02 - Lords of Destruction

by James Silke - (ebook by Undead)

  The bukko, flushing slightly at Robin’s nakedness, said, “She’s grown, all right. But when she dances, everyone will see it.”

  “Yes,” Cobra admitted, “but no one will suspect that a few tattoos on a dusty slattern is a map. Besides, the best place to hide something is in plain sight, correct?”

  Cobra, without waiting for his reply, uncorked the vial, sat on a stool facing Robin and began to copy a sign on her belly.

  Brown John watched, scowling with suspicion, then said, “Well, it’s a dandy place to hide something, there’s no denying that. But just what do those signs mean? She’s not going to start attracting more demons, is she?”

  “Trust me, Brown, please,” Cobra pleaded. “They are measurements, distances, that’s all. Now please help me. Get some water and a cloth, and wash the dust and oils off her skin. And hurry! Those slavers are already impatient to see her perform.”

  Brown John obliged, giving Robin the cloth to wash herself while Cobra copied the map.

  When Cobra was half finished, drawing the sign of a scorpion between Robin’s breasts, the sounds from outside grew louder. They all held still listening. The nomads had begun to gather in front of the stone auction block, and Robin flinched.

  “They’re already gathering,” she gasped.

  “It’s all right, lass,” Brown John said. “It’s customary on the road to make the audience wait awhile.”

  “But where’s Jakar?” Robin asked nervously. “Why isn’t he back? What if he’s found some reason for us not to perform? What if something’s happened to him?”

  Robin jerked as she spoke, smearing the mark Cobra was drawing, and Cobra snapped, “Hold still!”

  “I’m sorry.” Robin held as still as a stone.

  “Good girl,” Cobra purred. “The sooner the map is finished and the doll destroyed, the safer we will all be… including Jakar.”

  Cobra winked at Robin to relax her, then dipped her brush in the vial of stain and resumed drawing.

  When Cobra finished, the crowd outside had grown and become noisy. It was beating small drums and shouting for the entertainment to start. Cobra and Brown John fanned Robin with a blanket to dry the stain, then Robin got back into her ragged tunic. Brown John tied a yellow sash around her waist, and orange and red sashes to her ankles and wrists. Then he held her shoulders as he spoke.

  “When you get out there, don’t flirt or tease this time. Just be yourself in front of this group, and they will adore you. Slaving is ugly work, and it provides all the lusty pleasures a man can stomach, but little laughter. So have fun! Be the cutup, the knockabout. You know the parts. Do the opening dance from ‘Chums’ and let them accompany you on their own drums. It will flatter them.”

  Robin nodded, and Brown John opened the door, letting in bright daylight and a burst of roaring approval from the waiting audience. When the audience whistled and cheered again, the sounds drew her out through the door as if she were on a string. Before her bare feet touched the warm stone of the auction block, she was beaming.

  Brown John closed the door behind her and sat down tiredly on a trunk, listening. Outside, the crowd shouted and applauded loudly, and the drums beat out a happy rhythm.

  When the noise reached a crescendo, Cobra lifted the hammer she had taken from the bukko’s trunk, held the black doll against the floor boards and brought the hammer down hard. She hit it five more times, timing each blow so that the noise was covered by the crowd. Then she brushed the crumbles of stone and dust through cracks in the floor boards scattering it on the ground beneath the wagon.

  Finished, she sat down on the stool facing Brown John, and her chain swung lazily between them. “Feel better?” Brown John asked.

  “A great deal better,” she said solemnly. “But you look feverish.” She smiled knowingly. “It bothers you to look upon her naked flesh, doesn’t it?”

  “Indeed it does,” he said candidly.

  “Youth is always a mystery,” she said lightly, “and from what I have seen, you are easily seduced by mysteries.”

  He laughed. “I most surely am. Some are so confounding, I find them irresistible.”

  She knew again that he referred to her and smiled. He gathered up the chain between them until it was taut, and gave it a slight tug, asking, “If I remove the chain, will you answer a question… truthfully?”

