Dreamlands 5: Questers for Kuranes: Two Tales of Hero and Eldin

by Brian Lumley

  “Nothing,” he said, after a moment. “Just a whirlpool of … nothingness!”

  “Good!” said the Seer, with some satisfaction. “That’s how it should be. Does you no good, knowing the future. I prefer to be kept guessing. Keeps me on my mettle. Now we’ll try the right eye.”

  He opened the lowered lid, closed the other, and Hero looked again. At first there was nothing, but then—

  —The Seer’s invisible right eye began to fill in, tiny pieces of indeterminate action slotting into place like bits in a miniature jigsaw puzzle, gradually obscuring the absolute void which formed the board behind the picture. So fascinated was Hero by this process that he failed at first to take note of the emerging scene; but as it neared completion all leaped suddenly into perspective, so that now he gasped out loud and peered more closely yet.

  It was Eldin and Quester, the one aboard the other, all tossed about in a storm that spun the little sky-yacht this way and that like a torn kite caught in high branches on a blustery spring morning. Eldin, fighting with the sails, trying desperately to cut them loose before they pulled the boat apart; and a boom swinging, striking him, hurling him against the side of the tiny cabin where his arm seemed awkwardly trapped.

  Then the mast splitting and leaning over sideways to port, and the roof of the cabin wrenched loose and all the ship’s gear sucked out into the maelstrom. And the Wanderer cradling his (broken?) left arm, lurching this way and that and looking all about in seeming desperation. Quester was breaking up around him; the mast, splintered at its base but not yet broken free, swung to and fro, clearing the decks and shattering the upper strakes. With each wild sweep Eldin must leap over the lunging mast or have his legs smashed. Then the mast swinging far out to starboard and jamming there, causing the aerial wreck to list at more than forty-five degrees in that direction.

  And Eldin struggling with a hatch cover, slamming back the bolts until the door burst open with the pressure of the flotation bag contained beneath. The Wanderer’s ploy was obvious; he took a knife and cut through one of the two guys holding the bag in place, so that it sprang out of its bay below the deck and strained like a balloon to be free. Then, tangling his arms and legs in the net which covered the bag, the Wanderer reached down and sliced through the second tether.

  That did it; he was snatched aloft while Quester capsized and slid stern-first out of the sky, down toward the foaming Southern Sea far below.

  The picture faded, broke up, vanished, and the Seer’s right eye was once again invisible.

  “He lives!” Hero breathed, mainly to himself. And to the S.W.I.E.: “I’ll tell you what I saw—”

  “Hold!” husked that worthy, with whispery breath. “What you saw from without I saw from within. Two-way, these windows of mine. What, d’you think I can’t read these invisible eyes I’ve been gifted—or cursed—with? That would be like giving a crystal ball to a blind man! As for Eldin living, however”—he grew more whispery yet—“I’d not go daft on that theory, if I were you.”

  “Explain,” said Hero.

  “What you just saw was a day ago, during the storm. And it looked pretty perilous to me: floating off like that on a bag of mainly ethereal essence!”

  Hero nodded. “Maybe, but we’re old hands at ethereal-essence floating, Eldin and me. I say he lives! The question is … where?”

  “You want to scry some more?”

  “Can we?”

  The Seer sighed. “It’s a bit of an effort,” he grumbled. “But now that I’ve picked up his trail … and anyway, what’s a talent for if not to be exercised, eh? Very well, look again.” And once more he shuttered his left eye while opening wide the bottomless pit which was his right. More than eager, Hero licked his lips, looked—

  —And strained back from the Seer at what he saw, lurched to his feet with a cry of denial forming on his lips! Before he could utter it, the S.W.I.E. grabbed his wrist in an iron claw, dragged him down again. “It’s a picture!” the Seer rasped. “Only a picture floating on the surface of my mind. Damn it, I’m not always right!” “Liar!” Hero gasped. “It’s real and you know it!” But nevertheless he looked again in the moment before the Seer blinked and erased the thing:

  A backdrop of crags reaching to frouming mountains; great gray peaks rearing skyward; dark clouds scudding east on some secret, silent mission. And in the foreground: fangs of rock, scree slides, projecting outcrops like looming menhirs. Aye, menhirs, indeed! They set the mood for the rest of the scene. For caught fast halfway down a sheer-sided cliff, there was Quester’s deflated flotation bag; it clung crumpled to the fractured rock, the web of its rope net ripped—and empty!

