Chapter Eleven

Prince Tyfar

Well, I mean — where on two worlds these day can you expect to stroll along and pick up gold just lying about without something getting in the way? And — magic as well?

So there were monsters.

Hunch gave me a queasy look.

Nodgen rumbled that, by Belzid’s Belly, he wished he had his spear with him. Hitching up the coil of rope, which had an infuriating habit of slipping, I said, “I’d as lief have these chains off. They do not make for easy expeditioning.”

“Galid the Krevarr has the key.”

On we went until our way was halted by a press of slaves crowding back in the center of a wide and shadowed hall. Tall black drapes hung at intervals around the walls, and cressets lit the place fitfully. A monstrous stone idol reared up facing us, bloated, swag-bellied, fiery-eyed, and blocking the way ahead. Four tables arranged in the form of a cross stood near the center of the hall, and a chain hung suspended from shadows in the roof. Each table was covered with a series of squares, and each square was marked with a symbol. In addition, the squares were colored in diagonals, slanting lines of red, green and black. The slaves formed a jostling circle about the tables as the leaders contemplated the nature of this problem.

“Judging by what has gone before,” observed Prince Nedfar, “it would seem that we are to select a combination of these squares, depress them, and then pull the chain.”

“Ah, but,” said the fellow in the red and green checkered cloak. “If the combination is not the right one

— what will pulling the chain bring?”

We slaves shivered at this.

“What do you suggest, Tyr Ungovich?” The woman spoke and I looked at her, able to see her more clearly than before. She wore a long white gown that looked incongruously out of place in these surroundings, and her yellow hair, which fell just short of her shoulders, was confined by a jeweled band. Her feet were clad in slippers. I shook my head at that. Her face — she had a high, clear face with a perfect skin of a dusky rose color, and with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose I imagined must cause her acute embarrassment, quite needlessly. The habitual authority she held was delightfully softened by a natural charm. I could still think that, and she a slave owner and me a slave. At her back stood two Pachaks, clearly twins, and their faces bore the hard, dedicated, no-nonsense looks of hyr-paktuns who have given their honor in the nikobi code of allegiance into good hands. At their throats the golden glitter of the pakzhan proclaimed that they were hyr-paktuns, and conscious of the high dignity within the mercenary fraternity that position conferred upon them.

“My lady?” said this Tyr Ungovich, and he did not lift the hood of his checkered cloak to speak.

“It is to you we owe our safe arrival here,” said the flying man. He rustled his wings. “Your guidance has been invaluable, Tyr Ungovich—”

Yagno, the sorcerer, pushed himself forward. “The answer appears a simple progression of symbols —

the alphabet reversed, or twinned—”

“Or tripled, or squared, perhaps?” The voice of Ungovich, cold and mocking from his hood, congealed in the dusty air.

Old Deb-Lu-Quienyin stood with the others and said nothing.

“Well, we must get on!” Loriman the Hunter spoke pettishly. “If there is gold here, then it keeps itself to itself. Have a slave pull the chain, anyway—”

“Yes,” said Ungovich. “Why not do that?”

The backward movement among the slaves resembled the rustling withdrawal of a wave as it slips back down a shingly beach.

Kov Loriman beckoned. “You — yetch — here.”

The slave to whom he pointed was one of his own, as, of course, he would have to be. The fellow shrank back. He was a Gon, and his hair was beginning to bristle out in short white spears. Loriman shouted, and one of his guards, a Rapa, stalked across and hauled the Gon out. The fellow was shaking with terror.

“Haul, slave!” said Loriman in that icy, unimpassioned voice of the man who has ordered slaves about unthinkingly since he could toddle.

Seeing there was nothing for it, the Gon took the chain in both fists. The chain was of bronze and the links were as thick as thumbs, as wide as saucers.

“Haul with a will,” said Loriman, and stepped back a pace.

The Gon stretched up. His wire brush bristle of white hair glinted. He hauled. Instantly, with an eerie shriek, the chain transformed itself into a long bronze shape of horror. Like a python it wrapped folds about the Gon, squeezed.

His eyes popped. He shrieked. And, over the shrieks, the sounds of his rib cage breaking in and crushing all within in a squelching red jelly drove everyone back in the grip of supernatural horror.

“By Sasco!” Loriman fought his panic, overcame it, gave vent to his anger. The others reacted in their various ways. Watching, I saw this Kyr Ungovich standing, unmoved. The lady put a laced cloth to her mouth.

Prince Nedfar said, “No more. We read the riddle.”

The bronze chain dangling from the shadows became once more a bronze chain. Slaves dragged the crushed corpse into a corner. Another mark was chalked up against this great Kov Loriman the Hunter. They tried series of patterns, pushing various symbols and trying the chain. They lost more slaves. Not all were crushed by the serpent chain. Some vanished through a trapdoor that opened with a gush of vile smoke. Others charred and then burned as the chain glowed with inner fires. Every slave prayed that his master would not attempt to read the riddle, and having done so, pick on him to prove him right — or wrong.

A young man, just about to enter the prime of life, standing with Prince Nedfar and Princess Thefi, chewed his lower lip. I had taken scant notice of him, foolishly, as I learned. He wore simple armor, and carried as well as a rapier and main gauche, a thraxter slung around him. Also, and this I did remark, swinging from his belt hung a single-bladed, spike-headed, short-hafted axe. When he moved toward the cross of the four tables, and spoke up, I took notice of him.

His features were regular and pleasing, with dark hair and frank bold eyes which he kept veiled, as I saw, and he moved as it were diffidently, as though always hiding his light.

“Father,” he said, “let me try.”

Prince Nedfar gestured to the four tables.

“The riddle is yours, my son.”

Princess Thefi looked at him with some concern, as though she understood more of her brother than anyone else. I did not think they were twins. He smiled reassuringly at her, and moved with his hesitant step to the tables, and looked down.

He spoke up as though he had pondered what he would say during the preceding tragedies.

“There are lines of red, green and black. No one has marked them before. The symbols have taken all attention.” He looked up and gestured to the walls. “See the long black drapes, separated? Then, I think, this is the answer.” And he stabbed his hand down a long row of the black squares.

“Perhaps—” said the sorcerer, almost sneering.

The others waited. Prince Nedfar motioned to a slave and this wight moved reluctantly forward. He shook uncontrollably.

“Wait!” The Young prince stepped toward the chain. Before anyone could stop him he seized the links in his two fists, reached up and hauled down with a will.

“No!” Princess Thefi shrieked. “Ty! No!”

She leaped forward, her arms outstretched.

The chain rattled down from the shadows, a mere bronze chain, clinking and clanking into a puddle of bronze links on the stone floor.

And the monstrous idol moved. Groaning, spitting dust from its edges, it revolved. Beyond lay a round opening, black as the cloak of Notor Zan.

“By Havil, boy!” said Nedfar. His face expressed anger and anguish. He shook his head as though to clear away phantoms. Lobur the Dagger leaped forward. He clapped the young prince — this Ty — on the shoulder in a familiar gesture of friendship.

“Bravo, Ty! Well done! It is a Jikai — prince, my prince, a veritable Jikai!”

The shouts broke out then, of acclamation and, from us slaves, of heartfelt relief. Very soon we picked up our bundles and burdens and followed the great ones into the tunnel with flaring torches to light our going.

When the tunnel opened out into a proper stone corridor once more and we faced five doors, each of a different size, and so halted to tackle the next problem, I made it my business to edge alongside one of the slaves I knew to be the property of the Hamalese.

This slave was a Khibil, and his proud foxy face was woefully fallen away from its normal expression of hauteur, such as I was used to seeing on Pompino’s face. I struck up the aimless kind of conversation that seemed fitting to these surroundings, and at my more pointed questions the Khibil grew a little more animated.

“The young prince? Prince Tyfar? Aye, he is a fair one, hard but fair. He don’t have us striped unless the crime was very bad. And he stops unjust punishments, for fun, like — you know.”

I nodded. Indeed, I did know. But this Hamalese Prince Tyfar was not all sweetness and light. Oh, no!

He was, I was told, regarded as a bit of a ninny and, because of that, the slaves whispered, was the black sheep of the prince’s family. He liked to take himself off and disappear — and not adventuring, either, as a prince should. He was often dragged out of libraries, as a youngster, kicking and screaming, and forced to go to the practice arenas for play at sterner games.

I mentioned the axe.

“Aye,” said the Khibil, as the leaders wrangled over which one of the five doors to chance first. They had lost a number of slaves and were growing cautious with their supplies of human trap fodder. “I heard it said — from a big Fristle fifi who was employed by the nursemaids — that in spite of them, Prince Tyfar had himself taught the axe from axe-masters. He is very good, so they say.”

I thought, idly, it might be interesting to see how he acquitted himself against an axeman — and I thought of Inch of Ng’groga — by Zair! If Inch and Seg and Balass and Oby and Korero and some other of my choice comrades were here now! We’d make a fine old rumpus of this pestiferous maze of corridors, though, wouldn’t we? And then I realized I had been saying that a lot just lately, if only my friends were here. They were not. I was on my own. And I was slave.

The Khibil told me Prince Tyfar had arrived in Jikaida City in his little single-place voller only a day or so before Prince Nedfar, his father, left on the expedition. “And,” went on the Khibil. “Some rasts stole our voller. Yes! Thieved our voller from the roof, right under our noses.”

By Krun! But that was good news!

I could guess that Pompino, at least, had hung about waiting for me to show up. Drogo would have fretted to be gone. So, in the end, they had left — and I in the slave chundrog awaiting Execution Jikaida. Thought of my comrades, many of whom I had not seen for far too long, made me realize that I had numbered Korero the Shield, with an irrational but instinctive grasp upon reality, instead of Turko the Shield. Ah — where was my old Khamster comrade now?

The sobering reflection struck me shrewdly that Turko did not know of the creation of the Emperor’s Sword Watch. By Krun! But I could guess what his ironic comment would be!

A movement from up front heralded our onward progress and that one of the five doors had been selected. On we went and, taking the middle door, pressed forward along a wide stone-flagged corridor. One side consisted of firecrystal, that Kregan substance, almost stone, that being fireproof and transparent admits of the light from fires beyond to illuminate the darkest corners of a subterranean world. The light was bright.

The opposite wall was punctuated at regular intervals by the rectangular outlines of doors. Each door we passed was thrown open and cursory glances inside revealed bronze-bound chests broken open, bales ripped apart, costly silks and fabrics scattered about, overturned and shattered amphorae. Also, among this debris of frantic searches lay the bodies of men. Most were hideously ripped apart, just like the bales. Not all were slaves — I saw a Rapa sprawled with his iron armor crushed in and at his throat the golden glitter of the pakzhan.

“Monsters!” whispered the Khibil. He did not look happy.

But, then, who would in this diabolical maze within the Moder, without armor and arms, chained in slavery?

And then an even more sobering thought trotted up to chill the blood. In here, in the Moder with its denizens of monsters — would even arms and armor be of any use?

Hunch was casting nervous glances about, and shivering. But Nodgen the Brokelsh had no doubts.

“By Belzid’s Belly! I wish I had my spear!”

We slaves were all jostling along the corridor, and a sullen-looking Brokelsh humped with a monstrous pile of bundles on his shoulders cursed at Nodgen.

“By Belzid is it, Brokkerim? Well, by Bakkar, you do not know how well off you are! Your Kataki has not lost any of his slaves! This great rast Loriman has lost four of us already.”

“Peace, dom,” said Nodgen. “We all fly the same fluttrell here.”

The Brokelsh swore a resounding curse and struggled on. I was aware that just because men belong to the same race does not mean they are immediately and instinctively comrades in adversity. This is a sad thought.

“Anyway,” said Hunch, with a shake of his shoulders. “He is right.”

“So far,” said Nodgen, and poor Hunch shook again.

And, in that moment, it seemed Hunch’s worse fears were to be realized. For Tarkshur the Lash lumbered his ferocious way through the press of slaves, yelling for his idle, layabout bunch of lumops. A lumop, as you know, is an insulting way of calling a fellow a useless oaf. Now we were to prove ourselves for our Kataki master.

The room Tarkshur had elected to enter frowned upon us as we crowded up. His paktuns stood ready with drawn swords. We looked inside.

The other slaves passed along the fire-lit corridor, and the sudden spurts of action ahead were signaled by screams and the clash of weapons.

“You!” said Tarkshur, pointing at a Fristle whose cat-whiskers quivered up in anticipatory fear. “Inside!”

