Chapter Sixteen

In the Hall of Specters

Uneasily, we stared about. The lady Ariane said, flatly, that she could not go on any farther. So we made a camp in a corner where two walls joined at not quite a right angle and where the serried ranks of crypts were empty of corpses. It was a case of cold tack until some foraging Chuliks returned with smashed coffins. These burned with an eerie blue light; but on them were cooked up a meal and brewed Kregan tea.

Just then a Specter of Mutual Loathing walked in.

He looked just like a young and lissome youth, naked, long of hair, smooth of skin. He was smiling in friendly fashion.

“Leave him alone!” called the Wizard of Loh.

But one of the Chulik mercenaries — he was not a hyr-paktun — could not resist. With a grunt of contempt and loathing he slashed his thraxter at the smiling youth. Everything down here that was not a known friend was a monster.

The sword struck against the youth’s side. He went on smiling that wide zany smile. The Chulik yelped and went smashing backwards.

“Jak!” shouted Quienyin. “Face the youth and strike yourself!”

For a single heartbeat I did not understand what he meant — and then I saw. I whipped out the drexer and gave myself a resounding blow over the head, swinging the blade fiercely. I felt nothing. But the Specter of Mutual Loathing lost his smile. He staggered back. And purple blood sprouted from a deep wound in his head. With a wailing cry of despair he ran away, ran off, shrieking and shedding spots of purple blood that smoked as they spattered the floor.

“By Huvon!” whispered Ariane.

“A devil’s trick!” shouted Loriman.

“You are to be congratulated, Notor Jak,” said Tyfar.

I sheathed the unbloodied sword. “Rather, prince, thank Quienyin here, who saw through the devil’s trick.”

The Chulik paktun came forward. His kax was deeply marked by the blow he had struck at the Specter of Mutual Loathing.

“By Likshu the Treacherous!” he panted. “I struck only with sufficient force to slice a naked man — had I struck full force...” His powerful fingers traced the ugly mark in his cuirass.

“He was but a simple monster,” said Quienyin. “He must have prowled down here and lost himself.”

“You do not reassure us, Master Quienyin.” Tyfar drew his eyebrows down. Then he gave a small gesture with a hand that seemed to imply that what Krun brought, Krun brought. “But we are much dependent on your wisdom.”

“There are much worse monsters here?” demanded Ariane.

Tyfar gave Quienyin no time to answer. “If there are,” he said firmly, smiling at Ariane, “then we will meet them, aye, and best them, too!”

We set sentries and took turns to sleep. We lords — and I relished in a distant muffled way the irony of being numbered among the notors — each took a watch, acting as Guard-Hiks.[4]

The Hall of Specters formed one arm of a nine-armed complex of chambers, and each of these halls possessed its own resounding and macabre name. At the center, so Quienyin informed us, lay the mystery of this zone. There, we anticipated, also, we would find the eighth part of the key to get us out of here.

His quota of sleep being short, Quienyin joined me as I stood my watch. We talked quietly. He told me that San Orien’s explanation for the existence of the Moders seemed reasonable and to be given a due meed of credulity. Originally the mounds — low then and simple — were used as places of burial. The habit of the living to bury costly treasures with the dead brought the inevitable train of grave-robbers. So the structures grew more complex and the traps more hideous. The Undead stirred at disturbances. Illusion prevailed, for the Moders were controlled by a people who, although sadly shrunken in numbers in these latter days, retained awesome powers.

“There is more to it than that,” I said.

“Assuredly. The Moder-lords — to give them a euphemistic title — discovered much about their own natures as they watched the dying struggles of would-be robbers. They discovered that not only did they enjoy the intellectual stimulation of providing ever more elaborate puzzles and traps, they found also, and to their undisguised joy, that they could feed from fear.”

I nodded. “Other people have discovered that — think of the rasts who infest the Jikhorkdun and squeal at the blood in the arena. Or,” I added darkly, “think of Kazz-Jikaida...”

“No, no, young man. The Moder-lords feed directly from the psyches of the frightened.”

“That is possible?”

His comical turban slipped and he pushed it back; but the gesture was not the usual irritated push. “I Must Confess that many a famous Wizard of Loh shares that dark desire.”

He looked not at all proud of that.

He went on after a space in which I let him gather his thoughts: “San Orien believed there was but one Moder-lord to each dark labyrinth, sitting in his battlemented towers on high and giggling and chuckling to himself as he ran the poor demented creatures below.”

“They all came here of their own free will.”

“You wound sorely, Jak — but it is sooth.”

A guard stirred at the other side of the fire and stalked across. The firelight glinted from his armor and weapons. The smoke wafted away and was lost. We kept a sharp eye out for smoke, down here.

“So these rasts up aloft can survey our progress?”

“It would seem so — although I begin to doubt the fact.”

“And there’s only one of ’em to each Moder?”

“In all probability.”

“Well, I just want to get out of here. I have much set to my hand in Kregen. Time wastes.”

“There is, also, Much to be Won Down Here.”

“As?”

“You know what I seek. The lady Ariane seeks ways to topple her fat Queen Fahia. Loriman seeks ways to enhance his standing with and the glory of Spikatur Hunting Sword.”

“And Tyfar?”

“He adventures with his father—”

“And what does Prince Nedfar seek in this dolorous place?”

“I am not sure. Mayhap it is pure adventure. He is a great Jikaida player, and will respond to any challenge.”

“And Yagno, the Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis?”

Quienyin smiled and stretched. “It is obvious, that one. He must read his spells from a book, a hyr-lif. They are difficult to master. But they are effective. Yagno seeks ways to enhance his own sorcerous powers.”

“Could he learn enough to make himself a Wizard of Loh?”

“No. By the Seven Arcades — no — I hope not!”

“Yet — you—?”

“I but seek to regain what I have lost, not to gain what I never had.”

“Illusion and reality.”

“Aye.”

I found a stoppered jar containing a little wine and we drank companionably together. Quienyin lowered the jar and spoke reflectively. “San Orien says they go in for magical objects down here. Things that, when possessed, confer special powers.”

“My jar of yellow poison—”

“Precisely, Jak.”

The yellow light filled the close air with radiance and the fire burned with its eerie blue flames. The sentries prowled, alert, and our gazes kept flickering all about this mausoleum, surveying and noting the shadows in the corners, the corpses on their stone shelves.

“And Strom Phrutius,” I said. “What of him?”

“Gold and gems, I think. Treasure of the worldly sort.”

“Maybe he has more sense than I credited him with.”

“There is a well-known spell which will cause an armband to chain the wearer to the will of the giver. When I say well-known I mean in the sense of its existence being well known. The spell itself is arcane and difficult. With its knowledge a man could spell hundreds of armbands and thus ensure the willing and total obedience of all who wore them.”

“Tarkshur!” I said. “That’s what he’s after.”

“It is very likely.”

“He’ll turn up again, at the exit, you’ll see.” I clenched a fist. “Katakis are devils at survival.”

“So will your two friends, Nodgen and Hunch.” Quienyin offered me the wine. I shook my head. He went on, “It is Tyr Ungovich who provokes my curiosity. He is indeed an enigma.”

“What he wants,” I said, guessing, “will likewise be found on the ninth zone.” Then, quickly, I said, “You are confident Hunch and Nodgen will reappear? They went right merrily into their paradises.”

“Illusion, as the weapons you bear. They will appear.”

I touched the Krozair longsword. The metal was warm — and hard and solid to my fingers. I shook my head. Illusion...

“It is a great pity,” Quienyin said, “that Longweill the Fluttrhim[5]was killed. His gifts would have been useful.”

“He’s down skating about on the Ice Floes of Sicce now,” I said. “May Opaz have him in his keeping, poor Thief though he was.”

Shortly after that there was a general alarm as a procession of Green-Glowing Ghoul Vampires wandered past and we had a merry set-to. They were amenable to the kiss of steel, and were driven off. Again I noticed the fine free way Prince Tyfar fought, and, foolishly, I thought of Barty Vessler, and sighed.

When all had rested we set off to explore the nooks and crannies of the various halls containing the corpses. Prowling monsters were encountered and dealt with, each to its own peculiar fashion, and we lost a few more men.

If this was the Necromantic zone, as we believed, the key we sought — the part of the key — lay somewhere hidden. Finding it would take us a long time. And, as we explored, so we drew ever nearer the central chamber and the horrors it would most certainly contain. There would be a dozen or more cassettes to be filled with my record of the things we encountered in that nine-armed complex before we walked along and reached the place where we had camped. So we had come full circle, had found no way in or out, and must most carefully put our heads together to discover a method of forcing ingress to the center and its mystery.

“To the right, as ever,” quoth Kov Loriman. “I will smash a way through the wall, by Lem, and then we will get through!”

He seized a corpse by its arm and pulled and the corpse snapped at once into hideous life and leaped for Loriman’s throat. The Hunting Kov was not one whit dismayed. His sword whirled, the corpse’s head flew off, and one of his Chuliks swept a broad-bladed axe around and chopped the corpse’s legs away.

They kicked the bits of mummified remains of the Kaotim aside and bringing up picks and sledgehammers started smashing into the wall.

“One has,” observed Tyfar, “to admire their enthusiasm.”

Quienyin touched my arm and we drew a little apart.

“Have you noticed, Jak, that while the vast majority of the corpses are apim, like you and me, there are every now and then a few diffs?”

“Yes.”

“There is, I think, a Pattern to be Observed.”

So, leaving Loriman and his henchmen to go on smashing the wall down, the rest of us started to inspect the arrangements of the Undead.

In the end, and inevitably, it was Quienyin who spotted the significance. He smiled and pushed his turban straight.

Now, I must of necessity spell the words in English but the final result was the same as the original Kregish. The corpses lay in pattern, as Quienyin had indicated, and their order was thus: Gon. Hoboling. Och. Undurker. Lamnia. Och. Rapa. Djang.

Be very sure I looked long and with choked feelings at the Djangs — most of them were Obdjangs, those clever, gerbil-faced people who so efficiently run Djanduin, and whom the ferocious four-armed Dwadjangs respect with reason.

“It seems,” said Quienyin, “we are to find what we seek in the Hall of Ghoul. And it will be the ord[6]

something.”

We went carefully through the Hall of Vampires and the Hall of Banshees to the Hall of Ghouls. The yellow light showed us the ranked shelves of corpses. We all expected the Kaotim to stir and sit up and then leap upon us, uttering wraith-like wails.

In this Hall of Ghouls, somewhere, there were seven somethings, and the eighth something would give us the answer.

The sense of oppression enclosed us. We were entombed. Surrounding us lay mile upon mile of corridors and secret rooms, prowling monsters, darkness, and light more hideous than darkness. The feeling that the domed ceiling would fall upon us choked us with primeval terrors we would not admit. The idea of clean fresh air, and the radiance of the suns, and the feel of an ocean breeze — all these things were gone and lost and buried in the grave. The oppression held us in iron bands. The feeling of hollowness, of dusty silence, of the abandonment of years, choked like skeletal fingers at our throats.

“I — I do not like this place,” whispered Ariane.

Tyfar took her hand, and held it, and did not speak.

The tough mercenary warriors looked about with uneasy eyes, drawing together, fingering their weapons.

And then a silly Hypnotic Spider as big as a carthorse fell on his thread through a trapdoor.

“Do not look into his eyes!” yelled Quienyin.

One Fristle, shocked, was too late. The cat-man stood, petrified, ridged gristle and fur, and the gigantic spider, dripping venom, swung to take the poor fellow’s head into its jaws. Tyfar and I sprang together. His axe whirled. The Krozair longsword bit. The Giant Hypnotic Spider burst apart like a paper bag filled with water and dropped from a great height. The squelching stink gagged us all. The spidery arms scuttled away, singly, hairs bristling, and the gross body drooped into a flaccid puddle. The Fristle still stood, petrified.

“If that is the best they can do...” said Ariane, shaking herself. She laughed, a shrill tinny sound. They were all laughing. The reaction after the black thoughts of a moment ago shuddered through them. But the Fristle still stood, unmoving.

“Here,” said Deb-Lu-Quienyin. He shuffled up to stand before the Fristle. He did not touch him. “Jak,”

he said in his casual conversational voice. “Just Take a Look up through the trapdoor. There May Be More Up There...”

If I were a man who laughed easily, I would have laughed then. Obediently, I climbed up a pyramid of men and stuck a torch through the opening. The trapdoor hung down. A fetid odor broke about my head and I spat. The space beyond looked empty, full of ghosts and bones and stink.

“It appears clear, although—”

“Quite!”

Now we took greater cognizance of the configuration of the roof. The dome was broken here and there by bulging cornices, grotesquely carved. From one of these the spider had dropped, and the height, reachable by my pyramid of men, was not too great. We began to study the other bulging protuberances in the roof. The decorations particularly intrigued Prince Tyfar.

“As Hanitcha the Harrower is my witness! I do not discern any pattern! What do you see, Notor Jak?”

Before I answered I killed my automatic wince at his use of the name Hanitcha the Harrower. Ah, Hamal, Hamal, that empire had done great damage to my beloved Vallia!

“If there is a pattern, prince, we must find it.”

“True, by Krun!”

“And,” said his Brokelsh slinger, Barkindrar the Bullet, “My prince — beware, in the name of Kaerlan the Merciful! There may be more giant spiders...”

We all hopped back a few paces out from under the direct drop-zone in case there might be more Giant Hypnotic Spiders.

“Catch him!” suddenly shouted Quienyin’s voice, and we whirled to see the Fristle who had been petrified running, head down, racing madly and with demoniac screams, racing away down past the ranked biers of corpses.

“By Krun!” exclaimed Tyfar. “It’s enough to give a fellow a bad heart!”

A group of the mercenaries chased after him and brought him back, calmed him down. He still shook like the leaves of the letha tree. What he had seen in the eyes of the spider no one cared to inquire.

“And have you riddled the riddle yet?” demanded Quienyin.

“No.” Ariane was short with the old Wizard of Loh.

“Well, we must see what an Old Fellow Can Do.”

“Your permission, my prince,” said Barkindrar. “There are nine bulges — whatever you call ’em.”

The great apim bear of a man, the renowned archer from Ruathytu, craned his thick neck back, stared up. “And only one, my prince, has dropped a stinking spider, by Kuerden the Merciless!”

Quienyin smiled. “You are well served, prince.”

