Collected Fiction, page 40
“It is I, once Orander. Elf has made me a god, and he has built me worlds for my pleasure. Go back.”
“You see,” the warlock said, his gaze meeting Elak’s frankly. “Would you rob a god of his worlds? I put no enchantment on Orander. The king asked me to grant him this boon, and with my magic I did so—made worlds over which your brother rules. Would you drag him back to Cyrena—a place from which he fled?”
Elak did not answer. A frown darkened his face. Elf went on slowly.
“Dalan was jealous of my power; that was all. He tried to lead Cyrena against me, and in self-defense I sought the Northmen’s aid, for I could not call on Orander. Join me, Elak—you can sit on Cyrena’s throne, and my magic will serve you. Forget the Druid’s lies!”
Doubtfully Elak lowered his rapier. “I don’t want to rule,” he said. “I seek no crowns. I came here to win back Cyrena from invaders, and to free my brother. But——”
“But Orander does not wish to be freed——”
“You lie!”
Dalan’s voice! Elak’s head jerked up. He stared at the sky—to where, beside the Titan face of Orander, hung another face, hog-fat, toad-ugly, glaring down at Elf.
“Mider!” roared the Druid. “By Mider—you seek to stuff Elak’s head with lies? Your spells won’t aid you now—you spew of serpents!”
The warlock looked up unmoving. And the voice of Dalan thundered on from the sky.
“My magic is stronger than yours—else I’d not be here now. Aye, you seek to enlist Elak’s aid, for you dare not fight him—not while he carries the Druid knife of sacrifice.”
Elf’s lips were twisted in a venomous snarl. But the Druid ignored him, bellowed, “Elak! There’s foul enchantment on Orander. He’s glamoured by the damned witchery of Elf’s poison, by the spell cast on him unawares—but he can be called back to Cyrena, and he’ll thank you for it. No man is made to be a god, and there’ll be a fearful doom on Orander unless he’s called back. Speak to him of Cyrena—of his people, Elak!”
FOR a second the adventurer hesitated, staring up at the Cyclopean face of the king. Then, suddenly, he lifted his rapier with a shout. He had seen something change in the god-face, and the veil of horror had lifted from the alien eyes.
“Orander!” Elak cried. “Orander—come back to Cyrena! The sea cliffs are harried by Northmen, and dragon ships bring invaders with torch and sword. The chiefs have risen—but they need a king, else Cyrena will fall again.
“Orander, remember your kingdom—remember the fields of your land, green in the warm sunlight, silver under the moon. Remember the steadings and the cattle of your people—Sharn Forest and the Druid altars.
“The mountains and plains of Cyrena, your warhorse and your sword, remember all these! Remember those who held the throne before you without failing—remember the blood and steel that make up your kingdom. Orander—come back to Cyrena!”
The Titan face was no longer that of a god. It looked down on Elak, the face of Orander, Cyrena’s king. His pulses surged with triumph as he heard the Druid shout, “Shatter the jewel, Orander—shatter the demon jewel you hold!”
Simultaneously there came a thunder and a crashing as of riven worlds, and the ocher light vanished from the sky. The tumult roared all about Elak, the darkness broken by flashing, brief light-images. The ruins of sunken Lur sank down in thunder; the huge and splendid city of Athorama crashed in terrible destruction down the mountain, while the mitered beasts flew screaming, beating the air with frantic pinions. All around Elak was the death cry of a ruined universe, and it swelled and rose to a dreadful crescendo of terror.
He saw Elf’s face, twisted into a Gorgon mask of hate and fury, rushing toward him; something like the coil of a great serpent swept about his body. The rapier was gone, but he remembered the crystal dagger in his belt, clawed out the Druid blade. He drove it again and again into the cold, scaly thing that gripped him, unseen in the darkness that had fallen. Chill flesh seemed to shrink from beneath his attack.
Then he felt fangs closing on his throat, ripped out desperately with the dagger. There was a single frightful scream of deathly agony, and in a moment of blazing light Elak saw the body of Elf falling into a fathomless gulf that loomed below him. As he watched, the warlock’s figure seemed to be wrenched asunder by some unseen power that waited in the abyss. And again darkness fell—and silence.
