Outlanders 37 Rim of the World, page 1
Prologue
The Southern Congo
The drums spoke of the coming of the god.
In the village at the edge of the Usumbur Tract, the Waziri people stopped their work to listen. They cast uneasy glances at one another as the pounding rhythm increased in volume, seeming to seep from the tree line.
The double rows of giant eucalyptus trees stood like silent sentries at the border of the tract. The Julaba River flowed close by, curving away toward the eastern savannahs, but it didn't run through the tract itself. There was no movement of clean life within it, only the feeble and aimless slosh of stagnant waters, the drapery of liana-enshrouded boughs, the sulphurous stench of bog holes and the slither of the venomous snakes infesting the mire between the veldt and the deep jungle. In the twisted boles of the Borassus palm trees, no birds sang.
The sun sank slowly in the purple African sky and dusk rose up from the land itself, as if to smother its last glow. As twilight spread across the Usumbur Tract like the unrolling of a carpet, the drums reached a thunderous and frantic beat. The Waziri had heard the drums before and knew what the rhythm portended.
The village rose from a low escarpment. All the beehive-shaped houses were made of dun-colored mud brick topped by reed roofs, both materials provided by the tract. The structures enclosed a large hollow square and from the center blazed a communal cooking fire. The flames cast red streaks on the great oval shields of elephant hide held by the guardsmen and glinted from the points of the long spears angled over their chests. The faint breeze ruffled the shaggy dyed lions' manes that comprised their headdresses.
They stared up at the sky, dark faces impassive. The villagers followed their gazes uneasily, moving together toward the fire. An old man stripped to the waist threw more logs into it and the flames blazed up higher, turning the square into an oven despite the heavy humidity of the night.
A short distance away at the edge of the village, a young woman stepped out on the verandah of a bungalow much larger than the other huts. The flame of a torch affixed to a corner post cast dancing orange highlights over her slender arms and legs.
She was a tall woman, with the proud and erect carriage of Waziri nobility. Big gold hoops glinted at the lobes of her ears and several more encircled the slim column of her throat. Her eyes, a beautifully strange blending of pale brown and deep yellow, held an aureate hue, picking up the gleam of the golden bangles and baubles on her naked limbs.
Her complexion was a rich brown, her hair a thick black mass, caught back and confined by a golden fillet. From the apex rose the gilded tip of an elephant's tusk, giving her the aspect of a unicorn. Other than the feather anklets on her legs and the thin antelope-skin cups partly covering her taut breasts, her only garment was a brief kilt of leopard pelt about her loins.
Her features were bold and cleanly chiseled with a full-lipped mouth and strong chin. Unlike her subjects, Princess Pakari gazed up at the sky with no fear in her eyes or bearing, even though she knew the drums heralded the arrival of the god.
The booming drumbeats ended, replaced by the god's summons, a sound like a long, mournful wail. It rose and fell, echoing through the twilight and out across the grassland and seemingly deep into the Usumbur Tract. The call rose steadily in pitch, becoming as sharp and as piercing as a knife. Several people in the square clapped their hands over their ears and a number of children ran squalling toward their huts.
Then the god's eye appeared high in the sky, a glinting silver orb which at first seemed to be one of the new stars of the evening. Then the eye plunged straight down and braked to an abrupt halt, hovering directly above the leaping flames of the communal fire. A featureless disk of molten silver, the eye was twenty feet in diameter. Perfectly centered on the disk's underside bulged a half dome, like the boss of a shield.
A funnel of incandescence washed from the dome beneath the disk, its glare dazzling the cowering people of the village. The eye floated in the air as if suspended on a long string of screaming sound that filled the dark sky.
Princess Pakari gripped the rail of the verandah and stared unblinkingly toward the village square and the cone of light flowing down from the disk, interweaving with the tongues of fire.
At the same time the nerve-scratching wail faded, a giant figure suddenly shimmered in the midst of the flames. A fearful murmuring arose from the villagers and they moved away from the fire, toward the opposite side of the square. The guardsmen remained in place, their impassive faces registering no emotion, but they gripped the shafts of their spears very tightly.
