The Incompleat Nifft (61 page)

"Why, so it has been, Effulgent One!" fluted the Demonstump. "We are as good as arrived already. Let us climb above and I will show you!"

And so we climbed up to the rim of the ravine. From here we saw the source of the noise we'd heard—a far, embattled fortress, as we'd thought. But Ostrogall, with a tilting of his head, said, "Look that way, along the line our ravine runs. Do you see that high ground there?"

"Can you mean that low hill yonder?" I asked.

"Not hill, but bulge," the demon said, "born of the upthrust of the giant's Talons, which were stone-frozen just underneath it an eon ago."

Though it was surely wisdom to doubt our demon's every word, I will confess a thrill went through me, to think what might lie just beneath that hill, and what power we might be soon to borrow from it.

Barnar took watch to give me first sleep, but when I snapped awake (after who knows how long?) he lay snoring like the rest. Ostrogall—that spheroid of glittery eyes—had been our guard. Perhaps he had as much to fear from his countrymen as we had.

. . . Nor take no more than is alloted you,
Else huge Convulsions, and your deaths, ensue.
 

THERE WAS no need to mount even briefly to the open plain. As we neared the low hill capping 'Omphalodon's stone-pent Talons, a shallow defile branched off from our ravine. We followed this a quarter mile or so, arrived at the flank of the hill, and thus quickly confronted one of the portals to those talons.

More precisely, we confronted what
filled
the portal—filled it utterly, and bulged forth from it.

This Tolltaker, or at least that portion of one here presented to our view, was like nothing so much as a giant bud, whose tight-clenched petals were of a viscid, purplish meat that smelled like sun-cooked carrion. It lay as still as carrion too, until Ostrogall, startling me, gave utterance to a shrill ululation, apparently a greeting in some demon-speech.

At this, the bud delicately shivered. One of its petals stirred, and extruded from the rest like a great, reeking tongue. Embedded within was a ratlike demon—more like a captive than an anatomical feature, for it was netted to the tongue by purple veins that pierced and pinioned it. It opened a whiskered, edentulous maw and emitted an unearthly warble that answered Ostrogall's in pitch and cadence.

With an instant impulse of distrust, I slipped the carrying bag over Ostrogall's head, crying, "Silence, stump! We are the seekers here! Make known to
us
, oh Tolltaker, what we must do to partake of the Unguent of Flight." Assuming that this demon was tongued for human speech, as Ostrogall was, I was unprepared for the Secondary's readiness to meet all comers. The entire petal retracted, re-entombing the embedded demon, and another petal thrust forth.

Beside me, Sha'Urley gasped. Perhaps we all did. A beautiful young woman lay half sunk in this demon tongue, likewise netted in a piercing mesh of veins. The pallor of her face, her lovely breasts, had a womb-licked wetness, a natal sheen. I think the most piercing horror of this epiphany was her eyes, all dark and lustrous, knowing us, a living mind behind them, yet long centuries vacant of all hope. Her voice was an echo in an empty habitation:

"Each seeker's toll," she hollowly pronounced, "is one of his limbs. You are five, and might alternatively render one of your number entire, to pay for the other four." Now another of the Secondary's petals protruded—this one the lowest of the cluster. It split open, presenting us a steamy, fanged mouth that drizzled caustic drool. Evidently it was to this esurient orifice the owed limbs were to be tendered.

The proposition took us several stunned heartbeats to digest. I answered her. "You err, oh fair and luckless captive! We are six. And this demon here, though he lack a limb or two, is all entire of mind and wit. The life of him, the nasty devious will of him, the gist of him is quite intact. What if we render him? Surely he would pay for all of us? Or pay for my partner and me, at least?"

"His wholeness of mind is of slight import to my master," she intoned. "He is a head, no more. He would pay for one."

I had expected little more; meanwhile my offer outraged our companions, and woke a bag-muffled wail from Ostrogall. "Peace, all of you!" I cried. "One must test one's ground!"

Barnar leaned near me. What he murmured in my ear was purest inspiration. I beamed. I gripped his hand. Again I addressed our tragic interpreter, while Barnar whispered to our companions, taking something from each of them.

"Unhappy young woman!" I said. "I herewith make it known to your possessor that its hellish inflexibility awakes my wrath. I have determined to slay your master, and pay no toll at all!"