There was no hope in all of Kregen for that Fristle. He had to enter the room. He did so. He went in slowly, his eyes swiveling about, his body hunched over, cringing at the expected horror about to befall him.

He reached the center of the room and stood, unharmed.

Tarkshur was no fool. His baleful eyes surveyed us and saw me. “You — inside!” So, in I went, to stand beside the Fristle. Presently, one by one, we all stood within the chamber. The walls were draped in red silk. A dais stood at the far end and on the dais lifted a golden chalice. At each side two golden candlesticks lifted their four candles, the flames burning tall and straight, unwaveringly. The air smelled of musk.

“The chalice is of gold,” said Galid the Krevarr. “But it will be heavy to carry.”

We all knew the Jiktar of Tarkshur’s bodyguard was not thinking of the pains of the slaves, but of the speed of the party. But — gold is gold, to the eternal damnation of many a choice spirit.

“The chalice and the candlesticks.” Tarkshur made no bones about it. “Gold is what we have come for, and gold is what I mean to heave. Take it !”

Two slaves, prodded by swords, reluctantly approached the chalice. It possessed a lid carved in the semblance of a trophy of arms, crowned by a helmet of the Podian pattern, plumed and visored, and around the chalice itself glittered scenes of war. The two slaves took each a handle and lifted. The chalice did not move.

“Don’t lift it!” screamed Hunch — and the decorated lid rose, lifted of its own accord, and a wisp of blue smoke emerged.

We all staggered back. In a bunch we turned for the door ignoring the massive bellows of command from Tarkshur. The door through which we had walked was gone — all four walls were uniformly clothed in scarlet silk.

“Out, out!” shrieked the slaves.

The blue mist wavered and grew. Sickly, we stared upon the gruesome sight as the smoke thickened into the semblance of a human skeleton. The skeleton was apim and in its bony fists it gripped a sword and shield, all fashioned from the blue smoke. Those blue-smoke bony jaws opened. The thing spoke. The words were harsh and croaked out like rusty nails drawn from sodden wood. We stood, petrified, and listened. The Kregish words were full of inner meanings; but a doggerel translation will give the flavor of what the ghastly apparition spoke.

One of One and you are done.

One of Two will make you rue.

One of Three your lack you see.

One of Four will give you more.

Tarkshur laughed, suddenly, that grisly laugh of the Kataki that heralds no joy. “Give me more!” he shouted.

Nothing happened.

“But, notor, how?” said Galid.

The Katakis looked about, swishing their tails on which the strapped steel glittered. Tarkshur pushed his helmet up. Then, wise in the way of the men a slave master handles, he swung his ugly face on us. “Well, slaves?”

The answer was quite obvious; but I was in no mood to point the way for this rast Tarkshur to get more. So I said nothing. In the end a grim-faced Fristle, who had beforetimes received surreptitious favors from Galid, put his bundle down and advanced to the dais. He half-turned to face Tarkshur.

“Master — I think — the candlesticks—”

“Of course.” Tarkshur swaggered forward. “It is clear.”

Hunch took a great risk. He spoke out without being given permission to speak.

“Master — may I speak? More, yes. But — more of what?”

“What?”

Tarkshur was not puzzled. He even, in his good humor, did not lay his lash across Hunch’s back. “More gold, you onker.”

I said, “I think not. More tricks, or more monsters.”

Tarkshur’s tail lifted and quivered. He stared at me. Oh, I do not think he bothered to look at my face, even then. Katakis are man-managers and they treat men like objects. “Come you here.”

Slowly, I walked across the room and stood before him.

“You will be flogged. Jikaider. You are slave.”

“Yes, master.”

I could feel the chains dragging on my legs, the weight of the bundle on my shoulders. The air smelled of musk. The slaves at my back were breathing with open mouths, their sounds made a dolorous mewling in the silk-robed room.

Tarkshur gestured to Hunch, Nodgen and the Fristle. They moved up and we four slaves positioned ourselves before the candlesticks.

“Now, slaves, pull the candlesticks. Pull all four together.”

Galid the Krevarr and two of the Katakis moved up to supervise our work. Tarkshur stood by me.

“Pull!”

Nodgen, Hunch and the Fristle pulled.

I did not pull.

The screech of metal on metal as the candlesticks raked forward was followed immediately by the bellow of rage from Tarkshur and drowned instantly in the clash of stone and in the shrieks of terror as the floor fell away. We eight plunged into stygian darkness.

Chapter Twelve

The Illusion of a Krozair Longsword

We struck an unseen floor in a tumbled mass. Those damned steel tail-blades of the Katakis could do someone a nasty mischief now and I rolled up into a ball and shielded myself as much as possible with the bundles and the rope.

“Help! Help! Help!” Hunch was crying.

“By the Trip-Tails—” was followed by the scrunching wetness of a hard object squashing into a mouth.

“Belzid—”

We squirmed there in the darkness and sorted ourselves out. Tarkshur was raving. Galid was bellowing to his two men.

The musky smell increased as a tiny warm wind blew about us.

“Where is the slave? Where is he? I’ll have his tripes out! I’ll fry his eyeballs!” Tarkshur was frothing. Dragging myself off and feeling ahead at every step, I eased away from the noise. The chains clanked and I cursed.

Then a long narrow slit of light abruptly sprang into existence high in the darkness. It stretched out of sight in one direction, and ended in blackness by my head. The perspective indicated that slot of light stretched a long way down a corridor. The slit widened. The light grew. Presently we saw that bronze shutters were lowering from a wall of fire-crystal. All too soon I was revealed in the light. The Katakis sprang up and swished their tail-blades, looking at Tarkshur. But only two rose, Galid and another. The remaining Kataki lay where he had fallen and his tail-blade thrust hard through his own throat.

At his side, twisted in death, lay the Fristle. His cat-like head twisted down at an unnatural angle. Hunch was yelling and trying to run, and falling, and squirming about.

“Silence!” bellowed Tarkshur. He looked at me. He began to walk. He began to strut. He was going to slay me, of a certainty. You can often tell by the way a Kataki holds his tail — just so. Galid the Krevarr yelled.

“Notor! Look! By Takroti, notor — look!”

We all swiveled.

The opposite wall shone in the light. The opposite wall led into a paradise. For as far as we could see down the corridor the light reflected back from a profusion of precious objects, of luxuries, of the delights of the senses and of the flesh, a jostling multitude of everything a man might crave and long for. Useless to attempt to catalog that outpouring of sumptuousness. We just stared, open-mouthed.

Tarkshur forgot all about killing me — and that, by Krun, means for any Kataki only the greatest of interests in life had supervened. Katakis love killing. It is an irony and one of their burdens that, being slave masters, to indulge their pastime means to destroy their profits along with the merchandise. At about the same time we noticed an oddity about that display of wealth and luxury. Although the wall stretched away for as far as we could see, most of it was walled by fire-crystal. There were just eight openings. Eight openings for us eight who had fallen here. And, even as we looked, so fire-crystal shutters slid down over two of the openings, shutting up the display beyond. A beautiful Fristle fifi surrounded by the richest food and the most ornamental of treasure chests, clearly the lack of the Fristle whose neck was broken, was thus shut up.

I will not speak of what the dead Kataki had lacked, and what was gradually walled off from us. What his comrade had lacked, likewise, I will not speak of — but that opening was clear. With a mad yell of lascivious exhilaration, the Kataki paktun leaped past the fire-crystal. In seconds he had vanished from our sight.

“Stand, Galid!” commanded Tarkshur.

Galid the Krevarr quivered.

“There is plenty of time. We have only to take our fill and make our way back. The others will assemble the key.” Tarkshur swung on us three slaves. “You will not be slain — you will carry the treasure out —

when we are ready.”

Hunch and Nodgen stood, shaking. Hunch’s fear had gone. Nodgen was still getting over the smash on the head that had dizzied him. Two of the openings showed piled up treasure, and the other things of the good life that would delight an honest Tryfant or Brokelsh. Tarkshur saw. He sneered.

“Do not think—” he began.

A demoniac scream bounced in vibrating echoes from the walls. A shape, a shape from nightmare, bounded along the corridor toward us.

With a leap, we three slaves came to life and dodged out of the way. Let the two armed men tackle this monster...

It looked like a prickly pear, bristled with brown spines, with ten tentacular arms slashing about, each tipped with a poisonous sting. It bounced. It hissed. It gave off a stink like the sewers on Saturday night. With a snap Tarkshur hurled his helmet down and closed his shield across. Galid did likewise. They faced the monster and they fought. They were both good fighting men. And, at that, the monster was not so very fierce, not so very frightening, after all. A poor bouncing stinging bristle ball. For a naked slave, unarmed, the monster might well have spelled doom. Against two tough and agile Katakis, armed and accoutered, the monster was slashed into a dozen segments in no time, its tentacular arms splaying out pathetically. From their tips oozed a yellowish fluid. Neither Kataki saw any value in that liquid. One moment Hunch was at my side, trembling, saying, “I do not like this place at all — I am frightened clear through.” When I turned to answer him, he was gone.

“He has the right idea, our Hunch,” said Nodgen.

With that he raced across the corridor and threw himself into the opening of the fire-crystal wall. Beyond him lay a Brokelsh paradise. I did not doubt that Hunch was already well into his Tryfant paradise. The two Katakis were stepping back from the dismembered monster. The smell became worse as the fluids seeped.

Tarkshur saw that I stood alone.

“Rast! Where are—” Then he realized, and sharply turned to Galid. “Stay, Jiktar! We carry the treasure out !”

“Yes, notor — but—”

I stepped away from the wall. I dropped the bundle from my shoulders and I turned to stare into the opening that would reveal my lack.

“Slave!” Tarkshur was yelling, and I heard his voice from a long distance. He gave his orders to Galid.

“Chain the cramph fast so that he cannot escape.”

But I looked into the opening, and saw...

No. What I saw really centered on the object that stood just inside the opening. Farther back misty shapes swam out of my vision. Around this precious object lay a rapier and main gauche, a drexer, the cut and thrust sword we had developed in Valka, a short-hafted clansman’s axe. Also there lay a folded length of scarlet cloth, of good quality, and a broad and supple lesten hide belt, with a dulled silver buckle. And, in a worn sheath a seaman’s knife. Leaning against the side wall stood a tall Lohvian longbow and a quiver of arrows, each one fletched with the feathers of the zim-korf of Valka. There was, also, a jeweled shortsword like those deadly shortswords that are used with such skill by my clansmen in the melee. All these objects surrounded the central object. At this I gazed.

“Slave!” bellowed Galid’s voice, from some dimension outside reality. “Hold still, you rast, while I hobble you with your own damned chains.”

The object within the opening held all my attention now.

It was one of mine.

It had to be. There was the nick — it had to be! — the tiniest of nicks where I had beaten down Rog Grota, a famous Ghittawrer of Genod, in that old swifter battle on the Eye of the World. And here! It was here!

I felt a hand on my neck, forcing me down, and another hand dragging at my chains. Slowly I returned to this other dimension from that realm of reality that had for a few heartbeats claimed me. This was the reality, this frightful expedition down into a Moder, with monsters and magic, and a foul Kataki seeking to chain me fast.

And, for the first time in a long long time, I remembered I was Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor, Krozair of Zy.

I hit Galid. He went flying back and the look on his face was so expressive of stunned astonishment that I nearly laughed.

“Rast!” shrieked Tarkshur, and his ichor-slimed sword raked for my guts. The chains lopped his sword down and my left hand gripped onto his tail as the bladed steel sliced for my throat. For a space we glared, eye to eye.

“You will surely die, you rast, you—”

“I have chopped off many a Kataki tail, Tarkshur the Kleesh. Be very sure, yours will not be the last.”

He gobbled with fury; he struggled; but he could not move that deadly bladed tail. His shield was clamped between our bodies, trapping his left arm. His right arm was forced out and down as the chains bore remorselessly on his sword.

In his eyes I saw a nickering shadow.

Without thought I swung. We pivoted as though we were that very weathervane I had so recently been, blown hither and yon by every vagrant breeze. Galid just hauled his blow back in time, swinging his thraxter away down the side. I kicked him where it would do the most good, and shifted my grip on Tarkshur, and so wedging his sword down in the coil of chain, got a grip on his neck above the corselet rim.

I choked — only a little, enough to let him know what was happening.

“You are a Kataki,” I said. “I have no great love for Katakis. I have met one and one only who had any inkling at all of what humanity means. You are not that one.”