  “Carried south, southeast by the storm,” said Hero, his eyes halfglazed, “rushed along with the wind whistling in his rigging, Eldin eventually spied the Isle of Oriab. He deflated the bag a little, sank toward the island. But the wind was too strong or his judgment was off. He missed Baharna and flew on into the hinterland. Those peaks, the rocks, the mountain heights—those were the foothills of N’granek. I’ve seen it, been there, know the place. I couldn’t be mistaken.”

  “But I can be!” the Seer insisted. “Did you see him crash into the cliff, rupture his bag and burst the net? Did you see him fall? No, you saw only—”

  “—The result of that crash,” Hero finished it for him. “I saw its result, and that’s enough.” His eyes had turned bleak, and yet moist, too. “Now I have to go and find his body, find Eldin, and deal with him before N’granek’s gaunts find and deal with him. Or before he’s found by other creatures of the night.”

  The Seer nodded, said: “If he’s dead, and if you find him—what then?”

  Hero frowned through his misery. It seemed an odd question. He shook his head. “I don’t—”

  “There are laws that govern the dead here in the dreamlands, Hero!” the Seer’s voice was harsh. “Had you forgotten?”

  Hero gasped as he saw the other’s meaning. If Eldin was dead, then he’d died in an especially unpleasant manner. And those who died that way—in nightmarish fashion—all shared a common destiny: the Charnel Gardens of Zura!

  “No,” said Hero, shaking his head, “I’ll not let that be! Zura shan’t have him. Not the Queen of the Living Dead. I’ll track him, find him, burn him before I’ll let him go to her—and he’ll thank me for it!”

  He stood up again, and swayed a little from the sudden emptiness of his head, heart, limbs. “Now … now I have to look for him.”

  “Hero.” The Seer again pulled him down, and was surprised that it took so little effort. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Eh?” Hero sat there cold and numb.

  “Your quest?”

  “What do you know of my quest?” His query was listless, automatic.

  The Seer shrugged. “An hour ago, a carrier pigeon from Celephais found me as I was on my way here. From Kuranes. With a message. I was told you might seek me out, and the king asked me what I know of this Oriabian vampire. More than that, he also told me a couple of things. And it now appears your quest’s more urgent than ever. I’m sorry, lad, but Eldin will have to wait.”

  Again Hero lurched to his feet. “Not for any king’s quest!” he blurted.

  This time the Seer made no attempt to seize him, but said: “Hero, do you trust me?”

  Hero looked into his frozen, empty sockets, and said, “Yes—no—I don’t know. How can I trust someone when I can’t see what’s in his eyes? Trust you about what?”

  “About Eldin.”

  Hero’s face was gaunt, tortured. “I have to find him.”

  “Sit down and listen to me.”

  Hero sat—but inside his pain and frustration were churning toward anger. “Hero,” said the Seer, “there are many small lights in my mind. They glow there like fireflies in a dark lane, or stars mirrored in a still sea. They are people I’ve met, memories of which I’ve retained. I don’t know these motes individually, can’t tell which firefly is what man or woman. But I�
�m sure I’d know it if one of them were extinguished. None of them have been, not recently. A few have flickered now and then, but none of them have gone out.”

  “You’re saying Eldin is still alive.”

  “I can’t guarantee it, but I believe it. Now, do you believe me?”

  “If I do, isn’t that all the more reason why I must find him?”

  “Hero,” said the Seer. “This pain you feel, worrying about Eldin. Is it bad?”

  Hero groaned. “He’s more than a brother. I laugh with him …”

  “How much worse is it, then, for those families and friends beloved of this vampire’s victims? Now don’t look away but answer me. Eldin is one man, and they are many. And again I say to you: I believe he lives.”

  “But a short time ago you told me not to rely too much on my theory of his being alive.”

  “Because if I’m wrong I don’t want your hatred!”