There was a low wheezing and scrambling nearby, and light flickered up dimly. Elak saw the Druid bending over a lighted lamp and realized with incredulity that he stood in the cave of the black altar. Swiftly he turned.
A man was rising to his feet—and on the stones around him lay splintered yellow shards. Orander—no longer tranced by Elf’s magic, no longer under a spell. The king’s eyes met Elak’s.
The adventurer leaped forward, gripped his brother’s arms. “Orander! Ishtar be praised!”
“Praise Mider, rather,” Dalan said dryly. “And praise Orander for shattering the jewel and breaking the spell.” An expression of malevolent triumph came over the ugly face. “But you’ve slain Elf, Elak, and for that you have my thanks. May his soul be tortured through eternity in the Nine Hells!”
From the turret of King Orander’s castle Dalan watched three figures ride south weeks later. His heavy shoulders lifted in a shrug. Beside him Orander smiled a little sadly.
“He wouldn’t stay, Dalan. And I’m sorry for that.”
“He was wise,” the Druid said. “A country should have but one hero, its king. Best let him go in peace, lest quarrels come if he had stayed.”
“No. There would be no quarrels. But Zeulas—Elak, as he calls himself—is a wanderer. He will not change now, though I urged him. So he rides south again, with Lycon and Velia at his side.”
The figures on horseback grew small on the plain—two who rode very close together, and one who followed at a little distance, reeling in his saddle and keeping his balance only by occasionally gripping the beast’s mane. Elak and Velia talked, with soft laughter and high hearts, as they cantered onward—and behind them Lycon, in his own fashion, was happy also.
“Wine,” he murmured thickly to himself. “Goatskins of it. Good wine, too! The gods are very good . . .”
[THE END]
SPAWN OF DAGON
An eldritch, fearsome tale of the worship of the fish-god in the ancient world, and the prowess of a doughty swordsman in old Atlantis
Under all graves they murmur,
They murmur and rebel,
Down to the buried kingdoms creep,
And like a lost rain roar and weep
O’er the red heavens of hell.
—Chesterton.
TWO STREAMS OF blood trickled slowly across the rough boards of the floor. One of them emerged from a gaping wound in the throat of a prostrate, armor-clad body; the other dripped from a chink in the battered cuirass, and the swaying light of a hanging lamp cast grotesque shadows over the corpse and the two men who crouched on their hams watching it. They were both very drunk. One of them, a tall, extremely slender man whose bronzed body seemed boneless, so supple was it, murmured:
“I win, Lycon. The blood wavers strangely, but the stream I spilt will reach this crack first.” He indicated a space between two planks with the point of his rapier.
Lycon’s child-like eyes widened in astonishment. He was short, thick-set; with a remarkably simian face set atop his broad shoulders. He swayed slightly as he gasped, “By Ishtar! The blood runs up-hill!”
Elak, the slender man, chuckled. “After all the mead you swilled the ocean might run up-hill. Well, the wager’s won; I get the loot.” He got up and stepped over to the dead man. Swiftly he searched him, and suddenly muttered an explosive curse. “The swine’s as bare as a Bacchic vestal! He has no purse.”
Lycon smiled broadly and looked more than ever like an undersized hairless ape. “The gods watch over me,” he said in satisfaction.
“Of all the millions in Atlantis you had to pick a fight with a pauper,” Elak groaned: “Now we’ll have to flee San-Mu, as your quarrels have forced us to flee Poseidonia and Kornak. And the San-Mu mead is the best in the land. If you had to cause trouble, why not choose a fat usurer? We’d have been paid for our trouble, then, at least.”
“The gods watch over me,” Lycon reiterated, leaning forward and then rocking back, chuckling to himself. He leaned too far and fell on his nose, where he remained without moving. Something dropped from the bosom of his tunic and fell with a metallic sound to the oaken floor. Lycon snored.
Elak, smiling unpleasantly, appropriated the purse and investigated its contents. “Your fingers are swifter than mine,” he told the recumbent Lycon, “but I can hold more mead than you. Next time don’t try to cheat one who has more brains in his big toe than you have in all your misshapen body. Scavenging little ape! Get up; the innkeeper is returning with soldiers.”
