The Last Hieroglyph (26 page)

Vacharn ended, and stood peering into the dusk intently; and Yadar at that moment heard behind him a noise of slow footsteps coming upward across the shingle from the surf. Turning, he saw emerge from the livid twilight the old captain of that merchant galley in which he had voyaged so unwillingly to Naat; and behind the captain were the sailors and oarsmen. With the paces of sleep-walkers they approached the firelight, the sea-water dripping heavily from their raiment and hair, and drooling from their mouths. Some were sorely bruised, and others came stumbling or dragging with limbs broken by the rocks on which that torrential sea had flung them; and on all their faces was the ghastly look of men who have suffered the doom of drowning.

Stiffly, like automatons, they made obeisance in a body before Vacharn and his sons, acknowledging thus their thralldom to those who had raised them from deep death. In their glassily staring eyes there was no recognition of Yadar, no awareness of outward things; and they spoke only in dull, rote-like recognition of certain obscure words addressed to them by the necromancers.

To Yadar, it was as if he too stood and moved like the living dead in a dark, hollow, half-conscious dream. Even thus, walking side by side with Dalili, and followed by those others, he was led by the enchanters through a dusky ravine that wound secretly toward the uplands of Naat. Obediently he went: but in his heart there was small joy at the finding of Dalili; and his love was companioned by a sick despair.

Vacharn lit the way with a brand of driftwood plucked from the fire; and Yadar beheld vaguely, by its flickering, the black and cruel precipices of a steepening gorge, and the dwarfish crooked pines that leaned malignantly from high ledges, as if to cast with wizard hands a malediction upon the wayfarers. Anon a bloated moon rose red as with sanies-mingled blood behind them, over the wild, racing sea; and, ere its orb had cleared to a death-like paleness, they emerged from the gorge on a stony fell where stood the house of the three necromancers.

Long and low-lying was the house, built of dark granite, with crouching wings half hidden amid the foliage of close-grown cypresses. Behind it a cliff beetled, overhanging it starkly; and above the cliff were somber slopes and ridges piled in the moonlight, rising afar toward the mountainous center of Naat.

To Yadar, it seemed that the mansion was a place pre-empted by death: for no lights burned in its portals and windows; and a silence came from it to meet the stillness of the wan heavens. But, when the necromancers neared the threshold, a word was spoken by Vacharn, echoing distantly in the inner halls and chambers; and as if in answer, lamps were illumined suddenly everywhere, filling the house as with monstrous yellow eyes; and people appeared instantly within the portals like bowing shadows. But the faces of these beings were blanched by the tomb’s pallor, and some were mottled with green decay, or marked by the tortuous gnawing of maggots….

Later, in a great hall of the house, Yadar was bidden to seat himself at a table where Vacharn and Vokal and Uldulla were wont to sit alone during their meals. The table stood on a sort of dais formed of gigantic flagstones; and below, in the main hall, the dead were gathered about other tables, numbering nearly twoscore; and among them sat the girl Dalili, looking never toward Yadar. He, though sorely sick at heart, would have joined her, unwilling to be parted from her side: but a deep languor was upon him, as if an unspoken spell had enthralled his limbs, and he could no longer move at his own volition but must obey in all things the will of Vacharn.

Dully he sat, observing with small wonder the grimness and taciturnity of his hosts, who, dwelling always with the silent dead, had apparently assumed no little part of their manner and similitude. And he saw more clearly than before the common likeness of the three: for all, it seemed, were as brothers of one birth rather than parent and sons; and all were like ageless things, being neither old nor young in the fashion of ordinary men. Yadar could distinguish Vacharn from his sons only by the darker hue of his garments, and the greater breadth of brow and shoulders; and he knew Vokal from Uldulla merely by a sharper pitch of voice and a deeper hollowing of the gaunt cheeks. And more and more was he aware of that weird evil which emanated from the three, powerful and abhorrent as an exhalation of hidden death.

In the thralldom that weighed upon him, he scarcely marvelled at the serving of the strange supper that followed: though meats were brought in by no palpable agency, and wines poured out as if by the air itself; and the passing of the bearers to and fro was betrayed only by a rustle of doubtfully dying footsteps, and a light chillness that came and went.