  They stared at each other for long moments. Finally Hero said, “Very well, but understand: If you are wrong, I will hate you. What must I do?”

  “You go about your business for Kuranes,” said the Seer, with an audible sigh, “and I’ll look for Eldin. And who better for the job, eh? Me, with these invisible eyes of mine. But first, and quickly, let me tell you what the king told me, and also what I’ve learned for myself:

  “Kuranes’ message: The plague has spread to Celephais!”

  “What?” Already the numbness was going out of Hero’s brain; his mind was alert again, his grasp growing stronger. “The thing has taken a victim in Ooth-Nargai?”

  “Victims!” the Seer corrected him. “Plural. Three of’em.”

  “But how can that be?” Hero’s brow showed creases.

  The Seer shrugged. “More than one vampire, maybe? Or a creature who can fly in the night across the sea? I don’t know how it can be.”

  Hero thought back on what Kuranes had told him:

  Healthy men—hardy, adventurous types all, and usually in their prime—had been vanishing without trace in Baharna and its outskirts. They left neither hide nor hair, bits or bones behind but quite simply disappeared—almost. They did leave gradually dispersing wraiths—ghosts! But ghosts of peculiar habits. No rattling of chains or lopped-off head-carrying for these missing and presumably (what else?) dead persons; no, they were simply wraiths that haunted their old homes, their families, favorite places, and other “haunts” they’d known in more corporeal times.

  Now, ghosts in the dreamlands were as rare as ghosts in the waking world. Oh, the dreamworld had its monsters and menaces, true enough, its regions of magick, mystery, and nightmare, but as for ghosts … Homo ephemerens (the people of dreams) didn’t generally have much of true matter anyway. They seemed solid and real enough, as most dreams do, but there just wasn’t enough of them to leave a great deal behind. Dreamland’s legendary Enchanted Wood was rumored to be home for several departed spirits, but actual sightings of specters were generally few and far between. Or had used to be.

  The trouble with the troubled spirits which the Oriabian (and now Celephasian, apparently) vampire left behind was this: that they were incredibly persistent in aspiring to ghosthood. Each and every victim had become a ghost, without a single exception. Also, instead of merely haunting, they went about like lost souls (which of course they were) in a sort of vacant, absentminded, and yes, totally lost condition. Not lost like virginity or lost in sin, but lost as in not knowing where they were. And perhaps more importantly, not remembering who they had been!

  And having revisited that conversation with Kuranes, and now with something of animation, Hero said: “It suddenly strikes me that we can make a quick end of this thing!”

  The Seer raised an expressive eyebrow over nothing whatsoever, and said: “How so?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Use your right eye to scry the past, find the vampire in his/her/its vile pusuit—or better still red-handed at a victim’s demise—and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Oh?” said the Seer. “Obvious, is it? But if what you suggest were possible there’d be no more crime in all the dreamlands! Can’t you see that?”

  “Eh?”

  The Seer sighed. “I can’t scry on criminal activities—not consciously, anyway. My eyes for the most part are quite blind to all matters of larceny, thuggery, arson, etcetera. Crimes against persons or property are therefore outside my scope, especially in a supernatural context. On the other hand”—and he frowned, which, without eyes, was a sight to see—“in this case there does appear to be something of an ambiguity.”

  “Say on.”

  “Well, I’ve said I’m not much on scrying supernatural stuff—and that’s a fact, even though the scrying itself is nothing short of supernatural! Ah, but I can see the ghosts of this vampire’s victims!”

  “Indeed? And can you show them to me?”

  “Certainly! For I’ve made some preliminary investigations, and indeed I have the power to recall some of the scenes I’ve seen. Now look into my eyes again—both of them, this time—and I’ll run a replay.”

  Hero looked as directed, and it was something like using the Viewmaster he’d owned as a child, except when he thought of it he couldn’t remember his childhood and didn’t know what a Viewmaster was. Just another brief flash of memory from the waking world.