He thrust the purse into the wallet at his belt and kicked Lycon heartily, but the small thief failed to awaken. Cursing with a will, Elak hoisted the body of the other to his shoulders and staggered toward the back of the tavern. The distant sound of shouting from the street outside grew louder, and Elak thought he could hear the querulous complaints of the innkeeper.
“There will be a reckoning, Lycon!” he promised bitterly. “Ishtar, yes! You’ll learn——”
He pushed through a golden drapery and hurried along a corridor—kicked open an oaken door and came out in the alley behind the tavern. Above, cold stars glittered frostily, and an icy wind blew on Elak’s sweating face, sobering him somewhat.
Lycon stirred and writhed in his arms. “More grog!” he muttered. “Oh gods! Is there no more grog?” A maudlin tear fell hotly on Elak’s neck, and the latter for a moment entertained the not unpleasant idea of dropping Lycon and leaving him for the irate guards. The soldiers of San-Mu were not renowned for their soft-heartedness, and tales of what they sometimes did to their captives were unpleasantly explicit.
However, he ran along the alley instead, blundered into a brawny form that sprang out of the darkness abruptly, and saw a snarling, bearded face indistinct in the vague starlight. He dropped Lycon and whipped out his rapier. Already the soldier was plunging forward, his great sword rushing down.
Then it happened. Elak saw the guard’s mouth open in a square of amazement; saw horror spring into the cold eyes. The man’s face was a mask of abysmal fear. He flung himself back desperately—the sword-tip just missed Elak’s face.
The soldier raced away into the shadows.
WITH a snake-like movement Elak turned, rapier ready. He caught a blur of swift motion. The man facing him had lifted quick hands to his face, and dropped them as suddenly. But there was no menace in the gesture. Nevertheless Elak felt a chill of inexplicable uneasiness crawl down his back as he faced his rescuer. The soldiers of San-Mu were courageous, if lacking in human kindness. What had frightened the attacking guard?
He eyed the other. He was a medium-sized man, clad in voluminous gray garments that were almost invisible in the gloom—saw a white face with regular, statuesque features. A black hollow sprang into existence within the white mask as a soft voice whispered, “You’d escape from the guards? No need for your rapier—I’m a friend.”
“Who the—but there’s no time for talk. Thanks, and good-bye.”
Elak stooped and hoisted Lycon to his shoulders again. The little man was blinking and murmuring soft appeals for more mead. And the hasty thunder of mailed feet grew louder, while torchlight swiftly approaching cast gleams of light about the trio.
“In here,” the gray-clad man whispered. “You’ll be safe.” Now Elak saw that in the stone wall beside him a black rectangle gaped. He sprang through the portal without hesitation. The other followed, and instantly they were in utter blackness as an unseen door swung creakingly on rusty hinges.
Elak felt a soft hand touch his own. Or was it a hand? For a second he had the incredible feeling that the thing whose flesh he had touched did not belong to any human body—it was too soft, too cold! His skin crawled at the feel of the thing. It was withdrawn, and a fold of gray cloth swung against his palm. He gripped it.
“Follow!”
Silently, gripping the guide’s garment, bearing Lycon on his shoulders, Elak moved forward. How the other could find his way through the blackness Elak did not know, unless he knew the way by heart. Yet the passage—if passage it was—turned and twisted endlessly as it went down. Presently Elak had the feeling that he was moving through a larger space, a cave, perhaps. His footsteps sounded differently, somehow. And through the darkness vague whisperings came to him.
Whispers in no language he knew. The murmurous sibilants rustled out strangely, making Elak’s brows contract and his free hand go involuntarily to the hilt of his rapier. He snarled, “Who’s here?”
The invisible guide cried out in the mysterious tongue. Instantly the whisperings stopped.
“You are among friends,” a voice said softly from the blackness. “We are almost at our destination. A few more steps——”
A few more steps, and light blazed up. They stood in a small rectangular chamber hollowed out of the rock. The nitrous walls gleamed dankly in the glow of an oil lamp, and a little stream ran across the rock floor of the cave and lost itself, amid chuckles of goblin laughter, in a small hole at the base of the wall. Two doors were visible. The gray-clad man was closing one of them.