Mutely, with stiff gestures and movements, the dead began to eat at their laden tables. But the necromancers refrained from the victuals before them, in an attitude of waiting; and Vacharn, in explanation, said to the nomad: “There are still others who will sup with us tonight.” And Yadar, for the first time, perceived that a vacant chair had been set beside the chair of Vacharn.

Then, from an inner doorway, there entered the hall with hasty strides a man of great thews and stature, naked, and brown almost to blackness. Savage of aspect was the man, and his eyes were dilated as if with rage or terror, and little flecks of foam were on his thick purple lips. And close behind him, lifting in menace their heavy, rusted scimitars, there came two liches, like guards who attend a prisoner.

“This man is a cannibal,” said Vacharn. “Our servants have captured him for us in the forest beyond the mountains, which is peopled mainly by such savages.” Then, with a dark irony couching behind the words, he added: “Only the strong and courageous are summoned living to this mansion, and are suffered to eat with my sons and me at our table…. Not idly, O Prince Yadar, wert thou chosen for this honor among all who sailed in the merchant galley from Oroth. Observe closely all that follows.”

The giant savage had paused within the threshold, as if fearing the hall’s occupants more than the wicked weapons of his guards. At a signal from Vacharn, one of the liches slashed his left shoulder with the rusty blade, and blood rilled copiously from a deep wound as the cannibal came forward beneath that prompting. Convulsively he trembled, in such wise as a frightened animal, looking wildly to either side for an avenue of escape; and only after a second prompting did he mount the dais and approach the necromancers’ table. But, after certain hollow-sounding words had been uttered by Vacharn, the man seated himself, still trembling, in the chair beside the master, opposite to Yadar. And behind him, with high-raised weapons, there stationed themselves the ghastly guards, whose features were those of men a fortnight dead.

“There is still another guest,” said Vacharn, “a guest who prefers to sup when others have supped. He will come at his own time.”

Without further ceremony, he began to eat, and Yadar, though with little appetence, followed suit. Hardly did the prince perceive the savor of those viands with which his plate was piled; nor could he have sworn whether the vintages he drank were sour or dulcet. For his thoughts were divided between Dalili and the strangeness and horror about him. The utterances of Vacharn, and the presence of the cannibal, and the reason of his own presence at that table, were obscure to him; and he felt in all this the incumbence of an ill mystery. And, seeing that there was no longer a vacant place at the table, he was perplexed by the necromancer’s reference to the coming of still another guest. As he ate and drank, it seemed that his senses were sharpened weirdly, so that he grew aware of eldritch shadows moving between the lamps, and heard the chill sibilance of whispers that checked his very blood. And there came to him, from the peopled hall, every odor that is exhaled by mortality between the recentness of death and the end of corruption.

Vacharn and his sons addressed themselves to the meal with the unconcern of those long habituated to such surroundings. But the cannibal, whose fear was still palpable in his features and members, ate only a few scant mouthfuls, and these at the direct prompting of Vacharn, who appeared very solicitous of his guest’s appetite. Blood, in two heavy rills, ran unceasingly down his bosom from his wounded shoulders, and fell at last on the stone flags with an audible dripping. But of this, in his sore terror, he seemed unaware.

Finally, at the urging of Vacharn, who spoke to him in the cannibal’s own language, he was persuaded to drink from a cup of wine that had long stood before him untasted. This wine, Yadar perceived, was not the same that had been served to the rest of the company, being of a violet color, dark as the nightshade’s blossom, while the other wine was a poppy red. Hardly had the man tasted it, when he sank back in his chair with the appearance of one smitten helpless by palsy. The wine-cup, rilling the remnant of its contents, was still clutched in his rigid fingers; there was no movement, no trembling of his limbs; and his eyes were wide open and staring, as if consciousness still remained within him.

A dire suspicion sprang up in Yadar, and no longer could he eat the food and drink the wine of the necromancers. And much was he puzzled by the actions of Vacharn and Vokal and Uldulla, who, abstaining likewise, turned in their chairs and peered steadfastly at a certain portion of the floor behind Vacharn, between the table and the hall’s inner end. Rising a little in his seat, Yadar looked down across the table and saw that all three were staring at a small hole in one of the flagstones, which he had not hitherto perceived. The hole was such as might be inhabited by some tiny animal: but Yadar could not surmise the nature of a beast that burrowed in solid granite.

