Kingdoms of the Night (The Far Kingdoms)

by Allan Cole, Chris Bunch

  * * * *

  The fifth day broke gray and dismal, with a cold rain to add to our misery. We worked all morning, the light growing dimmer, the rain sleeting harder but then our spirits lifted about midday when the channel suddenly deepened enough to bear up the ships and we could make slow, but less laborious progress.

  Mud flats stretched on either side of us and soon we saw first a few, then scores of mud cones rising up twelve feet, or more. I didn’t know what to make of them except to observe that they looked a bit like the large mounds I’d seen on a wild plain, once. But they were homes of a kind of wood-eating insect and I couldn’t imagine such creatures ever favoring mud flats for nests. Then instead scores I saw hundreds of the things stippling the flats their surfaces bubbling with moisture, popping, then pustuling to a head again in a steady rhythm — almost as if they breathed.

  The channel carried the Ibis close to one of the cones and as I leaned to get a closer view a large, flat, diamond-shaped head shot up, hissing like an angry lizard. The head was albino white with a single black bead for an eye. Four sharp mandibles framed a mouth of mottled pink and they clacked ferociously. I drew back in surprise and no little fear.

  My reaction proved to be just in time because the creature reared back and spit a stream of putrid yellow liquid which spattered on the rails and deck. The surface of the wood blistered and smoked and I heard a cry of pain as the creature spat again and a hapless sailor was hit.

  He clutched his bare breast which had turned a fiery red as if seared by fire and he fell to the deck, writhing in agony.

  An arrow fired by a guard buried its head into the creature. It gurgled and shot back into its mud lair.

  Just ahead the channel widened into a deep pool. I shouted for Kele to make haste and ordered the signaler to flag the others to do the same. But then the lookout cried a warning and his warning was echoed all down the line as others spotted the same threat.

  Thousands of the creatures swarmed out of their nests and churned toward us from all sides. They were perhaps the length of a child but you would never mistake them for such an innocent thing. Their bodies — a glistening gray-brown behind the white heads — were half again as thick and tubular so they resembled a huge garden slug; but they had stubby legs with paddle-like feet — ten to a side so they could move with alarming speed across the flats.

  A score or more reached the channel and plunged into the water toward our ships, so incredible agile they could leap higher than our rails — bursting from the channel like blunt-tipped spears and raining their deadly spittle as their legs scrabbled at the rails for purchase. Two of them plopped down on the deck on either side of me and I cut one in half with my sword but before I could turn to dispatch the other, my whole side lit up in agony as it spewed thick yellow glop on me.

  As I reeled in pain, Otavi chopped the creature in two with his ax before it could sink its mandibles in me, then he too was shrieking as one of the creatures reared up from the deck and caught him full in the face. Chons speared it, pinning it to the deck where it wriggled mightily to get at him, but then Janela stepped in to lop off its head. Mithraik, who’d proved to be an uncommonly good fighter, laid about him with his sword, hacking at any of the gross creatures who came near him.

  All over the ship I could hear men shouting and cursing or crying in pain as they battled to keep the creatures from boarding. I recovered enough to slash the front legs off one of our attackers and it fell off the rail and into the water where five or more of its companions raced to devour it, the water boiling with their frenzied fight to consume the most.

  Every one we killed and kicked over the side seemed to divert the attention of its none too fussy friends, who’d eat their own as easily as us. It was probably the only thing that saved us. The deck was slippery with rain and stinging mucous and it was difficult for even the best of us to keep our feet, much less our wits.

  The Ibis broke from the narrow channel and into the pool. Behind us our comrades were still fighting their way out. I saw one man go over the side, a slug-thing fixed to his throat. The others struggled to reach him but were driven back by a shower of venom.

  The man’s cries were terrible and just before they stopped I thought I heard him scream my name.

  Then all three ships were in the clear but the danger wasn’t over. The creatures seemed only to pause for a moment at the channel’s edge, then plunged after us, fanning out in a long half-circle many slug-bodies deep. They swam like the big flightless birds that favor the frozen southern seas, diving downward a body length then bursting up to break the surface and curling over for another dive.