The god towered nearly fifteen feet tall. Elaborate body armor tinted a deep magenta with flaring shoulder epaulets and an iridescent gem-encrusted breastplate encased his gaunt frame. The armor was scrawled over with writhing dragons and snarling devil faces. He was clad entirely in metal except for his head.
The skin of his face, drawn tightly over strong, high-arching cheekbones and brow ridges, was of a pale crimson hue. His fierce, lusting eyes gleamed like molten brass, bisected by black, vertical-slitted pupils.
A pattern of scales glistened with a metallic luster on the flesh of his visage, and a back-curved crest of red spines sprouted from his hairless skull. The god, despite his inhuman characteristics, had a terrible, arrogant beauty about him, but there was something viscerally revolting about him, too—his aspect suggested a pampered, depraved child, not an entity touched with divinity.
Princess Pakari whispered in English, "It's him...returning exactly when he said he would."
A shadow stirred from within the house just inside the doorway. A woman's voice, soft but underscored with tension, said, "I want to see."
Pakari cast a swift glance over her shoulder, saying sternly, "Stay out of sight, Doctor."
Taking a deep breath and composing her face, Pakari stepped off the verandah with plumed head held high and marched single-mindedly across the open ground toward the village square. The murmuring people parted for her, like water before the prow of a ship.
The firelight winked dully on the underside of the silver disk hovering in midair. As she approached, the god stepped majestically out of the fire, his giant, armored body rippling like the surface of a disturbed pond.
The god spoke. "Princess."
The god's voice didn't boom, but reverberated with an echoing, metallic whisper overlaid by a smooth, oily texture. "Again you do not order your subjects to kneel in my presence."
Pakari's lips twisted as if she contemplated spitting at him. "The Waziri do not pay homage to tricksters, Utu."
"Overlord Utu," the looming figure corrected her.
Pakari ignored the remark. "I told you when you visited last that I will not give you the sacred Great Snake, the Collar of Prester John. It is not fit for your hands."
Utu's eyes flashed, glowing a bright yellow and Pakari felt her breath catch in her throat. She told herself it was merely a trick of the flickering firelight. Flexing his metal-shod fingers, he intoned grimly, "My hands crafted it aeons ago, long before your people even existed. I created it and I am its rightful owner. I merely demand what is mine. It is a small thing your god demands."
"You," Pakari said calmly but contemptuously, "are not a god. I have it on good authority you are only a fraud with a bag of tricks."
Utu's expression didn't alter. "Kneel."
Pakari shook her head. "No."
Utu's lipless mouth writhed back over his teeth in a fierce snarl. "Kneel to me, Princess...and pray that you and your people will die easily when I have no further use for you. Kneel."
Drawing in a long breath through her nostrils, Pakari tilted her head back so she could stare directly into Utu's eyes. "Never."
For a long, tense moment, there was no sound in the village except for the pop and hiss of the flame-eaten logs. Then, from the underside of the hovering disk stabbed forth a short needle of white light. It pierced one of the guardsmen, punching through the tough hide of his shield with a small puff of smoke.
The needle penetrated the man's broad chest, exited his back and impaled the Waziri soldier standing directly behind him. Both men continued to stand, blinking down in confusion at the cauterized pinholes in their bodies. The whiff of cooked meat joined with the odor of wood smoke. Then life vanished from their eyes. Knees buckling, they crumpled together to the ground without uttering so much as a grunt of dismay.
"Kneel of your own accord," Utu said, a twist of cruel laughter lurking at the back of his voice, "or I will compel all of you as I compelled those two fools."
Crying out in terror, all of the villagers including the other guardsmen prostrated themselves before the shimmering image of the god.
Utu's features creased in a smile. "Your subjects show far more survival sense than you, Princess."
Utu's voice rose. "I command the priest to come forth."