His lowering, low-browed, fierce Kataki face was slowly turning a rich plum color. His eyes started out, bulging with fury. He had no fear of me, a mere slave, who had for a moment caught him up with chains. I choked him again and he tried to butt me and I slashed at the bridge of his nose, an upward blow that rocked his head back. He glared up and over my shoulder and a fresh look, an expression of strangled surprise flashed into that ugly face.

I threw him away.

He had not hit the floor before I had leaped after him and to the side. The damned chains tangled me up and I pitched forward.

There was, for the moment, no danger from the Katakis.

The thing that moaned down upon us breathed a more deadly menace.

White and leprous sheets and folds of some insubstantial gossamer, like swirls of smoke, like sheerest curtains in a breeze, wafted and writhed along the corridor. An aura of blue sparks sizzled and spat. It was forcefully borne in on me that a sword would be worse than useless against this monster. Tarkshur had not lost his senses. I did not see Galid.

The Kataki slave master flung up his hand. He still gripped his ichor-smeared sword; but he did not use it. On the middle finger of his hand glistened a ring — I had noticed it as a mere foolishness of Kataki vanity — and now, as the writhing leprous-white monster approached, the ring sparked in reply. Long flashes of blue fire sped from the stone in the ring. The stone glowed with life. The fires met and fought with the blue sparks. Gyrating and twirling in the air, the monster lashed and shrieked and so, gradually, sank fluttering nearer and nearer to the floor. As it sank so its struggles weakened. Tarkshur was panting, and I saw the way he kept looking at the ring and then at the monster — and never at me. I understood that the power in the ring was being drawn off in proportion to the monster’s own strength.

Whatever sorcery was here in play, the power of the stone in the ring proved victorious. The leprous-white monster sank, fluttering weakly, beat at the ground and then slowly dissipated into wisps of vanishing white. A few little glittering stones scattered across the flags were all that remained. The Kataki wiped his lips with his sword hand, and then looked at me.

“I have saved your life, you ungrateful yetch — and now, for the indignity you have inflicted, I will take it.”

“Where is Galid the Krevarr?”

Tarkshur lowered his head and looked about. The Jiktar of his bodyguard was nowhere to be seen.

“You Katakis are a miserable bunch, contemptible cramphs. He is no doubt enjoying himself now at the expense of some poor devil’s misery.”

“You—” Tarkshur breathed deeply and his flaring nostrils in his damned Kataki face broadened. “I shall enjoy carving you.”

The farce had gone on long enough.

“You, Tarkshur, will either go away now with your life, or you will die — here and now. The choice is yours.”

He just didn’t believe this. I felt — well, it is difficult to say, now, exactly what I felt. Imagine lying in a grave with a granite block on your chest pressing the air from your lungs. Then imagine you have summoned the strength to push the granite block away. You sit up in the grave. You put your hands on the sides. You heave yourself up. And, suddenly, the glory of the suns shines down. Yes, well, that expresses a tithe of the way I felt...

Something in my face must have warned him. Suddenly, he took me seriously.

“You are chained, slave. You will not be quick. I shall surely win.”

“Do not try, Kataki.”

But, even then, he was not afraid. And, although I do not like Katakis as a rule, there was much to be said for this evil specimen of that degenerate race. He moved across, and his helmet was down and his shield was up and his thraxter pointed.

“What, slave, can you do?” The sword gestured. “Your chains will not take me twice.”

I did not answer.

I took up the Krozair longsword into my fists, and I own, I own with pride, my hands trembled as I took up that superb brand. But do not mistake me. It had not been the longsword that had caused me to rise from a long sleep. And, I half think, it was not that I was a Krozair of Zy, and had called my membership of that Mystic and Martial Order to mind that spurred me. Perhaps it was a mingling. Perhaps it was that I had, with surprise, realized that I, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, did have a responsibility to myself, that to deny my nature too long was to stunt my own growth. So I faced this Tarkshur the Lash and in my fists the Krozair blade gleamed splendidly. I held the sword with that cunning two-handed grip, the fists spaced exactly, so that enormous leverage and tremendous speed are obtained with precision.

Tarkshur sneered.

“That lump of iron! A mere bar! You are a fool!”

“I shall not tell you again, Tarkshur. Why I do not wish to slay you passes my comprehension. But you may take your life, and depart—”

He sprang.

The fight was brief.

It was as though an explosion of released passion broke all along my muscles, driving my fists into the weaving pattern of destruction that finished with a smashed shield, a shattered thraxter, a sliced helmet —

and Tarkshur the Kataki running screaming along the corridor, spilling blood as he ran. I had kept faith with myself. I had not slain him.

The blood was a pure accident. The fellow had tried to fight for just that amount of time too long, and one of the last blows intended to shred the other side of his helmet had cropped an ear. And, the strange thing was, he kept his tail.

Two things occurred to me.

One was that I was still chained and Galid the Krevarr had the key. But there would be an answer to that. The other was that the Whiptail would know me again.

How interesting that, as slave, I had not thought to call Katakis by their slang name, Whiptail!

Aloud, I said, “There is a thing I lack. The key to unlock these chains.”

I looked into the opening of the fire-crystal wall. The key was there all right, a clumsy thing of iron. As I retrieved it, it occurred to me to wonder if this was the very same key that Galid had had in his possession, or was it a simulacrum. Was the Krozair longsword that old weapon of mine with which I had gone a-roving as a Krozair over the inner sea? The chains were unlocked and I threw them from me. Whatever the answer might be, the key worked, the longsword was real. I was alone in the Moder with its magics and its monsters.

Well, by Zair! And didn’t that suit me best?

Yes and no, I told myself. There is nothing to equal the fine free feeling of adventuring alone, and there is nothing to equal the sharing of adventures with a gallant company of good friends and doughty blade comrades.

So I took out that length of scarlet cloth and discarding the gray slave breechclout I wrapped the scarlet about me and pulled the end up and tucked it in and secured all with the broad and supple lesten hide belt. I pulled the belt in tightly and the dulled silver buckle snicked home sweetly. Never having cared much for straps over my chest I secured the weaponry to belts around my waist, different belts each to its own weapon or pair of weapons. Equally, I do recognize the value of shoulder straps from time to time, and will use them when the necessity arises. As, now, I slung the water bottles back on. I will not tolerate dangling ends of scarves and belts and folderols. A fighting man must be trim. A ravishingly exotic dangling scarf can be grabbed by your enemy to reel you in like a fish, to be gaffed

— through the guts.

Of that wonderful Kregan arsenal displayed I selected the rapier and main-gauche. Also I took the drexer, for that sword holds a place of especial affection, seeing that it is a superior refinement on the Havilfarese thraxter and the Vallian clanxer, and with elements of the Savanti sword — those we could contrive — embodied.

As to why there was not a Savanti sword among those articles I lacked — I thought about this, and came to the conclusion that whatever of sorcery and magic ran this Moder, it, he or she did not have the power to set against that of the Savanti nal Aphrasöe. This is not surprising. Those mortal but superhuman men and women of the Swinging City would go through this place as a plough goes through rich loam.

My old seaman’s knife went over my right hip. When I handled it I own I gulped. I felt the awe. This was the knife I had first acquired on Kregen, seasons upon seasons ago. Could it be real? Or was it a mere semblance, fool’s gold, made of dreams and moonshine?

The clansmen’s shortsword I left. The drexer would serve in that weapon’s office. There was a Ghittawrer longsword, also, one I had owned when I had been with Gafard, the Sea Zhantil, the King’s Striker; this I did not touch. I took the Lohvian longbow and the quiver. Then I looked at the bundle I had carried as a slave, and the remnants of the two monsters slain in this magic-filled corridor. Now it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that I took the magical properties of the Moder over seriously. In long conversations with the wise men of Valka, and various Wizards of Loh I had known, the uses and abuses of magic had afforded lively debates. Wizards of Loh have real and formidable powers, as I well knew. There are many kinds of sorcerer on Kregen, and I usually steered clear of too close an entanglement with any of them. This place reeked of magic and illusion and it was vital to take everything that happened at face value, as though it were real.

An illusion of a monster biting your head off can kill you as headless as a real one. At the same time, an illusion is harmless if you understand the nature of the hallucination. That remained to be discovered in this den of iniquity.

Picking up the bag of food and the coil of rope I set myself, and thought to look into the Tryfant and Brokelsh paradises. I hollered out: “Hunch!” “Nodgen!” a long time. No answers being received, and not caring to enter, decided me.

So, alone, wearing the brave old scarlet, armed with my pretty arsenal of weapons, off I set. By Zair! But didn’t doing just that bring back the hosts of memories!

Those sparkles of glitter left when the leprous-white monster had vanished drew my attention again. Our discussions of magic at home in Esser Rarioch had often dwelled on the phenomenon of power being contained within reciprocal power. I thought of the blue sparks from the stone in Tarkshur’s ring. I picked up the scattered stones. Maybe, they would serve.

And that yellow liquid dripping from the poison stings of the bouncing bristle ball... Lacking a suitable container, I stated that fact, and picked up a handy little vial from within my own opening in the fire-crystal wall. Whatever power was operating here would, I judged, not provide anyone with something they did not lack. But the parameters were wide. So, with a vial of poison ichor as well as the stones, I marched off along the corridor seeking a way out.

As I marched along in the brave old scarlet a refrain of that favorite drinking song of the swods kept going around and around in my skull. “Sogandar the Upright and the Sylvie,” that notorious song is called, and the refrain goes, “No idea at all, at all, no idea at all...” And as the swods sing they fairly bust their guts laughing at the incongruous notions their lewd imaginations provide. Well, the song fitted me, now.

I had no idea what I was getting into, no idea at all, at all, no idea at all...

Chapter Thirteen

How an Undead Chulik Kept Vigil

Just as Tarkshur’s Kataki expedition had become separated from the main body, so other expeditions had gone their own ways. There were a few monsters I met, prowling about — for loose monsters seemed to prowl about the corridors the deeper we went — and there were two or three lively encounters before I was able to clear them away from the path.

I did not enter any of the rooms which lay invitingly open along the route, for I was attempting to find my way out.

Shouts ahead of me along a corridor fitfully illuminated by torches indicated I had come up with a part, at the least, of the expedition which had entered with me. Perhaps. Perhaps this place was crawling with travelers lost and desperate to find their way out.

A thing shaped like a chavonth stalked ahead. It was moving away from me and seemed unaware of my presence. Its low slung head snouted away from me; but I knew what it looked like well enough. Chavonths are feral six-legged hunting cats, and this one’s head would be a mask of ferocious cunning, blazing eyes, and splinter-sharp teeth. Normal chavonths are covered in a hide patterned in fur hexagonals of blue, gray and black. This one looked dusty...

From a side door where he had evidently been looting, for his arms were filled with gold goblets and bracelets and strings of gems, a man sprang out. He was a Rapa. He saw the chavonth even as the big cat leaped.

The Rapa was quick. He evaded the first lithe spring. But his leg was struck by a sweep of the chavonth’s front paw.

I blinked.

Instead of that Rapa leg being ripped by sharp talons, the limb was abruptly coated in dust. Then I saw the horror, as the Rapa screamed shrilly in shocked fear.

His leg was not covered in dust. His leg was dust.

He collapsed and the dust-chavonth sprang on him.

Instantly, Rapa, gold, gems, all were mere heaps of dust.

The dust-chavonth heard me then, and swiveled his head, snarling.

He leaped.

The steel with which an honest man defends himself against mortal perils would be unavailing here. I turned to run, dodging across the corridor in jagged leaps. Dusty padding followed me in bounds. The image of that Rapa collapsing and turning to dust hung before my eyes. And I saw... If memory did not play tricks...

Turning, I swung the Krozair brand up and with a quick prayer slashed at his hate-filled mask. The cold steel bit.

Instantly, the dust-chavonth shrieked a high shrilling vibration of agony. He changed. The dust vanished. I was facing a real chavonth, and under those hexagons of black, gray and blue his hearts beat savagely. But a real chavonth, savage and powerful though he might be, is not the same adversary as a dust-chavonth.

The longsword slashed and backed and the chavonth limped away, yowling, leaving a trail of blood spots, vanished into the gloom beyond the reach of the torches.

Men shouted down and I shouted back. They came up bearing torches and I saw the twin Pachaks. They looked as fierce as the chavonth.

“You are unharmed, notor?”

“Aye. The beast has gone.”