“Yes, yes,” exclaimed Ariane. “But which way do we count?”

I said, “Widdershins would seem appropriate in this place.”

We all moved to the bulge to the left of the one from which the spider had dropped, and stared up, at a loss.

“This is becoming impossible!” Ariane tapped her fur boot against the floor impatiently. “Are all you famous Jikais fools?”

“I do not pretend to be a Jikai, lady,” said Quienyin. He spoke quite mildly; but I, at least, caught the undercurrent in his patient voice. And, I knew, his patience was forced on him by the loss of his powers as a Wizard of Loh. I glanced across at the lady Ariane nal Amklana. She was not wearing well, of a sudden, and I could not find it in my heart to fault her for that.

She was a girl on her own with us. She had left her four handmaids and their bodyguards with the main party. No doubt she missed their loving ministration. Her rosy face stared up, deeply flushed, and her bright yellow hair tangled in disarray, uncombed, with bits of dust and detritus still matting the fine strands. Her dress was in a woeful state.

Yes, I felt sorry for her, the lady of Amklana.

As yet I had not learned her rank; but I felt absolutely certain she was a kovneva. Nothing less would explain her manner and carriage. And, she had been gracious to me.

“It seems to me” I said, and I spoke deliberately loudly, “if these Moder-lords want their fun out of us they won’t have much more if we cannot get on.”

This was not strictly true. But my words made no difference. Nothing happened as a result of them, unlike the occurrences in that fire-crystal-lit corridor where I had fought Tarkshur and had summoned the key to unlock my chains. Different orders of illusion were clearly operative in the Moder. And I wondered just how the damned Moder-lord watched us — as a Wizard of Loh might do, by going into lupu and observing events at a distance?

Logu Fre-Da and his twin, Modo Fre-Da, were casting worried looks at their lady. The big numim, Naghan the Doom, was looking at the two hyr-paktuns, and his mane indicated his own concern. The twins, I had observed with some pleasure, each had the same number of trophy rings from defeated paktuns dangling on their pakais. When a paktun defeats another noted mercenary he takes the ring with which either the pakmort or the pakzhan is affixed to the silken cords at the throat. I had once been betrayed by just such a dangling pakai. But I saw the twins fingering their pakais and I realized they were reassuring themselves, seeking sustenance from their own prowess, the pakais giving them fresh confidence in their nikobi. I have a great deal of time for Pachaks, and these two, it seemed to me, were fine representatives of their fine race.

The intriguing thought occurred to me to wonder how much swag they had concealed about their persons.

An acrimonious discussion began — at least, it was acrimonious from the lady Ariane, although Quienyin and Tyfar remained exquisitely polite. We seemed to have reached a dead end, an impasse, and no one could with any equanimity contemplate going back the way we had come. For lack of anything better we tramped off around the Nine Halls again, passing Loriman and his men still hard at work. We encountered a few prowling monsters, and lost a Rapa, and so returned to the Hall of Ghouls and stared up at the roof once more.

The answer to the riddle was either so complicated we could not solve it — and with Quienyin with us, despite that he had lost his sorcerous powers, I did not think that likely — or was of an imbecilic simplicity.

Many folk on Kregen are fond of calling me an onker, a get onker, a prince of fools...

“Make me a pyramid of men again,” I said and, I own, my voice rasped out as the Emperor of Vallia’s voice rasped — or the First Lieutenant of a seventy-four.

At the top of the pyramid I lifted the Krozair longsword and I smote against the roof, savage blows, eight of them, eight intemperate smashes against the prominent knob of polished jet over my head. The echoes of those vicious blows rang and rattled away along the stone biers. And the corpses all rose up.

Every corpse rose, and from those ghastly mouths a shrill and ghoulish screaming shattered against our nerves. Every corpse rose up, screaming, and rushed away, ran blindly from the Hall of Ghouls. They poured in a blasphemous rout through the two side openings to the Hall. We were all gathered in the inner end of the arm, that between the two side passages and the center of the mausoleum complex. The floor moved.

The floor revolved.

The ends of the side passages and the anteroom at our backs slid swiftly sideways — going widdershins! — and the floor on which we stood, petrified, turned and carried us around to face into the mysterious heart of the mausoleum.

A few of the mercenaries at last broke. They were not paktuns. With shrieks of fear they raced madly for the narrowing slot of yellow light, leaping off the revolving floor, screaming, tearing desperately away, rushing madly anywhere to escape the horrors of this place.

We who were left revolved with the Hall of Ghouls, swinging in to face whatever it was that had caused the Undead to rise in panic and flee.

Chapter Seventeen

Out from the Jaws of Death

We never again saw any of those mercenaries who had fled — not one, ever. What we expected to see, Opaz alone knows. I do not.

What we did see was a solid wall of darkness. The floor revolved one hundred and eighty degrees, and halted with a shuddering lurch, as though we were suspended by chains over a fathomless gulf. The blackness smote our eyes. The yellow light within the Hall of Ghouls continued; but it remained thin and pale. The stone slabs lay empty of corpses. The detritus on the floor crackled underfoot as we moved. Cautiously, we advanced toward that ebon wall, and it resisted, and we could make no impression on its immaterial substance.

The tall rows of empty biers frowned down. The light smoked somber upon us, and the silence stunned us.

Quienyin said, “The walls. The stone slabs. I think—”

“You are right, Master Quienyin!” Tyfar rushed to the nearest wall and put his foot against the bottom slab. With a slow remorseless pressure his foot was pushed along the floor.

“The walls!” shrieked Ariane. “They are closing in upon us!”

Steadily, with small screeching sounds as of trapped animals, the walls closed one upon the other. The wall of blackness ahead narrowed.

Now we could see that there was a finger-wide gap between wall and floor. And then the full diabolical nature of these stone jaws was borne in on us.

“The stone slabs!” shouted Ariane, and she tore her hair wildly, staggering. “See — they are not opposite!”

It was true. The stone slabs in one wall were set at a higher level than in the opposite wall. When they met, the stone juttings would pass between one another. Useless to jump up and cower in a stone slot so recently vacated by a corpse. The opposite stone slab would crush into that slot and... We looked about frenziedly for a way out. “These are the Kaochun,” Quienyin informed us, although few of us were in a condition to appreciate the knowledge. “The Jaws of Death.”

These Kaochun, these Death Jaws, were going to squash us flatter than an ant under a boot heel if we did not quickly discover the answer. I saw the rock chippings fallen from the stones. Without shouting, trusting to the others to see what I was up to and follow my lead, I picked up and discarded the chunks until I found a solid wedge-shaped piece. This I pushed point first under that finger-wide slot between wall and floor. I kicked it in savagely. The two hyr-paktun twins were the first to see and copy. Soon we were all ramming wedges under the walls as hard as we could. Some ground to powder, others slipped. But some held.

The chittering noise as of trapped animals faltered, and strengthened as wedges crumbled, and then dwindled again as we went ruthlessly along ramming wedges in as fast and as hard as we could. The walls shuddered. A thin high whine began.

The walls trembled.

Dust blew suddenly in a cloud from the discarded corpse wrappings. We flailed our arms, heads and shoulders smothered in the gritty dust. We choked and coughed. But the walls did not move in. The tremble shuddered to a stillness, the dust fell away, and the walls stopped. That high shrilling whine passed away above the audible threshold. We shook, suddenly, each one feeling the pain drilling into his ears.

Slowly, as an iris parts, the wall of blackness opened before us.

When the harsh actinic white light rushed in I saw that we stood in a slot between the stilled walls. There was space left for us only to walk out in single file, so narrow had been our confinement and so narrow our separation from death.

Prince Tyfar was the first to march out.

Head up, sword in his fist, he stomped out onto a black marble floor and into the white light. He stopped. As we crowded out he gasped: “By all the Names!”

Difficult to describe this Mausoleum of the Moder, so many impressions crowded in like a kaleidoscope. A place of wonder, of awe, and of horror...

The chamber stretched about us, full four hundred paces in diameter. The roof rippled oddly, hung with black insubstantiality, ever-shifting so that it was impossible to estimate the height. And that height appeared to waver and alter and to press up and down.

Positioned some fifty paces in from the walls around the chamber stood fire-crystal tanks, each with a girth of at least twenty paces. In each tank coiled and writhed a monster from nightmare, tentacled octopus-like shapes that slimed and hissed and beckoned obscenely. They would have put the shudders up the toughest of backbones.

Deb-Lu-Quienyin started to talk at once, and I guessed he sought to hold our tattered nerves together.

“We are clearly below ground level here, and I imagine this to be the heart of the Moder—”

“You said there were nine zones and this is the eighth—”

“True. But the ninth zone is not for normal men.”

We walked slowly forward between two of the tanks. We did not look again at the gruesome denizens. We all sensed that Quienyin spoke the truth and here was what we had come for — all of us, that is, except the Wizard of Loh... And myself.

Ranged in a circle within the circle of tanks, and crammed close together, stood cabinet and chest, box and trunk, glassed and bound with bronze. Small alleyways led through this circle. The treasures contained within this mass of cabinets defied the imagination. We halted, greedy eyes surveying the wealth displayed there.

Quienyin looked back.

“There will be time to sample these wares — after.”

No one had the hardihood to inquire of him, “After what?”

What lay in the next circle drew some of us on.

We could not look over toward the center of the chamber, because of the brilliance of the light that poured up in a wide shaft from the central floor, lifting and flooding up to be consumed in that shifting darkness of the ceiling.

Around that shaft of pure white light stood a fence, a wall, an insubstantial-seeming yet iron-hard barrier. Passing through alleyways in the circles of displayed wealth and magical equipment we stood before the iron barrier. A silver gate showed immediately ahead, and a golden gate showed to the right. To the left a bronze gate shut off ingress beyond the barrier. Somehow, we all knew there would be nine gates leading onto the shaft of fire.

“I think, my friends,” quoth Quienyin, “that is our way out — after.”

“Through—” squeaked Ariane. “Through the fire?”

“Yes, lady.”

“Well, how do we pass the gates?”

“Climb the fence,” offered Tyfar.

“No, prince.” Quienyin spoke quickly. “That way lies a sure and ghastly death.”

We took his word for it.

The mercenaries were jostling before the cabinets. In there lay unimaginable wealth. I saw a trunk the size of a horse trough filled to bursting with diamonds. At its side stood another, similarly filled with rubies. The glitter of gold paled to insignificance in the luster of gems.

“Touch nothing until we are sure!” commanded Tyfar.

The paktuns growled — but even their greed was tempered by our experiences. And, do not forget, these were the hardiest and the toughest of those who had entered, for they had survived. One quickly showed us a simple way to die.

The black marble of the floor that ringed the chamber gave way to white marble and then to yellow. Where we stood before the flame the floor was broken into patterns, intricate lozenges and heart shapes, circles and half-moons of inlaid stone. This paktun, he was a Rapa, stood upon a crescent of green, without thinking anything of it.

The green crescent swallowed him.

One instant he was standing there, rubbing his wattled neck, the next he was gone, and the green crescent reappeared.

Ariane screamed.

“Test every part of the pattern before you trust it!” called Tyfar. From then on, every one of us cat-footed about like ghosts.

Remembering Quienyin’s ominous words, I looked into the recesses of the chamber, alcoves past the tanks and their hideous denizens. Shadows shifted there, eye-wateringly. Tyfar was talking, quickly and softly, to the lady Ariane.

The Wizard of Loh said, “Jak, my friend. These things are real. There is no illusion here. Your weapons...?”

Displayed in glassed cabinets stood ranked many swords, many daggers, many different weapons of quality.

“I do not think, San, I will find a longsword like this. Until it vanishes from my fists, I will keep it.”

All the same, I did decide to replace the rapier and main gauche once we had the cabinets open. But — opening the cabinets was the nub of the question.

We all knew that horror would burst upon us as we burst open this treasure.

“My prince,” said the slinger, Barkindrar the Bullet. “Let us all stand well away and let me smash a cabinet.”

Barkindrar had proved himself on this expedition down a Moder. Tyfar nodded. Quienyin pulled his lower lip and looked at me. I made a small gesture which meant “What else?”

A distant tapping noise that had irritated my ears for a short time now grew loud enough for me to turn, puzzled. The others heard it now. The banging echoed hollowly and sounded like devil-tinkers at work on a yellow skull.

Quickly we ascertained that the knocking noise came from a wall away to our left and we moved back, positioning ourselves, wondering what fresh horror would burst upon us. Chips of stone facing the wall flaked off. Then a larger piece fell. The noise redoubled. Whatever was forcing its way through the wall was large and powerful. The banging bashed and boomed and rock fell and the wall split. In a jagged wedge-shaped gap the wall split from the floor to a point ten feet above and yellow light poured through with a spray of dust and rock chippings, glinting. Dark shadows moved within the jagged opening in the wall. They looked black and evil against the streaming yellow radiance.

A form lumbered through, and stood up, and bellowed.

“Hai! I am through!”

We all stared.

More figures burst into this dread chamber, and there was Kov Loriman, smothered in dust, shoving through, a massive sledgehammer in his fist, panting, triumphant. He saw us.

“You famblys! And how many have you lost? Did I not say I would smash my way out?”

Quienyin called across, “Or, kov — in !”

To be honest, I could not understand why some horror had not carried off the Hunting kov and all his men sooner.

I could not understand that riddle then. But it was made clear to me, and, I owned, despite his despicable propensities for Execution Jikaida and other unmentionable acts of abomination, Kov Loriman materially assisted me by that bashing entrance through the wall.

We gave him warning about the green crescents, and his men were as wary as ours of the wantonly displayed wealth.

One interesting fact I noticed then was that, of these survivors of the expedition, there were more hyr-paktuns with the golden pakzhan at throat or knotted in silken cords at shoulder than there were of paktuns with the silver pakmort or of ordinary mercenaries who were not yet elevated to the degree of paktun. But, then, surely, that was to be expected?

Tyfar was your proper prince. However much of a ninny he might be in ordinary life, he was lapping up the marvels and terrors of this Moder. He was punctilious with Loriman.

“The suggestion is, kov, that my slinger puts a bullet through one of these glass cabinets while we stand back.”

Loriman grunted, and glared at his Jiktar, the commander of his Chuliks. This one, a magnificent specimen of the Chulik race, impressive in armor, fiercely tusked, pondered.

“Quidang!” he roared at length.

