Krozair of Kregen (14 page)

“I agree. I think I shall not speak of this later.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yet the girl. . .”

“She is apim,” said the Kataki.

“Oh, assuredly. Had she been a Fristle, or a numim, a sylvie, or a girl from Balintol, I do not think it would make overmuch difference.”

Fazmarl, quaking, said, “They would mean nothing.”

I did not hit him. I must come to terms with this detestation of diffs that was so widespread among the apims of Zairia.I had hardly remarked it during my previous sojourn on the inner sea. I had changed, not the Zairians, that was all. And, anyway, Fazmarl and Rukker would have no idea where Balintol was. I lifted a trifle and peered over the bushes. The blasphemous ceremony drew to its gruesome climax.

Couples were dancing out there in the streaming torchlight, going widdershins, letting abandon carry them away in frenzy. The dread weight of evil bore us down. The sense of evil among the stones shivered through the torchlight, and a coiling mist melted the gold and pink moonbeams. Fazmarl shivered. He began to crawl back, away, shaking his head, his lips slobbering.

I let him go.

I said to Rukker, “It seems to me a little Jikai might be created here, Kataki.”

“You may. By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! This is no business of mine.”

“You would not trust your Targ against this Oidrictzhn the Abominable?”

“There is nothing supernatural there. It is a man, dressed in a skin, with a chimera for a head.”

“So why hang back?”

His tail started to twitch. I drew my sword. He saw it. He said, “You may get yourself killed if you wish. Do you not see the archers?”

“Aye. That proves they fear physical as well as occult powers.”

“Then, by Takroti, you may test them yourself.”

He would have left then, calling his people about him. I could feel the evil in that place. It is a difficult thing to say. There was some suppurating spirit of demonology flaunting itself against the gray stone wall, drinking the light of the torches. I held Rukker. The people out there, abandoned, most half gone on dopa probably, clustered close to the stone slab.

“Would it not be a Jikai to go out there and deprive them of their enjoyment? Would not depriving other people appeal to you, a Kataki?”

Under my hand his arm quivered. I could feel the bunch of muscle below the mail. He hissed the words as a Kataki can hiss. His face was demonic as any devil’s, almost as devilish as my own. “Take your hand off me! I shall spit you for this, apim!”

“Then you will have to catch me, Kataki,” I said, and stood up, and ran forward into the torchlight toward the stone slab of sacrifice and the girl bound helplessly upon its scarred surface.

Hideous yells burst from the corded throats of the people dancing and clustering about the slab of sacrifice. They were possessed. Drugged on dopa or any one of a variety of narcotics, or on sheer fear-driven hysteria, they capered and screeched and sought to drag me down with clawed raking fingers. I pushed them aside. There was no time to feel either anger or pity for them. I got in among them with vicious speed and the archers perched on the crumbling lichenous walls shafted two poor devils instead of me.

The aura of horror swelled nearer that splotch of utter darkness on the gray wall. In a tangle of naked arms and legs I pushed forward toward the slab. I did not use the edge of my sword; the flat sufficed.

The girl was not unconscious. She lay on her back, strained over by thongs from wrists and ankles that were knotted to iron rings stapled into the stone. She wore stockings that reached to mid-thigh and were banded by red-glinting gems. The stockings were black, a fitting counterpoint to the darkness that hovered over her. Her body gleamed pink and golden in the moons-light, looped with gems, strings of jewels chaining her breast-cups of gold and twining around her stomach and legs, linking her ankles and wrists. Her hair of that midnight black of the Zairians of the inner sea glistered with gems and silverdust. Her face seemed only a pale flower, her mouth and eyes mere dark bruises.

A man leaped on my back and I bent and hurled him away. The sword slashed the thongs of her ankles, sliced the right wrist-thong. I moved to reach the left thong and someone grabbed my ankles. I kicked. A screech like a lost soul in torment cheered me. The sword licked out. I put my left arm under the girl’s head, lifted her, slid my arm down to her neck, her back, and took her up as one might hoist a sack of cereal.

She felt light and soft and warm, and she trembled all the time with a fine shivering that tingled against my hand.

Now I would use the edge, if I must.