"My master hears you with indifference," she emptily reported.

"Well, we shall see," I huffed, unlimbering the quiver of throwing-steel I'd brought. This comprised four in-close javelins, heavy-butted for thrusting weight, and four spears, three-quarter hafted for carrying, with the plume-shaped head I like for penetration and the short bronze neck for resilience on impact that lets a rightly-thrown stick snake its way deeper into tough spots. I hoisted and hefted a javelin, making a great show of adjusting my throwing stance. Meanwhile Barnar and Ha'Awley inconspicuously retired to where they could climb the defile's opposite walls and, unseen, re-approach the Tolltaker along higher ground. There they would deploy a weapon of their own.

"By all the powers, beautiful one!" It was Sha'Urley, just behind me—and by her tender tone I knew she did not speak merely to assist our distraction of the Tolltaker, but rather spoke outright from her heart. "Who are you? Ah my poor sister! How came you to this vile durance?"

This in some measure seemed to stun the beauteous thrall of the puppeteering demon. Her startled eyes seemed to stare into wastes of time we could not know, as if, in melancholy horror, she only now remembered she had had a name, a native home, a soul. . . .

"I was Niasynth . . ." she said, wonderingly. "I was born in Saradown of world-wide fame for ships, and sailing folk. . . ."

"Alas, poor fair one," Sha'Urley breathed. Were those tears in her eyes? "It is a name unknown to me."

"I came to the infamous port of Bawd, renowned for decadence. . . . I lay with a handsome stranger, who drugged me and sold me to a demon-broker . . ."

"Fair sufferer!" I cried, "your liberation is at hand!" I knew as I spoke that I lied, unless her likely death were liberation. I pitched the javelin mightily. It slipped through the tiny aperture of the bud where the petalpoints met, vanishing utterly, waking scarce a tremor from that mountainous demonmeat.

"My master bids me mock the paltriness of your power to do it harm," Niasynth emptily intoned.

"Indeed!" I raged, hefting now a spear. Now Barnar and Ha'Awley had crept into view above, and at opposite sides of, the defile. "Make known to that heap of reeking meat," I raged, "that I herewith repay its callous tyrannies!" I gave my spear-cast a goodly wind-up dance, to allow my friends to coincide their assault precisely with what slight distraction my weapon's impact might afford, lest the Tolltaker detect
their
weapon's approach.

I sank my shaft near all its length straight down the throat of the jaws the demon had thrust out to take our toll. The jaws engulfed the shaft without a tremor, but simultaneously my colleagues squeezed out the whole contents of four full flasks of brood-scent on the demon's dorsal surface.

I waited through several heartbeats, strung tight, expecting the demon's surge of panic at the whelm of Behemoth-scent, and sudden withdrawal. Surely so powerful a gust of spoor, coming from above and behind, must throw the demon into an upheaval of escape. It did not even stir. Though it were a secondary demon, how could it be indifferent to Behemoth's scent?

Here came Bunt and Barnar tumbling pell-mell back into the ravine. At a loss, I began deploying a third cast, with further declamations of wrath and resolution. But I had scarce cocked to throw when I sensed a fleet approaching tremor in the ground. I flung my spear to work what last diversion it could, and dove to hug the ground. From overhead, huge jaws thrust down into the defile, and seized the demon just where its blubberous mass sprouted from the stone.

In the instant of seizure the Forager's aim had merely been to lift and bear away what she had taken for a misplaced infant. But the furious power of the demon's reaction quickly galvanized her to an answering rage. Undoubtedly some taste of demonmeat—for the Tolltaker wounded itself with its struggles—counteracted the delusion of the brood-scent. The hungry Forager pulled mightily, her clawed feet shrieking on the stone. Three rods of writhing demon was hauled twisting from its shaft. Incredibly, such seemed its subworld strength, it balked at further extraction, despite the Forager's mightiest pullings.

And then a second Forager came pistoning up the draw, and added its jaws to the demon's uprooting. More heaving, bucking demon-thew came out.

A third Forager loomed above. We fled the ravine and found more distant cover, while vast jaws tore, demon-blood sprayed, and the vermiform Tolltaker writhed and thrashed and hammered the stone with its ever-diminishing bulk. Did luck not love us? How we had blundered to success!