  “It will depend on the question.”

  “There is something special about Robin. There always has been, and I am convinced that you know things about her that I don’t.” His tone hardened. “I must know what they are.”

  “That is simple enough,” she replied in a casual tone. Then she lied, saying, “Apart from her high spirit and extraordinary beauty, she is not special, not to women. But I understand why you think she is. She makes you feel young again.”

  He listened to the drums and slap of Robin’s bare feet on the stone outside, then nodded. “That is true. When I first met her, she did make me feel young. But not now. There’s something else.”

  “You don’t feel young now?” she asked behind a skeptical smile.

  “Indeed I do. But it’s not Robin. It’s you.”

  He pulled on the chain, trying to draw her to him, but she resisted, and their eyes held each other, sober and heated. Then she said slowly, “Don’t flatter me, Brown. It makes me feel strange and weak, and I am not used to such emotions.”

  “I am not flattering you,” he said.

  “Yes, you are,” she insisted. “I have seen you looking at the growing weight at my hips and the wrinkles appearing on my throat.” She hesitated. “You know I am quickly growing older.”

  “I suspected it,” he replied without concern. “But I don’t understand. It’s not natural. It’s happening too fast. When we met, I would have sworn you were no more than twenty-five.”

  “Twenty-six,” she said, correcting him. “The Queen of Serpents is twenty-six all her life. It is part of the contract with the Master of Darkness. But when you are no longer queen, and only a woman again, you slowly return to your rightful age.”

  “Which is?”

  She smiled. “That, Brown, will remain a mystery… but we are not as far apart as you might have thought.”

  “I was thinking the same thing myself,” he said, white eyebrows arching dramatically. He tugged on the chain again. She stood slowly, came into his lap, smiling, and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her throat, and she stopped him, scolding him with a regal frown.

  “You’re forgetting who I am.”

  “No,” he said, with the balls of his ruddy cheeks burning brightly, “but I’m working on it.”

  She laughed easily, and her voluptuous body came against his, surrendering in a dozen places. He stroked her throat, then her hair. As he did, the play slowly went out of their eyes, and their lips parted as their breath quickened. With his eyes on hers, he removed the chain and set it aside. Then he reached for her face, and her hands caught his, stopping him.

  “Be careful, Brown,” she whispered, “I am not who you think I am.”

  “I’m counting on that,” he said.

  She hesitated, then let go of his hand, and he placed it at the back of her head, guiding her lips toward his. The trapdoor slammed open in the room above, followed by the sound-of feet dropping heavily to the floor. Cobra and Brown John stood abruptly. The feet descended the enclosed staircase, and Jakar appeared, loading his crossbow. His words were controlled but rapid.

  “The slavers have gathered here to begin a search for Robin. The Nymph Queen has offered a huge reward for her, and word is being sent to every slave hunter in every land, as far as the eastern border of the Great Forest Basin. It’s just the beginning of the hunt that could take years.”

  “They don’t suspect she’s here?” blurted Cobra. Jakar shook his head. “I doubt if they would believe you if you told them.”

  “Thank the Good Goddess for that,” Brown John said, sighing with relief.

  “But if they are h
unting for her,” Cobra said urgently, “they must have some way of identifying her.”

  “Every girl collected will be brought here and inspected.”

  “But only Tiyy has the power to identify her.”

  “How?” demanded Brown John.

  “She knows what I told the Master of Darkness about Robin, about the nature of her spirit, and she can see a spirit as easily as you can see a cloud in the sky.” She turned back to Jakar, and her voice faltered. “She’s… Tiyy’s not here, is she?”

  “No!” Jakar said solemnly. “But that bastard sharkman is.”

  Brown John glanced with concern at Cobra. “Can he identify you?”

  She nodded. “I’ll stay in the wagon.” She hesitated, then added, “But I don’t understand. If he’s here to identify her, he must have some way to do it.”

  “I can’t pull her off that stage now,” said the bukko. “They’d become suspicious.”

  “I know,” Cobra said. She looked at Jakar. “Is there anything else you should tell us?”