  Janela called to me and I saw her muscling an empty oil keg to the side. She slashed her arm with a knife, letting blood spill into the keg. I steadied myself as she reached for me with that knife, but she veered at the last instant, cutting off a bit of my hair.

  Quickly she stuffed the red hank into a small bag with a long sling. And she whirled the bag about her head, chanting:

  Demon Dreamer,

  Who sleeps in the deep;

  Awake onto me!

  Demon Dreamer,

  Hear my plea:

  Awake!

  Awake!

  The bag burst into flame and Janela flung it into the barrel. The oil residue caught and an unholy flame sheeted up.

  Janela shouted to me for help and reached for the burning barrel.

  I steeled myself and the two of us grabbed the keg — the heat of the fire so intense it was nearly impossible to bear — and threw it over the side.

  I had barely time to marvel that despite the heat my hands were unscathed, when there came an unearthly shriek, as if from the bowels of the earth and the surface of the water spumed and boiled.

  The flaming keg exploded upward and a wave caught the Ibis, flinging us to one side.

  Out of the depths rose an immense demon whose like I had never seen. It had the form of a woman — lush as any courtesan’s — but covered with scales like a lizard. Her hair was long and dripping and the color was a foul green. Her face was that of a hag’s but with long, filed teeth. She had the hands of a corpse, bony and long with needled-talons for nails.

  The demon turned this way and that, eyes black, flecked with yellow. Fear gripped me when I thought her gaze had fallen on me but they swept on — until she saw the swimming mass of slug-things.

  She gave another shriek — so loud that my ears rang with the horror of it for many hours — and plunged toward the creatures. Our attackers immediately swerved to meet her.

  The demon gurgled in glee, scooping up a score or more in her huge hands. Chortling, she swallowed them whole and reached for more. The slug-things were unfazed, flinging themselves at the demon. Soon she was covered with them, screaming in pain as they ripped at her scaly flesh; but even then she scooped up more and gulped them down.

  We were the unwilling audience of the battle for longer than I care to dwell on. And it was a fight without an apparent victor, for in the end the demon, with the last of the slug-things clinging to her, finally sank beneath the water. And as we fled the water’s surface continued to boil until we were out of sight.

  Eventually we thought it safe enough to stop. The rain had finally ceased and the sun made so bold as to peep out to see us swab filth from the decks and treat our wounds with an ointment Janela conjured up to heal the burns made by the creatures’ venom.

  I was helping her work on Otavi, who’d narrowly escaped blinding, and she was commenting that it didn’t look like his surly features would be spoiled by a scar, when the lookout shouted he saw signals from Quatervals’ party on the shore. The hunting party had returned and from the fatness of their burden it looked like all had gone well.

  When we’d fetched them the first thing Kele asked was: “Did ye, perchance, find us that road?”

  Quatervals shook his head. “Not a sign of one,” he said. “And although there’s game aplenty, the forest’s so thick it’d take us a month to get
where we’re goin’.”

  “Now there’s a great pity,” Kele said. Quatervals goggled at her, amazed at such a swift change of mind. “And here I was prayin’,” Kele continued, “that we’d finally get off this damned lake.”

  * * * *

  Quatervals had come across more than just difficult terrain in his journey.

  “It was a lucky thing for us, my Lady,” he said to Janela, “you had the foresight to prepare us for the worst.”

  Before his group had left Janela had cast a protective spell over each man, blowing bone dust in their faces and giving each man a ring woven from the black fur of an ape-like animal known for its ability to move through the forest without being seen.

  “I can’t make you invisible,” she’d told Quatervals, “but if you practice your woodsman’s skills well enough I can make it harder for you to be noticed. You’ll emanate the peaceful aura of something harmless but foul-tasting. It’ll make you seem dull-witted as well, so if there are any witches or demons about they’ll pass you by as not being worth their notice.”

  “So there’s something out there?” I asked Quatervals.

  His face grew dark. “Indeed there is, my Lord,” he said. “And if it weren’t for the spell Lady Greycloak cast I wouldn’t be standing’ here tellin’ the tale.”

