Omens of Kregen (18 page)

Nath in my left arm, my legs kicking, I retained the knife in my right fist. Something cold hit my thigh and I struck down without thought.

Fish or another tentacle, I did not know. Whatever it was, it went away.

Just when I knew I couldn’t last another heartbeat, my head popped out of the water into air that, musty and stinking of fish though it was, tasted like the best Kregen air on a headland of Valka.

I hoisted Nath up, used the back of my hand on his cheek, and looked about into that unremitting darkness.

No! Not quite! A leaching sickly green light, low on the water, just ahead. It could not be far. Using my legs easily, trying not to make a commotion in the water, and towing Nath along at my side, I persevered, and felt the shock of relief as my feet hit soft mud.

By the time I’d crawled out and pulled Nath clear, we were both covered in the evil-smelling gunk.

Nath still breathed and after I’d pumped some water out of him he spluttered and spat and choked out: “By Vox, Jak! You saved me. I thought I was on the one-way journey to the Ice Floes of Sicce then.”

“We’re not out of it yet, dom.”

“No. But I give you thanks for my life. Now where?”

“Look there.”

The green light emanated from a swarm of tiny creatures like glow-worms contained in a transparent shell dangling on a line. I noticed the creatures were not trapped, for some crawled to an opening and flew off, extinguishing their light as they did so. The line depended from a spiral extension from the forehead of a monster like a giant toad, horse size, that sat crouched and waiting with open mouth. The green light dangled before that open gaper.

As we watched, a bat-shape, all glints of orange and silver, swooped with jaws agape at the cluster of fireflies. With a single convulsive gulp, the giant frog took him, took him in whole. The wide horny mouth snapped shut, the flaccid skin of the throat bulged and swallowed, and the mouth opened again ready for the next.

We did not approach the green light bait, and the monster toad ignored us.

“Looks as though we are stuck,” commented Nath.

“I’m not prepared to peg out on a filthy bit of mud watching a toad catch his supper.”

“So?”

“I’ve no idea.”

With an enormous splashing and a sucking sound the water boiled and a tentacular shape reared upward. Green light glinted from its glistening hide. Corpse-white tentacles snaked aloft, striking unerringly for a hole in the unseen roof — a hole that appeared where it had not been before, that disgorged a shrieking man, and that closed up again the moment its evil work had been accomplished.

The massive body with one of its two tentacles fastened about the man, fell back into the water. We saw no more of that poor devil.

“Magic and monsters,” said Nath. “I see.”

“We can’t stay here forever,” I said, somewhat peevishly. “Let us go and explore.”

The torch I carried thrust through my belt would need to be dried out before it could be used; the spare in my pack was roused out, tinder and steel were struck, and we had a light.

“When delving,” I said, “it is wise to wrap everything in waterproof oiled silk or membrane.”

“I’ll remember.”

I quite liked this Nath the Impenitent. Laconic, he had a nice caustic way with him.

Our torch had no attractions for the orange-and-silver batlike creatures. They lusted after tender green fireflies, and were consigned to the inward parts of the monstrous toad. We left him to get on with his supper, and I wondered how long he had been there, and how long he would have to remain there in the future.

The spit of mud ahead broadened in the light of our torch into a graveled way that led into a wide shelf of rock above the water.

The going was treacherous. We were still dripping from our harness, and the leather would need some attention in the not-too-distant future. The temperature, on the cold side, was not too inconveniencing, and we made out a flight of steps leading upward into the darkness above the reach of our torch.

“Yes, Jak, I know,” said Nath before I needed to speak. “Stairways are treacherous here.”

“We must go up.”

“Assuredly.”

Prodding with our swords, checking everything twice over, we made our way up.

Nath’s sword point went clean through the apparently solid rock of a tread.

“Painted parchment. There’ll be stakes under there, sharp.”

“Aye.”

A loose stone lay dead in the center of the top step.

I stretched out, and this time I used the longsword. A quick twist sent the stone skittering off. In the same instant a damned great set of spears slammed across the head of the stairway. They ripped across with points glittering. Those points, still glittering and unstained with our blood, tucked neatly into slots cut to receive them. The five spears formed a gate to our egress.