After a moment the lean figure of a man shuffled toward the fire. Like most of the Waziri, he was tall, but his great age bowed his shoulders. A long white beard fell from his jaw line and over his chest. Over his back lay a kaross of leopard skin. His dark brown face bore deep creases and crisscrossed lines. He looked as old as time itself. His eyes, covered by a milky film, were blind, and he felt his way forward by means of a wooden staff topped by the likeness of an elephant's head, with the trunk curled.
"I am Inkula," he announced in a surprisingly vibrant tone.
"You are the keeper of the Great Snake, the Collar of Prester John." Utu didn't ask a question; he
The old man nodded. "It is in my care and will remain so until the rightful heir stands upon the rim of the world."
"Your god bids you to bequeath the inheritance of Prester John to whom I choose. I will return at the waning of the Moon and then you will deliver the collar to the heir."
"And who is that?" Pakari demanded. "All Waziri are the heirs of the collar."
Utu gestured negligently with his right hand. A rainbow-colored borealis suddenly shimmered beside him and swiftly coalesced into the image of a young Waziri man. Naked to the waist, his massive pectoral muscles showed an intricate pattern of ritual scarring. He wore an ostrich-plumed headdress above a fierce, scowling face. He wore a duplicate of Pakari's gold- tipped elephant-tusk fillet, and like her, his only clothing was a leopard-skin kilt.
"Laputara!" Pakari shrilled in angry incredulity. "Even from exile you betray your people to this monster?"
Utu chuckled patronizingly. "Your half brother cannot hear your recriminations. This is but the prince's likeness, wafted here by the winds at my command—"
"It's a hologram," Pakari broke in impatiently, "like you are. How did you buy him?"
"Unlike you, the prince recognized and accepted his true god."
Pakari clenched her fists so tightly her nails bit into her palms. "Only because Laputara believes your lies, that he stands to gain complete power over Africa. I knew he was ambitious and vain, but I didn't know he was a traitor! Don't you know he dreams of reviving the days of Shaka—invasions, massacres, whole tribes wiped out?"
Utu shrugged. "If he wishes to emulate a long-dead Zulu conqueror, then once he wears the collar he has the right."
"But first," Pakari snapped, "he must do your bidding." Utu smiled crookedly. "Isn't that always the way of mortals who seek boons from the gods? You can prevent Prince Laputara from reenacting the role of Shaka simply by acceding to my request to accept the collar...and obey me—at least for a time."
"I can do the one," Pakari declared darkly, "but not the other."
The smile fled Utu's face. He gestured toward the sky. "When the Moon wanes, Princess. Laputara will arrive before that and make preparations."
The image of Utu rippled, shivered and burst apart into millions of tiny, multicolored motes that then swarmed up into the belly of the disk like a cloud of fireflies. Despite the way her heart trip-hammered painfully within her breast, Pakari forced herself to remain standing, staring defiantly upward at the silver craft.
It slid soundlessly across the sky and within seconds was lost from view in the deepening African twilight.
Slowly, Princess Pakari unclenched her fists and her respiration became less labored. Wheeling around, she said sharply, "On your feet! The Waziri bow to no fakers!"
Carefully, eyes on the sky, the villagers rose from the ground. They murmured apprehensively, shuffling away from the corpses of the guardsmen. Pakari gestured toward them. "Attend to their bodies and be respectful. They at least died on their feet."
Head held high, Pakari marched purposefully across the square, ignoring the pleas and hands reaching for her. Inkula the priest called to her querulously, "Princess—"
She strode past the old man. "Later. We will talk later."
Pakari entered her house, striding into a dimly lit foyer where lion skins carpeted the floor. Once out of sight of the villagers, she sagged against the wall, running a trembling hand over her sweat-filmed brow.
Aware of a presence in the doorway to her private chambers, she demanded in English, "Did you see?"
A sturdily built woman stepped out of the shadows. Her bronze skin was a shade lighter than that of Pakari's, but her eyes were a deep, liquid brown. She was clad in a colorful, intricately dyed cloth shift of the type favored by the Waziri women. A bright red turban was wound about her head. Her full bosom strained at the thin fabric of the shift. A square case dangled from her right hand.