“It was a dust-chavonth — you are lucky—”

“I saw that a poor Rapa it slew and turned to dust lost his life and his gold and gems — but his sword remained true to itself.”

“A chance, notor.”

They called me notor, Havilfarese for lord, without thought. Truly, I had changed from the beaten and chained slave who had entered here. I did not think anyone would recognize me. We did not touch the heap of dust as we passed. Somehow, I did not think it would ward off a dust-chavonth. It might in all probability turn all who touched it to dust. The lady these twin hyr-paktuns served still wore her white gown. But it was streaked with grime and was torn. Her slippers were gone. She wore a pair of white fur boots. Her rose-red face and her yellow hair looked still out of place here.

“Llahal, notor. You are most welcome — I have not seen you before?”

“Llahal, lady. I am Jak — no, that is sooth.” Then I thought to convince them I had come into the Moder with another party. “You are an expedition new to these places?”

“Yes. I am Ariane nal Amklana.”

She said Ariane nal Amklana. Amklana was a proud and beautiful city in Hyrklana, and because she used the word “nal” for “of” I knew she was the chief lady of that city.

“Llahal, my lady. Shall we join forces?”

The two Pachaks nodded as she turned to them. They had seen the little affray with the dust chavonth.

“The notor will be a useful addition,” said one.

“Useful,” agreed his twin.

“Is there anyone else with you?” I said.

“Longweill, a flying man. He is farther up the corridor.”

I nodded. So these two had become separated from the others. The lady Ariane looked in nowise afraid, rather, she stared on every new thing with the rapt absorption of a child, delighted at the splendors, terrified by the horrors. I felt I could come to like her, given time.

“We must try to find our way back to the others,” she explained to me as we walked on up the corridor.

“I am going into no more rooms of horror. I did not come here for gold.”

I forbore to ask why she had come. Again the feeling struck me that only the most dire of reasons could have forced her to come at all, given that she must have understood far more of the dangers than ever we slaves had.

Longweill, the flying man, made the pappattu in a spatter of Llahals, and then, together and with a crowd of retainers and slaves, we continued this nightmare journey.

A mere catalog of the monsters we encountered and the dangers we passed would, I feel, weary. Suffice it that as we penetrated farther into the Moder and discovered more of the maze of corridors and rooms and chambers, and riddled riddles, and fought monsters, we battled against the forces of sorcery and of death.

The flying man, Longweill, was a Thief.

He made no bones about it. There are thieves and Thieves. After all, those ruffianly Blue Mountain Boys who owe allegiance to Delia of the Blue Mountains are as bonny a bunch of reivers as you will find on Kregen.

“By Diproo the Nimble-fingered!” he said, as we gazed up at the blank ending of the corridor we had been traversing. “Now how do we get through here?”

As a Thief he was first-class, I daresay. But I had up to now not been impressed by his powers of survival in a place like this. He took good care of his own skin, and his slaves were loaded with loot. Like us all, now he wanted out.

And getting out was far more difficult than getting in.

The sensation was distinctly odd, considering what had gone before, when I was consulted as to our best course.

“If we cannot go straight on, then we must of necessity go up or down.”

So we looked for a trapdoor, in floor or ceiling.

When one of the Pachaks, the indomitable twin called Logu Fre-Da, curling his tail-hand high over his head, pointing, indicated a trapdoor in the ceiling we all crowded over. Logu Fre-Da’s twin, Modo Fre-Da, looked up and shook his head. His straw-yellow hair swirled. He lifted his upper left hand and made a gesture of negation.

“We have been trending down, to escape at the bottom of this pestiferous ants nest, have we not, brother?”

“You are right, brother.” Logu Fre-Da turned to his lady. “Lady — we must search for another opening.”

Longweill pushed through. His wings clashed together and then parted and blew our hair streaming in the downdraught as he flew up to take a closer look at the trapdoor. “No,” he called down. “Who is to say there is any way out? This whole business stinks of traps, and I am expert in those. Up is the way out, the way we came in.”

“By Papachak the All Powerful,” quoth Modo. “He could be right, brother.”

“I do not think so, brother.”

“Hai, tikshim!” called down the flying man. “Remember your place among us notors.”

Now tikshim, which equates with “my man” — only in an even more condescending and insulting way

— is intensely annoying to whomever it is addressed. Logu Fre-Da turned away sharply from under the trapdoor in the ceiling. Modo went with him, and they began to speak in fierce whispers, one to the other.

Longweill, the flying man, pushed the trapdoor up.

He should not have done so — of course.

The jelly-like substance that poured out in a glutinous blob enveloped him. Only his wings protruded through the transparent mass. We saw him. The blob of gluey substance fell to the floor. Longweill was consumed. The blob sucked him into its substance. His wings fell and rustled slackly on the floor. We all crowded back.

The blob started to roll after us.

Glistening brown and umber streaks writhed within the blob as it rolled, and the oily texture of the mass picked up dust and the scattered detritus of the floor. This rubbish was ingested as the blob rolled, infolding and slipping away, to be left as a trail on the floor where the blob had passed. The blob glistened.

Well, man kept back the darkness and the creatures of darkness with his ally, fire — a chancy and often untrustworthy ally, admitted by all — and the rolling glistening blob looked oily to me. Snatching a torch from the hand of a faltering Gon I turned and hurled the blazing brand at the rolling glistening blob.

It was oily.

It burned.

Waiting, I wondered what fresh deviltry would spew forth from this monster, as we had seen other monsters rise from their destroyed predecessors.

Smoke, in this den of deviltry, was always a menace...

The smoke from the burning glister-blob rose in a black and pungent cloud. It writhed up, coiling and twisting, and in the brilliance of the flames beneath we stood back, shielding our faces, fearfully watching and waiting for the smoke to assume a more awful form.

In a black flat ribbon the smoke poured toward us, writhing some five feet off the ground. Many of the slaves started to run in deadly earnest. Steel, against insubstantial smoke, would avail us nothing. About five paces from us — and the two Pachaks stood with me together with a numim whose lion-face bore an iron-hearted resolve — the smoke abruptly switched sideways as though caught by a powerful wind. We could hear no wind. Yet the smoke thrust a long tongue against the side of the corridor wall, and split into many probing fingers, streaming, and so passed it seemed through the wall and was gone. Naghan the Doom, the numim, said, “A grating.” He crossed to the wall and called for torches. In the glow we looked. The grating was there, right enough, man height and wide enough for even my broad shoulders; but the bars confined holes no larger than bean shoots. No amount of peering in the flung light of the torches revealed what lay beyond.

The conference was brief. Picks and sledgehammers were produced and the slaves went at the grating with a smash.

“Poor Longweill,” said the lady Ariane. “He was so hot-tempered. He would never listen.”

“You knew him before?”

“Oh, no. We met when Tyr Ungovich organized the expedition. In Astrashum. Expeditions from all over Havilfar are constantly arriving and departing.” She laughed, more nervously than I liked. “Departing from the city to come here, I mean.”

“Aye.”

“And we must find the others. Prince Nedfar has already two parts of the key.” This statement made her pause, and color stained up into those rosy cheeks. She turned her eyes on me, gray-green eyes, fathomless. “Notor Jak — do you have any part of the key?”

“No, my lady. Not a single part.”

“Oh!” she said, and bit her lip.

The picks and sledges were smashing away the stone grating.

It occurred to me to say, “And you, my lady. Do you?”

“Why, no — more’s the pity. We must find the nine parts of the key before we can unlock the door at the exit and so win free from this terrible place.”

“With,” I pointed out, “or without what we came for.”

She searched my face, seriously, and the tip of her tongue crept out to lick her lips until she remembered, and instead of licking her lips, said briskly: “Oh, but I must have what I came for. It is vital.”

Still I forbore to question her. That was her business. Mine was getting out of here with a whole skin —

as I then thought.

The lion-man, Naghan the Doom, shouted across, “The way is open, my lady.”

“Very good, Naghan. I will follow.”

And, at that, what was revealed beyond the smashed-open grating was not particularly promising. But everyone in the Moder, I am sure, felt the desire to push on. To retrace our steps would be failure and would lead to disaster.

Narrow steps led downward, wide enough for one person at a time. The walls and roof were stained with moisture and far far away, echoing with a hollowness of enfolding distance, the sound of dripping water reached up.

The steps were slippery. Men fell, and others fell with them; but there was always one stout fellow to hold and to give the others a chance to pick themselves up each time. So we penetrated down.

“We are going from one zone to another, that is certain,” said Modo Fre-Da. He half turned his head to speak to me as I followed him. The two Pachaks and the numim surrounded the lady, and my help was relegated to the rear. That suited me.

“Zone?”

“Aye—” Then there was a slipping at our backs, and we had to brace ourselves to hold the mass of men pressing down.

My thoughtless question was thus forgotten. But, all the same, it was relatively easy to guess what Modo meant by a zone. Other considerations weighed on our minds as we came out onto a graveled floor and cast the light of the torches into a vast and hollow space, filled with the sound of running water, to see what fresh terrors confronted us.

Now there are torches and there are torches on Kregen. If you can get hold of the wood of certain of the trees, and use pitch and wax prepared in certain ways, you may build yourself a torch that is a king among torches, or you may wind up with a piece of burning wood that casts its light no more than half a dozen paces. The wizards and sorcerers have means of creating lights, magical lanterns, you might call them, that cast a mellow radiance for a considerable distance. Yagno would have one of those for sure

— I wondered if old Quienyin also had one in his meager belongings.

Our torches were reasonably bright, varying in quality, and shed their lights over some seventeen or eighteen paces. Light-colored objects and movement could be picked out beyond that. So we saw the glinting shimmering waterfall erratically revealed. We walked closer over the gravel. The water fell from somewhere out of sight, curving to fall into a stone-faced pool in which a stone island supported a shrine. In the shrine the marble idol leered at us. I, for one, was having nothing whatsoever to do with his ruby eyeballs.

“Spread out,” ordered the lady Ariane. “And see what there is to see.”

We found ourselves in a cavern rather than a stone-faced corridor or hall. The water ran out an arched opening at the far end bordered by a stone-flagged path. Near a jut of rock that stretched into the stream lay the figure of a man clad in full armor, his arm outstretched. His mailed glove almost touched a small balass box, bound with gold, sitting on the ledge of rock. The water did not touch man or box.

“That box looks interesting,” quoth the lady.

“Mayhap, my lady,” offered Naghan the numim, “it contains the part of the key to be found in this zone.”

“That we will not discover until—”

“Let me,” said Logu Fre-Da, and he moved forward. He stretched out his tail-hand. My attention had been occupied by the dead man. The armor was of the kind favored in Loh, a fashion I knew although not at that time having visited Walfarg in Loh, that mysterious continent of walled gardens and veiled women. The old Empire of Walfarg, that men called the Empire of Loh, had long since crumbled and only traces of a proud past were to be discerned in once-subject nations. This man had traveled far from the west, over the ocean to reach his end here. He was a Chulik, and his savage upthrust tusks were gilded. His skin appeared mummified, a pebbly green in configuration and color. In his left hand he gripped a weapon with a wooden haft some six feet long, and whose head of blue steel shaped like a holly leaf was by two inches short of a foot.

That cunning holly-leaf shape, with the nine sharp spikes each side set alternately forward and backward, and the lowest pair extended downward into hooks, told me the weapon was the feared strangdja of Chem.

Logu was a hyr-paktun, a man of immense experience in warfare and battle. He seized up the balass box in his tail hand and, even as that tail swished up and threw the box to his brother, his thraxter was out and just parrying in time the savage blow from the strangdja.

The dead man came to life the instant the box was moved.

He sprang up, ferocious, his Chulik-yellow face restored to its natural color, his tusks thrusting aggressively. He simply charged maniacally straight for Modo, who held the box, swinging the deadly strangdja in lethal arcs.

A single blow from that holly-leaf-blade might easily sunder through the Pachak’s shield, a second rip his head clean off.

“He seeks to slay the man who holds the box!” yelled Naghan. The lion-man’s own halberd slashed at the Chulik as the Undead passed, and was caught on the strangdja. For a single instant the two staved weapons clung and clashed, and then with a supple quarter-staff trick, the halberd was flung off. Naghan staggered back, raging with anger, to fling himself on again.

“Throw the box!” called Ariane in her clear voice.