“Um,” said the Impenitent. “Awkward.”

“If they’re on springs we may be able to force them back.”

“Then, by Chozputz! Let us try!”

“Stand by the points. When I have them drawn enough, slip through.”

He didn’t argue. I laid hands on the second and third spear haft, drew in a breath, and hauled back.

The springs were powerful. I could feel the resisting pressure; but I put my back into it and hauled with a will and slowly, slowly, with a creaking groan of protest, the spears eased back. The points came free of the slots. Keeping the movement smooth I forced the spears back and back and then Nath with his guts drawn in, slipped through.

With a smashing ripping sound the spears socked back into their slots as I released them.

“Now you, Jak.”

Nath hauled. He hauled with a will and the sweat started out on his forehead. His biceps bulged. He swore and struggled and got the spearheads out of the slots and then he could force them back no farther.

“They’re slipping!”

I put my fists on the hafts just beyond the shaped heads. I arched my back. I thrust. I pushed the spears back, and Nath laid on again with a surge of power, and with a final burst of frenzied energy, the spears were free and I could slide through.

“By Vox!” he said, panting. “You have the strength of a dozen nikvoves!”

I made no answer but turned around to survey what new perils we must encounter in this ghastly place.

At this point Csitra and Phunik put on a splendid show for us. At least, for the poor wights who were trapped down here.

First, a procession of mewling goblins fell on us. After we had chopped them, a crazed herd of Shrinking Phantoms gibbered and clawed to their own destruction. Three Lurking Fears nearly had us; but we rallied and drove them off with contemptuous words as well as cold steel. A handful of unnamables were hewed to pieces, and coiling vapors which stank like a fish souk in a drought sent us, green-faced, charging full on them. Then, after a few more passes with objectionable creatures both material and immaterial, we were confronted by a clacking collection of skeletons.

“Skelebones,” declared the Impenitent, highly disgusted. “We know how to deal with
them!
”

So, deal with them we duly did, and left bits and pieces of sundered bones strewn upon the rocky floor.

“Somebody is failing to impress, dom,” said Nath. “That I truly declare.”

“You are right. But we are not out of it yet.”

The passageways we cautiously traversed were still jagged; but we progressed up two more floors and the architecture of the corridors became more refined.

One room into which we peered with due precautions, for the door stood open, revealed a hideous idol of a demon god upon a throne. “No,” I said, rapping it out, sharp and hard. “We will not go in there.”

Shortly thereafter we ran across a chamber sumptuously decked and spread with a banquet for two. So, down we sat and ate and drank.

“They like to keep their victims nice and fresh,” said Nath. “That suits me.”

He drank, I noticed, without his habitual and automatic rationing of himself, for he was a swod of Vallia. He also did not realize the potency of some of the wines. In any event he caught himself, and threw the last flagon onto the floor. But his tongue was loosened.

In no regular order I learned he’d been apprenticed to a silversmith but had preferred to go off and learn the trade of armorer. He was the first son of parents who, having bred four fine sons and three beautiful daughters, went and got themselves drowned in one of Vondium’s canals. Then the troublous times hit Vallia, and Nath had gone off to be a soldier, something hardly available to anyone of Vallia unless they went abroad to be a paktun.

He had never been a mercenary. He had fought Vallia’s enemies. He had a chestful of bobs; but he’d lost the medals when he’d been knocked off
Shango Lady
.

“Then it all went wrong,” he said, and the mournfulness that would have been amusing at another time rang painfully true. “Those Opaz-forsaken Leem-Lovers!”

I sat quiveringly alert. Now what?

“Took her, they did, took my sister’s little Sassy. Gave her sweets and a new white dress, and a bangle. My own sister, Francine, and that husband of hers, Fortro. It was their fault. If I’d found ’em, I’d have killed ’em stone dead on the spot, by Vox!”

I waited. He rambled on, a broad palm against his forehead, his elbow on the table.

“Bought her back, I did. Gave those stinking rasts broad red gold for little Sassy.”