Now, in a loud clear voice, Vacharn spoke the single word, “Esrit,” as if calling the name of one that he wished to summon. Not long thereafter, two little sparks of fire appeared in the darkness of the hole, and from it sprang a creature having somewhat the size and likeness of a weasel, but even longer and thinner of body. The fur of the creature was a rusted black, and its paws were like tiny hairless hands; and its beaded eyes of flaming fulvous yellow seemed to hold the malign wisdom and malevolence of a demon. Swiftly, with writhing movements that gave it the air of a furred serpent, it ran forward beneath the chair occupied by the cannibal, and began to drink greedily the pool of blood that had dripped down on the floor from his wounds.

Then, while horror fastened upon the heart of Yadar, it leapt to the knees of the huge savage, and thence to his left shoulder, where the deepest wound had been inflicted. And there the thing applied itself to the still bleeding cut, from which it sucked in the fashion of a weasel; and the blood ceased to flow down on the man’s body. And the man stirred not in his chair; but his eyes still widened, slowly, with a horrible glaring, till the balls were isled in livid white; and his lips fell slackly apart, showing teeth that were strong and pointed as those of a shark.

The necromancers had resumed their eating, with eyes attentive on the small bloodthirsty monster; and it came to Yadar that this was the other guest expected by Vacharn. Whether the thing was an actual weasel, or a sorcerer’s familiar, he knew not: but anger followed upon his horror before the plight of the cannibal; and, drawing a sword he had carried through all his travels and voyagings, he sprang to his feet and would have tried to kill the monster. But Vacharn described in the air a peculiar sign with his forefinger; and it seemed that the prince’s arm was suspended in mid-stroke, and his fingers became weak as those of a newborn babe, and the sword fell from his hand, ringing loudly on the dais. Thereafter, as if by the unspoken will of Vacharn, he was constrained to seat himself again at the table.

Insatiable, to all appearance, was the thirst of the weasel-like creature: for, after many minutes had gone by in that hall of abominations, it continued to suck the blood of the savage. And from moment to moment the man’s mighty thews became strangely shrunken, and the bones and taut sinews showed starkly beneath the wrinkling folds of skin. His face was like the chapless face of death, his limbs were lean as those of an old mummy: but the thing that battened upon him had increased in girth only so much as a stoat increases by sucking the blood of some farmyard fowl.

By this token, Yadar knew that the thing was indeed a demon, and was no doubt the familiar of Vacharn. Entranced with terror, he sat regarding it, till the creature dropped from the dry skin and bones of the cannibal, and ran with an evil writhing and slithering to its hole in the flagstone.

Weird was the life that now began for Yadar in the house of the necromancers. Upon him there rested by day and night the malign thralldom that had overpowered him during that first supper, and he moved as one who could not wholly awake from some benumbing dream. It seemed that his volition was in some way controlled by those masters of the living dead. But, more than this, he was held by the old enchantment of his love for Dalili: though the love had now turned to a spell of despair.

He ate at the table of the necromancers, and slept in a chamber adjoining that of Vacharn: a chamber unlocked, and without tangible bars to hinder his going. Dully he foresaw the fate designed for him: since Vacharn spoke seldom except with grim ironies, referring to the doom of the cannibal, and of the thirst of the weasel-like familiar, whose name was Esrit. And he learned that Esrit had undertaken to serve Vacharn for a certain term, receiving in guerdon thereof, at the full of each moon, the blood of a living man chosen for redoubtable strength and valor. And it was clear to Yadar that, in default of some miracle, or sorcery beyond that of the necromancers, his days of life were limited by the moon’s period. For, other than himself and the masters, there was no person in all that mansion who had not already passed through the bitter gates of death, thereby becoming unacceptable to Esrit.

Lonely was the house, standing far apart from all neighbors. Other necromancers dwelt on the shores of Naat, served mainly by the people they had evoked from drowning after shipwreck; but betwixt these and the hosts of Yadar there was little intercourse. And beyond the wild mountains that divided the isle, there dwelt only certain tribes of anthropophagi, who warred perpetually with each other in the black woods of pine and cypress, but feared the necromancers and their thralls.