  He nodded. “They’re not just hunting for Robin. Rewards are being posted for Gath, for you,” he indicated Cobra, then Brown John, “and for the bukko of the Grillards.”

  Cobra had to sit down, and Brown John stared in shock.

  Jakar shrugged. “I couldn’t find out why, but it’s getting interesting, isn’t it? I have a feeling this Nymph Queen knows more about us than we know ourselves.” His eyes laughed coldly, and he bounded back up the stairs. “I’ll be on the roof.”

  Brown John listened until he heard the trapdoor slam, then looked down at Cobra.

  “It’s the doll,” she said. “This is Black Veshta’s work.”

  The bukko looked down at his offending hands and forced a lighthearted tone. “She’s really touchy, isn’t she?”

  Cobra looked at him angrily, dumbfounded at his levity. But when she saw his smile, its warmth softened her.

  “Is this what it means to be human,” she chuckled, “laughing at the face of death?”

  He nodded, and said with deliberate profundity, “Laughter is good, but sometimes there are better things.”

  He took her head in his hands, kissed her full on the lips, then stepped back smiling. “You can blame Black Veshta for that too.”

  She laughed lightly and shook her head. “If that is all you wish of me, then Black Veshta has nothing to do with it.”

  He reached for her again, but she pulled away, shaking her head. “Hurry now! Find Gath!”

  He hesitated. “You didn’t answer my question about Robin.”

  “I know nothing more,” she said, and lowered her voice. “Trust me, Brown. Please.”

  He nodded and went out the rear door.

  Twenty-Six

  BASKT

  The huge sharkman paced inside his tent, cursing the heat and his living armor which he could not remove. The desert was already butchering his body and mind after only three days, and there would be hundreds more, perhaps thousands, before some lucky slaver chanced upon the girl and brought her to him.

  With a convulsive growl he cursed Tiyy, then the desert sun. As if in reply, a gust of air parted the tent’s flaps allowing a shaft of golden sunlight to cut through the grey gloom and sear the blistered plates of armor at the backs of his legs. He strode to the flaps and whipped them shut. For a moment he stood motionless, helplessly breathing the stench of decay rising from his scabbed armor plates. He smelled like a dead codfish rotting in the sun.

  He crossed to a small altar at the back of the tent and stood before it, rubbing his jaw. Lying on the altar was a black doll, an extremely voluptuous version of Black Veshta lolling in supine sexual invitation on a pile of shark teeth. Baskt reached into his mouth, pried out a handful of teeth and tossed their bloody bodies into the box. Then he prostrated himself in front of the altar and prayed to the doll, asking it, as he had five times already that day, for rain.

  Finished, he picked up a jar of wine and stood over Schraak, drinking.

  The slick little man lay naked and oiled between three shuddering nomad girls chained to his bed. His grey flesh was raw, and his cheeks were a sickly blue. The worm had been drunk or drugged ever since they had ridden into the desert.

  Baskt grunted bitterly and moved away. He would have liked to be in the same stupor, but did not dare. He had to keep moving in order to breathe, and the incessant itching would not let him rest anyway.

  There was a distant, rolling boom. It had the definite cracking roar of thunder, but he dismissed the notion. He was certain it was the body of the desert bending again under the heat of the sun.

  A flash of light again speared through the tent wall, this time using a hole, and a bright whiteness illuminated the deep clefts where his cold death eyes hid. His sharp nose twitched, and the scent of blood reached his brain. A feeding fury instantly leapt through his flesh, and his body spasmodically arched as if it were in shark form. The involuntary movement threw him off balance. He staggered and dropped to all fours, the tip of his pointed helmet aimed at the sandy floor.

  His eyes blinked as his mind fought off the scent, and thoughts of going mad dashed around inside his tiny brain until it ached. He was five days’ march from any sizable body of water. There was no chance of returning to his shark form, no matter how much he hungered for it. Not in the desert. There was no chance of any kind of relief, yet his mind had suddenly behaved as if he were once more a shark, and his senses had smelled blood, even though he knew there was nothing but the odor of hot dirt on the air.