Chuliks have about as little of humanity in them as Katakis; they have given me a rough time of it on Kregen, as you know. But, at least, they are mercenaries born and bred to be paktuns, and not damned slave masters. And while their honor code in no way matches the nikobi of the Pachaks, they are loyal to their masters. And, they can be loyal even when the pay and food runs out, which is more than can be said for most mercenaries.

As we prepared for this fraught experiment, I realized that the place with all its creepy horrors was actually powerful enough to make me maudlin over Chuliks. By Zair! But doesn’t that stunningly illuminate the stark and overpowering impression this Moder was making on me!

So, with Chuliks as comrades, I hunkered down with the rest as Barkindrar the Bullet went through his pre-slinging ritual.

Did he, I wondered, do this in the heat of battle?

Prince Tyfar put store by him, as he put store by his bear-like apim archer, Nath the Shaft who hailed from Ruathytu. And, I should quickly add, neither of these two retainers were mercenaries, as Ariane’s numim retainer, Naghan the Doom, was not a mercenary.

As Barkindrar went through his preparation and whirled his sling another odd little thought occurred to me. As we had penetrated nearer and nearer this Mausoleum of the Moder, so Deb-Lu-Quienyin had grown in confidence. It was as though by merely approaching what he sought he took reverberations from his coming powers, sucking strength from his own future.

Barkindrar let rip. The leaden bullet flew. The glass cabinet splintered into gyrating shards. Splinters and shatters of razor-edged glass splayed out. Anyone standing nearby would have been slashed to ribbons. The smashing tinkles twittered ringingly to silence on the marble floor. We stood up.

“Well done, Barkindrar!” said Tyfar. He beamed.

“Have a caution, prince,” said Quienyin. “There may be a guardian...”

Kov Loriman hauled out his pouch and extracted a small body. It was a tiklo, a small lizard creature, and he held it by the tail gingerly.

“When we were being outfitted by Tyr Ungovich he charged me a great deal of red gold for this little fellow. By Havil, yes! Ungovich said that at the final moment he would prove his worth. Is not this the final moment of this damned maze?”

“Have a care, kov.”

“What ails you, Master Quienyin?”

“I do not — rightly — know. It is passing strange.”

Old Quienyin looked about, vacantly. I saw his arms begin to lift up from his sides as the arms of a Wizard of Loh rise when he is about to go into lupu. But the old mage’s arms dropped and he hooked his thumbs into his belt, and he squiffled around a space before he said, “You could be right.”

Loriman laughed and led off to the smashed cabinet.

Barkindrar had picked a cabinet containing crowns. They were ranked on their pegs, brilliant, redolent of power and authority, clustered with gems, shining. Each one would have bought the kingdom its owner ruled.

Loriman picked one out unceremoniously. Nothing happened. He lifted it, with some casual remark that, by Havil, it suited him. He was about to put it on when Quienyin struck it from his hands. It fell and rolled. I noticed, from the corner of my eye, the little tiklo give a twitch in Loriman’s fingers. The crown rolled across the marble. It grew smaller. Rapidly it constricted in size, shrinking, until finally, with a little plop, it vanished.

“Your head, kov, would have been inside that.”

Loriman lost his smile and his color. The veins in his nose seemed to strangle into thin white lines. He shook.

“This is a place damned to Cottmer’s Caverns — and beyond!”

Tyfar looked troubled and he spoke in a voice low and off key, as though what he had to say perturbed him. “You said, Master Quienyin,” he remarked in that indifferent voice to our oracle, “that these treasures were real.”

Quienyin coughed and wiped his lips.

“So I said, prince, and so I maintain. Watch.”

Deliberately the old Wizard of Loh picked up another bejeweled crown. He lifted it high in both hands. Then, with a decisive gesture, he brought it down and placed it on his own head.

“No!” screamed Ariane, half fainting.

The crown remained on Quienyin’s head. It did not shrink. Glittering, it surmounted his ridiculous turban, glowing with the divine right of kings to extort and slay.

“What does it mean, Master Quienyin?”

“Only that Kov Loriman should throw the tiklo away.”

“You mean that rast Ungovich tricked me?”

“No. Only that, perhaps, at a distance, Tyr Ungovich was not aware of the true menace of this Moder and its Monsters.”

“I’ll have a word with him, I promise you!”

Ariane giggled. “Maybe it is your turban, Quienyin!”

“Aye!” shouted Loriman. “Try the crown without that!”

Quietly, the Wizard of Loh complied. The crown remained its true size, a real crown, resplendent with glory.

After that there was an orgy of cabinet smashing.

Some little of the menace of this deadly place seemed to be removed and yet I do not think a single one of us was lulled. We all knew that the sternest test yet remained — if we knew what it was.

Chapter Eighteen

The Mausoleum of the Flame

A price surely seemed demanded for the wanton looting going on in this awesome chamber. The restraints of reason were broken among these people, the terrors through which they had gone had boiled up insupportably and now burst forth in wild laughter, drunken staggerings, the crazed smashing of glass cabinets and the wholesale strewing of the contents about the marble floor. The lady Ariane followed by her people was running madly from cabinet to cupboard to chest to box, eagerly searching for the lure that had brought her here. I could only wish her luck if it had to do with unseating poor pathetic fat Queen Fahia of Hyrklana.

We do not always see clearly into the motives of people whom we do not know well, and if they appear to agree with our own wishes, transfer our own desires into their actions. Fulfilling my promise to replace the rapier and main gauche with a real set of Bladesman’s weapons, I saw in the case alongside the equipment I chose a beautiful little brooch. It was in the form of a zhantil, that fierce, proud wild animal, king of the animal kingdom in many parts of Kregen, fashioned from scarrons, a gem of brilliant scarlet and precious above diamonds.

Carefully, I pulled the brooch out. It did not come to life and seek to bite my thumb off. Nor did it come to life and grow full sized and seek to chew my head off.

I put it into my pouch.

A looter, Dray Prescot. Well, I have been a paktun and a mercenary many times, and the paktun’s guiding motto is grab what you can when you can. Life is short, brother... Without discarding the drexer I buckled up a thraxter. If the drexer was going to vanish along with the other weapons of hallucination, then a real blade for rough and ready battling would be a comfort. That brooch now — for whom else in two worlds would I have taken it?

So that reminded me that when a fellow returns from a little lonely jaunt it behooves him to bring back presents for all the family. Feeling remarkably ridiculous, I toured around the shattered displays seeking items I thought suitable as little gifts. The odd thing was, a little gift from this treasure house of the Moder was worth a fortune.

When Delia said to me, as she would, “And where have you been this time, my heart?” I would have to reply, “Oh, just a little game of Moders and Monsters.” And attempt to leave it at that. Of course, I would not be allowed to. I knew full well that after what I told my Delia and after the sight of these little gifts I’d have Drig’s own job to prevent her from hopping into a voller and insisting I took her on a little jaunt of Moders and Monsters. By Zair, no! I said to myself, and saw Ariane, holding an ivory box to her breast, the tears pouring down her rosy cheeks, and thought — my Delia? Down here? Never!

Well, it just goes to show you that man sows and Zair reaps, that no man can riddle the secrets of Imrien, that — oh by Vox! That I was foolish to imagine what I imagined. Quienyin walked across to me. He waved an arm about.

“Look at them, Jak!”

Certainly the place was in an uproar. People were staggering about under enormous loads of loot. These were old hands at the game of removing portable property, and the gold and silver were left untouched, the gems and the trinkets which were worth more than the gems of which they were made, these were the objects these ferocious paktuns were pocketing.

“Now, Jak,” said Quienyin in a sharpish tone, “here is that which I think you may find of use.”

He handed me a thin golden bracelet of linked swords.

“And, San?”

“And just this, young man. When a man wears the Blade Bracelet he is an invincible swordsman. But, wait — it holds its power for one fight and one fight only. After that — poof!”

“And you believe I need this?”

He eyed me with a sympathy I sensed was genuine. “Keep it safe. When you meet Mefto the Kazzur again.”

“I give you my thanks, Deb-Lu. But — no, and I mean you no disrespect. Mefto is a great kleesh, right enough; but he is a swordsman and when I next meet him I shall beat him fair and square.”

He looked at me as though I were off my head.

“What in the name of He of the Seven Arcades do you want here, then?”

“I,” I said, “want to get out!”

The racket continued on about us as he looked shrewdly up at me, his eyes appearing to give forth more light than any human eyes could. “Now that is the most sensible desire in this whole place!”

“We have to get through that wall and up to the shaft of fire?”

“Yes. Look, Jak—” He pulled a belt from one of the many pockets of his robe. “Cannot I interest you in this. If you wear this in a fight your foeman’s sword cannot harm you.”

“Yes, and is that for one fight only?”

“It is.”

“Do these folk know that the magical items they are taking work once only?”

“Oh, no, some of them work for quite a long time.”

“I suppose there isn’t a device here that will magically transport us out of here? That would be — nice.”

“Sarcasm, young man, is cheap. And, no, there is not. At least,” he pondered vaguely, “I have recognized nothing resembling such a device. And, I may add, I have felt remarkably young about my lost powers lately.”

“I had noticed.”

I had noticed, also, that he was not talking in capital letters for most of the time...

“Let us take a look at the wall where Loriman broke in. I am interested.” He nodded and we started for the jagged opening in the wall. The wall where the Hall of Ghouls had revolved to bring us — squashing

— here was simply another wall like all the other eight. The wall from the Hall of Specters showed Loriman’s gap. “The Hunting Kov is a — forthright — man.”

“Oh, aye.” I gave a hitch to the lesten-hide belt holding the scarlet breechclout. That had been cut from an immense bolt of cloth here, and the belt was supple and strong. “D’you happen to know if he’s found whatever it is he seeks to help him with the Spikatur Hunting Sword? D’you happen to know what it is?”

“He found a gold and ivory casket that gave him joy. Had I my powers — when I have my powers! —

I must discern this Cult or Order.”

“Well, if it works only once...”

“That is what is so intriguing.”

Approaching the jagged opening in the wall Quienyin stumbled on a chunk of the masonry Loriman’s bully boys had broken down. He put his hand against my back to steady himself, with a small cry and then a quick apology. Turning, I took his arm and supported him to the gap. Noises spurted from the jagged wedge-shaped opening, distant and hollow, borne on a foul-tasting breeze that died the moment it reached the central chamber. Quienyin cupped his ear and listened intently.

Presently he looked up inquiringly, and I nodded.

“But how many ... ?”

A jag of masonry thrust against my side.

“The hole!” cried Quienyin. “It is closing!”

As a wound seeks to heal itself so the walls were growing whole again. I gave a yell at a bunch of shouting Chuliks who, loaded with loot, were making faces at the octopus-like monster in the nearby tank. They ignored me. I started bashing at the walls with a sledgehammer discarded among the rubble. Quienyin at my side helped with a pick.

I bellowed into the hole, that old foretop hailing roar.

“Hurry! The gap closes! Hurry, you famblys! Bratch !”

As I smashed away stones so they grew and pressed in. So, although I hate the word, it fitted here, by Krun! and aptly, I bellowed into the hole: “Hurry! Hurry! Grak! Grak!”

In only moments they were up the opening and the first face to show, peering through past the glitter of a sword, was that belonging to Prince Nedfar. He looked mad clean through.

“I see you, rast!” In a twinkling he scrambled out and his sword leaped for my throat. I threw myself backwards.

Lobur the Dagger was out, and other fighting men. Quienyin yelled.

“Prince! Prince! Hold! It is us — we are here — this is Notor Jak and he is a friend. Hurry through, all of you, before the gap closes on you.”

There followed a right old hullabaloo before the rest of the expedition tumbled through the opening. The last one through was Hunch, and he shivered and shook as the stones closed up at his rear with a clashing thunk, making him leap as though goosed.

He did not recognize me, for I stood talking to the prince, girded with weapons, clearly one of the lords.

“Jak? Aye — I remember you. You are well met.” Nedfar possessed the princely merit of remembering faces. “If your story is as strange and horrific as ours...”

“It is, prince,” said Quienyin. He explained as the newcomers with howls of glee threw themselves at the glitter of treasure.

Nodgen the Brokelsh was with Hunch. They did not know me. So it goes with the eyes of slaves. They both looked as though they had spent a continuous month of Saturday nights without a break. I wished them well of their Tryfant and Brokelsh paradises.

Tyfar welcomed his father and sister with a seemly show of emotion. Also, I noticed the comradely way he greeted Lobur the Dagger. As for Kov Thrangulf, Tyfar welcomed him in the proper style, as befitted a young and untried prince toward a high-ranking influential noble.

The flaunting display of wealth drew the newcomers as a flame draws a moth, and the uproar redoubled in that august and eerie chamber with the Shaft of Flame illuminating all the frenzied moths. The Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis pushed through and stood, feet braced, fists on hips, a glittering figure surveying the mausoleum, the circle of weird creatures in their tanks, the smashed treasure chests and scattered wealth. He nodded, sagely, as though he had planned it all.

“So this is the nadir of the Moder,” he said. He puffed out his cheeks. His splendid figure glittered almost unmarked by the desperate adventures of the journey that had turned us into a rag-tail and bob-tail collection.

“Not quite, San,” said Quienyin, cheerfully.

But San Yagno ignored the old mage. His eyes lighted on a chest fastened with nine locks shaped into the likenesses of risslacas. The scaled dinosaurs were prancing in bronze. Yagno advanced upon the chest, pushing people and bric-a-brac out of his way. He planted himself before the chest, which was of sturm-wood inlaid with balass and ivory, and bound in bronze.

“I recognize that sign,” he said, half to himself. He reached into that sumptuous gown and pulled out a thick book, covered in lizard skin, locked with gold.

“Watch this, Jak,” said Quienyin. “It is something worth the seeing.”

The Chuliks of San Yagno’s bodyguard — there were but five left of the original dozen — formed a ring about their master. But Quienyin and I could still see. San Yagno opened the hyr-lif, thumbed the stiff paper over, found the page he sought. He held the book close to his face and began a long incantatory mumble. Most of it concerned sunderings and breakings and smashings of one kind and another. The first bronze lock, shaped like a risslaca, snapped open.

The second through to the ninth snapped up in turn.

San Yagno puffed his cheeks out. He was panting. He stowed the book away and motioned to the Deldar of Chuliks.

This one lifted the lid.

“A vast expenditure of thaumaturgical lore,” observed the Wizard of Loh. Only the slightest tinge of irony colored his mild words.

