'Ath,' he said after a time, 'I have been so absorbed in my researches that I have seen little of the men. Do they grow lax from inactivity?'
'No, milord,' panted Ath, hoisting a heavy-laden jug from the pool. 'I drill them three times each day in the courtyard, and they entertain themselves sparring with one another or hunting the rest of the day.'
Rills of water ran along the captain's arms as he tied the full jug into place upon the disgruntled animal, who shifted unhappily beneath the added weight.
'They hunt? What is there to hunt?'
'Tiny antelope, milord. The men have only caught one and now place bets as to who shall catch the next.'
Ethram-Fal scowled in resentment. 'If they catch another, I want a portion of its flesh. Fresh meat would be much superior to our tedious provisions.'
Ath waded back into the pool, relishing the flow of water over his skin. 'Yes, milord.' The next jug bubbled as it filled.
'So their morale is good?' The sorcerer drank from his wineskin and gave a barely perceptible shudder. Ath hesitated a moment before replying.
'There were some complaints when you forbade torches within the palace, and the glass balls of light that you gave us to take their place made some of the men nervous.'
Ethram-Fal frowned, then waved a hand in dismissal. 'There will be no fire of any kind inside the palace. I touched a petal of the lotus to a candle and it burned faster than dry pine. Tell the men that any who break this rule will pay with their lives.'
'Yes, milord.'
'And why the concern about my light-globes? Are the superstitious fools afraid of them?'
'Some said that they were unnatural and feared to touch them. I proved that they were harmless by holding several at once. All seem to accept them now.'
'By Set's shining coils,' Ethram-Fal chuckled dryly, shaking his head.
'These warriors are a weak-minded lot. The light-globes are merely a sea plant sealed in crystal. The magical enhancement is minimal. Well then, are they otherwise content? Do they quarrel amongst themselves?'
'No quarrels, milord. But I've added an additional' guard to each shift after nightfall.'
'Two men per shift? That's of little consequence. But why? Does the night watch grow lonely?'
'Not lonely enough, milord. The past two nights the sentries of the third shift reported that something was skulking among the rocks at the canyon mouth.' Ethram-Fal sat up straight.
'Something or someone?' he demanded, 'What did they see?'
'By Derketo's ivory teats, milord, I had hoped not to tell you of this.
I am shamed to say that the men simply grow fearful when left on guard alone after dark, so I added an extra man to each shift.'
'What did the guards see or hear, Ath? Answer my question now or know great pain.' The sorcerer's voice was taut with displeasure.
'Y-yes,' stuttered the soldier, dropping his jug so that it sank into the pool. 'I do not mean to displease you, milord. The first night Teh-Harpa thought that he heard something moving in the rocks and, when he went to investigate, thought he saw two shining eyes.'
'An animal,' declared Ethram-Fal.
'Just so,' said Ath, bending to pick up his jug once again. 'The second night Phandoros heard sounds of movement and thought that he heard a voice speaking.'
'A voice?' The sorcerer came to his feet. 'Who was there?'
Ath flinched, holding the water jug before his chest as if it were a talisman against his master's imperious gaze.
'No one, milord. Phandoros scoured the canyon mouth with a torch and found nothing. He was too ashamed to tell me of his fear. I only learned of the matter when I overheard the men discussing it among themselves. All agreed that Phandoros was mistaken and that it was an animal foraging in the dark. I added the second sentry so that these stories would not work upon the imagination of guards left all alone.'
'Yes,' said Ethram-Fal, sitting down once again. 'That was wise, Ath.'
The tall soldier breathed easier and went back to the safe business of filling water jugs. He laboured without speaking for some time, but the silent scrutiny of his master grew onerous.
'Our supply of water was quite good, milord. Do you need all these extra jugs filled for some great magic?'
Ethram-Fal laughed condescendingly, smoothing his caftan over bony knees. 'It is my intention not to return to this oasis for some time. I wish us to be well supplied with water.'
Ath hoped that his master would elaborate, but the sorcerer said nothing more. At last the final jug was sealed and lashed into place upon the shaggy back of an unhappy camel. Ath squatted beside the pool, sipping water from a cupped palm and catching his breath.