"I did, Princess," the woman replied quietly. "It was just like you described. He even scared me, and I knew what to expect. Don't be too hard on your subjects."
Pakari sighed and shook her head wearily. "They are not my subjects yet, not technically. Whoever wears the Collar of Prester John will hold that honor."
"We'll see what we can do about that." The woman reached up and pulled away the turban. Her hair fell in an ash-blond stream to her bare shoulders.
Pakari straightened up and eyed her challengingly. "When you came here to administer to my people, you also said you could help us against Lord Utu, that you knew who—what--he really was."
Reba DeFore nodded, lifting the case containing the satellite transcomm system. "All I have to do is make a call. Show me where I can set this up."
Princess Pakari gestured across the room to a doorway that opened onto a shrubbery-enclosed garden. DeFore followed her hand-wave and stepped out into the humid night, unlatching the case.
She glanced up into the sky at the big, bright full Moon, gleaming like an orb of cold fire overhead. She wondered briefly if Brigid, Grant and Kane were able to appreciate its beauty.
Chapter 1
The Sudan
Kane silently cursed the steady silver glare of the full Moon. He moved cautiously, circling to the right to put his back against the canyon wall. A small edge, but under the circumstances he was willing to accept anything he could get.
Yusef mirrored his movements. The goateed man was slightly shorter than Kane's six foot one, but younger by at least a decade. He looked immensely strong from a lifetime of eking out an existence in one of the harshest environments on Earth.
Naked to the waist, Yusef's brown torso was roped with heavy muscle. He stood poised on the balls of his feet, his eyes squinting from beneath heavy black brows as he studied his adversary. With a thumb he absently caressed the hawk-headed pommel of the curved jambiya dagger in his right hand.
In turn, Kane calculated, considered and discarded half a dozen strategies for engaging the younger man. Like Yusef, he was stripped down to pants and boots. He was built with a lean, long-limbed economy, with most of his muscle mass contained in his upper body, much like that of a wolf. A wolf's cold stare glittered in his blue-gray eyes, the color of dawn light on a sharp steel blade.
His musculature was long and flowing, like stretched-out bundles of sinew covered by a tan lacquer. The smooth symmetry of the lacquer was spoiled by a number of scars, from the stellated puckers of bullet wounds to the thin, jagged lines inflicted by edged steel. A faint hairline scar showed like a white thread against the sun-bronzed skin of his left cheek. Unlike the man he faced, he was clean-shaven.
Kane's dark hair was damp with perspiration, despite the comparatively cool breeze that had begun to waft over the Nubian Desert with the arrival of night. He heard the rustling whisper of the sand slithering across the outcroppings of red-gray rock rearing from the ground.
Djebel Kif, a black pillar of basaltic stone loomed three hundred feet above the tumbled crags and the humans clustered at its base. The fourteen-inch combat knife in Kane's right hand felt as effective as a child's toy against the eternal hostility of the desert—but he didn't intend to use it against the desert, only against one of its spawn.
"Which one of you silly sods is going to make the first move?" Suliedor Entwhistle asked impatiently.
Without taking his eyes off Yusef, Kane retorted flatly, "Let's make it a surprise, how about."
The eight wiry men in burnooses and girdled caftans murmured among themselves, not really understanding Kane's words but comprehending his disrespectful tone to their chief. Angrily, they clutched at their firearms. The guns were crude, home-forged affairs, twin barrels with large, funnel-shaped bores. They were antiques, but ones as deadly as Sin Eaters in the right hands, with the right ammunition, as had already been proved. They were all sturdy desert men whose faces were as flint-hard as the rocky wasteland around them.
Suliedor Entwhistle turned his head toward Kane, but the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses turned his face into something blank and even a little inhuman. A hook-nosed man of medium height with a spade beard, he was clad in Arabian elegance. His turban was of rose-colored silk, his boots stitched with gilt thread and his girdled khalat was gaudily embroidered.