“Had it been Kov Loriman,” I said. “He would simply have taken an axe to the fastenings.”

“Precisely, young man.”

And, I swear it, we both laughed.

We did not stop to see what San Yagno found in the chest after the first reeking objects were revealed. But they seemed to delight the sorcerer. He was laughing away to himself and distributing his loot among his followers. I wondered if they would hurl it all away to load themselves down with gems. Ariane’s four handmaids were cooing and aahing over her and attempting to tidy her hair and prepare a quiet corner where she might change into a clean new dress, of which they had a store borne by patient slaves. That made me realize that the arrivals did have slaves with them. I said to Lobur the Dagger, “How did you fare with the Fliktitors?”

He didn’t know what I was talking about.

It turned out that Nedfar’s party had followed a vastly different route from ours. Once they had branched off, the fortunes of the Moder had treated them as harshly, but had spared some of their slaves. They had lost Strom Phrutius.

“He is now being ingested in the guts of some half-invisible creature we could only see in the dark. As soon as there was light he incontinently disappeared.”

“San Orien mentioned such a monster. I am sorry to hear about Strom Phrutius. It was a Laughing Shadow.”

“Oh, aye, Master Quienyin. It laughed most dolefully when Tobi, a fine archer, shafted into its nothingness. It took itself off, then.” Lobur pulled his lip. “Tobi is dead, now. He was engulfed by a poisonous flower that grew from a crevice in the wall at prodigious speed.”

We expressed our regrets at the losses suffered by the Hamalese, and it was clear to me, as to Quienyin, that while we might be on the threshold of the heart of the matter, for this short space a sense — a damned false sense, to be sure — of release from tension eased the burdens on the minds and fears of these people. It was cat and mouse. That seemed clear. I asked Lobur the Dagger about his slaves, and he mentioned casually that they had picked up a couple of odd fellows somewhere who had almost been cut down before they managed to convince Prince Nedfar they were not demons. And then I quelled a quick grimace which might have been misconstrued as a smile as Lobur said: “They were left over from an earlier expedition, wandering about, poor devils.”

Hunch and Nodgen had hit upon the same lie as I had to explain wandering slaves without a master. As for Tarkshur — well, that must wait.

I made myself look eager. “By Zodjuin of the Gate! They might be two of my fellows!”

It was now vitally necessary for me to get to Hunch and Nodgen and browbeat them into dumb acceptance before anyone else espied their stupefied reactions when they saw me and, at last, recognized me by what I would say. It would be nip and tuck. Here, in the wider danger of the Moder, this small and social-order danger remained just as perilous.

They had dressed themselves up in finery which had been sadly ripped and stained in their struggled advance along the corridors. I found them with a bunch of other slaves, all goggling at the uproar. The slaves were nerving themselves to break constraints and join in the looting. I took Hunch’s Tryfant ear between finger and thumb of my left hand, and Nodgen’s Brokelsh ear between finger and thumb of my right hand, and I ran them a way apart, yelling as I did so: “You pair of yetches! You have caused me great concern! But I forgive you! You have done exceeding well! To have remained alive!”

They almost hung on their ears, swinging, as it were, to glare up at me. I bore down on them, bellowing, and, between bellows, I rasped in a low voice, “Yes, you famblys, it’s me — and a word will have your ears — no, your heads! — off. Act up. We came here before; but your memories are bad. Say nothing!”

They just looked at me as though a demon had opened his mouth and spat out all his fangs at them. In a bull-roaring voice I said, “I promised you manumission and manumission you shall have!” I glared about and saw Lobur and Princess Thefi and Prince Tyfar looking at me with undisguised curiosity.

“Witnesses!” I raved on. “There are the witnesses. When we are out of the Moder the bokkertu can be concluded, all legally — but, as of now, you are manumitted, Hunch and Nodgen, both — free!”

Had the audience broken into a small and polite round of applause it would have been perfectly proper. In this place it would have been incongruous. But the deed was done and seen to be done, and these two would — if we lived — receive their papers.

The idea of gratitude did not cross my mind. All three of us knew that Tarkshur would turn up — almost bound to — and then our deception would face a sterner task. But these two looked at me, at the continuous looting, and Hunch stood up rather taller than was his usual wont, and Nodgen bristled up in such a way that he looked fierce rather than boorish.

Curiosity touched me as to what exactly they would do. When they launched themselves at the overturned cases and shattered cabinets, I sighed, and went off to see what Nedfar would have to say about the damned nine key-bits we needed.

As Quienyin joined me and we started to move off from the area where the slaves squatted, still quaking, still not sure just how to breach the domination of the lash, we saw an odd — a pathetic — act. One of the slaves, more bold, more hardy than his fellows, crept cautiously from that shivering group. These were slaves who had been slaves for a long time, many had been born into slavery. This tough one of them inched across to a toppled cabinet and scooped up a brass dish and then, holding it with his back curved and the bowl pressed to his belly, he scuttled back. We watched. He began to hand out chunks of the stuff in the brass bowl. The slaves stuffed it into their mouths and began to chew. It was cham, the great jaw-moving panacea of poor folk on Kregen — and a delicacy for these poor slaves. Quienyin and I exchanged looks and walked on. When the slaves, at last, broke out, would be time enough coming. From the actions of the group of principals around Prince Nedfar, we judged most of them had found what they sought. Tyr Ungovich, still shrouded in his hooded robe of red and green checks, stood among them. We walked up and San Yagno, glittering, said, “You have a place here, Master Quienyin. But who is this fellow to come thrusting himself in where he is not invited?”

I said, “I leave you to your discussion.” I took myself off. There was nothing to be gained by making an issue of this petty business yet; I felt the Wizard of Loh would inform me of the decisions reached. I went off to find Tyfar and Lobur.

Ariane’s handmaids had taken her off to the shelter and they would be making her presentable. Slave labor was a mere part of her expectancy, and her handmaids were slave girls, no doubt of it. Princess Thefi said, “You cannot know how much I am in your debt, Notor Jak! My brother has been telling me of your adventures—”

“You are fortunate to have such a brother,” I said, in my best gallant way. But it was true. “And we are going to come through, safe and sound, all of us.”

Lobur the Dagger said, “By Krun! I know so!”

Well, he knew more than I did then.

Kov Thrangulf hovered. Somehow, these three managed to have their backs to him. I felt awkward. But Kov Thrangulf, as though bearing a burden to which he was accustomed, went off toward the treasures again.

Presently, Prince Nedfar shouted for Kov Thrangulf, and he went gratefully off to join the conference, along with other second-in-commands. Lobur the Dagger laughed, all bronzed face and flashing teeth.

“You have to feel sorry for him.”

“Yes,” said Thefi. “But if only he wasn’t so — so—”

“Did I show you this?” said Tyfar, hauling out a pretty bauble, and thus changing the tone of the conversation.

Among the profusion of treasure and magical items there lay scattered about a vintner’s dream. Some of the mercenaries, unable to resist free booze, had been drinking and had, apparently, suffered no ill effects. We four decided not to risk sampling the wines or food. Lobur, with one of his raffish smiles, produced a squat green bottle, and we drank companionably, in turn. It was a Hamalian porter, dark and brown and heavy, and went down with a rich taste.

The sensation was distinctly odd to stand thus in pleasant conversation and drink Hamalian porter in the midst of the scenes caterwauling on about us, in this horrific Moder, and know the three with whom I so companionably drank were avowed enemies of my country. Odd...

The Princess Thefi had outfitted herself in charming style, with tight black trousers and a blue shirt with a darker blue bolero jacket, all in fetching fashion, with a green cummerbund around her waist, which was delightfully slender, by Krun! She wore rapier and main gauche. She looked splendid. I said, “Princess, my lady — did your clothes come from this place — or did you acquire them within the other zones of the Moder?”

“Oh, we found a veritable storehouse of clothes and weapons.”

“Then, princess, best you had don clothes from here. Otherwise,” I said, and I did not smile, “you will find yourself stark naked when we emerge onto the outside world.”

“Say you so?”

“Aye!”

She gave a little amused squeal and turned her quick lively gaze on Lobur.

“I know those who would joy in that!”

“Princess!” protested Lobur, outraged. “You impugn my honor!”

Well, it was all pretty stuff. But the Moder stretched about us with its dark secrets and we must find a way out — if we could.

Talk of clothes brought other thoughts to their minds.

“You wear deuced little clothes, Jak,” said Lobur. “I call to mind stories I have heard — vague, distorted — of a man, a very devil, who went everywhere clad only in a scarlet breechclout.”

“Oh?” I said, injecting surprise into my tones. “Can you remember anything...?”

“Only that he was no friend to Hamal,” said Prince Tyfar.

“In that case, I shall find something else. When it comes to the fluttrell’s vane... Blue, would you say? Or green?”

They began to discuss this with some seriousness and Thefi went off to find clothes that would not vanish to reveal her splendor to the goggling world.

As they talked I wondered just how much they did know from hearsay of that very devil in the scarlet breechclout, that Dray Prescot who was the Emperor of Vallia and deadly foe to the Empire of Hamal, and also the same Dray Prescot who had good friends in Hamal and despaired of a country unjustly governed.

I saw Nodgen and Hunch talking to Quienyin. The two ex-slaves were clad sumptuously and garnished with a Kregan arsenal of weapons. Nodgen held a broad-bladed spear. They went off together, the three of them with Quienyin in the lead, searching among the tumbled magics. Prince Nedfar called his son over to join the discussion with the chiefs and principals. The princess returned dressed in new clothes, tight black trousers and blue shirt as before. Lobur looked at Thefi and then at me.

I said, “I have urgent business...” I drifted away.

The situation appeared that we might stay in this wondrous chamber — the Chamber of the Flame, it might have been called — for as long as we wished. When we made our move to break free would be the time when the horrors would pounce.

Yet the object of challenging the dangers of the Moder was to escape with the treasures one desired. Escape was the problem.

Ariane, radiant in a pure-white gown, her hair impeccable, her face rosy-red and glowing, had joined the conference.

“Well, Notor Jak—” This was Quienyin, smiling, ironic, striding up to me with Nodgen and Hunch looking sheepish. “They want you to join them. I have persuaded them that you are not a monster or a djinni or any form of ghoul.” He snuffled. “It was a hard task.”

“He’s a right old devil,” said Hunch.

I said, “Strom Phrutius may be dead, Hunch, you hulu — but his chief cook, Fat Ringo, has survived to bring his gross bulk into this place.”

“I know. I have kept clear of him.”

“Stick by me when we quit this place. We’ll win free, have no fear.”

Easy words, those — but how were they to be accomplished?

Quienyin and I walked across and joined the enlarged group around Prince Nedfar.

“You are welcome, Notor Jak. I am glad I did not cut you down when we entered through that Havil-forsaken hole.”

I said, “Had you not hurried you would have had a puzzle to solve and the Jaws of Death to dare.”

“I have been told. Now we need all our wits to riddle the way out of here.”

Ariane had regained much of her composure. “The way lies down beside the Shaft of Flame.”

“There is a wall of insubstantial iron, lady—”

“There are nine gates!”

“To which we do not have the keys.”

Tyr Ungovich’s shoulders moved, as though he shrugged in resignation, or laughed quietly to himself. The red and green checkered hood did not move as Ungovich spoke in a voice like a rusty hinge:

“Without the sorcerous power of San Yagno the party would never have reached here. You are fortunate, Notor Jak, that your party is still alive without the aid of so mighty a thaumaturge.”

Carefully, I said, “We survived.”

“Let me set one of my fellows to climb the wall!” burst out Kov Loriman.

“By all means,” said Tyr Ungovich.

We remembered what had chanced the last time he had said that. Loriman hunched himself up, his face bloating with anger.

“Well, Tyr Ungovich. What do you suggest?”

“Do we have all the parts of the key?”

They were produced as though they were precious relics, and Nedfar laid them out on a table which his son quickly turned up the right way. There were eight curiously-shaped pieces of bronze. We all stared at them solemnly.

Well, and by Zair! Weren’t they the most precious objects in all this Moder?

And, without the ninth part, they were valueless.

Chapter Nineteen

Of a Gate — and Honor

Much of the rampaging about and the ecstatic sorting through treasures to uncover the finest abated. The explosive release of tensions neared its own exhaustion. Men still capered about, fantastically arrayed in cloth of gold and festooned with gems, they still played stupid silly magical tricks one against another, with spurts of blue fire and whiffs of occult stinks, causing Yagno to twitch. But gradually they quieted and looked toward the group where the decisions of their fates rested. The hood of ruby and emerald checks drew forward, shadowing all within, as I spoke to Ungovich.

“You sold Kov Loriman the Hunter magics to ward off the magics here. And the others bought trinkets of some power.” As the Hunting Kov started forward, clearly about to blaspheme by Sasco over the uselessness of the tiklo, I went on in a louder voice, “Perhaps in view of your knowledge of conditions here, you have knowledge of what it is we need to open these gates.”

“It is in my heart to have been with you and witnessed what went on when you were separated from us. Did any of your party find a key?”

“What we have is there on the table.” Tyfar pointed.

Kov Loriman subsided, caught up in the importance we all sensed in the words of that rusty-hinge voice, consigning the matter of his tiklo to a Herrelldrin Hell.

“Nothing else?” Tyr Ungovich sounded as though he was becoming annoyed. His rusty voice grated unpleasantly.

These men had talked over and over before I had joined the group, and had settled nothing. We were going to be trapped here if one of us did not come up with the right answer.

“We found a golden key,” said Ungovich. “But an oaf lost it for us.”

Prince Nedfar drew in his breath. He spoke and all the quiet dignity of the man showed splendidly in that place. “Amak Rubbra, who was a just and honorable man, lost his life with that golden key.”

“An oaf, I said,” the rusty voice said spitefully. “And an oaf I mean.”

“Without a key—” San Yagno started to amplify.

“Here,” snarled Kov Loriman. He hauled out the box of a size to take a portion of cham and, opening it, proffered the contents. “A silver key we found. Is this what you want?”

“Ah!” grated Ungovich.

We all craned to look.

Ungovich reached for the silver key. It was left to Yagno to say, startled, “Tyr! Careful! It may be—”

“Quite.”

“A silver key for a silver gate, notors?” said Tyfar.