Ethram-Fal stood and stretched himself in the shade of the date palm.
Hitching the strap of his wineskin over a shoulder, he walked to the pool's edge and pointed into the shallows.
'Ath, use your dagger to dig a small hole in the sand there.'
'Milord?' The soldier obediently, drew his dagger, but looked into the water quizzically.
'There,' snapped Ethram-Fal impatiently, 'beneath the surface before you.'
Ath stepped into the pool, splashing diamond droplets in the sun as he hastened forward. Knee deep, he bent and used the blade of his dagger to carve a pit in the sandy mud of the pool's bottom.
'Deeper,' commanded the sorcerer, peering over Ath's bent shoulder.
'Not wide, but deep.' Swirling particles clouded the water as the soldier worked, obscuring his progress, but in a moment Ethram-Fal seemed satisfied.
'Good enough. Now out of the way.' Ath stepped back and climbed out of the pool, thrusting his dagger into the sand to dry. He regarded his master with wary curiosity.
Ethram-Fal waded awkwardly out into the water, his oversize caftan floating out behind him. He stopped beside the hole Ath had dug and pulled something from a pocket. He held it out in an open palm, and Ath saw that it was a flattened, black ovoid with a thick seam running around its edge. It filled the sorcerer's hand and had the organic appearance of a monstrously overgrown seed. Ath had never seen anything like it before.
Ethram-Fal whispered words in a language dead thirty centuries, and the black seed twitched in his palm. Bending slowly and reverently, the sorcerer lowered his hand to the smooth surface of the pool and whispered once again. The words rasped together like dry bones. A tangled network of veins appeared on the glossy, sable surface of the seed. Ethram-Fal thrust it under the water, pushing it into the hole and using his hands to bury it. Then he drew back, lifted his dripping hands from the pool, and moved them in a slow, circular pattern over the planted seed. He whispered a final time, turning his hands over abruptly before him. Lurid crimson glyphs blazed brilliantly upon each palm for an instant and vanished.
The Stygian sorcerer slogged out of the pool with a twisted smile on his face. His captain stared with intent apprehension at the spot where Ethram-Fal had planted the seed, as if expecting something horrible beyond words to burst from the waters at any moment.
'Come then, Ath, let us be gone,' said Ethram-Fal jovially. He pulled himself atop his squatting camel and clung to its saddle as it rose to its feet. Ath tore his eyes from the pool and mounted his own beast hurriedly, as his master looked on in apparent amusement.
The camels snorted in distaste as they were forced to file out of the only patch of greenery on the parched expanse of desert. They moved steadily, if reluctantly, up the sifting side of the huge dune that flanked the oasis. A hot wind tore sand from the dune's crest and hurled it into the faces of the two men leading the column of camels.
Ethram-Fal noticed that the sun had already dried his caftan, which had been dripping wet only a moment past. Once over the dune, Ath drew up short, cursing.
'Set's scales! I left my best dagger stuck in the sand back there.' The soldier pulled on the reins of his mount and prepared to turn about to retrieve his weapon.
'No,' said Ethram-Fal firmly. 'You must do without it. The next visitor to
that oasis is in for a terrible surprise.'
XX
Pesouris the ferryman lounged in a well-padded chair set out upon his dock. At the end of a long day's toil he often found it pleasant to relax here for a time before repairing to his house and the diligent attentions of his concubines. At times like this, when the sun had just dipped below the earth's rim and the breeze came cool and bracing down the twilit Styx, he felt it only proper that he should reflect upon his good fortune and perhaps offer up a discreet prayer of thanks to Father Set. It was the servants of the serpent god, after all, who had made his present prosperity possible. If he had not been granted a ferryman's seal by the Stygian authorities of Bel-Phar, he would still be competing for his livelihood with all manner of motley would-be ferrymen. Now that he alone was authorized to transport travelers across the Styx to Bel-Phar, his wealth and status had exceeded his fondest wishes. A fortnight ago he would have been unable even to rent this dock, and today it belonged to him. Paying even a single full-time concubine would have been beyond his meager means.
