern warriors await you there. You will then transport them to the environs of Hish. You will know where to set them down, Great Ap, by the fighting that will then be raging along the western road from the-Kaleen’s Dark Capital…..”
“You speak riddles, Collin. What force is there in Om as of this instant which would challenge the Dark One?”
“There will be one, I promise you.”
The great eyes stared, grew even larger, seeming to enter my own. For the first time I felt, nay, I was immersed in their communion…
And then I was free, and Great Ap was saying. “You speak the truth, for nought is hidden when minds are once enjoined. As to whether it is the best thing to do is something else. An area of your thinking is denied us, you know-though ‘tis not of your doing, but of some other force. We like it not, Man-thing, though we sense that like yourself it is not a thing of evil. So be it. It will be done. We will start within the hour!”
“How many hours to do the job?”
“To go to Marack, and then to Hish-no less than forty.”
“I can expect you then at mid-afternoon on the day following tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“Great Ap,” I said solemnly, “if you do not come, it well may be that I will fail and all will die.”
“We will come. Are they warned, those men of yours? For if but a single flight of arrows is launched against us-“
“They are warned. They will be ready.”
“Then so be it, Collin!”
And just like that I was again sitting naked upon a cushion on the rain-swept balcony of our castle-wing in Hish. I arose to reenter our quarters and find a towel. My doughty Breen Hoggle-Fitz had indeed been warned. More. He was to have passed the word to Fel-Holdt and mayhap a dozen more. Upon Ap’s arrival, Hoggle would have either convinced them of the need for this most monstrous thing in all their history-or he’d be a dead man. The mere thought of the task he’d accepted-to get thirty thousand Marackian warriors to mount the webbed bodies of five hundred great Vuuns, their erstwhile mortal enemies, and then to fly eight thousand miles in what would seem as a howling gale-was sufficient to depress even me.
But not for long. A Rubicon had been crossed, true. But there were still alternatives.
Beneath the sheets again, I looked to Murie. She seemed delectably small beneath the soft-weave linen. Had she not been blowing bubbles and snoring delicately, I’d have thought she’d disappeared completely. I woke her up.
I roused them all before dawn since even a minute wasted could spell the difference between defeat or victory. The thin edge of great Fomalhaut was just above the eastern horizon when we finished our breakfast and hied ourselves to the temple pyramid. Even then at that early hour the streets were alive to a beehive of activity. In the area of the pyramid, supplicants thronged to revere the myriad of gods. Most were for the peripheral temples, including Hoom-Tet’s, few were for the Kaleen. Hishians, I mused, were indeed early risers.
Actually, the time I had previously suggested-after which, if I had not returned they were to take other measures-was way off. Moreover, if I had been seized by the Dark One and they had waited four hours, it would most certainly have meant their seizure too. Such however was not the case.
The garrulous young Sernas led us to one of the many cafes and drinking spas spaced round the periphery of the great circle. They would await me there. As they seated themselves, I sensed their trepidation, sharply; their concern. More! Their fear followed me, enhancing my own as I walked rapidly across the five hundred feet of polished flagstones.
I wore hauberk and surcoat, but no weapons. Guardians at the great doors, young priest-warriors in black robes with drawn swords and cowls thrown back, answered my questions. They told me what I already knew, that the problem of trade was administrative.
They advised me where to go. I replied courteously that I would still see a priest of authority so as to give my personal thanks to the Dark One, and vice-versa, and thus to have some proof of his good will to take back with me to the Selig Isles.
My wish was granted.
Once inside, I marched down a lengthy passageway to arrive finally at a great inner hall, the pyramid’s very heart. Except for the Dark One’s priestwizard officiating at an obsidian altar at the hall’s center, the place seemed empty. Corridors leading from it and around it, however, teemed with activity. Young priests, also of the warrior category, were everywhere. Other than myself there were less than a dozen supplicants. Each “interview” lasted but a few minutes. Indeed, my waiting time was twenty minutes, no more-during which I accomplished all I had come to do.
Contact lenses, imbedded brain-nodes and a bit of electronic bat-sonar: it was all there inside my head. In the very lair of the beast, to quote an antiquated cliche, I quickly determined the exact layout of the inner rooms of the pyramid. The faintest of “molar” clicks plus additional sound factors, all assisted by an electronic control penetration, created an instant graph, or “stat” upon the reverse of my contacts. The stat was three-dimensional, defining distances, and outlining the sites of barracks, warehouses, numerous other rooms below us, a myriad of passageways, a larger room at a distance of two hundred feet above us, and one final, small room directly below the pyramid’s peak. Tracing the pattern of that room’s ceiling, I found an aperture
, the opening to the skies. I knew then that I had the exact location of whatever mechanism it was that the Kaleen had created to do the job. I even had time to double check it before it became my turn to stand before the Dark One’s facsimile.