  Quatervals had struck out to find a land route first and to hunt for fresh meat on their return.

  “All went well for the first two days and nights, my Lord,” he said. “Although we didn’t find anythin’ like a road, there’s game trails aplenty, cuttin’ every this way and that.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen such a forest. Trees’re so tall and thick it’s nearly black as night on the floor. So dark some of the plants make their own light — big things, lookin’ like mushrooms a witch’d conjure up. All glowin’ red or blue and makin’ the nastiest smell when you’d tread on them.

  “And some of them favor meat, ’stead of good earth and water. Saw one catch a rabbity sort of animal. The poor sod got too close and the damned mushroom burst open like an umbrella. Had big fangs ringin’ it and a red, hairy sort of throat. It gobbled up its snack quicker’n it takes to tell, then went back to bein’ an innocent lookin’ mushroom again.

  Quatervals said some of the trees grew their fruit right out of the bark instead of from branches. “It gave us the shivers,” he said. “The fruit was large and a sick lookin’ green. Made the trees look more like plague-sufferers... all covered with boils. And I’ve never seen so many bats. Hangin’ down from the branches in the day like they grew there, then goin’ off to feed at night. Seemed to favor the tree fruit I mentioned so I wasn’t worried they’d want to make a meal of us. Still, the sight of them was enough to make a man’s skin crawl.”

  He shivered at the memory. “Especially since the trees they lived in were the safest place to sleep at night. All sorts of huntin’ things came out then, just like you’d expect. Saw a tiger once but he didn’t give us any trouble. Thanks to Lady Greycloak’s spell he just looked up in the direction of where we were perched, then decided to ignore us and move on. Same with the bears we saw. Two of them, size of a small house it seemed. ’Course we were pretty nervous so it might have been me thinkin’ what it’d be like if they took it into their heads to climb.

  “But the worst thing was a fella who resembled a big damned lizard, but with fur. And he rose up on his two hind legs to spy out his prey. Seemed to favor those rabbity things I mentioned. When he’d see one he’d scream like blazes. Froze your blood in its veins and your mind as well so you couldn’t make a thought no matter how hard you tried. At least, that’s how we felt and the rabbity critters must have done the same, because they just stood there like they were stone and were snapped up by the lizard with no trouble at all.”

  Kele sniffed. “So far,” she said, “yer tale sounds like a pleasant walk ’n the woods next to what’s been goin’ on here.”

  Quatervals nodded. He’d heard our story and had made proper noises of commiseration and shock at our ordeal.

  “And you’d be right to think that,” he said. “Because that’s all it was... mostly. We were even gettin’ used to it as time went by. But that all changed on the third day.”

  Quatervals and the others had clambered out of the trees that morning, eaten, made their ablutions and were discussing the day’s travel ahead when it happened.

  “It sounded kind of like a horn,” Quatervals said. “Except it was the loudest horn to be heard since the gods thumped us together out of muck. It was deep as thunder and it hit us like a wind in the Month Of Storms. First blast nearly bowled us over and the trees shook so hard we were pelted with branches and leaves. Second blast was deeper’n the other. Made your bones tremble. But the wind wasn’t so fierce.

  “And the third call — for that’s what it turned out to be and I’ll get to that in a minute — was... gentler, is only way I can describe it. Seemed more like music, sort of. Made you feel nice. Made you think how much nicer it’d be if you went to listen to that horn up close.”

  Janela’s eyes narrowed. She’d guessed a small portion of what was coming. “My spell should have protected you from that,” she said.

  Quatervals nodded. “That it did, my Lady,” he said. “It wasn’t like we had to go. More like... well... that it’d be nice, that’s all.”

  He looked at me. “My mother didn’t breed a fool, my Lord,” he said. “So I knew straight off it was some kind of sorcery we were dealin’ with. Talked to the others and they said the same. We talked about it an hour or more and the whole time that horn kept playin’.

  “Nearly decided then and there to head back, pick up a little meat on the way and report what we’d heard. But the more we talked the more we’d known that you’d want more’n just that. As scouts, our duty was to get a looksee, and it ought to come from as close as we could get.”