The box arched up, and was caught by Logu, who waited until the Chulik advanced, madly, insensately, and then the box sailed over to me. I caught it and prepared to use the Krozair blade one-handed. Stories of the Undead circulate as freely on Kregen as on Earth — more freely, seeing that they exist there. They are often called Kaotim, for kao is one of the many words for death, and they are to be avoided. Whether or not this example could be slain by steel I did not know, although I suspected he might well be, seeing that he had resumed his living appearance when recalled to life.

“Throw the box, Jak!” called Ariane.

I threw it — to her.

“You rast!” screeched Naghan at me, and fairly flung himself forward. But the Krozair brand flamed before him. The superb Krozair longsword is not to be bested by a polearm no matter how redoubtable its reputation or deadly its execution.

So the Chulik Kaotim sought to get past me, aiming a blow at Ariane, and I chopped him. Could one feel sorry for slaying a man who was already dead?

When the Kaotim’s second leg was chopped he had to fall, for the Undead had been hopping and fighting on one. He hit the stone coping to the stream, and struggled to rise, and his stumps of legs bathed in the water and no blood gushed from their severed ends.

Finally, Naghan, with a cry of: “In the name of Numi-Hyrjiv the Golden Splendor!” brought his halberd down. The Kaotim’s Chulik head rolled. No blood splashed. The gilt tusks shone in the light of the torches. The armored body lay still.

For a moment there existed a silence in which the roar of the waterfall sounded thin and distant. I said, “If the key part is so important, as, indeed, it is, it would not have been entrusted to so feeble a charge.” I turned away. “Whatever is in the box — it will not be the key.”

I do not know who opened the box.

All they found was a coil of hair, and a blue silk ribbon, and a tiny pearl and silver brooch. The lady Ariane said, “Put the things back in the box. Place it back on the ledge from whence it came.”

This was done.

We stood back.

The Chulik head rolled. The legs walked. As Osiris was joined together, so that nameless Chulik adventurer resumed his full stature, legs and head once more attached to his body. Painfully, he crawled to the stone ledge and stretched out his hand toward the box — and so once more died. His yellow skin marbled over and granulated to that death-green color. He remained, fast locked in the undying flesh, his ib forever barred from the Ice Floes of Sicce and the sunny uplands beyond.

Chapter Fourteen

Kov Loriman Mentions the Hunting Sword

The torches threw grotesque arabesques of light and shadow on the ripple-reflecting roof of the tunnel. The stream ran wide and deep at our side. We pressed on along the stone path and we took it in turns to lead, for we encountered many of the more ordinary water monsters of Kregen. Always, the two Pachaks and the numim clustered close to their lady. There were in her retinue other powerful fighting men, and between them and me we kept the way ahead clear.

“Water runs downhill,” said a Brukaj, his bulldog face savage as he drew back from slashing a lizard-form back into the water from which it had writhed, hissing. “So, at least we go in the right direction.”

“May your Bruk-en-im smile on us, and prove you right,” I said. “For, by Makki-Grodno’s disgusting diseased tripes! I am much in need of fresh air and the sight of the suns.”

After a time in which more scaly horrors were slashed and smashed back into the water, it was my turn to yield the point position. Pressing back to the very water’s edge, I scanned the dark, swiftly-running stream as the people passed along.

A soft voice as Ariane passed said: “I think you fight well, Jak. You are a paktun, I think.”

“Of a kind, lady.” I did not turn my head. The Pachaks and the numim passed along and I stepped back from the edge to bring up the rear.

Light blossomed ahead, glowing orange and lurid through the darkness. I was still in rear as we debouched into a cavern vaster than any we had yet encountered. Here the water ran into a lake that stretched out of sight, beyond the fire-crystal walls streaming their angry orange light, past the weird structures that broke the surface of the water with promises of diabolism.

“Well, by all the Ibs of the Lily City!” said Ariane. “We will not meddle with them !”

Fastened by rusty chains and rusty rings at the stone-faced jetty lay seven ships, sunken, their superstructures alone rising above the waters. They were carved and decorated grotesquely. Many skeletons were chained to the oars. In the clear water hundreds of darting shapes sped dizzyingly. They were not fish. Their jaws gaped with needle-teeth, and their eyes blazed. We drew back from the edge with a shudder.

The gravel expanse began where the stone ended, and then more stone flags started again, some twenty paces farther on.

No one offered to step upon the gravel.

Tarkshur, Strom Phrutius, Kov Loriman and, even, Prince Nedfar, would simply have told a slave to attempt to cross. I looked at the lady Ariane nal Amklana and wondered what she would do.

“Naghan!” She spoke briskly. ‘Tell some of the slaves to break a piece away from the nearest boat. Throw it on the gravel.”

“Quidang, my lady!”[2]

No slaves fell in the water as a piece of the rotten wood, the gilding peeling, was broken off. It was thrown out onto the gravel. It sank out of sight, slowly but inevitably, and a nauseating stench puffed up in black bubbles around it.

“We cannot cross there, then!”

“And we do not go back—”

“We cannot swim—”

“The boats!”

But each piece of wood we tried sank, for the stuff was heavy as lead, and rotten, and putrid with decay.

“Examine the wall for a secret door,” commanded the lady.

As the slaves and retainers complied, she turned to me and bent a quizzical gaze on my harsh features.

“You say you are a paktun of a kind, Jak. And you are Jak, merely Jak and nothing else?”

Now the paktuns had called me notor, lord, without thought, and no man who is not a slave upon Kregen goes about the world with only one name. Unless he has something to hide. And anyone with an ounce of sense in his skull will invent a suitable name. I would not say I was Jak the Drang, for in Havilfar no less than Hamal, that name would be linked with the Emperor of Vallia. So, without a smile, but as graciously as I could, I said, “If it please you, my lady, I am sometimes called Jak the Sturr.”

Now sturr means a fellow who is mostly silent, and a trifle boorish, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, not particularly favored by the gods in handsomeness. I picked the name out of the air, for, by Krun! I was building up a pretty head of boorish anger and resentment at the tricks and traps of this Moder. By Makki-Grodno’s leprous left earlobe! Yes!

She laughed, a tinkle of silver in that gloomy torch-lit cavern.

“Then you are misnamed, I declare, by Huvon the Lightning.”

I did not smile. Huvon is a popular deity in Hyrklana, and I was not going to pretend to this woman that I came from that island. If she asked where I hailed from...

“And, Jak the Unsturr — where in Kregen are you from?”

“Djanduin, my lady.”

“Djanduin! But you are not a Djang!”

“No. But I have my home there. The Djangs and I get along.”

“Yes.” She wrinkled up her nose, considering. “Yes. I think you and they would — Obdjang and Dwadjang both.”

What, I wondered, as shouts rang out along the rocky wall, would she say if I told her I was the King of Djanduin? For a start she would not believe me. And who would blame her?

We walked over the wall and Naghan the Doom indicated an opening in the wall. I would have preferred to have found a boat and gone gliding down the stream to the outside world. But as no craft were available we were in for another confounded corridor. Anyway, there were probably more waterfalls, and things with jaws that were not fish, and all kinds of blood-sucking leeches and lampreys and Opaz-alone knew what down the river...

The room into which we pressed at the end of the corridor presented us with another puzzle. I let them get on with it.

Whatever it was Ariane had come here for, the scent was growing cold as far as I was concerned. Yet every step we took could bring a horrible death, and therefore this Moder had to be taken seriously, very seriously indeed, by Vox!

The room was some hundred paces wide and broad with a fire-crystal roof from which light poured. We had entered by a square-cut opening which was the right-hand one of three. Across the room towered a throne draped in somber purple. The throne itself was fashioned from gold, and surrounded by a frieze of human skulls. Bones and skulls formed the decorations around the walls. On the throne sat the wizened body of an old woman. She had, we all judged, died of chivrel, that wasting disease that makes of Kregans old folk before their time.

Her robes were magnificent, cloth of gold and silver, studded with gems and laced with gold wire. Her skeletal fingers were smothered in jeweled rings. Her crown blazed.

A series of nine white-marble steps led up to the throne. Each side, and tethered by iron links, crouched two leems, motionless, their yellow eyes in their fierce wedge-shaped heads fastened upon us. The fangs were exposed.

On the third step up to the throne lay the armored body of a Kataki. He had been a famous warrior, one judged, a slave master, powerful, in his prime. Now he moldered away and he had not been dead for as long as most of the Undead in this fearsome place. The silence hung as an intense weight upon us.

“He is not, I judge, a Kaotim,” observed Ariane. She was remarkably composed. “He was an adventurer, who failed the test.”

We all nodded solemnly.

On seven tables spread with white linen down the left hand side of the chamber a feast lay spread out. The viands looked succulent, the wines superb. Not one of us was foolish enough to touch a scrap of food or a drop of drink.

Going as near as I felt sensible to the dead Kataki I saw that his face was black and his eye sockets were empty.

A small spindly-legged table to the right of the lowest step contained on its mosaic surface a golden handbell.

The lady Ariane paused before this little table, and looked down. She mused within her own thoughts before she said lightly, “To ring or not to ring?”

“To touch, or not to touch — anything,” I said.

“True, Jak the Unsturr.”

Mulishly, I said, “It is Jak the Sturr, my lady.”

She frowned. “I do not choose to be crossed.”

Well, it was a petty matter and not worth arguing about. Not here, where a ghastly death might leap upon us at any moment.

Faintly at first, and then growing steadily louder, the sounds of voices; the shuffle of feet and the clink of weapons sounded at our backs. We looked around as the noises strengthened.

“From the center door,” said Naghan. “Best, my lady, we keep out of sight.”

Silently, all of us, slaves fearful and retainers not much happier, we crowded behind the seven tables and crouched down. It was a jostle and we were cramped; but the fighting men positioned themselves ready to leap out if the occasion warranted.

The noises spurted into the chamber and then a voice broke out, hard, high and yet lighthearted.

“Thank Havil! There is real light ahead. Courage, my friend.”

“Courage?” came a wheezing voice. “It is more a pair of strong legs, like yours, I am in dire need of at this moment.”

Out into the light from the central opening stepped Deb-Lu-Quienyin and, with him and leading a small bunch of warriors and slaves, came Prince Tyfar. They stared about, much as we had done when we first entered.

The lady Ariane stood up, and smoothed her white gown.

“Lahal, prince!”

The shock was profound. Ariane laughed mischievously.

I frowned. She had risked an arrow through that pretty head of hers — the warriors with Prince Tyfar lowered their bows reluctantly. The prince smiled and walked forward, his hands outstretched.

“My lady Ariane! Lahal and Lahal. What a pleasant sight in this infernal prison!”

We all stood up from where we had hidden behind the tables and we all felt foolish, I daresay. After a space for mutual greetings, our stories were told. Very similar they were, too. As Ariane and the flying man had been separated, so the Wizard of Loh and the young prince of Hamal had been cut off from the main party by a falling block of stone. Now, together, we studied our present predicament. Deb-Lu-Quienyin walked across to peer at the dead Kataki, and I observed how these people, like ours, had learned to do nothing foolish until everything that could be worked out had been worked out. He saw me. His face expressed surprise; but no great surprise, no shock. He smiled his old smile.

“Why, Lahal, Jak. How nice to see you again — you have had success, I trust?”

I greeted him in turn and then Ariane broke in to say, “So you two know each other? How nice!”

Prince Tyfar and I made the pappattu, and he gave me a hard look. “A lone adventurer, down here?”

“There are few people with you, prince.”

“Yes, true — your party?”

I pointed up, down, and around. “Havil alone knows.”

“You are welcome to join our party—”

I looked at him. He was a fine, sprightly, well-set-up young man, and the axe that dangled at his belt looked freshly cleaned. He was a prince of Hamal.

I said, “And you are at liberty to join me.”

His eyebrows went up. His right hand dropped betrayingly toward his axe. Then his face creased. He threw his head back. He laughed. “By Krun! You are a jokester — and that is good, down here.”

“If you two have finished?” Ariane looked cross. This was man’s business and she felt a little left out —

or so I judged the situation. “How do we go on?” She motioned to the three doors. “The left-hand one?”

Quienyin sighed. “That will probably take us back again where we do not wish to go. And the way is hard.”

In the pause that followed we all heard the noises from the third door. There was about them a familiar ring.

Quienyin nodded. “We have all been working our way through these places and have, by different routes, converged on this chamber. That, I judge, is the rest of the party.”

We all agreed and did not shelter behind the tables.

The Wizard of Loh was both right and wrong. When the newcomers walked out into the chamber we saw that they were the people belonging to Kov Loriman the Hunter. He strode ahead, swinging his sword about, enraged, looking for quarry. He had only two slaves and many of his fighting men carried bundles of loot.