I ventured, “But you have paid them. Do you still need the gold to repay the debt?”

“Debt? Aye, it’s a debt. They said I stole the money. Stole it from my own regiment. Well, I borrowed it and then I was disappointed of my promotion and there was no gold. I could have managed it, I could.”

Now, when I used to be the Emperor of Vallia, I could not obviously know everything that went on all over the entire empire. When Nath rambled on about his court-martial and the way the nobs had it in for him, I knew I had no knowledge of that particular court-martial, although as a matter of principal I’d tried to have the records of everyone sent to me for perusal. You can’t be everywhere at once. All the same, I felt guilt. I
ought
to have known.

“They sent me off to train up coys. And reduced me to the ranks. So I joined the Vallian Air Service when the wars at last ended. And here I am.”

I took some comfort from the fact that had Nath done something for which he had received the death sentence, then I would most certainly have known fully everything there was to know about his case. I had the case of Renko the Murais as a guidelight, there.

Stating the obvious, I said, “I suppose you refused to plead guilty and so acquired your sobriquet of the Impenitent.”

“Assuredly so, Jak, assuredly so.”

Then his head went down plonk upon the table and he started to snore. He blew a neat little circle of bread crumbs away from his head on the table.

Such, then, it seemed, was the tragedy of this man’s life. What he had said of Lem the Silver Leem remained ominous. I just hoped the temple of his sister and her husband was the same as the one the prefect had burned down.

If the evil cult ever got a grip in Vallia, bad times would follow. Then the odd and unsettling notion occurred to me that I had to think of these problems not as the emperor, but as merely another citizen. Oh, yes, I still had broad lands and many estates in Vallia; Delia and I would not starve. Drak and Silda had the imperial provinces now.

I had not asked Nath why he had not demanded the right to have his case referred to the emperor, for I had heard the way Nath contumed the said emperor.

This hairy, hard, barrel-bodied fellow snoring away with his head on the table just did not like the aristocracy. Well, I’d had a few run-ins with them in the past myself.

After a good rest and another meal we set off again. We passed through a series of uninteresting corridors where discarded flang husks crunched underfoot to reach a tall and most imposing archway. The doors were shut.

“I’m not going back,” I said, and pushed the right-hand door. It moved smoothly open.

The hall within was vast. Opulent encrustations festooned ceiling and columns. The drapes were velvet thick and wine red. The marble floor shimmered in its whiteness. The sweet scent of flowers on the air reached us pleasantly. Ranged tier on tier around three sides stretched upholstered benches. They were uniformly empty. At the center of the hall and the focus of the tiered seating lay a pool of water. Thick marble walled the water. The liquid sent gentle drifts of steam upward.

“Capital!” declared Nath. “A bath is just what we need.”

I agreed. We poked all around and found nothing untoward. The water, when we tested it, was warm and aromatically scented and most inviting. We stripped off and plunged in.

Well, and — of course — we should not have done that foolish thing.

When our heads broke the surface after the dive all the tiered seating was crowded to capacity with gawking crowds — not apims, men and women, but ghouls, creepie-crawly horrors, skelebones, vampires, all creatures of horror, leering and gibbering upon us.

The croaking hissing noise they made filled us with revulsion. They were enjoying the entertainment.

And the water grew hot.

It heated up with incredible speed. In only moments it would reach boiling point.

The night’s entertainment here was plain. We were to be boiled alive for these horrific creatures’ pleasure.

Chapter eighteen

Deb-Lu’s boiling water trick

We both started swimming like madmen for the marble lip of the basin, and the water swirled and boiled and forced us back as though we sought to swim up a waterfall.

I was making progress; but the water grew hotter and hotter, and I did not wish to leave Nath.

Through the steam, something — and it was not a random something — made me glance toward the doors we had entered. Seg stood there, with Loriman and the Khibil sorcerer. Seg was shaking San Aramplo like a rag doll. Other members of the expedition could vaguely be glimpsed crowding up.

The sorcerer shook his head, and there was in the unhappy gesture his hand-tendered resignation, denial and despair.