Pesouris heaved a deep sigh of satisfaction, his burgeoning paunch straining at his silken girdle. He locked stubby fingers together behind his thick neck and leaned back in the chair. His dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He wondered which of the two he should select tonight. An idea burst upon him, causing his thickly thatched eyebrows to raise abruptly. Couldn't they be made to compete for his affections?
Of course they could. Why hadn't he thought of this before?
The sudden stream of fantasies unleashed by this new inspiration was cut short by the nearly inaudible scuff of a boot sole on the dock behind him. The interruption displeased Pesouris, who twisted about in his padded chair to face the intruder.
Night and the shadows of two tall palms conspired to make the base of the dock a thick mass of impenetrable shadow. There was someone there, though; Pesouris could just make him out.
'Ahptut? Is that you?' The ferryman called the name of his hired servant and was dismayed at the weak sound of his voice. Bristling a little, he sat up and stared into the darkness.
'You! Who's there!'
The figure of a tall man was barely visible, standing motionless on the dock. A chill fluid seemed to course down the ferryman's back. He fumbled at his waist for the curved dirk on his belt, his mind awhirl with panicked surmise. Was it that drunken fool Temoten come to claim vengeance? Or a thief out to rob him of his hard-won riches?
Pesouris was still groping for his dagger when the man on the dock took two steps forward, emerging from the shadow of the palms into the pale starlight. He was a big man, standing tall and stiffly straight in a loose caftan that rippled gently in the night breeze. He said nothing, but his presence less than ten feet from the ferryman was mutely threatening. Pesouris finally got his hand on his hilt but did not draw the weapon. He looked into the blackness within the caftan's hood.
'What do you want?' he asked through lips gone suddenly dry. The man on the dock thrust out a hand and pointed at the smaller of Pesouris's two ferries, moored along the dock. Then he pointed out across the star-flecked Styx. The hand disappeared into a pocket of the caftan and came out clutching a fistful of coins. The man tossed them onto the dock at the ferryman's feet. There were several coins, and they clashed musically together as they hit the weathered wood of the dock. The weight of their impact and their vague yellow gleam were not lost on Pesouris. Gold.
'Your pardon, my lord, but I cannot ferry you across at this hour. The Stygians, in their wisdom, forbid it. If you come back at daybreak¦'
An uncomfortable moment of silence lengthened until the ferryman felt his pulse quicken with new apprehension. The man on the dock moved, thrusting his hand once again into his pocket and drawing forth another handful of coins. The pile of gold on the dock grew twice as large.
Pesouris looked down upon the spilled coins in sorrow. 'I'm truly sorry, master, but it is forbidden for me to take travelers across the river after sundown. Your offer is generous, but if the Stygians caught us they would slay us both.' The ferryman spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. He did not have to feign regret. That was a lot of gold.
The man on the dock stood still for a long moment, his flowing white garb giving him the appearance of a silently risen ghost. Then he lunged forward and seized Pesouris by the throat and belt.
The ferryman choked as he was drawn effortlessly up out of the chair.
The hand at his throat seemed sculpted from cold granite. The portly ferryman was tossed bodily into the smaller of his ferries. There was a sharp stab of pain as his right knee cracked against the gunwale. If he had not been so full of fear, the pain might well have incapacitated him. As it was, he had the strength to roll over, grasp the slender mast, and pull himself to his feet in the little craft.
'Please,' he choked, 'I'll take you. Don't¦'
The silent man was lowering himself stiffly into the boat. He sat in the prow and regarded Pesouris impassively. Only the vaguest outline of his features was visible in the darkness. There came the dry whisper of steel on leather as the man drew a heavy-bladed sword and laid it across his knees.
The ferryman busied himself poling first off the dock and then along the muddy bottom of the Styx. The ferry was little more than an outsized rowboat fitted with a miniature sail. Pesouris had Ahptut use it to carry the smaller, less wealthy groups of travelers. Now he scrambled to set the little sail as the craft surged out onto the black breast of the Styx.