We all moved across to stand before the silver gate in the insubstantial iron wall. The shaft of pure white light lifted blindingly over our heads. Shadows fled away in long fingers of darkness. A smell of ancient decay hung in the air here.

“I do not think the key will harm me,” said Ungovich. He lifted it out. Nothing happened. We all watched him as, carefully, he inserted the key in the keyhole and turned, pressing sideways as he did so. The silver gate moved inward a hand’s-breadth. He paused.

A man shrieked in terror and as we whirled to look back into the Chamber of the Flame other men took up that scream of horror.

This Mausoleum of the Moder was guarded.

From the transparent tank opposite the silver gate the colossal tentacled monster rose, twining those slimy arms and clawing at the sides, lifting itself up. As its gross body climbed to the lip of the tank its eyes, red as fire, large as shields, blazed upon us, and its serrated yellow beak clashed with a champing grating sound that chilled the blood.

I reached forward, seized the handle, and slammed the gate shut.

Instantly, the octopoid monster shrank back into its tank.

“By Havil!”

“May the gods preserve us!”

“To open the gate is to release — that !”

Prince Nedfar said over the hubbub: “It seems a perfectly logical arrangement.”

Tyr Ungovich’s unpleasant voice scratched out. “Well, notors. And what do you suggest now?”

“We cannot stay down here forever!” shouted Loriman.

“Yet if we open the gate—” said Yagno.

“Cannot you spell the beast, San Yagno?”

Ungovich said, “I do not think a mortal spell will affect that beauty.”

I looked at Quienyin. He had been keeping silent lately. He caught my look and, in the pause after Ungovich’s conversation-stopping statement, said, “This is not a case for spells. This needs the military mind, organization, determination and decision.”

Prince Nedfar, Prince Tyfar, I was pleased to see, understood at once what Quienyin meant. Ungovich said, “I do not see—”

Loriman had grasped it, now.

“Then stand aside, Tyr, and let those who do see — do!”

“Before you begin,” I said, “notors, two things.” I shouted to Hunch who was standing nearby with his aptitude of overhearing likely conversations. “Did more than one monster climb up its tank?”

“Aye, notor!” shouted back Hunch, quaking.

“And, two,” I drew an arrow and nocked it. “Will a shaft perhaps dissuade a monster from climbing—?”

“You delude yourself!” said Ungovich.

“I think not, Notor Jak.”

“But more than one monster moves. So we must be quick.”

All the same, I held the Lohvian longbow half-bent, the arrow gripped in the old archer’s knack in my left fist, as we went about organizing what had to be done.

We allowed half a bur for final preparations. The Deldars — those who were left — bellowed and roared in fine Deldar style and the men formed ranks. The slaves, piled with loot, were positioned and threatened with unmentionables if they stirred too soon and did not run when told to grak. The notables arranged themselves with each party. Nedfar would lead. I offered to be the last, and Tyfar and Lobur said they would stay also, seeing that my party consisted of myself and two men only. Hunch and Nodgen, shuffling up under enormous bundles, looked at me reproachfully.

“Remember,” Nedfar called, his voice ringing out for us all to hear. “There is no need for panic. Long before there is any danger we will prevent it. Do not jostle or push. Any man who disobeys me will be cut down.”

There spoke your true Prince of Hamal, by Krun!

What we were about to attempt was obvious in the context of the situation. I just hoped the situation would not change. The bastard up there, the Wizard of the Moder, the Moder-lord, could so easily change the rules.

Quienyin stood beside me. “I think I will—”

“You, San, will go out with an early party — as you value my friendship!”

“But, Jak—”

“It will be a pretty skip and jump at the end, I think.”

He looked at me with a worried expression. And he was a Wizard of Loh! “The Moder-lord will run us hard.”

“Aye.”

He nodded. “You are right. I feel strength in the — in the air. Mayhap I can do most good as you suggest.”

“I am confident of it.”

Prince Tyfar walked to the head of the line to bid his father luck, as I judged, and then he turned to Ariane. She nodded, once, white-faced under that rosy-red, and swung away to speak to her numim bodyguard. The Pachak twins guarded her close. Tyfar, scowling, came back to me.

“Notor Jak — my fellows will swing the gate. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” Then I added, “Prince.”

“You are a strange fellow — and I see you still wear the red.”

“I overlooked that, prince. Still, it is the color of blood.”

“Oh, no, Jak! Why, that loincloth is brilliant scarlet!”

“So it is. Well, let us swing the gate and hope it is not stained a darker red.”

Ungovich came over. “Get as many through at one time as you can.” As he spoke I felt an irrational desire to haul off that concealing hood and have a look at this mysterious man. He stalked off to take his position in the line, and Quienyin rubbed his thumb under his jaw, scratching.

“I think,” he said, and he looked meaningfully at Tyfar and me. “I really do think you should not allow the creature to climb out of the tank.”

“Once out—?” said Tyfar.

“Indubitably, my dear prince.”

I turned away. Deb-Lu-Quienyin was most certainly feeling some tremor of the future, some inkling of the resurrection of his powers. I wondered what kind of a man he really was. The old buffer I knew was certainly far removed from a puissant and feared Wizard of Loh, that was for sure. All the relaxed air had gone out of the situation. The hullabaloo as the treasures were spilled out wantonly had vanished. Now the men looked anxiously at the silver gate, and cast uneasy glances over their shoulders at the ominous writhing shapes in the tanks. That close confining breathless sensation clamped down on us.

Prince Nedfar called, “In the name of Havil the Green! Open the gate!”

Tyfar nodded to his men, chief among whom were Barkindrar and Nath the Shaft. The silver gate swung open. Nedfar stepped resolutely through, his shield and sword positioned, vanished out of my sight. I swung about, narrowly watching that coiling slimy monstrosity within the tank lifting itself up. The tentacles seemed to be signaling to me, hypnotically waving and demanding my obedience. The tentacles slid over the rim. One red eye appeared, and another. The curved serrated beak showed. Over half the bloated body lifted above the rim of the tank.

“Close the gate!” I bellowed.

Tyfar’s men slammed the gate, and others held back the next in line. They halted, sullenly, looking back. The monster slowly sank down into its tank.

I watched it narrowly. Down and down it dropped behind its transparent wall. I fancied, when it stopped moving, it had not dropped as far down as it had been.

“Gate!”

The gate opened and the line began to pass through, inevitably jostling and pushing. Now that the first party had gone on through and had not reported back disaster, the second party were more confident. When the gate was shut at my shout and we waited for the coiled monster to subside I took stock of the man who came up to stand beside me, breathing deeply. Kov Thrangulf held himself stiffly erect, and his face flushed a dark and painful red. Over in the third group, where we had thought it wisest to include the women of the expedition, Lobur was laughing and talking to the Princess Thefi, who was responding beautifully. Thrangulf bent his lowering brows upon them. Ahead of the princess, the lady Ariane and her people waited patiently.

“By Havil,” said Thrangulf. “I am forced to put up with much!”

I watched the monster sinking down. When it came to rest I was convinced it was not as far down as previously.

And — one limp tentacle hung down over the rim of the tank and was not withdrawn. “Gate!”

The people pushed along. Following the women’s group a column of Chuliks waited. One of them was quite clearly incapacitated from the drink and as they moved forward he toppled flat on his face. Some of his comrades were for leaving him; in the end and moving with speed, they threw his sack of booty away and a comrade hoisted him up onto his shoulder, perched precariously along with the swollen bundle of swag. “If he wants his life, we will give him that. But as for his booty—”

“He will never make paktun now,” said another. They pressed on. The little check caused them to be tardy, opening up a gap into which they crowded forward smartly, leaving a gap to their rear. I eyed the monster. The tentacles writhed above the rim and a red, shield-sized eye peered balefully down. It seemed to me the damned thing was climbing up quicker each time. I would take no chances. As the serrated beak began to move forward above that gross body, surrounded in slimy coils, I bellowed,

“Shut the gate!” I whirled as shouts broke out by the silver gate. Tyfar and his men were pulling the gate but three burly Chuliks struggled within the opening, effectively blocking the closure. They insisted on pushing through. The gate hung open, jammed. And the monster began to hiss. “Out of it, you cramphs!”

shouted Tyfar. I ran. I sped up to the gate and gave the center Chulik such a buffet he took off headlong, his feet flying up. He vanished out of sight and his two comrades were caught, a fist around each pigtail of coiled hair, and thrust savagely on. Tyfar’s men hauled the gate shut. I stood back. I felt intensely annoyed by such stupidity.

The monster hissed and began to descend — and the thing dropped down reluctantly...

“By Krun, Notor Jak! You deal severely.”

“Onkers,” I said. “Get onkers.”

“Next time—”

“Next time teach ’em with steel!”

And I stomped away.

Kov Thrangulf was staring at me as though I was a madman.

“That was Prince Tyfar to whom you had the honor of addressing yourself—”

“I know. And he’ll be a prince in that tentacular beast’s inward parts if he doesn’t look lively!”

Kov Loriman stumped over. He had elected to stay with the last party, which did not surprise me. Despite all the horrors of this place I had the dark suspicion that he rather fancied getting his blade into one of those red eyes.

“The prince was given the task because he is a prince and the son of a prince. But if he cannot manage—”

“He will,” I said. “Kov. Do not fret.” Then I added ominously, “By the time it is our turn that beast is not going peaceably back to its tank.”

He looked at my bow — I should say that I had put the bow away once I had taken up my new task —

and he grunted. “I say shaft it, Notor Jak.”

That was sweet politeness from the Hunting Kov.

“I think,” I said, “I might try a shaft at it the next time it shoves its ugly snout out.”

“Let us all try, by the Blind Archer!”

When next the gate was opened all the archers left let fly at the flaming red orb of the tentacular monster. If the shafts hit at all, it was difficult to say. They ricocheted and caromed away. When that happens to an arrow driven by a Lohvian bowstave, the archer knows he has loosed at something special.

“The thing is cased in some kind of damned armor!”

“Kov — would you care to try your sword against it?”

He took my meaning at once. The veins in his purple nose swelled. He looked meanly at me. “When the order to open the gate is given — I will...” He hesitated, and then said, “I will try.”

Kov Thrangulf drew his sword. “If you will, kov, I will stand at your side and smite blow for blow.”

“You are welcome, Kov. Let us stand together and smite!”

Although as usual I was amused by all these kovs this and kovs that, here was an intriguing example of etiquette functioning in ways that were universally recognized on Kregen. The gate opened and the two kovs, positioned and ready, leaped to strike doughty blows at the writhing tentacles. Their swords rebounded. I would not have been surprised had they both been snatched up and ground to pulp in that ugly yellow beak. Kov Thrangulf went on slashing and hacking like a madman, quite uselessly. Kov Loriman dragged him back and a glistening tentacle swept past closer than any fighting man cared to see. A bright blue favor was wrenched from the shoulder plate of Thrangulf’s armor.

“By Krun, kov! That was—” Thrangulf swallowed down and looked about. “You pulled me back!”

“Aye! Otherwise you’d be beak-fodder by now — kov!”

Then it was time to bellow the gate closed. The monster was now quite clearly remaining much higher in the tank, and three tentacles hung down outside the rim. As we waited a thought crossed my mind. The Krozair longsword might only be an illusion; it could cut, had cut — would it cut this monster?

I went across. The two kovs were stiltedly polite, one to the other, and it was clear Loriman’s opinion of Thrangulf as a fighting man had plummeted. I lifted the Krozair brand. Loriman said, “You are wasting your time.”

“Nevertheless, it is needful I try.” And I slashed.

The shock vibrated right up my arms, through my shoulders and exploded in my skull. I was swung around and staggered.

“I told you,” said Loriman.

Thoroughly bad-tempered I stomped across and bellowed for them to open the gate. On that occasion we did not get above half the next waiting group through. I began to calculate the odds. That confounded red and green checkered hood came into view and the rusty hinge voice croaked,

“You cannot do it.”

“We will try.”

“That is the privilege of apims.”

So that meant nothing. He could be apim or diff and say that, say the same words with vastly different meanings.

I went down to the gate and gave Tyfar’s men a thorough talking to. Then I stalked along the waiting lines and threatened them. The threats were redundant with the looming menace writhing within the tanks. Four limp tentacles hung down outside; those within the transparent walls coiled and squirmed. And, the tanks farther around in the circle showed their awful denizens at precisely higher stages of movement, as though they were notes in a scale — a scale of horror.

I said to the people at the tail end, “If we all move faster, and do not stumble, we will all get through —

just.”

Hunch looked ill. Nodgen shook his spear.

Kov Thrangulf came up to me again, puffing his cheeks out.

“They all contume me,” he said. He was by way of being light-headed. “I do not have that famous ham in my name. My grandfather carved out the kovnate, and I have held it. Is not that a great thing?”

“Aye, kov.” I spoke true words — for I knew of the dangers and difficulties in retaining a hold on lands and titles.

“I am a plain man. I do my best. The Empress Thyllis has turned her face from me.” He sounded maudlin. I think at that moment he believed he was going to die, that he was facing certain death and not the possibilities of death that lurked in the Moder. “I am a plain man,” he said again. “Not fancy. I try.”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Kov.”

“My grandfather, the kov. He lived too long. My father never forgave him for that.” He choked up and wiped his mouth. “My father showed me his displeasure, knowing I would be kov.”

Another batch of fugitives went through and I narrowly surveyed those remaining, measuring the length of the lines against the height up the tank of the nearest monster. And, as I thus watched the lines and the monsters, and listened to Kov Thrangulf, I was aware of another thought itching away, a trembling suspicion that we would not get away as easily as all that, even from here. I felt sorry for Thrangulf. What he said added up; but the urgencies of the moment supervened, so I contented myself with saying, “All men have a purpose in life, kov. Find yours.”

He looked at me as though I had struck him. I stared back, and he took a step away from me as though blown by an invisible wind. I suppose my ugly old beakhead carried that demoniac look.

“Take your place in line, kov, and go through quickly...”

“I shall not forget you, Notor Jak — even if I die!”

He resumed his place in the line. The process of escape went on, a remorseless logic of attrition. Now there were a dozen tentacles hanging outside the tank. Limp when the gate was closed, they wriggled to squirming life when the gate opened, hauling up that gross body. The red eyes glared malevolently. The serrated beak clashed.

Hunch and Nodgen looked at me appealingly. I showed them a stony face. Someone had to bring up the rear. I could have wished it was someone other than them, though.