  The scene was Andahad, a small but opulent seaport on the far side of Oriab. Hero knew it well enough since he and Eldin’s ladyloves Ula and Una Gidduf had lived there once upon a time with their well-to-do merchant father, Ham. As Hero watched, the picture in the Seer’s eyes narrowed down to a house of some excellence standing on a hillside to the east of the town. Outside the house, relatives of the family, passersby, and curiosity seekers in general, stood about in a small crowd, some having visited or being about to visit and others simply waiting to see what they’d see. Hero scanned their faces and believed he saw one that he recognized; then the S.W.I.E.’s eyes took him through the main door and inside the privacy of the dwelling itself.

  There, in the main room—the sitting room, with a wide window overlooking the ocean strand—the family of the missing-presumed-dead man sat around in great distress, wringing their hands and weeping, or else staring in astonishment at all that was left of the head of the family. His widow, the lady of the house herself, was quite distraught; wild-haired and -eyed, she all the time pleaded with the apparition, which stepped here and there about the room, peering this way and that, with an expression of bewilderment—no, of utter mystification—written plain on its diaphanous transparency of a face.

  Hero was fascinated. He watched the ghost in its perambulations, how it appeared to examine this or that object or item of furniture in the room, frowning as if desperately trying to recall something it should know. And a weird comparison struck Hero: that the specter’s expression was not unlike Eldin’s or even his own on those occasions when they would briefly recall some fragment from the waking world, only to lose it a moment later. Every so often, as it drifted about, the ectoplasmic revenant would deliberately move around a chair or table, as if subconsciously “remembering” that such items of furniture were there; but mainly it walked right through them, and occasionally people, too, even its own pleading, weeping, half-crazed widow.

  Occasionally it would seem to recognize one or another of its children, stop and stare in its puzzled fashion, even begin to smile or cry; but then the three-quarters vacant, worried expression would return and off it would go again, fading and quickening in turn, insubstantial as moonbeams where it examined and reexamined the room. Eventually, not looking where it was going, it passed into a solid wall and disappeared.

  “An explorer and adventurer,” the Seer informed as his eyes went blank as space again. “He mapped half of Kled in his time, that one. A great lecturer on his travels and travails in far, foreign places. When you’re too old for questing, Hero, maybe you should take a leaf from his book and become a lecturer. He didn’t do too badly out of it.”

  �
�Oh?” The other frowned. “Well, possibly there’s no connection between who he was and what he’s become, but in any case it doesn’t seem to me that he’s done too well! I mean, what is he now but a vacant vapor, eh?”

  The Seer scratched his head through his cowl a moment, then offered: “Do you want to see more? I’ve looked into most of these cases as they’ve occurred. Since we’re visiting in Andahad, as it were, you might also like to check out the shade of Shallis Tull.”

  “Shallis Tull?” Hero repeated the name. “Wasn’t he big all those years ago in the antislave-trade lobby? Didn’t he forge links with Parg, become the blood brother of Gunda-ra-Gunda, the Pargan king, and sabotage a Kledan slaver fleet?”

  “The same.” The S.W.I.E. nodded. “Hard as nails, Shallis Tull, but with a heart of gold. Alas, he too is now a ghost; he haunts the ship he once sailed against Kled!”

  “He wasn’t a family man?”

  “No, not him. The sea was his mistress, and fair play for all men his goal. Care to visit?”

  Hero nodded. “But make it brief; I fear for Eldin, and at this rate you’ll never get after him.”

  Again the Seer’s eyes clouded over …

  SO IT WENT.

  Through the Seer’s invisible eyes Hero boarded Shallis Tull’s sloop The Silver Fish, to witness that vessel’s vampirized ex-captain vacantly exploring her length and breadth. There was something vaguely familiar about the ship’s interior and belowdecks, but Hero was rather more interested in the ghost of Tull than the vessel it had chosen to haunt.

  Finally he followed the blocky, bearded, bewildered, and disembodied apparition back up on deck, where in a little while it passed into the wheelhouse, through the wheel, and vanished into the woodwork.

  Before the Seer’s eyes could revert to their commonplace (?) vacuity, Hero gazed through them onto the wharfside, where as before a small crowd of curiosity-seekers had assembled, all of them staring in wide-eyed wonder at the ghost-boat. And again, among the milling faces of these perversely peering persons, Hero thought he saw one which he recognized. Indeed, the same one that he’d seen outside the house of the explorer-adventurer.