An arrow splintered against the slab. The scarred surface showed ancient evil stains. Just beyond the slab a pit in the ground covered by an iron grating drew my alert attention. People were dragging the grating up, screaming in ecstasy and fear, throwing the iron grille down and then running, running. . .

Anything could squirm out of that dank pit. . .

“Slay him! Strike him down! Immolate him!”

The shouts grew in frenzy. With the girl caught up to me and dangling her strings of jewels and chains of gold, I began to run back. I looked over my shoulder, just to check my rear, as was my custom — and I saw the dread shadow against the stone move.

At that moment of impending horror an entanglement at my feet brought me pitching to earth. I held on to the girl and as we both slammed into the ground she did not cry out. Her eyes were wide and brilliant and fixed on me hypnotically.

I looked up.

A Thing moved among the shadows.

A Shadow moved among the things.

The screeching and shouting died to a whimper and faded. The breeze stilled. Mists coiled before the moons and the light changed with dread subtlety from gold and pink to a drenching shower of blood-rubied radiance.

I looked up.

Something ancient and evil slithered against the stones. Something . . . There was only one name that could be given this bestial monstrosity from out of the dead ages of time — Oidrictzhn — Oidrictzhn the Abominable!

The Shadow rose and lifted and became monstrous, huge, blotting out vision and reason. A chilling slithering, a hissing, a feral, hateful mind-numbing hissing whispered from the shadows clustered about the Shadow.

The Beast from Time slithered out from the shadows to devour me.

The Beast out of Time

Apim, the thing was, fully ten feet tall, gray and leprous of skin, marked by the splotches of foul disease. Its skin hung from it loosely, fold on fold of repulsive gray mantling, dripping with the festering slime. And its head! Domed of head and yet with leprous crawling skin patches supplanting all hair, with deeply sunken eyes that glared now as mere red slits. Red, red, those eyes, twin pits of fire, burning down on me. I rolled over above the girl. I saw the thing’s mouth. Arched and black, it gaped obscenely, and from its upper jaw tendrils of slime hung like oozing living stalactites. Green ichor dripped. The thing lifted gaunt arms from which hung like living gray curtains the hideous folds of flesh. Skeletal the fingers, curved, harsh, bony webs of taloned destruction. Now I was on my feet. The girl lay in her tawdry jewels and gold, winking flashes of fire in the torchlights and that dropping blood-red light, splendid against her flesh in that moment of horror.

The thing advanced farther from the shadows. The slithering hissing of its progress sounded from nameless horrors hidden in the shadows thickly pressing around its legs and feet. Its arms lifted like bat wings, its skeletal talons reaching forward. The red eyes blazed from their deep pits of hate, and the green slime dripped from its mouth. The fetid odor of the thing near drove me back; but I gagged and lifted the sword.

The girl spoke.

“If it touches you with its claws, you are doomed.”

“Then, my lady, I shall have to see it does not touch us.”

Her gasp was a pretty diversion; but the horror moved on and the contrasts of the moment must be forgotten. This was no mere mortal monster. I did not think a mere mortal man hid behind this obscene facade. This was a real true and
live
ancient evil one, from beyond Time, summoned up and demanding his sacrifice.

How old was this ancient thing? From what pits of hell had it been raised?

The slime dripped from its ghastly mouth and its head bent forward, so that the ruby eyes sank into mere furnace slits.

How could I spare pity for it? It should have died long and long ago, no longer needed by mankind, forgotten and allowed to sink into its tomb. But superstitious humanity had dabbled blasphemously in the black arts of Kregen and had drawn forth this horror. So a simple mortal man must drive it back from whence it came.

“It is Oidrictzhn the Abominable!” The devotees had regained their voices. They were shrieking in rhapsody, falling onto their knees, their arms uplifted in supplication. They prayed in an obsessed fervor to this Abomination. “All praise to thee, Oidrictzhn! Lahal and Lahal to the Abominable One!”

The thing slithered nearer.

And the lassitude and the weakness crept up my sword arms. I held the Ghittawrer blade with both fists, one unhandily near the other, for the hilt was not a full Krozair hilt. I struggled to think of the Krozairs then. Of Zair, of Opaz, of Djan. I tried to form words and hurl them at the Beast of Time. I wanted to shriek out that it should return to its ghastly haunts in the name of Zair; but I could not croak a word.

