A Fortune for Kregen (16 page)

The clansmen’s shortsword I left. The drexer would serve in that weapon’s office. There was a Ghittawrer longsword, also, one I had owned when I had been with Gafard, the Sea Zhantil, the King’s Striker; this I did not touch. I took the Lohvian longbow and the quiver. Then I looked at the bundle I had carried as a slave, and the remnants of the two monsters slain in this magic-filled corridor.

Now it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that I took the magical properties of the Moder over seriously. In long conversations with the wise men of Valka, and various Wizards of Loh I had known, the uses and abuses of magic had afforded lively debates. Wizards of Loh have real and formidable powers, as I well knew. There are many kinds of sorcerer on Kregen, and I usually steered clear of too close an entanglement with any of them. This place reeked of magic and illusion and it was vital to take everything that happened at face value, as though it were real.

An illusion of a monster biting your head off can kill you as headless as a real one.

At the same time, an illusion is harmless if you understand the nature of the hallucination.

That remained to be discovered in this den of iniquity.

Picking up the bag of food and the coil of rope I set myself, and thought to look into the Tryfant and Brokelsh paradises. I hollered out: “Hunch!” “Nodgen!” a long time. No answers being received, and not caring to enter, decided me.

So, alone, wearing the brave old scarlet, armed with my pretty arsenal of weapons, off I set.

By Zair! But didn’t doing just that bring back the hosts of memories!

Those sparkles of glitter left when the leprous-white monster had vanished drew my attention again. Our discussions of magic at home in Esser Rarioch had often dwelled on the phenomenon of power being contained within reciprocal power. I thought of the blue sparks from the stone in Tarkshur’s ring. I picked up the scattered stones. Maybe, they would serve.

And that yellow liquid dripping from the poison stings of the bouncing bristle ball...

Lacking a suitable container, I stated that fact, and picked up a handy little vial from within my own opening in the fire-crystal wall. Whatever power was operating here would, I judged, not provide anyone with something they did not lack. But the parameters were wide. So, with a vial of poison ichor as well as the stones, I marched off along the corridor seeking a way out.

As I marched along in the brave old scarlet a refrain of that favorite drinking song of the swods kept going around and around in my skull. “Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie,” that notorious song is called, and the refrain goes, “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all...” And as the swods sing they fairly bust their guts laughing at the incongruous notions their lewd imaginations provide.

Well, the song fitted me, now.

I had no idea what I was getting into, no idea at all, at all, no idea at all...

Just as Tarkshur’s Kataki expedition had become separated from the main body, so other expeditions had gone their own ways. There were a few monsters I met, prowling about — for loose monsters seemed to prowl about the corridors the deeper we went — and there were two or three lively encounters before I was able to clear them away from the path.

I did not enter any of the rooms which lay invitingly open along the route, for I was attempting to find my way out.

Shouts ahead of me along a corridor fitfully illuminated by torches indicated I had come up with a part, at the least, of the expedition which had entered with me. Perhaps. Perhaps this place was crawling with travelers lost and desperate to find their way out.

A thing shaped like a chavonth stalked ahead. It was moving away from me and seemed unaware of my presence. Its low slung head snouted away from me; but I knew what it looked like well enough.

Chavonths are feral six-legged hunting cats, and this one’s head would be a mask of ferocious cunning, blazing eyes, and splinter-sharp teeth. Normal chavonths are covered in a hide patterned in fur hexagonals of blue, gray and black. This one looked dusty...

From a side door where he had evidently been looting, for his arms were filled with gold goblets and bracelets and strings of gems, a man sprang out. He was a Rapa. He saw the chavonth even as the big cat leaped.

The Rapa was quick. He evaded the first lithe spring. But his leg was struck by a sweep of the chavonth’s front paw.

I blinked.

Instead of that Rapa leg being ripped by sharp talons, the limb was abruptly coated in dust. Then I saw the horror, as the Rapa screamed shrilly in shocked fear.

His leg was not covered in dust. His leg
was
dust.

He collapsed and the dust-chavonth sprang on him.

Instantly, Rapa, gold, gems, all were mere heaps of dust.