The pappattu was made and he gave me a queasy look for which I did not blame him. After all, I could easily be a monster waiting the opportunity to rend him into pieces. But Quienyin’s word sufficed.

“These passages writhe like a boloth’s guts,” Loriman said, and his full fleshy face exhibited passion.

“When do we get to the real treasure house? By Spikatur Hunting Sword! I need to get my hands on—”

He checked himself and then blustered on— “Gold and gems! Aye, by Sasco! That is what I came for and that is what I will have!”

So, I said to myself, this fine fleshy bucko was down the Moder for something other than gold or gems... While the slaves and retainers wandered about the chamber seeking to read its riddles, I got hold of Quienyin and steered him to the center where we might talk. From our fascinating conversations under the stars as we rested in that caravan in which we traveled to Jikaida City, I knew him to be a pleasant old buffer — for a Wizard of Loh! — who felt the loss of his sorcerous powers most keenly. Yet I had sensed in him a groping for comradeship passing strange in a thaumaturge and not to be simply explained away merely because he had lost his arts of sorcery.

“Spikatur Hunting Sword,” he said and puffed out his cheeks. “The kov let slip more — well, little enough is known of that secret order—”

“I heard rumors it was a new religion out of Pandahem—”

“You see? Stories, rumors, nothing known for certain. Whatever the truth, its members are Dedicated to Hunting. That, at least, is sure.” He pushed at his turban. “And it is the least — nothing vital is known.”

“I am most happy to see you alive and well, San. You seek your powers here—”

The intelligent inquisitiveness he had exhibited over this matter of Kov Loriman’s secret allegiances shriveled at my words. He rode the tragedy extremely well, and showed a brave and proud face to the world. He was a Wizard of Loh. Instant obedience from ordinary mortals had been habitual to him. Sucking up, to find no easier way of saying it, from simple men who feared him had been his lot in life. But this loss had changed him greatly. He was troubled. He and I had come to an understanding out there on the Desolate Waste.

“Thank you, Jak. But, I crave your indulgence, do not tell these people I am a Wizard of Loh.” His old eyes shifted to peer suspiciously at a massive Chulik, one of Loriman’s bully boys, who prowled past bashing his spear against the floor. “I have told them I am a Magician of the humbler sort, whose tricks are mere sleight of hand. I do not think it would go well if they knew—”

“Rest assured. And so you have a secret. Do not we all?”

“Had I my powers, young man, I Would Read Your Secret!”

He spoke in capital letters, our San Deb-Lu-Quienyin.

He pulled his shortsword around. That betrayed him, if folk knew he was a Wizard of Loh.

“We have descended many levels within the zones. I think we are on the fifth zone now. What I seek lies on the lowest zone of all, the ninth zone. San Orien advised me.”

“And is there truly a way out?”

“Yes. If you have the nine parts of the key. They fit together to unlock the outer door. But without the nine parts you will never leave.”

“I hear Prince Nedfar has two.”

“He had three when we were parted. His son, Prince Tyfar, has one. We must ask that boor Loriman—”

“Cautious, San, how you speak of him!”

“Aye, young man. You are Indubitably Right.”

“And what of this famous sorcerer, San Yagno? Is he real?”

“He has powers. Great powers. But — he is not a Wizard of Loh, by the Seven Arcades, no!”

“And the creature — apim or diff — within the swathing red and green checkered cloak, this Tyr Ungovich?”

Quienyin looked troubled, and scratched up under his massy turban. A wisp of red hair fell; but not all men from Loh have red hair, and not all men with red hair are Wizards of Loh.

“He is an enigma. Without my powers I cannot riddle him.”

“He it was, I believe, who arranged your expedition?”

“That is so.”

The others were still searching around and finding nothing of use. And — no one had been messily killed, either.

“Now, San, these keys — or parts of the key. How are they recognized?”

He did look surprised now. “How is it that you venture in here and do not know that, Jak?”

I stared at him. “A secret for a secret, San?”

“Ah!”

“I came here with your expedition as a slave. I won free — from that heap of foulness, Tarkshur the Lash—”

The look that passed across the Wizard of Loh’s face was not so much unreadable as amazing. I saw compassion there, and sympathy, a lively indignation.

“You are fortunate, my friend, to be alive and whole.”

“So now you understand my dilemma. I must pass myself off as one of the notors—”

Now he smiled, a creasing of his face that charmed. He was no fool.

“Oh, but, Jak. On the Desolate Waste, when we played Jikaida with Pompino and Bevon — why, I knew then you were more than a paktun, more than a hyr-paktun — a notor?” He shook his head. “I shall retain a few powers.”

“Well, for the sweet sake of Opaz—”

“Ah!” Again he smiled. “This dreadful place, to a normal man, is addling your wits, Jak. You are a prince, at the least. But, I will Keep my Own Counsel, as You will Keep Yours. We are, each of us, In the Other’s Hands.”

“Agreed. If we chance upon Tarkshur—”

“Then we bluff. I observed the slaves, looking at each establishment, all eight of them. Ionno the Ladle is with the main party. I did not recognize you—”

“You would not expect to see a man you knew, as slave, surely? Especially here?”

“Every man may be slave.”

Before I could make some mundane acquiescent reply, Loriman walked past, ostentatiously poking at the floor the Chulik had already sounded. “Some of us,” said this Loriman the Hunter, “are seeking ways of egress instead of chattering.” He walked on and gave us a mean look. He would have said more, but I called across in as cheery a voice as I could muster, “We confer on a plan.”

He bridled at my lack of proper respect for his exalted rank of kov, and I heard Quienyin’s wheezy chuckle. “Give us a moment more — kov.”

When he had gone on with his useless floor-prodding, the Wizard of Loh said, “You do have a plan?”

“Tell me how you recognize the parts of the key.”

“Each zone carries its own notification, its symbol. The three topmost ones are bronze, silver and gold, for they are the petty baubles men struggle for, and kill.”

“Yes.”

“The next three are named for gems. Diamond, Emerald, Ruby.”

“That follows. We are in the Emerald zone now. And the lowest three?”

“Gramarye, Necromancy and — and the ninth I will not, for the moment, say.”

“As it pleases you. But — what you seek lies there?”

“Yes.”

“Emerald,” I said. “Nothing as simple as that emerald and gold crown that poor old lady on the throne wears?”

“It might be her crown.” Together, side by side, we walked across and halted before the marble steps. The dead Kataki slumbered; the four leems did not move.

The lady Ariane joined us. “You have something?”

“My lady,” said Quienyin in his most bluffly gallant way, a veritable performance for a haughty Wizard of Loh. “My fine friend, Jak here, wonders if the crown...?”

“Maybe. How to reach it? No man is going up those steps. Oh,” she said, cross, “if only silly Longweill had not got himself killed!”

Prince Tyfar stomped across, his right fist curled around his axe haft. “There is no way out that I can find!”

He saw the direction of our quizzical looks.

“The queen’s crown?”

“There is emerald in it...”

“And,” pointed out Quienyin, “bones and skulls, also.”

“Well,” said Tyfar, “my heart is not in it, but we will have to send someone up there.”

The group of retainers and slaves who had clustered to find out what was going on suddenly became, as it were, mere wisps of smoke, vanishing into the far corners to prod and pry industriously at the solid walls.

I said, “If we attach a line to an arrow—”

“Capital!” declared Tyfar. “And I have the very man for us. He is renowned in Ruathytu as a bowman.”

At Tyfar’s imperious shout a bear of a man lumbered across. He was apim; but massively built and with a shock of dark hair. He wore a leather jerkin, brass-studded, and his bow was a composite reflex bow of some pull. I was quite content to let him shoot, for I judged the range demanded a flatter trajectory weapon — although I fancied Seg would argue that one.

Kov Loriman objected. He stomped up with a Fristle in tow who was holding a composite reflex bow which, although it looked much the same as the one the man from Ruathytu carried, was by its construction and the curves the product of a different philosophy. Both were good, both would do the job. They were just different tools and both equally efficient.

A wrangle ensued as to which bowman would shoot.

I did not — as you might expect — intemperately loose myself. A piece of fine thread had first to be attached to the arrow. This was done — to both shafts. Kov and prince glared at each other. Ariane tinkled her laugh. “Let me choose—”

“This is touching honor and is not to be settled at a woman’s whim,” growled Loriman. “Lady.”

Tyfar’s face went white. But Ariane turned her brilliant eyes upon him. She checked her own words. What she was going to say, what she would have brought to the quarrel, I do not know. I do know that Prince Tyfar was set to knock the boorish kov into Kingdom Come.

Deb-Lu-Quienyin said: “Let us twirl a shaft.”

Rumbling, we all agreed this was the answer and the arrow was tossed. It came down cock-feather down, and Kov Loriman, who had chosen that — unusually — smirked.

About to pass some casual comment that it was a pity all the Hamalese crossbowmen were with Prince Nedfar, I checked, almost choking. By Krun! I wasn’t supposed to know anything about this expedition!

They gave me an odd look as I choked and I turned the movement into a shake of the head and a sneeze. “This dust,” I said. “It gets right up my hooter, by Djan!”

The two bowmen were Professionals, no doubt of that. Loriman’s Fristle drew to cheek and let fly. Now maybe it wasmerely the weight of the line upon the shaft, light as it was, or maybe there really did come a sudden and fierce gust of wind. Whatever caused the phenomenon — the archer missed. The shaft went skittering off a skull, caroming, and struck the ebon wall at the rear of the throne. A blaze of crimson light devoured the arrow.

When we hauled in the line the end was charred black.

That did not encourage any of us.

Prince Tyfar’s champion from Ruathytu shot next and exactly the same thing happened. Three times each they shot, adjusting their deflection for that unpredictable wind. Six shafts burned.

“By Sasco the Wonder!” stormed Loriman. “I’ll have you jikaidered! You hire yourself as a bowman and you cannot shoot as straight as a five-year old coy!”

Prince Tyfar raised his eyebrows at his bear of a man.

“My prince — there is a wind. It cannot be judged.”

Loriman swung on me, his thick face flushed. “A fine idea you had!”

I said: “If a sorcerer were here he might well say the wind was an illusion.”

“The arrows are blown out of true, ninny!”

Prince Tyfar’s gasp was perfectly audible to us all. I ignored both that and Kov Loriman’s insult. Anyway, what could he do in the way of insult and indignity to me, who had played him at Execution Jikaida?

“Then if the wind is real,” I said, still in an even unimpassioned voice. “There must be holes, funnels, something from which the wind blows.”

They all craned their necks to peer up into the shadows fringing the throne. Loriman was completely unaware of his insulting behavior.

“I do not see any! Lights, you rasts, bring lights!”

Torches were brought and their light smoked up into the shadows of the throne, and a cloud of bats swooped out, red-eyed, squeaking, to fly madly away around the walls. We watched them narrowly. But they appeared harmless, and perched themselves upside down on tall crannies of rock. I said, “And, if I am right, as it seems I am, seeing some force prevents us from toppling the crown down

— what happens when we do bring it down?”

“We will meet that when it comes.” Prince Tyfar spoke firmly. “And I am now convinced the part to the key is there.”

“In that case,” I said, “prince, call up a slinger.”

“Of course, Notor Jak. Of course!”

Quickly a slinger was hauled out, a tough-bodied Brokelsh whose coarse body bristle was armored on his left side and mother naked on his right. The line was attached to one of his leaden bullets. He looked at the crown, and shrugged his shoulders, and winked his eyes, and licked his lips.

“Give me room, doms,” he said, in that brokelsh way.

He swung and let fly.

The slingshot arched. The wind blew — we all knew that supernatural wind blew. The bullet flew true. He was a good slinger, that uncouth Brokelsh.

The line tightened as the leaden bullet swung about with a clatter against the crown. Prince Tyfar was among the first who took a grip and hauled.

The crown tilted. Sparks of green fire shot from it, irradiating the chamber in an eerie green glow.

“Oh, no!” cried the lady Ariane.

But the crown tilted, toppled, fell.

It crashed down onto the steps, bouncing, shedding shards of green light. It struck the Kataki corpse and rebounded high, spinning, refulgent with a glitter of gold and gems. When it struck the bottom step a long, wailing moaning began vibrating throughout the chamber. And the steps revolved, the throne and the drapes and the wizened crone vanished out of our sight and from the revealed black hell hole a horde of ravenous shapes from nightmare leaped full on us.