Soon, crops full, our huge assistants sped away. Returning up the ravine, we found it sprayed with purple gore and littered with torn flesh—and found the tunnelmouth open and unguarded.

"Look there!" Sha'Urley cried. "Niasynth lives!"

If live she did, it could not be for long. Poor demon-thrall, poor human puppet! Though the slab of hellmeat she was bound to had indeed fallen clear of the Foragers' feast, it had bled out a purple pond already, and it seemed that she, too, dwindled with the bleeding. Sha'Urley, kneeling by her, began with her sword's edge to shave the demon tissue from Niasynth, though still that beauteous thrall bled her own blood from the stubs of sundered demon veins that pierced her everywhere. Her voice came dreamy with her waning strength:

"Thanks, dear sister, but I die apace. Hear me, earthfellows. Each of you may scrape off of 'Omphalodon's uncovered flesh no more Unguent than will fill one of the bowls you will find within the shaft. Should any one take more, it will be known. The Secondaries' spells enmesh the Talons. Huge convulsions, and your deaths, will follow any act of greedy excess by any one of you. One bowl each, no more. With all my heart I thank you for this death's sweet . . . sweet . . . deliverance."

"We too rejoice for you. Away then!" I cried.

"First help me!" Sha'Urley urged. "I think she may be saved!"

"Alas, fond hope!" I cried. Already my whole spirit was below, in a rapture of near-achieved delight. The four of us plunged into the shaft-mouth, while still Sha'Urley knelt by bleeding Niasynth, plying her swordblade with surgical tenderness.

An antechamber received us, where the light of torches socketed in the wall mixed with dim, vinous light leaking down from the subworld above. Here where his eyes might help, and his treacheries could no longer hinder, I unhooded Ostrogall. "Please, gentlemen!" he cried, "Take her admonition firm to heart! For the least excess in harvest of the Unguent will be known. And such is the savage rigor of the Secondaries' spirit that they have provided for these tunnels' ruin, sooner than bear pilferage past what they prescribe!"

Half-hearkening, we scanned an inscription chiselled in the wall, above a heap of carven stone bowls. These lines of High Archaic were known to us. Their best-known description is found in Finnik of Minuskulon's
Iambical Ditties
:

Heliomphaladon Incarnadine
 

Sunken in his Dark did long repine,
 

And craved to clutch the splendor of the sun
 

Whose glow and grandeur, legended in lore,
 

The mighty demon ne'er laid eye upon,
 

Mured as he was in his Third Subworld lair.
 

Crouched where fang-tormented myriad moan
 

And Universe is but a rumored light,
 

The demon gnawed Forever like a bone
 

Whilst solar phantoms scorched his murky sight,
 

Till was more real this storied star to him
 

Than were his world's inexorable walls.
 

His molten hands did through the
 

world-bone swim. . . .
 

Now behold where all disjoint he sprawls!
On sunless hell his eye forever shines,
 

Heliomphalodon Incarnadine.
 

I hefted one of the bowls. It was capacious enough, perhaps, if one but knew the concentration of the Unguent's power. I could not repress the thought, however, that it would not hold half the capacity of one of the leathern jars that we had brought to bear our harvest away in. Perhaps Ostrogall sensed my disappointment, for he elaborated:

"The Secondaries, oh Luminous Masters, have involved the Talons in trigger spells. Take but an iota of excess and the Talons are fractionally released from the detaining sorcery ensnaring them. They surge upward. All this tunnelwork meets grinding annihilation in one claw-twitch. Believe me, none in all this time, not even the grimmest of my own compatriots, has ever dared to flout this iron limit. Should even one of us let greed over-rule him here, we all shall die together."

The four of us nodded solemnly at one another. "Well, then," Barnar said, scanning the several tunnels that branched from this chamber, "Nifft and I will take this way, you two that one, and the first to find our quarry can halloo the others."

As Costard's and Bunt's torches dwindled down the central shaft, we took the leftward one. We began going at a jog-trot, the pair of us moved by a wordless accord—Barnar, I am sure, mutely assessing distances and times, as I was.

Cut by demon art, the shaft walls had a melted smoothness, and were amply diametered to allow much larger beings than ourselves an easy passage. Our going down, though somewhat steep, was neither difficult, nor long.