No prowling monster wandered through, gibbering. Had one done so I believe we would have roared with laughter at the inconsequentiality of such an apparition at this time. Many of the nearer monsters hung close to the tops of their tanks, and bunches of tentacles hung down outside.

When but three groups of people remained I said to Loriman: “Let us leave the gate closed for a longer period, kov. Mayhap that beast will slip down.”

“We can try...”

So we waited, apprehensively, in that gruesome chamber among the overturned treasures. The tentacles of the monster hung limp. It did not, as far as I could see, drop down an inch. We waited. Presently, Loriman swore. He said, “By Hito the Hunter! It is no use. Open the gate and send the next one through.”

We did so.

The monster balanced on the very rim of the tank, swaying and clacking its beak. That beak could grind stone to powder.

I believe the very remorselessness of the whole process, the gradual approach of the monster to escape and our destruction, the logic of it all, wore us down more than any screaming screeching monster-charge could ever do. And something of that feeling must have permeated the Moder-lord, watching us, no doubt, and giggling and mumbling soggy toothless jaws. A piece of discarded gold in the shape of a dancing Talu, beautiful and abandoned, stood up and began to dance toward a cabinet that righted itself and shuffled its legs into the position it had occupied before. The glass joined together over the Talu. With a scraping whispering furtiveness the strewn treasures began to replace themselves within healed boxes and cupboards. Chests turned upright and refilled with spilled gems. The whole mausoleum filled with the glint of gold and the glitter of gems and the rustle of scuttering treasure. As for the magic items

— ghosts, wraiths, call them what you will, the cabinets filled and resumed their accustomed places.

“The cramph of a Moder-lord considers we are finished,” said Loriman. He spat and hitched up his shield and sword.

“There is still a chance,” I said. “There were two men in Jikaida City reputed to have returned from the Humped Land with treasure and with magic. Can they best us?”

“It is not they who will best us—”

“No. I think the monster will climb out of the tank the next time we open the gate—”

“Agreed!”

“So we must open wide and all press through, fast — fast! It must be done.”

Kov Loriman the Hunter, a rough, unpleasant slave-owning man, a player of Execution Jikaida, said, “I shall, of course, go last.”

I said, “Kov, tell me. What did you say to Master Scatulo when you lost at Execution Jikaida?”

He stared. “You were there?”

“I was there.”

“I told him that he had one more chance and then I would send him to take the place of the Pallan of the Blacks.”

“Very good. I shall go through last.”

“Do you wish to fight me for it?”

And then the incongruousness of the situation came to my rescue. I didn’t give an adulterated copper Havvey for him. Did I? Whatever path his honor made him tread, my path lay in the light of the Suns of Scorpio and of the well-being of Vallia.

“Of course, of course. With my compliments — you may go last,”

“As is right and proper.” And he fingered his sword and looked back with a black look at the octopoid monster.

Other intrepid adventurers had come here and gone through the gates loaded with treasure. Mayhap this Moder was different from others, and those two successful men of Jikaida City had plundered an easier tomb. For, of course, we were all grave robbers — although the stakes were raised to a rarefied level. But, still, other men had succeeded here, I felt sure. The tentacled monsters could be outwitted. That could only mean worse things awaited down the Shaft of Flame.

“Now?” said Loriman.

I couldn’t say I liked him. But he had been — useful — in his uncouth way. And I didn’t know from whence on Kregen he hailed. He had carefully not said.

I looked at the last men waiting. I shouted. “When the gate opens — run! If any man stumbles he must be pushed aside and tail on at the rear! So, doms — do not stumble!”

Loriman shouted, “I shall stand at the gate. If any man attempts to push out of place, him I will strike down!”

Prince Tyfar looked a trifle green about the gills. I walked across. “Prince — go out with your men first

— we will close the gate.”

“But—”

“Do it!”

He looked crestfallen, like a chastised child. I turned away and gave him no room to argue further.

“All set?”

“All set!”

The gate swung open. The men began to run through, quickly, plunging out of view, shooting like peas from a pod. Tyfar went. His men followed. The lines ran up, men panting, frightened, pushing on, keeping in line, shouting. Loriman stood at one side of the gate, his sword raised, his face hateful. I prowled the other side, urging the men on, encouraging them.

With a monstrous hissing the tentacled octopoid, immense, writhing, slimy, toppled from the tank and scuttled for us.

“No brainless bunch of guts is going to beat us!” roared Loriman. “No matter that it is invulnerable to honest steel. Run, you hulus, run!”

Shrieking, a man stumbled and I seized his neck and hurled him on. Out of sight through the silver gate they crashed, two by two, hurling on. Hissing, writhing, the monster raced swiftly over the marble toward us. No treacherous pattern of that floor engulfed it. The tentacles swirled, slimy, reaching out... Only a half dozen more... Nodgen and Hunch were through... Two more — then the last two... I swung to face Loriman.

In that moment he stood there, exalted, his face a single ruby flame, his eyes murderous. I thought he would stay and challenge the monster out of the sheer joy of hunting. I grabbed his arm and pulled as a clansman pulls a vove up over a fire-filled trench. Together, we roared through the silver gateway and I slammed the portal shut. Its clang sounded like sweetest music. The shaft of fire rose before us, lifting from a stone-walled pit. Men were running forward, following the one ahead and vanishing out of sight down between flame and wall.

“We’ve done it!” exulted Loriman. He swaggered toward the pit from which rose the Flame. “The cramph of a monster has been beaten!”

A gigantic hissing belched up behind us, like a volcano bursting. We swung about. We stared up, appalled.

Tentacles appeared over the top of the insubstantial iron wall.

A gross form rose into view. Red eyes like flame, the size of shields, stared wickedly down upon us. A yellow serrated beak clacked. Deliberately, the monster lifted over the wall, balanced, fell clutching down toward us.

Chapter Twenty

The Fight over Vaol-Paol

Dread of that primeval horror exploded in my skull. Two thoughts clashed in my head. The monster was impervious to steel. And other men had escaped from this awful place. Squirming with coiled animate energy the monster rushed swiftly across the stone toward us as we fled for the Shaft of Flame. Between that supernal white light and the lip of the stone pit a narrow opening offered the way of escape. Stone-cut steps spiraled downward within the confines of the pit. Another monster flopped over the wall and, hissing, propelled itself on those wriggling serpent-like tentacles toward us.

Men pushed on down the steps. The slot between wall and flame was perhaps just wide enough for my hulking shoulders. A man toppled. Screaming, he pitched from the steps. His body entered the flame. Spread-eagled, his pitiful bundle of loot flogging free, he drifted down as though suspended against a blast of invisible force, and as he fell he dwindled and burned. We shuddered and hurried down the stone steps, treacherous with slippery moss and slimy with fungus.

Looking back past Loriman, who thumped down with a look of ferocious distaste on his florid features, I saw the monster’s red eye appear, festooned with coils of slimy writhings, saw it lash futilely down after us.

Loriman bellowed, jerking his head back. “The thing is balked! Ha! We have bested the monster!”

But the monster launched itself into the column of pure white light. Like thistledown, it floated. It sank. Its arms writhed and its eyes glared, its beak clacked, and it dropped down and down within the Shaft of Fire.

Loriman switched up his sword.

“If we are to die,” he shouted, hard and venomously. “I will strike and strike until I am dead!”

I thought of that poor devil who had fallen through the Flame. “Look!” I shrieked. “Look — the thing shrinks!”

And it was so. As we hurried down and the monster sank within that supernal radiance, so, we saw with thankfulness, it dwindled in size and shrank until it was no larger than a coiled mass of rope such as would be found on the deck of a swordship.

That shrunken bundle of horror still held menace. It drifted in to the steps and as we hurried down so it fastened upon the arm of a Rapa. He shrieked, his feathers all stiff with horror. He slashed with his sword, and the steel bounced, and the dwindling monster pulled him free of the stone steps, and he sank with his death into the shining whiteness.

Up there other monsters launched themselves into the Shaft of Flame. As we hurried with desperate caution down those slippery steps I knew that no magics we might have found above would preserve us from this danger. And, also, I was convinced that nothing the Moder-lords with all their thaumaturgical arts could provide would prove of any use to me in my dealings with the Star Lords or the Savanti. The Moder-lords dealt in illusion and horror and fear. But they were mortals. Their reach of dread power had its limits.

Looking down the spiral stone stairs one could see only the bobbing heads of the men in front, curving away out of sight beyond the radiance of the Flame. The stairs went down widdershins. How far the pit sank into the ground, no one could tell.

To our left the shrinking monsters drifted down through the Flame. Their hissing ceased. The only sounds were of men’s breathing, and the slip and slither of feet upon the stone. Down we went and then I saw the men below me turning into a low stone opening, arched in the wall at our sides. The steps down trended on and down and out of sight. Thankfully, Loriman and I ducked into the opening, to stand erect in a wide chamber and see the rest of the expedition waiting for us. The babble of greetings and the quick question and answer as the fate of comrades was disclosed went on like a surf roar. Light of a sickly green fell from a roof away behind the dazzle.

“Thank Havil we are all safe — save for those poor unfortunates who succumbed.” Prince Nedfar betrayed determination. He issued his orders in a hard voice. “We have discovered a passageway and a long corridor leading upward. This must be the way out. But — we go carefully.” That, we all knew, was a remarkably redundant piece of advice and betrayed the state of our nerves no less than those of Prince Nedfar’s.

“We go on in the same order.” He looked meaningfully at Loriman and Tyfar and the rest of us latecomers. “It has been a long and trying wait down here.”

I looked about among the people.

“Where is Master Quienyin?” I shouted, pushing through the throng.

But Quienyin, Ungovich and Yagno were missing.

“I believe they went on ahead, to spy the way,” said the lady Ariane. “Let us go on!”

Her face had lost a great deal of that high color. But what she said made sense, although Nedfar might have thought differently. We started up the corridor, and all of us, from time to time, cast apprehensive glances backwards.

“By Tryflor!” panted Hunch. “This place has scared me witless.” He shook with fear. Nodgen tried to bolster his courage with a bellow. “You Tryfants are all the same. Only good for running!”

“True,” moaned Hunch. “Too true!”

We pressed on and soon we recognized that the sequence of corridors and rooms matched those through which we had first passed when we entered the Moder. Nedfar shouted that this was a good sign. “The way out mirrors the way in! Courage! Onward!”

We trended upward and when we reached a chamber draped in solemn purple we stopped, dismayed. No doorway broke those somber walls.

Men rushed about pulling the purple curtains aside. All they found was a small secret door beyond which stood a lever. The lever was fashioned of ivory and bronze, and it looked ominous.

“Pull that...?” said Loriman. “It is a riddle.”

“We have no time for riddles.” Nedfar looked outraged.

Tyfar stood near me, and Ariane leaned on the shoulder of her numim.

“The three who went ahead,” I said, “they must have riddled this riddle aright — or where are they?” I looked at Ariane. Her face flushed, bringing her color back to that rosy red. She stamped her foot. I said, slowly, “Did they go ahead, lady?”

“Yes!” she flared. Then: “No — I do not know. I did not see them. I think they went on down the stairs of the pit.”

The transparency of the lie could not soften my feelings.

“I shall go back for Quienyin.”

“I shall come with you, Notor Jak—” said Tyfar.

“No, prince. Better not — you should stay to take care of the lady Ariane.”

He looked at me. His spirit was up. The diffidence had gone, at least, for a space.

“No, Notor Jak. I think not.”

“Pull the Havil-forsaken lever!” roared Loriman, “and have done!”

Nedfar snapped out, sharply, “Not until we have examined everything thoroughly, three times over!”

“There is,” put in Kov Thrangulf, swallowing, “the matter of the ninth part of the Key—”

“Yes, kov,” sang out Lobur the Dagger. He stood very close to the Princess Thefi. “You are right, by Krun! Now how could we have overlooked that weighty matter?”

I turned away sharply. I went back along the corridors through which we had just toiled. The scene I left was not to my liking.

Through the corridors I hurried and crossing a nine-sided room with curlicued marble floor inlaid with the symbol for vaol-paol, The Great Circle of Universal Existence, I stopped stock still. Against three of the walls stood tall glass cabinets. In each cabinet and plainly visible through the glass glowered a Kildoi warrior. On each, the four arms and tail hand grasped weapons.

Now I could have sworn those cabinets had not been there when we hurried past this nine-sided room. Then, with a resounding Makki-Grodno curse, I pushed on. Mysteries, mysteries... The quick shuffle of footsteps in the corridor a few rooms along heralded Deb-Lu-Quienyin. He looked different. And, yet, he was the same.

We turned together to hurry back, exchanging news.

“The three mages went on down the pit of the Shaft of Flame. I warned Yagno; but he said he was a Sorcerer of the Cult of Almuensis. Well—” Quienyin sounded genuinely aggrieved. “What I saw down there, on the ninth level, I will not say, young man. It is not for ordinary mortals.”

“Did you regain your powers, San?”

He gave a half-despairing, half-amused laugh. “Yes and no. I found what I sought, as San Orien had promised. The Moder-lords do not allow Wizards of Loh into their Moders. That is a fact. But I was no longer a real Wizard of Loh. So I found that which was needful.”

“Wonderful — but, in this place, there is a catch?”

“There is a catch, Jak. I will only regain my full powers when I am safely outside the Moder.”

“Then that is all right. They are searching for the last part of the key now. They have found a lever. We will soon be out.” Then, I said, “And Yagno? And Ungovich?”

“Yagno was — no, better I do not reveal that. As for Ungovich, he disappeared, and I fear he shares the same fate as Yagno.”

“So — unhappy though it is, we do not wait for them?”

“By every Queen of Pain who ever reigned in Loh,” he said, and surprised me by that word, “no. It is useless to wait.”

We entered the nine-sided chamber with the inlaid motif of vaol-paol in the floor. Quienyin halted. The three glass cabinets opened. The three Kildoi stepped forth. They glared at us. No time to think. No time to understand that these three were Kildois, just as Mefto the Kazzur was a Kildoi, with four arms and a tail equipped with a fist, superb fighting men, tremendous in their strength and skill. Mefto had bested me at swordplay. No time, no time. No time even, with the flashing memory of Seg Segutorio heartening me, to bring the great Lohvian longbow into action and shaft the first of them as he rushed upon me.

Quienyin shouted something, and I caught the tailing words: “...the Kazzur!”

The Krozair longsword ripped free.