Luck was still with me. For just as the guards at the city’s gates had not had to deal with enemies for a full five thousand years, thus losing the fine edge of suspicion, so was this also true of the Kaleen’s own representative-the extension of his very self.
The thing’s torpor was more than apparent; indeed, the ritual was a study in dullness.
Still did I know that all supplicants to the Dark One would have one prime thing in common-fear! When it was my turn, therefore, I acted accordingly. Actually, I hardly needed to. For as I too approached the dark and ominous creature holding forth at the obsidian altar, I confess to a sudden trembling, a small but noticeable weakening of the will.
The figure was tall; the black robe and cowl were all encompassing. Moreover, where even the sight of a shadowed face within the cowl might be expected-all was darkness. The voice, when it came, was sepulchral-as dead as that of the Hishian lord, Gol Bades, before I’d ripped asunder the various parts of his armor upon the great field of Dunguring-to find nothing inside.
The priestwizard asked, “What is your desire? What would you of our living God’s omnipotence?” And the voice came from inside my head.
My eyes flew open instantly, deliberately, denoting proper, startled fear. Then they dropped, looked away, while I allowed my hands to tremble slightly. “I am the Prince Til-Cares,” I mumbled orally. “I am from the Selig Isles-here on the question of trade…”
“Our god’s house, Seligian,” the hollow voice proclaimed, “is not the market place.
What would you here?” The robe and cowl stood straight. The echoing voice inside my head evoked a phantasmagoria of death and tombs and dark, eternal night.
I fell dutifully to one knee, saying, “‘Tis that when I am through with administrative things, I’ll then return to Selig. Therefore I’m come to pledge me once again to our god and to his office and person-for I am his man. And in this respect,” and I bowed even lower, “I would beseech our god’s beneficence, so’s to take it back to Selig with me.”
The outright cupidity of my petition made no mark at all on the wizard-priest. Indeed, I’m sure, ‘twas the norm. And too, at that precise moment I’d chosen to place a small bar of purest gold upon the obsidian altar, admiring the while the sheen of the beauteous yellow against the black.
The darksome figure disdained to notice the offering. He raised a withered, blue-white hand to admonish me, saying, “Return then to your Selig Isles with this proof of your ‘oneness’ with the Dark One. You need but to press upon it and call-and he will answer, Use it not lightly, Seligian,” the dread voice intoned, “or ‘twill mean your death….”
The raised hand put forth a corpse finger, and lo! upon the altar beside my piece of weighty gold was a circle of green metal with a centered orb of black. It gleamed and when I seized it, tingled to the touch as had the entry permits to the gates.
Then the hand dropped. The voice was silent. The cowled figure became as still as the horror it really was.
I bowed deeply in reflex, arose and backed away until I’d reached a respectable distance. I then simply turned and made my retreat to the passage that led to the single exit.
The whole thing, from the time I’d left the group until my return, had taken but forty minutes, no more. My eyes sought out Lors Sernas who sat to one side conversing with roundfaced Charney. “Young sir,” I told him bluntly, “the question of extended trade and its mutual benefits has been resolved with the Dark One. We will go now to your father’s castle, for I would discuss it still further with all those gathered there.”
He batted his protruding liquid eyes, asked weakly, “You’ve seen him? The Kaleen?
He’s told you this?”
“Do you doubt me, sir?” My voice was suddenly harsh and cold. I produced the pulsing green medallion, showed it to them all. The looks of horror upon Murie’s and Caroween’s faces and the hurried sacred circle of Ormon traced instantly upon seven breasts, was evidence of its power.
Young Sernas’ face had gone dead white. He mumbled almost incoherently, saying,
“My Lord, ‘tis the mark of highest favor.” And then, as if he had suddenly thought of something awful, “I pray you, sir, think nought of what I said last night and the day before, about our Hoom Tet-who, as all know, is actually but slime in the wake of the greatest of them all.”
“Hey, now.” I winked and slapped his back, switched roles mercurially to assuage his fear, “Your Hoom Tet’s not that bad-nor,” I grinned, “is the Dark One all that good.” This, while I turned the “null” stone again to full against any use of the talisman’s power against me.
“Come!” I said to them all. “Let’s to it. It’s thirty miles to Sernas’ castle. We must be there before noon….”
Rawl, catching my eye, said softly, “I think me, Collin, that despite all else the game, as such, begins right now.”
I replied just as softly, “Indeed it does-right now!”
Once beyond the gates-and there wasn’t a one of us who didn’t breathe a lusty sigh that we’d accomplished it all so easily-a cloudburst rain began. Despite it we kept to the road, fur cloaks all hunched against the driving wetness.