The dust-chavonth heard me then, and swiveled his head, snarling.

He leaped.

The steel with which an honest man defends himself against mortal perils would be unavailing here.

I turned to run, dodging across the corridor in jagged leaps. Dusty padding followed me in bounds.

The image of that Rapa collapsing and turning to dust hung before my eyes. And I saw... If memory did not play tricks...

Turning, I swung the Krozair brand up and with a quick prayer slashed at his hate-filled mask.

The cold steel bit.

Instantly, the dust-chavonth shrieked a high shrilling vibration of agony. He changed. The dust vanished.

I was facing a real chavonth, and under those hexagons of black, gray and blue his hearts beat savagely.

But a real chavonth, savage and powerful though he might be, is not the same adversary as a dust-chavonth.

The longsword slashed and backed and the chavonth limped away, yowling, leaving a trail of blood spots, vanished into the gloom beyond the reach of the torches.

Men shouted down and I shouted back. They came up bearing torches and I saw the twin Pachaks.

They looked as fierce as the chavonth.

“You are unharmed, notor?”

“Aye. The beast has gone.”

“It was a dust-chavonth — you are lucky—”

“I saw that a poor Rapa it slew and turned to dust lost his life and his gold and gems — but his sword remained true to itself.”

“A chance, notor.”

They called me notor, Havilfarese for lord, without thought. Truly, I had changed from the beaten and chained slave who had entered here. I did not think anyone would recognize me.

We did not touch the heap of dust as we passed. Somehow, I did not think it would ward off a dust-chavonth. It might in all probability turn all who touched it to dust.

The lady these twin hyr-paktuns served still wore her white gown. But it was streaked with grime and was torn. Her slippers were gone. She wore a pair of white fur boots. Her rose-red face and her yellow hair looked still out of place here.

“Llahal, notor. You are most welcome — I have not seen you before?”

“Llahal, lady. I am Jak — no, that is sooth.” Then I thought to convince them I had come into the Moder with another party. “You are an expedition new to these places?”

“Yes. I am Ariane nal Amklana.”

She said Ariane nal Amklana. Amklana was a proud and beautiful city in Hyrklana, and because she used the word “nal” for “of” I knew she was the chief lady of that city.

“Llahal, my lady. Shall we join forces?”

The two Pachaks nodded as she turned to them. They had seen the little affray with the dust chavonth.

“The notor will be a useful addition,” said one.

“Useful,” agreed his twin.

“Is there anyone else with you?” I said.

“Longweill, a flying man. He is farther up the corridor.”

I nodded. So these two had become separated from the others. The lady Ariane looked in nowise afraid, rather, she stared on every new thing with the rapt absorption of a child, delighted at the splendors, terrified by the horrors. I felt I could come to like her, given time.

“We must try to find our way back to the others,” she explained to me as we walked on up the corridor.

“I am going into no more rooms of horror. I did not come here for gold.”

I forbore to ask why she had come. Again the feeling struck me that only the most dire of reasons could have forced her to come at all, given that she must have understood far more of the dangers than ever we slaves had.

Longweill, the flying man, made the pappattu in a spatter of Llahals, and then, together and with a crowd of retainers and slaves, we continued this nightmare journey.

A mere catalog of the monsters we encountered and the dangers we passed would, I feel, weary.

Suffice it that as we penetrated farther into the Moder and discovered more of the maze of corridors and rooms and chambers, and riddled riddles, and fought monsters, we battled against the forces of sorcery and of death.

The flying man, Longweill, was a Thief.

He made no bones about it. There are thieves and Thieves. After all, those ruffianly Blue Mountain Boys who owe allegiance to Delia of the Blue Mountains are as bonny a bunch of reivers as you will find on Kregen.

“By Diproo the Nimble-fingered!” he said, as we gazed up at the blank ending of the corridor we had been traversing. “Now how do we get through here?”

As a Thief he was first-class, I daresay. But I had up to now not been impressed by his powers of survival in a place like this. He took good care of his own skin, and his slaves were loaded with loot.

Like us all, now he wanted out.

And getting out was far more difficult than getting in.