In my two fists and gripped in that cunning Krozair hold, the brand gleamed in the unwavering beams of the black candles in their golden holders... The Kildois hurled themselves on. The first gripped thraxters in his right upper and right lower hands. His lower left hand slanted a round shield. His upper left hand wielded a spear. And in his tail hand that wicked daggered steel glittered as his tail swept in high above his head.

No time to delay. No time for fancy work. As I had fought the overlords of Magdag on the swaying deck of a swifter I would have to fight now. It was all hard, merciless, practical fighting and none of your fancy academy fencing...

The thraxters slashed for me. The Krozair brand blinded, whirling like a living bar of light, chunked through the shield, bore on to score a deep wound all down the Kildoi’s chest. Before he had time to yell, before he had time to fall, I bounded away and swung into action against his fellows. They bore in from each side, cunning, clever, supreme fighters. And as these superb Kildois attacked they did not understand they faced an old Krozair Brother, a Krozair of Zy — who knew more tricks than the Krozairs, by thunder! The longsword swept dazzlingly. A thraxter scored across my right shoulder and then the first Kildoi was down, minus a tail he had flung unavailingly across to protect his throat. Tail blade, tail hand, throat, vanished in a welter of purple blood.

The second flung himself forward, shield up, spear aiming for my eye. I slid his blow, brought the Krozair brand around, quick, quick! Ah, the Krozair Disciplines teach a man how to stay alive, by Zair!

Whether they were real Kildoi retainers of the Moder-lord or whether they were illusions, I did not know. But their steel would kill.

The fight was over. Three dead Kildois lay on that inlaid representation of the symbol for vaol-paol, and their purple blood dripped thickly. I stood back. I panted only a little.

“By the Wizard of—!” said Quienyin, shaking.

“By the Black Chunkrah! Now that opened the old pores a trifle! Let us, San, hurry on — and get out of here!”

As we came up to the purple-draped chamber and the noise of the people of the expedition arguing away at the top of their voices — as usual — I said, and I admit rather slyly, to Quienyin, “San, tell me

— that Bracelet of Blades you wished me to wear — how would it have worked there? For all three Kildois? Or the first one only?”

He gave me a look along his nose. “You are a hard man, Jak.”

“Aye — to my sorrow.”

Hunch and Nodgen appeared glad to see me and the Wizard of Loh still alive. They told us that the lever had at last been pulled, that a wailing pack of Lurking Fears had writhed out, that the warriors, although quaking with supernaturally-induced terror, had managed to slay all the Lurking Fears.

“And,” shouted Hunch, “the lever did two things—”

“The ninth part of the key in a secret cavity!” shouted Nodgen.

“—and the keyhole in an onyx wall — there!”

“And now,” said Nodgen, “they are fiddling about putting the bits of the key together. That is brainy work.”

A triumphant shout racketed down from the far wall. Nedfar waved the completed key aloft, his face radiant. “We have it!”

Everyone felt that we must hurry. Urgency drove us on, for we were all confident that at any moment fresh horror would prowl down upon us. The purple draperies were pushed aside to reveal the onyx wall and the keyhole. It had to be a keyhole! There was no other way.

“Something dire will happen when that key is turned,” said Prince Tyfar. He looked excited and wrought up in a way far different from his usual diffident manner.

Ariane shuddered and drew away from him.

Lobur the Dagger held Princess Thefi close. Retainers and paktuns held their weapons ready, a forest of steel blades. We looked about the chamber and back to Prince Nedfar and the onyx wall with the keyhole. He placed the key in the lock. He paused. Then: “In the name of Havil the Green!” He pushed the key in and turned it.

The purple draperies vanished in puffs of smoke. The odor of charred flesh gusted. The solid wall peeled back to reveal a colossal statue of Kranlil the Reaper, a full hundred feet tall, crowned, ferocious, malefic, wielding his flail.

Between the mammoth columns of his feet a narrow door groaned open, bronze bound, crimson, double-valved, the door slowly opened.

A long upward slope was revealed. And — at the far end, tiny and distant — light! Daylight! As our eyes made out the drifting shapes up there we saw clouds and the streaming mingled radiance of the Suns of Scorpio.

And then, as the first mobs broke through, shrieking their joy, a whirling darting maddening cloud of stinging insects broke down about our heads. They poured from the opened casket in the claws of Kranlil the Reaper. They tormented us as we ran, stinging and lacerating and driving us mad. The vial of yellow poison kept my skin partly immune, so that I felt the stings as light prickles, like nettles.

Men were screaming, and flailing their arms, and running, running, tearing madly up that long narrow corridor.

Tyfar screamed and caught at his collar. I grabbed him and twitched out the little horror that was clinging to his neck. It was banded in yellow and green, gauzy-winged, and its sting was black and hard and tipped with a globule of moisture. I threw it away. I could not see Nodgen and Hunch in the bedlam. We pushed on and Logu Fre-Da and his twin, Modo Fre-Da swiftly assisted Ariane along. Her hair was covered with insects. She screamed, trying to beat them free. Modo let out a yell and fell, clasping his legs. Both limbs crawled with the insect horrors. Logu bent to him.

“Leave him, you fool!” screamed Ariane. “Help me!”

Shrieking, Ariane stumbled. Tyfar caught her, helped her up. He was covered with the stinging insects. He choked, trying to go on, and fell. Quienyin grasped my arm, shaking, beating at the air. Tyfar was on his knees, looking up imploringly, still gripping Ariane’s white dress which crawled with banded green and yellow.

“Ariane — princess—”

“Let go, you rast! I do not care a dead calsany’s hide for your life! Let me go !”

She struck Prince Tyfar. She wrenched free and ran screaming and sobbing up the slot, pushing and beating at the backs of the people struggling on. The two hyr-paktuns watched her go. Quienyin said, chokedly, “Let — let them go — the insects will follow—” He let go my arm and beat at himself. “I am on fire!” The hideous uproar persisted, a cacophony of torture. Barkindrar the Bullet and Nath the Shaft sprang to the side of the prince. All three hummed and buzzed with insects.

“We must go on!” I shouted.

We staggered and stumbled on. We were the last. The two Pachaks struggled along side by side, helping each other.

Our little group fought a way through the swarming clouds of insects. Hunch and Nodgen, trying to shout and making mewling noises, lurched on up the slope. Up there the daylight showed, bright and welcoming. The glory of the ruby and jade light fell into the opening, and irradiated the walls, and we fell and crawled on, afire with the poisonous stings from the winged furies. We neared the top and the way to freedom.

Slaves, paktuns, retainers, notables, passed out through the opening and faintly we heard their yells of exaltation and triumph.

We pressed on.

Almost — almost we reached the opening.

Then the slab fell clashing down, stone on stone, and the blackness descended upon us. We were shut in, denied life, trapped within the Moder.

Chapter Twenty-one

Of the Powers of a Wizard of Loh

Trapped... And all that ghastly catacomb of the Moder as our tomb...

“Back!” I yelled, savagely. “Out between the legs of Kranlil before that door closes!”

Scrambling, shouting, we raced desperately for the lower door. We came shooting out into the purple-draped room, and the double doors, crimson, bronze bound, groaned shut at our backs.

“But it is no use!” cried Tyfar. “We are doomed—”

“The insects are gone,” I said. “We have our lives still.”

Quienyin looked at me and shook his head.

“It is a long way—”

“Yes. But the only way, now. We must return through the Moder and make our escape the way we came in.”

We stared one at the other with frightened eyes. We knew what we had been through...

“We are a choice band,” I said. “We can win through if we bear up and trust in ourselves.”

“But, think of it. . .” whispered Hunch. Then he shouted, “I will not think of it! It is too frightening.”

“It is,” agreed Nodgen. “So best think of something else and just come along.”

Yes, they were a choice band. Prince Tyfar and his men, Barkindrar and Nath. Nodgen and Hunch. Logu and Modo Fre-Da. And Deb-Lu-Quienyin, a Wizard of Loh whose powers would return only when he was safely out of here. A choice bunch, indeed, to venture back through this Castle of Death. They were all scratching themselves. My vial soothed away their stings; but we still itched uncomfortably.

“It is a mortal long way,” observed Barkindrar.

“Look,” said Nath the Shaft. “I wager you I can shoot out the right eye of that damned statue before you can sling out the left. Is it a wager — for an amphora of best Jholaix when we sit in The Scented Sylvie?”

“Done,” said Barkindrar.

Sling whirled instantly, bow bent at once — leaden bullet and steel-tipped bird flew. Both of those staring green eyes clipped out, sparking, tinkled away somewhere.

“Mine, I think—”

“Ha! Mine, of a surety!”

I said, “I am surprised they allow ruffians like you in The Scented Sylvie. By Hanitch! What Ruathytu has come to!”

They gaped, then, and Tyfar suddenly burst into a laugh.

“You know the Sacred Quarter, then, Notor Jak of Djanduin?”

Nodgen and Hunch stopped arguing to stare at us like loons. The two Pachaks gave up hunting for the fallen eyes of Kranlil.

“Well enough to know I intend to spend a pleasant evening and night there again. You may not be a Bladesman, but I wager your axe sings a sweet tune.”

“And I shall share that evening and night with you!”

“Done!”

“Now we must make our way back,” he said, airily. “There is a charming tavern on the Alley of Forbidden Delights — The Sybli and the Vouvray, it is called.” He started to walk out of that dolorous chamber and along the corridor. We all followed. “I shall have great pleasure in taking you there, Notor Jak.”

“You do me the honor,” I said, walking on.

Well, at least, this was one way to anchor the mind to sanity. What we faced was like to test us to the utmost. And there was an intriguing fact I had not overlooked. As we marched on I counted us again. Yes, I was right.

Nine.

We were nine adventurers, challenging the sorcery of the Moder.

As we walked the twin Pachaks talked to each other and then, respectfully, they addressed Prince Tyfar.

“Prince, we request that you witness our formal severing of our nikobi to the lady Ariane nal Amklana.”

Tyfar’s face pinched in. But all he said was, “I so witness.”

We went on toward that spiral stair up the pit of the Flame. I took the opportunity to say to the two hyr-paktuns, “You would do me a favor, and confer honor if you were to look out for Master Quienyin. Is this acceptable to you?”

They nodded solemnly. They did not give their nikobi — not yet. But I felt a little easier for Quienyin. We were going to need stout hearts and hard fists to get out of here. Hunch was a weak link, possibly, but I fancied Nodgen and I would handle him.

I do not propose to detail all our struggles and torments as we battled our way back up the Moder. I will say that we found Kov Loriman’s discarded picks and sledgehammers and simply bashed our way out, as he had bashed in. We did take a number of magical items indicated to us by Quienyin in the spirit that we had earned them the hard way. We plodded on, encountering monsters and vanquishing them by sorcery or by steel, and so went on and up.

We found ourselves taking a different way fairly soon, and we saw no sign of the lake and the sunken ships and the quicksands.

Corridor after corridor, room after room... They blurred after a time into a continuing progression of horrors. But we went on. We were nine adventurers and if we were not hard-bitten when we began, we were hard-bitten enough at the end, by Vox!

Another interesting fact was that, going up as we were instead of down, we ran into traps from, as it were, the rear. Monsters, too, seemed a trifle put out that we did not appear from the right direction. I can say we left a trail behind us that would have done credit to a raging boloth in a potter’s yard. We came to a corridor which curved gently out of sight ahead. Low golden railings separated each side from the main passageway. Within these golden railings stood or lounged or reclined on sofas hundreds of the most beautiful women of many races. They smiled seductively. Their eyes lighted on us brilliantly. Lasciviously they beckoned to us. Some played harps and sang. The whole impression was of a single gigantic offering to passion.

Hunch and Nodgen stopped. They licked their lips.

Most of the women were half-dressed in exotic and revealing costume, attire calculated to drive a man wild with desire. I pointed at the long rows of carved skulls set back from the golden railings, each some four or five feet from the next.

“You are not in the Souk of Women now, you famblys.”

“No, but — look at that one!”

“And look at her!”

“Look — that is all.”

A Kaotim prowled along just then, a figure of a skeleton of a Rapa with his big beak glittering. He seemed surprised to see us. Quienyin whiffed him into ashes with a sprinkle of powder from a jeweled box taken from the Hall of the Flame. “Over a hundred pinches of powder left, friends,” he reported. The Undead drifted away in a dribble of ash.

Kao is only one word for death in Kregish, which is a language rich and colorful.

“But,” said Hunch, “only to look...”

“You are in a Moder. You know what mod means, Hunch?”

He shivered, and took his longing gaze away from the sylvie who smiled lasciviously, beckoning, sweet.

“Yes. I know what mod means.”

“Then let us go on.”

So we went along between those wanton women and heard the mewling slobbering cries ahead. We proceeded cautiously.

A man came into view. He had clearly not heeded the warnings implicit here. The women near him were all laughing and displaying themselves and taunting him. From the mouth of one of the skulls a long, thin, prehensile line, like a whip, fastened about this man’s tail. The two whip-tails linked and held, fast locked, knotted.

The man kept trying to pull himself away, and crying, and shrieking, and then falling to his knees. In his hand he held a knife. He was, we judged, insane.

“A Snatchban,” said Quienyin. “He will never cut that.”

On the floor lay two swords and a dagger, sundered into halves.

Hunch and Nodgen started forward and then, as the imprisoned man shrieked and swung his knife down and so withdrew it, they halted, as it were, on one foot, and stood staring dumbly.

“If there is one thing they fear above all else,” said Tyfar, “it is to have their tail cut off.”

“Yet, if he doesn’t cut if off, he will perish here, miserably.”

“Would you cut it off — for him?”

“Me?” I said. “Well — I might.”

Quienyin did not say anything.

Nodgen and Hunch came to life. Each took out his knife.

“We will cut it off for him, notor.” Then Nodgen said, “Perhaps it would be better if you went ahead a little?”

Hunch said, “He may be — violent.”

I said, “We will walk on.”

So we seven walked on between those beautiful women until the curve of the corridor closed in at our rear and the next chamber opened up ahead. Muffled mewling sounds drifted up from the way we had come. We entered the next chamber and set ourselves to read its riddle — backwards. Once we were through the riddle, the way out would be clear, for that was the way in. Presently Nodgen and Hunch rejoined us.

“And?” I said.

They kept their gazes down.