  “You thought correctly,” I said, congratulating myself once again for picking a man like Quatervals, who could reason so coolly. “Go on.”

  “We tracked the sound half the day,” Quatervals said. “Usin’ game trails when we could and cuttin’ our own path when we had to. All the critters knew somethin’ was up. Didn’t hear even a bird stirrin’. When we looked up we could see them sittin’ in the trees, not even peckin’ at a feather to get at a flea. We stumbled on some animals hidin’ in the brush or behind fallen logs. They didn’t bolt or threaten if they were a size to do so but slunk off to find another place to hide.

  “We were climbin’ the whole time. Sent a man to shinny up a tree once and he said the lake was at least a couple hundred feet below us. So I wasn’t surprised when we reached a ridgecrest and the ground dropped away and the trees opened up. Down the bottom of that hill is where the sound of the horn was comin’ from. We eased about and found a rocky clearin’ with boulders stacked nice and convenient for spyin’. So I reared up and did just that.”

  Quatervals’ voice had grown hoarse, whether from weariness in the telling of the tale or in re-living the experience, I couldn’t say. I sent for some wine to ease both, then urged him to continue.

  “I was lookin’ down into a canyon,” he said. “Maybe twice as wide as the Great Amphitheater in Orissa. There was a creek runnin’ down the middle and the ground around it was bald of everythin’ except rock. First thing that got my attention was all the people. Couldn’t say how many because they were comin’ from everywhere. Scamperin’ out of the woods on every side except the one we were on — thank the gods. They were scramblin’ down into the canyon, then runnin’ in the creek or alongside it — didn’t seem to matter to them.

  “Nothin’ mattered, in fact. Saw them fall, saw them stub their toes on rocks, saw them skin themselves on boulders. Didn’t matter. Just got up or brushed away the blood if their head was hurt and it got in their eyes. And kept goin’ to the sound of that horn.

  “There were all kinds of them, too. Long-legged men and women, wearin’ nothin’ but bark loin cloths. Little fellow
s, maybe as high as my waist and dressed head-to-toe in animal skins. Some were black as night. Some a dirty white. And some were painted all over in all kinds of colors so I couldn’t see their skin. Anyway, you could tell they weren’t from one tribe. But from all over the forest, carryin’ nothin’ but the babes in their arms.”

  The wine had arrived. Quatervals gave me a thin smile of thanks, drank, then plunged on.

  “I looked to see where they were goin’,” he said, “and right where the canyon ended and the creek spilled into the lake I saw the horn. It was maybe twenty feet long, or more, with a huge bell at one end, cradled on a framework of logs. The tube came out from there, gettin’ narrower as it went until it came to fellow puffin’ on it. He was fat as an ox, with a chest nearly as big around. Two men were holdin’ him up while others held the horn for him, so all he had to do was blow.

  “And blow he did. Puffin’ up ’til it seemed he’d float away, then bearin’ down to blow. And out came that sound we’d been trackin’ all mornin’. Except now we were so close I could understand what all those people were doin’. Because I wanted to join them in the worst way. Throw off my clothes, kick off my boots and go runnin’ down the canyon to that music.

  “But just when I thought I couldn’t stand it any longer my finger started to burn. Underneath the ring Lady Greycloak gave me. And then I got scared and it came to me that something awful was about to happen.”

  Quatervals shuddered in a deep breath, wiped sweat from his eyes and took another drink of wine; steadying himself for what was coming.

  “I looked closer,” he said, “and saw maybe a hundred more people like the man blowin’ the horn. They weren’t fat like him but they were wide-shouldered, with thick muscles and kind of stocky. They were wearin’ some sort of armor, made of leather and wood with metal studs and nails. They had helmets, fanned out wide at the neck and steeplin’ in to a point on top. Weapons were spears, swords, clubs, bows... that kind of thing. But only a few of them seemed to be made of metal. And what skin showed was dyed real red, like the color of your hair, Lord Amalric, if you’ll forgive the comparison. Their faces were painted red as well, except for the eyes and lips which were daubed with black.