  He listened to his own blood pound the drums of his ears and wanted to scratch in countless places. Every pore, scale and orifice of his body was being violated by heat and sand. His only escape was to think of the ocean, of its wet cold, of its endless liquid-blue space, of the yawning dark green gloom of its depths and of beautiful brown-skinned girls flailing on the surface in a frenzy of fear at the sacred feeding times. A euphoria came over him similar to what he felt when he swam from sea water into fresh water, but then his breath became short, and he had to stand and pace again.

  As he moved back and forth, he put his fingers inside his mouth, felt his new teeth rising into place and spit out the taste of his own blood. Even it seemed unusually hot and rancid, and made him thirsty. He went out the back end of the tent and moved to the water barrels standing in the shade. He picked up a wooden bucket and dipped it into the water. He drank deep, trying to fill his entire seven-foot form with one swallow. Suddenly he stopped short. Water splashed over his chest armor as he looked over the rim of the bucket.

  Bars of jagged white light were flashing across the shaded boulders, like lightning, but there was no lightning in the sky. Another distant, rolling boom came, again sounding distinctly like thunder. He climbed up through the rocks until he could see the far hills. Above them was a dark thundercloud, but no sign of lightning.

  Baskt chuckled bitterly, a low harsh grating sound without humor. It was a rain cloud, but he had no hope of it reaching En Sakalda, no hope in anything, least of all in his prayers. He would have to be standing in a downpour first.

  Shafts of blinding white light suddenly exploded from the water slopping about the bucket between his hands, and made him blink and stagger. He caught his balance, and a shuddering blood hunger jerked through him. A primordial urge so strong his entire body began to bend from within, until he was arched threateningly around the bucket. He looked down into it, very carefully.

  A few remaining scraps of white light shot through the ripples of the shallow water, then flashed up the wooden sides and were gone.

  Baskt shook the bucket, but the remaining water sloshed and slapped around revealing no light hiding within it. He returned to the barrel, dipped the bucket into it again, came away with half a bucket of water and looked into it. All he saw was water and a few dead flies. He lifted the bucket to drink again, and as it came level with his eyes, white light again exploded from it. He turned his face away, thinning his eyes, and watc
hed it out of the corners.

  The light was not coming from the water. It was ricocheting off of its surface, coming from someplace behind him.

  He turned sharply, tossing the bucket aside, and saw beams of white light spearing out of the smoke at the center of the camp. It appeared to be coming from the stack of cages within the smoke.

  Baskt entered his tent, snapped his sheathed sword from the floor and strode out into the sunlight. He moved straight for the light, stepping over bodies, and through campfires into their smoke, until he faced the stack of cages.

  The captive girls were naked except for beads and scraps of cloth. Dark-skinned desert natives, they were young and uncommonly attractive, but there was not a redhead among them, and little virtue.

  The sharkman, his body snarling at the blood scent filling it, moved in among the cages, shoving them aside in order to examine each of the girls. Reaching the opposite side of the stack, he looked back and saw that the light was slashing across the girls’ frightened faces. But not one of them blinked or appeared to notice it. They only shivered and wiggled with invitation. He pushed through the few remaining cages and stood in the open area beyond.

  There the light hit him directly in the face, blinding him. He lifted a forearm, blocking the light, and looked under his hand.

  The light was centered in front of a large wagon parked behind a massive stone auction block. It was moving, swirling dizzily.

  He thinned his eyes and saw a girl dancing within the light. She moved like a firefly, banging a tambourine with childish abandon, kicking and twirling colorful sashes tied to her wrists and ankles. The light seemed to come from behind her, but he was uncertain. It was blurred by her flashing arms and legs.

  Baskt strode forward and stopped behind a scatter of cages, horses and benches. Just beyond them were the backs of a small crowd of clapping slavers, squatting and sitting on the ground below the flat stone. He studied the girl for a long moment, holding the feeding fury within, until he was certain.