Chapter Fifteen

Of a Descent Through Monsters

The horrors skittered and hopped and flew upon us. They were hairy, squamous, warty-hided. They ran on four legs or six legs, their tails were scaled and barbed. Their eyes were red or yellow and they blazed maniacally with hate, or were smoldering green and glared with crazed venom. A whole heaping stinking gargoyle menagerie of monsters fell upon us — and not one was larger than a terrestrial cat. We slashed away at them beating them off, seeing men fall shrieking with long orange fangs fastened through corded throats. The uproar, the stench, the sheer horror of it all beat frenziedly upon us. Exactly how many different types of monster there were I do not know. Certainly among the hundreds that poured screeching from that hell hole there were at least twenty different sorts. And all of them, every single one, was bent upon our destruction.

The slaves did not last long.

Near naked, unarmored, weaponless, the slaves were stripped of flesh in a twinkling, and it seemed their macabre skeletons still ran, the bony jaws clacking in fear.

I saw Quienyin striking bravely about him with his shortsword, surrounded by a cloud of fluttering horrors. It was a case of wading through clutching scratching teeth and talons to reach him and assist in beating away the mind-congealing host.

“Fliktitors, Jak!” The Wizard of Loh panted as he struck. “That is what they are, Fliktitors.”

The drexer in my right fist slashed and hewed. The main gauche carved a bloody path — as the saying is

— and yet that was as near as you would come to the truth of the saying. For the horrors formed a tightly packed host and each blow struck them down so that I did, in truth, carve a way through them. Prince Tyfar battled with superb fury and cunning, and his axe hissed as it clove through spiny back and leathery wing.

The two Pachaks and the numim closed up around their lady and fought as only Pachaks and numims can fight.

The outpouring of scaled horrors ceased. The warty-hided ones ran on their six legs and were crushed. The hairy ones clawed up with curved talons and were cut down.

But men were cut down also.

When, in the end — in the long bloody end — we had finished the last mewling one, the Brokelsh slinger planting a heavy and uncouth boot upon its black and squirming neck, we stood back, panting, and surveyed the carnage.

No slaves survived.

Kov Loriman was berserk with rage, and went about slashing with his sword at the putrid corpses of the Fliktitors.

The Lady Ariane’s white gown shook with her panting, and it was stained and splattered with blood, red and green.

We all felt, we survivors, that we would rest and refresh ourselves before we essayed any further the mystery and terror of this haunted place.

Loud were the voices raised in argument, loud were the quarrels between diff and apim, between men of the same race, between warrior and retainer. But we all knew, every one of us, that we must stick together.

Loriman stalked over to me, livid. “So your idea was a fine idea, ninny! This is what you have brought us to!”

I picked up the tumbled crown. It was ice cold.

“Look in this, kov, and see what there is to be seen.”

The leaders crowded around as Loriman snatched the crown and shook it. An oddly shaped piece of bronze tumbled out.

“Ah!” said Tyfar.

“The key!” exclaimed Ariane. “The part from the fifth zone!”

Loriman grunted and picked it up, started to stuff it away under his armor. I said, “I think, kov, I will take care of that.”

“You rast! I am a kov — I shall—”

“You will hand that over, or, kov or no kov, you will...” And then I caught myself. I breathed in deeply and slowly. Vosk-skulled onker of onkers, Dray Prescot! Quienyin stepped forward. The inflection in his voice took our attention.

“Perhaps, as she is so well guarded, the lady Ariane...?”

“I would offer to carry the part of the key,” said Prince Tyfar. “But will gladly yield the honor to the lady.”

Loriman was outvoted. I looked curiously at Tyfar. A bright, bonny prince, the slaves had said. But a bit of a ninny, also... The axe was pure compensation. He tended to glow a bit around the edges when confronted with women. And he regarded carrying the damned bit of key as some kind of honor. Well, given romantic notions and frames of reference, of course it was. But down here in this Moder with Monsters and Magic were, if you thought about it, fine times for chivalry and honor. Everyone was glad of the food and rest. A round umbrella-shaped object, translucently white and shining, drifted in through the center door. It was some three feet in diameter and from its center a long thin tendril drooped twelve to fifteen feet, for it was rising and falling, and occasionally flicking about. Quienyin called out, “Don’t touch the feeler!”

By this time down here no one touched anything if they hadn’t given it all the tests they could think of —

which made progress slow. This round umbrella was quick. From that slow drifting floating it exploded into action the instant its dangling tendril touched living organic substance. That feeler locked around the neck of a Brokelsh who was not quick enough. We expected, given the horror of this place, that the unfortunate man would be reeled in like a fish at the end of a line. Instead the round translucent horror reeled itself in, swooping down, positioning itself exactly above the man’s head. I was irresistibly reminded of the cone of a flick-flick as the translucent circle closed over the man’s head. It drew itself in like a hood over his head, tightly, tightly — his staring features were clearly outlined in the translucent material.

“It is a Suffocating Hood!” shouted Quienyin.

“Cut it off!” commanded Ariane.

Loriman lifted his sword.

“You will cut the man, also.” Quienyin looked sick.

The Brokelsh was running in crazy circles, as though controlled, and his chest jerked spasmodically. He collapsed quickly enough, suffocated, and we could see the blueness of his face through the translucent material of the Suffocating Hood.

“Has anyone an atra with the symbol for air?” demanded the Wizard of Loh. “Hurry!”

Everyone — except me — began searching desperately through the amulets they wore around their necks or hidden upon their persons. Most folk of Kregen — not all — carry an atra or two to ward off various kinds of evil. A Fristle let out a yell. With remarkable speed, Quienyin had the atra in his hand, with a quick jerk breaking the leather thong around the Fristle’s neck. The cat-man jumped. Quienyin started to force the atra up inside the tiniest of wrinkles in the lower edge of the Suffocating Hood as we gripped the shivering, dying Brokelsh. The atra was a simple, clumsily cast chunk of silver in the shape of a nine-sided figure, with the symbols for Fur, Lightning, Air and Milk, engraved on its dull surface. After what seemed a long time, the Brokelsh breathed again, his blueness seeped away — but the horrific Suffocating Hood remained clamped around his head.

“How do we remove that ghastly thing?” whispered Ariane.

“Why waste time?” demanded Loriman. “He is only a Brokelsh.” He strode across, lifting his sword.

“Let me—”

“Loriman! Kov!” said Ariane, shocked. “No—”

But the Hunting Kov got the tip of his sword up the same fold where the atra had been forced. Perhaps it was the passage of air, perhaps it was the right thing to do, perhaps it was just luck. He started to twist his sword and cut into the thin material of the Suffocating Hood. He cut, also, the face of the Brokelsh. I did not think that man would mind.

The Hood, suddenly, like an umbrella opened violently against a rainstorm, swelled out, and skimmed away aloft, trailing its tendril. Loriman gave a vicious slash at the dangling line; but missed. I wondered if a sword would cut the line at all.

“Let us push on,” growled Loriman.

Fortified wine was pressed on the Brokelsh. He looked shattered. But he was lucky still to be alive. Of course, maybe quiet suffocation would be preferable to what awaited him in the lower zones of this Moder...

Our order of march was reorganized and we plunged with uplifted torches into that black hell hole beyond the throne.

The moment the last mercenary pushed through the whole throne construction revolved. We saw the purple drapes, the throne, the frieze of skulls and bones, the four leems, all turning back to face once more into the chamber. I wondered if a new crown would appear on the dead queen’s head. At my side, his face crimson in the torchlights, Quienyin whispered, “Those leems — had we rung the bell...”

“Probably,” I said. And we all hurried on into the darkness.

The way led down. Nitre glittered on the walls, and our lights reflected back from obscene carvings which appeared to writhe and cavort. I observed the way Tyfar, highly embarrassed, kept trying to engage the lady Ariane in animated conversation and her quick bird-like looks of fascination past his glowing face at those highly personal carvings. Well, one day, the youngster would learn about women... We marched on down the long slope and it was at length clear that we must have penetrated down into the next zone within the Moder.

The hall we entered was a single blazing mass of ruby walls.

The walls were studded with rubies.

Some of those hard-bitten paktuns started in at once with their daggers. No lightnings flashed, no thunders rolled, no monsters leaped upon us as the first stone broke free. The mercenary, he was one of Loriman’s powerful Chuliks, reached out with a cupped palm as the ruby popped out from the wall. The deep crimson gem fell onto his palm, fell through his palm, burned a seared black hole through flesh and bone and sinew. The Chulik let out a shout — and, knowing Chuliks, I was not at all surprised that the yell was almost all of anger and outrage and only a trifle of pain.

“The Glowing Stones!” Quienyin pulled an apim back as the next stone bounced free. It struck the floor and exploded in a shower of sparks, red and brilliant even in the massy ruby light of that devilish room. Very cautiously we looked for the opening, and found a trapdoor in the floor which, when opened by prizing blades, revealed a hollow white radiance beneath. Tyfar said, “By Krun! White is better than red!” And he dropped down, his sword pointed before him.

Yes, well, he was a brave young man. Foolhardy, perhaps.

When we all stood on the floor at the foot of the flight of stairs down — and not before — the floor tilted. Helplessly, we were all tumbled away down a long slippery slope, the reek of thick oil in our nostrils. Down and down we shot, slipping and sliding. Above our heads the white light dwindled and was gone.

The slope down which we skidded gradually eased out and became horizontal, like a chute, and deposited us, jumbled up and swearing, in a confused mass on a normal stone floor. Fire-crystal walls shed a yellow light. We picked ourselves up. Not a drop of oil stained our garments or armor. We looked about.

In the opposite wall stood just two doors, one rounded and one pointed, both shut, and between them leaned an iron-bound skeleton of an anthromorph, grinning and grotesque. Otherwise, the chamber was bare.

“Which?” said someone, and he spoke for us all.

“I,” observed Kov Loriman, “prefer to choose the right.”

That was the pointed arched doorway.

For the rest of us that confirmed our decision to choose the round-headed doorway. Of such petty stuff are great decisions made.

I did not speak aloud; but I said to myself, “Of Roman or Gothic, either will do for me...”

The corridor beyond looked perfectly normal. Not one of us believed it was. But — we were wrong. A simple plain straightforward stone corridor, well-lit, led on for some way within the Moder, gently inclining down. The walls were unremarkable. At length, and with something of a relief, we came to a small chamber into which we could not all press, so perforce a bunch of warriors remained outside.

In the room, within a glass case set upon a silver and balass table, we found an object upon which we gazed with great speculation. It was a key. It was fashioned from silver. It was an ordinary key.

“Not, I think,” said Ariane, “one of the parts of the Key—”

“That, lady, is obvious!” snorted Kov Loriman.

“In that case, kov,” pointed out Tyfar, “there should be no difficulty for you to smash the glass and take the key. Surely?”

But Loriman was a Hunter and was not to be snared like that.

“Before I tell one of my paktuns to take the key, we will look more thoroughly.”

That made sense, and so we searched the chamber.

We found nothing else and Loriman told one of his men to break the glass. The Chulik polished up his tusks with a wetted thumb and started forward, and Tyfar said, “Kov! I mean you no disrespect. We are all in this together and must accept the needle. Let my slinger smash the glass while we wait outside...”

The Chulik paktun — he was a hyr-paktun — turned about at once and marched toward the door. The rest of us followed suit. Only Loriman was left in the room. He gave a disgusted snort and followed us out. Tyfar’s Brokelsh slinger went through his ritual of shrugging his shoulders, winking his eyes and licking his lips. He slung.

Barkindrar, his name was, a fine slinger. From Hyrzibar’s Finger. Down in the southeast of Havilfar. The glass vanished in a welter of smashings. It tinkled to the stone floor. A long rope-like object snapped up from the base of the shattered case and lashed, looping, around the empty space where any man must stand who had smashed the case with a sword. The diamond-backed rope, like a serpent, hissed as it coiled and lashed and, finding nothing there, collapsed limply. It hung down like a disused bell rope.

“By Krun!”

The Chulik who had been given the duty shouldered forward and hooked the key out with his dagger. The golden pakzhan glittered at his throat. The key lifted and he held it on the tip of the dagger, the point through one of the loops in the handle. He held it out to Kov Loriman, his employer. We all tensed.