Once the ferry was well under way, there was nothing Pesouris could do except squint into the darkness for the lights of Bel-Phar and regard his unlikely passenger. The air was chill upon the nighted river and a cooling draught blew back along the length of the boat. It bore a strange scent to the ferryman's nostrils.
Once, when he was very young, Pesouris had travelled by caravan with his father to Khemi at the mouth of the Styx. One morning he had awakened early and set out into the dunes to relieve himself. In a sandy hollow he had found the corpse of a camel. The beast had been mummified by the relentless arid heat of the desert and resembled a sagging leather fascimile of itself. The warm morning breeze had carried the same scent that he smelled now on the cool evening breath of the Styx.
Of a sudden Pesouris longed to look at anything other than his passenger. Turning his head to one side, he noticed a brief flash of froth out on the dark water. Amazed, the ferryman realised that he had spotted a crocodile. There were more flashes, more signs of movement all around the little boat. Here a black, armoured muzzle broke the surface, and there a ridged, lashing tail struck foam from a glossy swell. The hair stood up on the ferryman's arms. Crocodiles did not venture so far from shore. And they did not follow ferryboats. The breeze blew stronger, bearing that scent back to Pesouris once again, and suddenly he understood. Crocodiles are eaters of carrion. They smelled it, too.
By the time that the sparse lights of Bel-Phar's waterfront came into view, Pesouris had completed a long and most sincere prayer to Mitra.
He had briefly considered praying to Set before deciding upon the more merciful god of the Hyborians. If he survived this evening, he promised both a vastly generous donation to a temple of Mitra and a serious change of lifestyle. Looking to either side of the ferry, he felt certain that his prayers were falling on deaf ears. The man sitting in the prow of his boat had not changed position and if he noticed the swarm of crocodiles following them, he gave no sign.
'Master,' said Pesouris, hating the shrill sound of his voice, 'we are almost across.' No response. He mustered his flagging courage. 'Master, the water is full of crocodiles.'
The man in the prow remained silent.
Pesouris concentrated on bringing his ferry in to a darkened, deserted dock, pointedly ignoring both his somber companion and their reptilian escort. When the little boat grated against the stained stone blocks of the dock, the ferryman felt a surge of relief, immediately followed by a rush of stark terror.
The man in the prow stood up, n
aked sword in his hand. Pesouris fell to his knees in the bottom of the boat, clenching his eyes shut against the blow he knew would come.
'Please, master,' he pleaded. 'I'll tell no one of your passage. Spare your poor servant.'
A weight lifted from the prow of the ferry. Pesouris opened his eyes to see his passenger standing on the steps carved into the stone of the dock. The waterfront seemed unnaturally silent. On the neighbouring pier a lone torch flickered yellowly from a sconce set in stone. The man sheathed his sword with a swift movement and tugged back the hood of his caftan, paying no heed to Pesouris whatsoever. He turned and started up the steps.
'Master,' called the ferryman. The tall man stopped, turned, and looked down at Pesouris, who cringed but spoke.
'Master, who are you? What do you seek here?'
The flesh of the man's face seemed impossibly drawn and sunken in the faint torchlight. The mouth opened and closed stiffly, as though its owner had forgotten how to speak. A scar shone pale through the lusterless growth of beard.
'Death,' said Gulbanda, and moved away up the stairs into the night.
XXI
T'Cura of Darfar scrambled down from the jagged rock spur that he had been using as a lookout for most of the morning. Below him, twelve men lolled quietly beside their hobbled horses, clustered in what shade they could find atop the boulder-strewn ridge. Neb-Khot, the small band's leader, squinted in the merciless noonday glare, watching T'Cura descend and wondering what he had seen. He took a swig of warm, brackish Water from a goatskin and motioned for T'Cura to hurry.
Neb-Khot was a thin, wiry man. His dusky Stygian complexion was darkened even further by ceaseless exposure to the desert sun. His burnoose was grey with dust, secured at the waist with a leather girdle that held a scimitar and three cruelly hooked daggers. His sharp brown eyes peered questioningly at T'Cura, who scuffed over the rocky soil toward him. The Darfari approached his chieftain, touched his scarred forehead in a salute, and spoke.
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