A crude table and a few chairs were all the furnishings of the room. Elak strained his ears. He heard something—something that should not be heard in inland San-Mu. He could not be mistaken. The sound of waves lapping softly in the distance . . . and occasionally a roaring crash, as of breakers smashing on a rocky shore.
He dumped Lycon unceremoniously in one of the chairs. The little man fell forward on the table, pillowing his head in his arms. Sadly he muttered, “Is there no mead in Atlantis? I die, Elak. My belly is an arid desert across which the armies of Eblis march.”
He sobbed unhappily for a moment and fell asleep.
ELAK ostentatiously unsheathed his rapier and laid it on the table. His slender fingers closed on the hilt. “An explanation,” he said, “is due. Where are we?”
“I am Gesti,” said the gray-clad one. His face seemed chalk-white in the light of the oil lamp. His eyes, deeply sunken, were covered with a curious glaze. “I saved you from the guards, eh? You’ll not deny that?”
“You have my thanks,” Elak said. “Well?”
“I need the aid of a brave man. And I’ll pay well. If you’re interested, good. If not, I’ll see you leave San-Mu safely.”
Elak considered. “It’s true we’ve little money.” He thought of the purse in his wallet and grinned wryly. “Not enough to last us long, at any rate. Perhaps we’re interested. Although—” He hesitated.
“Well?”
“I could bear to know how you got rid of the soldier so quickly, back in the alley behind the tavern.”
“I do not think that matters,” Gesti whispered in his sibilant voice. “The guards are superstitious. And it’s easy to play on their weakness. Let that suffice!” The cold glazed eyes met Elak’s squarely, and a little warning note seemed to clang in his brain.
There was danger here. Yet danger had seldom given him pause. He said, “What will you pay?”
“A thousand golden pieces.”
“Fifty thousand cups of mead,” Lycon murmured sleepily. “Accept it, Elak. I’ll await you here.”
There was little affection in the glance Elak cast at his companion. “You’ll get none of it,” he promised. “Not a gold piece!”
He turned to Gesti. “What’s to be done for this reward?”
Gesti’s immobile face watched him cryptically. “Kill Zend.”
Elak said, “Kill—Zend? Zend? The Wizard of Atlantis?”
“Are you afraid?” Gesti asked tonelessly.
“I am,” Lycon said without lifting his head from his arms. “However, if Elak is not, he may slay Zend and I’ll wait here.”
Ignoring him, Elak said, “I’ve heard strange things of Zend. His powers are not human. Indeed, he’s not been seen in the streets of San-Mu for ten years. Men say he’s immortal.”
“Men—are fools.” And in Gesti’s voice there was a contempt that made Elak stare at him sharply. It was as though Gesti was commenting on some race alien to him. The gray-clad man went on hurriedly, as thought sensing the trend of Elak’s thoughts. “We have driven a passage under Zend’s palace. We can break through at any time; that we shall do tonight. Two tasks I give you: kill Zend; shatter the red sphere.”
Elak said, “You’re cryptic. What red sphere?”
“It lies in the topmost minaret of his palace. His magic comes from it. There is rich loot in the palace, Elak—if that’s your name. So the little man called you.”
“Elak or dunce or robber of drunken men,” Lycon said, absently feeling the bosom of his tunic. “All alike. Call him by any of those names and you’ll be right. Where is my gold, Elak?”
But without waiting for an answer he slumped down in his chair, his eyes closing and his mouth dropping open as he snored. Presently he fell off the chair and rolled under the table, where he slumbered.
“What the devil can I do with him?” Elak asked. “I can’t take him with me. He’d——”
“Leave him here,” Gesti said.
Elak’s cold eyes probed the other. “He’ll be safe?”
“Quite safe. None in San-Mu but our band knows of this underground way.”
“What band is that?” Elak asked.
Gesti said nothing for a time. Then his soft voice whispered, “Need you know? A political group banded together to overthrow the king of San-Mu, and Zend, from whom he gets his power. Have you more—questions?”
“No.”
“Then follow.”
Gesti led Elak to one of the oaken doors; it swung open, and they moved forward up a winding passage. In the dark Elak stumbled over a step. He felt the cloth of Gesti’s garment touch his hand, and gripped it. In the blackness they ascended a staircase cut out of the rock.