After a short while we passed through the village wherein we had last seen the dozen or so hanged citizens. On the previous day the bodies were fresh. Today they were decomposed. An indication, I thought, of what Adjusters had long concluded-that where tyranny reigns all things are tainted, and thus corruption’s speeded.
Our dottles kept to their measured pace. We sheltered but once, a dottle browsing period in a barnlike building next to the road; shared it with a dozen or so soft-eyed gogs, all smelling of milk and with three calves to nuzzle the seven teats of each winsome mother.
There is nothing on Fregis to equal the downright sweetness of a small fat gog-calf. Their loving nature is matched only by the excess of their stupidity. This last reminder tempered somewhat my sudden revulsion against the gogmeat jerky upon which we were all chewing.
… Murie, concerned with my pensive silence, said softly, “My lord, you’re not sharing.”
“Nay, love,” I replied, “I cannot. For the truth is, I play it all by ear.”
But they had a right to know. So I sent Sernas to the road to check for Yorns and such while I told them what had transpired and, generally, that I hoped by the use of every trick in the bag to win the lords of Om, at least this batch of them in Sernas’ castle, to our side.
“And which side may that be-now?” the doughty Griswall asked dryly. And I knew then that he-nay all of them-desperately needed some sort of reassurance beyond my mouthings of “play it by ear” and such. For, after all, I had been in the lair of the Dark One himself. Who was to know what had actually happened there?
Still I was their leader. Discipline and firmness was therefore the only way. “There is but one side, Griswall,” I told him bluntly: “The side of freedom; our side; the side of Marack and the North. And do you not fault me, sir. For I remain who I am-the Collin!”
I made to continue, but before I’d even finished, Murie’s fingers came lightly to my lips to stay my need to explain. She whispered softly, though all could hear her, “Hey, now, my lord, you’ve told us. There’s no need for more.”
“But there is,” I said. “For nought but your good cousin and myself know that Hoggle-Fitz, our Lord of Dernim, will also be with us in this, the final bickering-” I grinned- “along with Fel-Holdt and the thirty thousand now waiting at Gortfin castle.”
They gasped.
Rawl laughed aloud, saying, “‘Cepting that we don’t know when they’ll get here.”
“We do now,” I said.
“We do?”
“Aye. By mid-afternoon tomorrow the skies will be filled with Great Vuuns, br
inging Marack’s army; their objective, to join the force of fighting men which, hopefully, we’ll be leading against the Dark One’s city.”
Murie, her eyebrows one solid arch, exclaimed, “And you play this by ear?” Her tone was incredulous.
“I’ve no choice. The time grows ever shorter ‘twixt now and when the Dark One makes his effort.”
Griswall, pondering, said soberly, “I ask forgiveness, Collin. My faith in you did lapse.
It will not do so again.”
I laughed. “Be not so hasty. It may well be that tomorrow’s sun will see Great Vuuns and Marack’s finest arrive to an empty highway-except for a gallows line whereon we’ll all be dangling.”
Sernas returned then to tell us that there were no Yorns in sight, nor any others.
Discipline in Om had not the significance it had in Marack. In effect, why ride the rain when there was no need to? Tober whistled our dottles up and we set out again. As we rode, I laid the groundwork for a small part of my plan by explaining to Sernas my desire to share the controls of a mutual trade with the lords at his father’s castle. The potential, as I described it, even with its limited freedom, caused his eyes to literally shine.
At the spot where we’d fought and slain the knights of Haken, I bade them pause and excused myself from the road for a privy purpose. With a well conditioned decorum they did what I’d expected they would do-stared dutifully in the opposite direction.
I went directly to the scoutship, phased it in, entered it, and turned its “null” full on. Its power was sufficient to disrupt the mag-field for a full fifteen miles in all directions, thus giving the castle a limited protection from the Dark One.
This, of course, would not apply to wizards and such, those who already had some sort of liaison with the pyramid….
On the road again we leaned into a steady downpour. Indeed, the rain was such that when I’d remounted, I’d failed to see what Murie strove desperately to show me. When I finally glanced curiously to her dottle’s nudging shoulder, I saw her Cheshire grin. Her purple, elvish eyes were gleaming. A toss of her rain-drenched curls suggested that I look back. I did. And there sat Hooli upon her dottle’s rump. He’d put the booties back on, and the bright red tam was on his head-worn jauntily. With one hand he clutched Murie’s sodden cloak; the other held a nibbled leaf. His expression was vacuous. But then, almost unnoticeably, his little round head turned ever so slightly. One beady black eye widened-and the bastard winked at me.
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