The sensation was distinctly odd, considering what had gone before, when I was consulted as to our best course.

“If we cannot go straight on, then we must of necessity go up or down.”

So we looked for a trapdoor, in floor or ceiling.

When one of the Pachaks, the indomitable twin called Logu Fre-Da, curling his tail-hand high over his head, pointing, indicated a trapdoor in the ceiling we all crowded over.

Logu Fre-Da’s twin, Modo Fre-Da, looked up and shook his head. His straw-yellow hair swirled. He lifted his upper left hand and made a gesture of negation.

“We have been trending down, to escape at the bottom of this pestiferous ants nest, have we not, brother?”

“You are right, brother.” Logu Fre-Da turned to his lady. “Lady — we must search for another opening.”

Longweill pushed through. His wings clashed together and then parted and blew our hair streaming in the downdraught as he flew up to take a closer look at the trapdoor. “No,” he called down. “Who is to say there is any way out? This whole business stinks of traps, and I am expert in those. Up is the way out, the way we came in.”

“By Papachak the All Powerful,” quoth Modo. “He could be right, brother.”

“I do not think so, brother.”

“Hai, tikshim!” called down the flying man. “Remember your place among us notors.”

Now tikshim, which equates with “my man” — only in an even more condescending and insulting way

— is intensely annoying to whomever it is addressed. Logu Fre-Da turned away sharply from under the trapdoor in the ceiling. Modo went with him, and they began to speak in fierce whispers, one to the other.

Longweill, the flying man, pushed the trapdoor up.

He should not have done so — of course.

The jelly-like substance that poured out in a glutinous blob enveloped him. Only his wings protruded through the transparent mass. We saw him. The blob of gluey substance fell to the floor. Longweill was consumed. The blob sucked him into its substance. His wings fell and rustled slackly on the floor.

We all crowded back.

The blob started to roll after us.

Glistening brown and umber streaks writhed within the blob as it rolled, and the oily texture of the mass picked up dust and the scattered detritus of the floor. This rubbish was ingested as the blob rolled, infolding and slipping away, to be left as a trail on the floor where the blob had passed. The blob glistened.

Well, man kept back the darkness and the creatures of darkness with his ally, fire — a chancy and often untrustworthy ally, admitted by all — and the rolling glistening blob looked oily to me.

Snatching a torch from the hand of a faltering Gon I turned and hurled the blazing brand at the rolling glistening blob.

It was oily.

It burned.

Waiting, I wondered what fresh deviltry would spew forth from this monster, as we had seen other monsters rise from their destroyed predecessors.

Smoke, in this den of deviltry, was always a menace...

The smoke from the burning glister-blob rose in a black and pungent cloud. It writhed up, coiling and twisting, and in the brilliance of the flames beneath we stood back, shielding our faces, fearfully watching and waiting for the smoke to assume a more awful form.

In a black flat ribbon the smoke poured toward us, writhing some five feet off the ground. Many of the slaves started to run in deadly earnest. Steel, against insubstantial smoke, would avail us nothing. About five paces from us — and the two Pachaks stood with me together with a numim whose lion-face bore an iron-hearted resolve — the smoke abruptly switched sideways as though caught by a powerful wind.

We could hear no wind. Yet the smoke thrust a long tongue against the side of the corridor wall, and split into many probing fingers, streaming, and so passed it seemed through the wall and was gone.

Naghan the Doom, the numim, said, “A grating.” He crossed to the wall and called for torches. In the glow we looked. The grating was there, right enough, man height and wide enough for even my broad shoulders; but the bars confined holes no larger than bean shoots. No amount of peering in the flung light of the torches revealed what lay beyond.

The conference was brief. Picks and sledgehammers were produced and the slaves went at the grating with a smash.

“Poor Longweill,” said the lady Ariane. “He was so hot-tempered. He would never listen.”

“You knew him before?”

“Oh, no. We met when Tyr Ungovich organized the expedition. In Astrashum. Expeditions from all over Havilfar are constantly arriving and departing.” She laughed, more nervously than I liked. “Departing from the city to come here, I mean.”