Loriman, with a coarse laugh, took from a pouch a wooden box, of a sort men use to carry cham which they chew all day, and the Chulik obediently dropped the key into the box. Loriman snapped the lid shut. We relaxed. If Loriman had vanished in a puff of smoke we would have been sorry. He was a powerful force to have with us, and I, for one, would have wished his end to be of a more obviously useful kind. So we went traipsing on up the corridor and left that room far in the rear. The corridor curved gently to the right, and this, I felt, must please the Hunting Kov.

Ariane and Tyfar were deep in conversation.

Quienyin and I walked side by side.

“We must make a proper camp and rest soon, Jak. I am weary and, I fear, My Limbs are Not what They Were.”

“I agree. The lady Ariane bears up wonderfully well.”

I told the Wizard of Loh something of what had befallen me in the Moder, and then said, “And the openings offered what men lacked. If we could find a way back there, surely, you would find what you lack — is this not so?”

He shook his head. “All is Not What it Seems. I think you will find the equipment you have will vanish when you leave this place.”

“I had the thought myself. But it is real now, and serves.”

“Some of the treasures these avaricious men have collected are real, others are mere fool’s gold. And the magical items which the more cunning among us seek share the Same Propensities.”

“We are, I suggest, in the Gramarye zone?”

“We may have descended through two zones and be in the Necromantic zone. I learned what San Orien had to tell me; but each Moder is different. Some are abandoned. We know why we are in this one...”

He told me that San Orien, the resident Wizard of Loh in Jikaida City, had advised him as far as he could. The secrets of the Moders were kept as far as possible from the poorer folk, and this explained no doubt the mystery of Nathjairn the Rovard and his slit throat. Other cities to the south also sent expeditions. “On the six upper zones of the Moder are seven hundred and twenty-nine different types of monster.” He glanced up at me. “Which, as you will readily perceive, young man, is Nine Times Nine Times Nine.”

“Oh, readily.”

“The yellow poison you stoppered in your vial must be some form of protection to your skin — the Fliktitors did not scratch or bite you at all — or did you put that down to your superb swordsmanship?”

Deb-Lu-Quienyin had seen me fight Mefto the Kazzur.

I felt suitably chastened.

“And you suggest that the sparkling stones from the Leprous Sheet can be used as Tarkshur used the stone in his ring?”

“One was able to purchase little magics against some of the monsters, but their value is dubious. Yagno did a trade, as did that mysterious Ungovich. Your stones I think would be effective against another Leprous Sheet. Against any of the more Fearsome Monsters Down Here...” He shook his head. Cure-all magics were a fool’s dream, anyone but a fool knew. But men might draw a little comfort from exchanging gold for magic charms.

The corridor branched and branched again and ranked doorways opened on either hand. Here Loriman demonstrated that some of his gold had not been wasted.

The inclination to look into every room we passed had still not been mastered. Quienyin and I were content merely to look; others prodded and pried in the search for treasure and magic. It would not be altogether fruitful and might weary to catalog continuously all the rooms and chambers and monsters and horrors; but Loriman’s gold saved him at least twice on this level.

A warrior marched up from the shadows of a room with fluted columns of red and yellow ocher and drapes of purple and gold — very tasteful to those with that taste. The warrior wore purple armor, and carried a purple shield whereon was described a golden zygodont — all fangs and claws and membranous wings and barbed tail. His sword looked useful, yet that cunning blade, too, was fashioned from purple metal. The visor of his helmet was closed.

Loriman bristled up at once. He swelled. The veins in his nose throbbed.

“Any man who wants a fight can have one! I am a hunter — and I hunt anything that moves!” And with a yell he threw himself into the onguard position ready to smash down onto the warrior in his closed purple armor.

Quienyin shouted, “Kov! Caution! He is no man, he is a monster! A Hollow Carapace!”

Loriman heard, luckily for him, and he jerked back. The purple-accoutered warrior strode on.

“We had best run,” said Quienyin, looking about.

“A Hollow Carapace! Like a fighting man!” boomed Loriman, and his voice echoed eerily in the chamber. “Aye! I have somewhat for that monster! The tricky rast!”

From his pouch he drew forth — after snicking his sword away — a narrow box such as stylors use for their pens. From this he took forth a little animal like a pencil with squat wings. At its pointed head, which spiraled sharply, glinted moisture.

Quienyin looked pleased.

“An Acid-Head Gimlet! Charming—”

“I paid gold for this,” said Loriman. “If it does not work as I was promised—”

A Chulik — he was a hyr-paktun — abruptly screeched, high in his corded throat, and leaped upon the purple warrior. His sword lifted and blurred. The Hollow Carapace shifted the purple shield to deflect the blow; but the Chulik knew all about shields and swerved his blow away beautifully to hack past the side of the shield and into the purple cuirass beyond. At least, that savage and skilled blow would have hacked into a normal cuirass unless it was of superb quality.

The sword bounced. The Chulik staggered back. “By Hlo-Hli!” he shrieked. His sword was a mere mass of molten metal, dripping, and when he dropped it it shredded away his glove and the flayed skin of his palm beneath.

“Not the shield, kov,” cautioned Quienyin as the Hollow Carapace advanced, sword and shield ready.

“I know, I know,” snapped Loriman. He lifted the little winged animal, the Acid-Head Gimlet. It was a dart of blue and green and brown, almost like a dragonfly. The moisture at its gimlet-shaped head glittered. Loriman launched it. It flew, its wings buzzing like ripsaws, skimmed across the space between to bury its head in the visored helmet. It rotated.

Three heartbeats — three and a half, at the most — passed before the Hollow Carapace reacted. By then it was too late. From the hole drilled by the gimlet head and bitten by the acid puffed a foul odor. Whatever caused that was invisible and was, I think, not material. For the Hollow Carapace was —

hollow.

It collapsed.

It fell in on itself as a vessel exhausted of air collapses under the ambient pressure. Bits and pieces of the armor bounced on the stone floor. We tensed anew, for we were well-accustomed to the ghastly phenomenon of fresh monsters rising from the remains of the old. The golden zygodont sprang into bestial life from the shield, sprang hissing out to charge full on us. The men fell back.

“The sword!” yelled Quienyin, dancing around beside us.

The purple sword skittered among the detritus of the Hollow Carapace. Fittingly, it was Loriman who dived for the sword, got it into his fist, swung at the golden zygodont. The blade sheared through a foreleg and Loriman swung again and the next stroke half-severed the serpent-neck. The third blow decapitated the zygodont. Everyone breathed out — shakily.

“Now thank all your gods it did not resume its true size!” said Quienyin. I went across to the Chulik hyr-paktun who was gripping his right wrist, his hand stiffly extended. As I went so the pieces of purple armor puffed into purple smoke and dissipated.

“Drop the sword, kov!”

Loriman dropped it — just in time. He would have lost his hand — at the least. I took out the stoppered vial of yellow poison from the Bristle Ball and pressed it against that grisly flayed palm. “Hold still, Chulik!”

He went rigid with shock, and then looked down. I took the vial away. The skin of his hand was whole again, yellow and unmarked.

The hyr-paktun stared at me with his dark slit eyes.

“You have my thanks, apim—”

“We all fly the same fluttrell here.”

The golden zygodont had disappeared. Dust hung in the air. We pushed on, warily. Many rooms, many chambers, many wonderful things...

And, also, many ghostly apparitions, were-creatures, ghouls from the diseased imaginings of madmen, vampires with red-dripping fangs, specters, wraiths, banshees...

We walked through a long corridor fitfully illuminated by orange torches in the yellow-brown fingers of skeletons ranged against the black walls. The oppressive atmosphere crashed down. We spoke in quiet voices — even Kov Loriman. Tyfar and Ariane walked together.

“I believe we approach something of quality,” said Quienyin.

Between each skeleton stood a table carved in the form of an impossible monster. On the tables rested objects of unimaginable use mingled with treasure, arms and armor, food and drink, valuables. Now Chuliks fear very little on Kregen and their imaginations are limited. One massive warrior, straining his armor, gazed upon an artifact that would keep him in luxury for the rest of his life. It was a single enormous yellow gem, subtly carved into the likeness of a Chulik head. It fascinated him, and, clearly, he felt himself to be the most fortunate of Chuliks to be nearest. He picked it up. I can guess he could not stop himself from picking up that magnificent gem.

He cupped it in his fist and it did not burn, he did not disappear in smoke, he was unharmed. The skeleton at his side stretched out its empty hand, still gripping the torch in the other, and fastened those bony fingers about the Chulik’s wrist.

Men yelled and stumbled away. The torches threw dizzying orange lights and shadows between writhed. The Chulik pulled his hand back sharply. He could not break that skeletal grip.

“Here, Chekumte—” said a compatriot.

“Hurry,” said Chekumte. “It grips hard.”

The second Chulik brought his sword down in a sweeping cunning blow against the yellowed wrist bones of that skeletal arm. The sword did not shear through. The bones sheared through the sword. The point fell onto the floor with a mocking clang.

“By Hlo-Hli!” yelled Chekumte. “Bring a blade! Strike hard!”

We sheared through four swords before I thought that, in all decency, I should try the Krozair brand. Quienyin saw my movement as I made to unsheathe the longsword.

He shook his head. “I fear not, Notor Jak. That is a form of the Snatchban. The rope at the cabinet of the silver key was another. I believe they are also found in whip forms, liana forms, tentacle forms. Mortal steel will not cut them. We do not have the blade that will.”

Loriman glared along the corridor. “We must push on.”

The Chulik Chekumte struggled against the bony fingers. The pakmort shone a silver glint at his throat and his pakai of many rings shook. He was a paktun from Loh. “Do not leave me, comrades! I am a man, a mortal man!”

He was a Yellow Tusker, almost as lacking in humanity as a Whip-Tail. Loriman gestured to his Chulik comrade. “Do what you have to.”

“Yes, yes, by Likshu the Treacherous!” cried Chekumte. He writhed again, his yellow skin sheened with the sweat of terror. “Do it !”

Prince Tyfar drew Ariane away, bending his head to her, gently.

The Chulik brand slashed down.

Chekumte from Loh staggered back, his severed wrist spouting Chulik blood. I thought of Duhrra of the Days...

My vial of yellow poison sealed the wound but did not restore the hand. Chekumte held his stump aloft.

“See, doms!” he cried. “Now you may call me Chekumte the Obhanded!”

“No,” said his comrade. “Better Chekumte the Skohanded.”[3]

The skeleton moved again. It lifted its mottled brown fingers gripping the freshly severed fleshy hand, the thick blood dripping. Its hideous jaws opened. Blood spattered. The jagged teeth crunched down. The skeleton’s jaws closed with a snap. The hand vanished — forever.

We shuddered and pressed on down that skeleton-guarded corridor.

Through apparitions, through fire, through poison, we battled our way on and we realized we were —

we must be! — approaching a crisis. The horrors multiplied, shrieking and clawing — and then, suddenly, fell away. In a hushed expectant silence we passed through an ebon portal. Somber drapes opened with the fetid odor of death.

A series of dusty anterooms which we treated with the utmost caution led us at length into a macabre chamber of considerable extent.

This wide and lofty hall extended about us bathed in yellow light. Quienyin perked up. We had passed through horrors and now although the threat of terrors to come existed here, plainly, we felt we had gained an important objective.

“Ah!” he said, pleased. “We must be in the penultimate hall to what San Orien called the heart and reason for being of the Moders.”

The ceiling bulged low in some places, festooned with carvings of a grotesque and repulsive character. Bats swooped about high, and peered down with red eyes. A faint incense stink hung on the air and slicked flat and unpleasant on the tongue. Sounds echoed.

The opening through which we had entered remained in being and did not close on us. Directly ahead at the far end of the hall the wall rose, tiered into many shelves. In each side wall openings almost as high as the ceiling led onto short passageways. Every wall was honeycombed with slots of stone. They jutted into the hall here and there forming oddly angled aisles. Above the main doorway and inscribed deeply into the marble an inscription glittered with gold.

THE HALL OF SPECTERS

“San Orien knew of the Nine Halls surrounding the mausoleum,” said Quienyin. He was peering every which way, quivering with attention, seeming to shed years from his age. “This is the Hall of Specters. There is a confusing complex of halls and corridors cradled here. And the whole place is a single vast mausoleum.”

Dead bodies lay everywhere.

The walls were honeycombed with the dead.

Mummified as though in life, mere heaps of dusty rag, skeletons, masses of dried corruption, the bodies lay silently upon their biers of stone. Relaxed in the sleep of eternity, the corpses lay in rank on rank, niche on niche, tomb on tomb.

In every direction nothing but corpses.

But — were they dead?