The sword felt impossibly heavy. My arms trembled. My calves shook. My head drooped. I struggled savagely to lift my head, to lift my arms, to still the agonized trembling of my body.

And the thing spoke!

Serpentlike, the hissing words garbled out through that obscene mouth.

“Puny mortal man! Foundling of Time! I demand my due!”

Only my body betrayed me. I knew what I was going to say. Oh, yes, I knew what I’d shout at the obscene thing. But it had the power, it possessed the ancient evil powers out of time and it held me in a stasis so that all my muscles could not move my body, my arms could not uphold the sword.

The blade drooped and sank.

The girl struggled to her knees, her golden breast-cups jangling against the golden chains, the gems over her body glittering. She clasped my knees. But I was of no use to her.

I think then, I really think, that I, Dray Prescot, lord of many titles and many lands, would have marched on my last long journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce. I really do. . .

I fought against occult powers that I dismissed as being the enfeebled ravings of children and idiots. But who may say what festers in the past of Kregen? Who deny the reality of that moment of horror?

The sword drooped and the point struck the ground and I leaned forward. In moments only I would topple helplessly to the ground.

And all the time the ruby fires of the thing’s eyes glared furnacelike upon me and the green ichor dripped from the gaping arch of its mouth.

I could not speak; but my mind formed words.

“Sink me!” I burst out. “A stinking slimy half-dead monstrosity with all the black arts of Tomborku to see me off with my own thirty-two-pound roundshot for company! By Zair! A fine fool I’ll look when the gray ones greet me among the Ice Floes!”

I felt the tremble in my arms. I remembered what a lady had said. The Star Lords — well, they would probably laugh to see me in this plight, for all that they could have aided me had they wished. So I thought then. As for the Savanti, they were mere mortal men, even if superhuman in their powers. They would not aid me now. Only I could aid myself, so I thought, in my usual blind arrogance and pride.

And the tremble persisted and I felt the sword’s weight again and I lifted. The hilt felt incredibly good in my fists. I raised my head. The thing did not advance. Against the shadows a radiance grew. A yellow light. A yellow light that limned that ghastly head with the dripping fungoid growths depending in place of hair, that shone upon the gray walls and drove away the black shadows. Yellow. A yellow radiance.

“By God! Zena Iztar,” I said. “But you are very welcome.”

And I lifted the sword against the tearing shriek of my muscles and I struck at the leprous shape before me.

It stumbled back. I caught it a glancing blow and it keened a shrill whine. The shadows writhed and coiled and lambent blue sparks spit from the darkness. But they spit and recoiled as that glorious yellow glow strengthened. Again I lifted the sword and took a pace forward and struck. The thing shrieked again and stepped back and back. I could feel nothing, now, in my arms. Twice I had struck and twice I had missed. I, Dray Prescot, swordmaster, bladesman, Bravo-fighter, had missed this shuffling, lumpy, ichor-dripping obscenity not once but twice.

I knew then that Zena Iztar could aid me only in some way, some not-so-small way, that lifted the occult power of the force that enchained me. But I could not move forward. I was held by unnameable powers. The sword glittered in the mingled lights; it could not be impelled against that hideous shape of horror.

“By Zair! Give me but the strength for one last blow!”

Willpower, the striving, the desire, the determination, by these I might stand against the Star Lords, Zena Iztar had told me. I must summon up all my willpower and force my reluctant muscles to power my body forward.

Oidrictzhn the Abominable leered upon me with his furnace eyes of ruby fire. He saw. He moved forward and his claws raked around. One touch was death. One touch of these webbed and taloned claws would doom me for all eternity. This I knew.

I burst the bonds even as the claw raked at my face. I swung the brand and the steel shrieked and bit and green slime spouted.

The thing screamed. It staggered back.

I have scoffed at the word eldritch. But in that moment I knew what an eldritch scream sounds like.

It sounds with the insane terror of pure horror.

The yellow glow began to fade.

The worshipers of this vile thing had dared not to approach. The archers had not dared to loose. The Beast from Time lurched. One claw still made feeble raking passes as it staggered back. The other claw lay on the ground at my feet and even as I looked so it gathered itself to it, and like a webbed scorpion scuttled for the shadows against the gray stone. I let it go. I know about scorpions.