“We talked about it, notor. We felt it would be — undignified — for him to lose his tail. He would probably prefer death.”

“You put him out of his misery?”

They shook their heads.

“Oh, no, notor. It would not be seemly for two ex-slaves to slay him.”

I screwed my face up. I did not blame them. But, all the same. I started for the way we had come in, saying, “Then I will cut his damned tail off.” The entrance closed with a snap.

“There is no way back to him now,” observed Tyfar.

“No...”

“Poor devil,” said Tyfar. “I do not like them as a rule. I wonder who he was?”

“You did not recognize him?”

“No, should I have?”

“I do not think so.” He had — changed. The experience had altered him profoundly. But Hunch and Nodgen and I knew him.

Thus was Tarkshur the Lash left to his fate.

I wondered if they had left him his knife.

We were now running low on food and water; but we made a camp and rested up until we were refreshed enough to continue. How we managed our escape at the top occupied a deal of our conversation, but I found I was going beyond that in my own black thoughts. A very great deal further, by Vox!

The thought that the beautiful Krozair longsword would vanish when we reached the outside had to be faced. I was conscious of the privilege of having it in my fists once more. The Eye of the World, Grodnim and Zairian, seemed a long long way away now.

We were nine. One Tryfant. Two Brokelsh. Two Pachaks. Four apims. Nine. Chance had brought us together. And we used chance to our own ends. We nine battled our way through the horrors until we stood in an echoing hall where the screams of lycanthropes banished away still lingered, and recognized where we were.

“Through that door, yonder,” said Quienyin, pointing.

“The first thing I do,” began Nodgen.

“That will be the second thing for me,” quoth Hunch.

“I think, my friends,” said Quienyin, “it will go something like this.” He drew himself up and took a breath. In a strong voice he called, “Answer no is there.”

From the room where I had last eaten a chunk of doughy mergem we walked out as the doors opened of themselves. We stood in a hall and the dust coated the floor. I studied the many sets of footprints. Then I began to walk quietly off to a corner.

“Beware, Jak!” cried Tyfar. “Look at those stains at the ends of footprints which end — abruptly!”

“Yes. But we are not the ninnies who entered here.”

“That is true, by Hanitcha the Harrower!”

“I am not sure I know what you are about, Jak,” said Quienyin, “and if I suspected what it was I am sure I would not want to know. But, let me see...”

He walked across and halted well before the end of the line of footprints I had chosen. The ceiling curved into a bulge here, and the shadows clustered among the cobwebs. Quienyin took a small crystal object the size of a shonage from inside his robe and turned it about. Presently in its pale depths we saw a blue-green glow and the outline of a humped shape. Quienyin turned the crystal until he had the blue-green glow responding most strongly.

He nodded his head and then pushed his turban straight.

“Yes. A Trap-Volzoid. Nasty — serrated teeth that will fasten around your neck — that explains the stains. He’ll lift you straight up. He’s lurking up there somewhere and spying on us.”

“A Volzoid — but—”

“This is a Trap-Volzoid. He can leap for perhaps three or four paces. He is waiting for you to walk into range.”

“Let him wait, notor!” called Nodgen.

Hunch said, “The door is this way.” He started to walk to the portal through which we had entered — a long time ago.

I said, “Will the harpy with the golden hair open it for you?”

The torches still burned above the gates. But they were fast closed, and the iron bars and studs did not look rusty.

“Oh, by Tryflor — have mercy!”

The others went across to the door. They banged on it. It did not open. Nothing happened.

“Right,” I called. “You’ve had your fun. Now scoop up handfuls of dust — large handfuls — and when I yell cast them up into that corner. Make the dust thick.”

“You think to blind it, Jak?”

“Long enough for me to reach the corner.”

“You take a terrible—”

“That is what this is all about. Now, doms, ready!”

I yelled, the gathered dust flew up in a thick black sheet, and I went hurtling forward for the corner expecting to feel a fetid breath envelop me and razor-sharp fangs encircle my neck and find my head inside the capacious mouth of the Trap-Volzoid.

The dust smothered everywhere and I crashed into the wall.

Winded, I clung to the dusty stone. After a space I could see the other’s faces like full moons rising through the dust cloud. I began to feel for the catch in the wall and found the right knob after a space and pressed. The door in the wall swung inwards.

I turned back.

“The last one—”

“I will go last!” declared Prince Tyfar.

“Wait!” I said crossly. “Logu and Modo. You next. We will go up and deal with the Trap-Volzoid. Then the last will cross in safety.” The two Pachaks nodded, pleased I had selected them for their superb fighting ability in confined spaces.

We went up a narrow stone stair and crept out into a hollow and stinking place filled with detritus and bones. The Trap-Volzoid crouched on the lip of the bulge, looking away from us, ready to leap the moment an unsuspecting man walked within range.

The Krozair longsword bit, the Pachaks swung — and the damned thing, wounded and hissing, leaped out into the dusty hall.

In the end Tyfar and his men finished it off. It lay, a leathery ball, fanged and vicious and stinking, and the men stood back and looked up at us in the bulge and shouted.

So, up the winding stair we all went, and I led over the protestations of Tyfar, and we went with naked steel in our fists.

“I am beginning to think, my dear Jak,” said Quienyin as he puffed up the steep and narrow stairs, speaking over the heads of the two Pachaks who followed me — Tyfar brought up the rear — “that this may count as being Outside the Moder.”

The others would not guess the significance of that. But, if he was right!

“I pray Djan you are right, San.”

“Mind my foot, you fambly!” came Nodgen’s indignant voice, followed at once by Hunch, saying, “This is too scary for me!”

They were good fellows... We went on and the narrow stair gave onto a tiny landing where a skeleton leered at us and an arched lenken door with its bronze studs all green shut off the way.

“This is not a case for magic, I think,” said Tyfar, and Quienyin closed his mouth. Hunch stepped forward and looked at the door and the lock. He pursed up his Tryfant mouth.

“Looks normal enough. Nothing to fear there—” He started working his dagger about in the lock and, after a surprisingly short time, the catch snicked back and he pushed the door open. When we were all inside the room, which was harmless, I said: “You showed skill in opening the lock, Hunch, but—”

“Oh, well, notor,” he said, spreading his hands, “everyone has to have a trade.”

“Maybe so. But, next time, do not push the door open so recklessly — else!”

Hunch the Tryfant went green.

We eased out into a passageway. It was paneled in painted wood, carpets covered the floor, there were exotic vases with flowers, and paintings and carvings against the wall. The air smelled sweet and yet there hung in the warmed air the faintest smell of tangs, as of sweet rottenness. What followed I would prefer to pass over swiftly. But my narrative would be incomplete if I did not attempt to convey the sense of disgust which pervaded us as we investigated that palace. For it was a palace. We were prowling among the luxurious chambers of the towers perched atop the Moder. Yes —

we had penetrated to the lair of the Moder-lord himself. Or — itself... The sights we saw there made us realize that our stomachs were not as tough as perhaps we had thought.

We spoke in hushed whispers.

“I am uneasy, Quienyin. It seems to me we have gained entrance here too easily. A mere Trap-Volzoid?

A skeleton that did not move?” The air carried that sweet smell of putrefaction. “We are being sucked into a trap.”

“Oh, yes, my dear Jak. Indubitably.”

I glanced quickly at Quienyin. He stood by tall curtains of thick dark blue damask. He looked —

different. The air of being an old buffer fell away from him. Although men on Kregen do not materially alter as they age through over two hundred years of adult life, until the very end, the change in him was profound. His eye was clearer, the lines around nose and mouth fined away. He walked with an alert step.

“Your powers—?”

“Not all. Some. Enough to bring us here and not notice what the Moder-lord had spread for our destruction.”

I let my breath out. I have said that the powers of the Wizards of Loh are very real and very terrible. Perhaps this very exhibition of them, unconscious as it was, chilled me most.

“What—?” said Prince Tyfar.

Quickly, on a breath, I said, “We have come far enough. We must find a way out. A normal way.”

“If there be such a normal thing in this devil’s cauldron,” growled Nodgen.

“Bound to be,” said Hunch. “Got to be — hasn’t there?”

We had crossed through most of this palace from the entrance we had found and so I said, “A stairway down near the outside. There has to be one somewhere.”

Walking along the corridor, warily, we entered a chamber through draped crimson curtains. The room glittered with gold. Everything, it seemed, was fabricated of gold. A golden cage stood in a corner, with a golden statue of a creature none of us had ever seen before. Then Tyfar started, pointing.

“Look, by Krun! So one of us had the same idea. Perhaps he knows the way out—?”

The figure in the red and green checked cloak turned.

The hood fell back.

We all gasped.

The head was hairless — and lipless and noseless and earless. The skin was of a gray-green marbling, deeply fissured by furrows that turned the whole head into a ghastly parody of humanity. The face looked as though decay and dissolution, well advanced, had been halted and petrified. Thick green sinews stretched between the chin and the neck of the checkered robe. And the eyes — black and red, and demoniacal in their intensity of hate!

“You are welcome,” said Tyr Ungovich. “I had not expected you, but here you are—”

“You did not expect us,” I said. “And, Ungovich, tell me a riddle, as you love them so. Why should you live?”

No readable expression crossed that gruesome countenance.

“Surely it is you who should answer that?”

I put my hand to the hilt of the Krozair longsword — and it was not there. Nothing remained of what I had taken from the fire-crystal opening that provided what I lacked. But those replacements I had taken from the Mausoleum, the Hall of Flame, these remained. I touched the hilt of the rapier.

“Steel will not harm me.” The red and green checks stirred as Ungovich swung about, sharply. “And now you die!”

He put a golden whistle to his mouth and blew.

No sound issued.

He blew again, the ghastly gray-green marbling of his cheeks pulsing. Again and again he blew. He swung to face us, and the eyes blazed in unholy anger — demoniac.

“I am the Wizard of the Moder! You will die when my pets—”

Quietly, Deb-Lu-Quienyin said, “I do not think they heard your call, San.”

The exquisite irony of that formal salutation of San was not lost on us — nor on the Wizard of the Moder.

He peered closely at Quienyin.

Then he moved back, sharply, and — from nowhere — a sword appeared in his left hand.

“You—” he said, and his words were a thick choke. “You are—”

“Yes.”

“But none enters here! None! It is not permitted!”

This — thing — had caused us great grief. It had set traps for us, riddles, hurled occult monsters upon us, tortured us. Now it stood there, slashing a sword about, mewling, fiery-eyed, and helpless in the grip of those awesome powers of a Wizard of Loh.

“Let me shaft it and have done,” said Nath.

“Let me put a bullet between its yes,” said Barkindrar.

Hunch goggled.

Nodgen hefted his spear.

The two Pachak hyr-paktuns set themselves, as ever, ready for what might befall. I said, “We came here of our own free will. We have taken treasure from this thing. Let us not slay it.”

“No?” breathed Tyfar. He was shaking.

“It protected its honored dead,” said Quienyin, “and the protection turned ugly, became a game, a game of death.”

“I didn’t come here of my own free will,” said Hunch. “By Tryflor, I said as much at the time!”

“By the Resplendent Bridzilkelsh, nor me!” quoth Nodgen.

“Nor did I,” I said. “But most of us did. We agreed to this thing’s terms for its abominable game. We have exposed it. I think that wounds it sorely.”

“Wound it!” said Nath the Shaft. His bow lifted, the arrow nocked. “I’ll wound it past the Ice Floes of Sicce!”

“Together, Nath,” said Barkindrar. His sling swung suggestively.

The thing that called itself Ungovich hissed at us.

“Should we kill it?” whispered Tyfar.

“Men kill things they do not understand. Do we understand this thing, this Moder-lord? Do we descry why it does what it does?”

“You have the right of it, Jak,” said Quienyin. “Let us begone!”

Silently, we left the Wizard of the Moder hissing and slashing his sword about. We left that golden room. We were perfectly confident we would find the way out.

Ungovich, green and marbled with arrested decay, slobbered after us. He sobbed in the agony of his spirit. As we reached the crimson curtains of the doorway, Nodgen turned back and spoke.

“The next time we come here, old Wizard, we may not be so magnanimous!”

“Come back!” squeaked Hunch. “Come back here ! You off your head?”

And so as we went out we laughed.

But I felt again that dark sense of dread that, one day, I would return... If not to this Moder then another of the many dark death traps of the Humped Land...

We found the stairway, we found the door, we opened it with an ordinary handle. We stepped outside.

We stepped into the clean fresh air, and into the glorious streaming lights of the Suns of Scorpio... The dark and ominous bulk of the Moder brooded at our backs.

By Zim-Zair! But it was good to be alive, and on Kregen!

* * * *

The adventures of Dray Prescot continue in A Victory for Kregen. Notes

[1]It is not necessary to go into a full explanation of Jikaida to understand the course of this game. The rules and a description of Poron Jikaida were published as an Appendix to A Sword for Kregen, the second volume in the Jikaida Cycle of the Saga of Dray Prescot. A.B.A.

[2]Quidang — equates with “Very Good, your orders will be carried out at once.” Similar to “Aye, aye, sir.” A.B.A.

[3]Ob: one. Sko: left. Mon: right. A.B.A.

[4]Hik: abbreviation for Hikdar, roughly equivalent to a captain, a company commander... Its use here is correct Kregish. A.B.A.

[5]Fluttrhim: Flying man.

[6]Ord: eight.

About the author

Alan Burt Akers was a pen name of the prolific British author Kenneth Bulmer, who died in December 2005 aged eighty-four.

Bulmer wrote over 160 novels and countless short stories, predominantly science fiction, both under his real name and numerous pseudonyms, including Alan Burt Akers, Frank Brandon, Rupert Clinton, Ernest Corley, Peter Green, Adam Hardy, Philip Kent, Bruno Krauss, Karl Maras, Manning Norvil, Chesman Scot, Nelson Sherwood, Richard Silver, H. Philip Stratford, and Tully Zetford. Kenneth Johns was a collective pseudonym used for a collaboration with author John Newman. Some of Bulmer’s works were published along with the works of other authors under "house names" (collective pseudonyms) such as Ken Blake (for a series of tie-ins with the 1970s television programme The Professionals), Arthur Frazier, Neil Langholm, Charles R. Pike, and Andrew Quiller.

Bulmer was also active in science fiction fandom, and in the 1970s he edited nine issues of the New Writings in Science Fiction anthology series in succession to John Carnell, who originated the series. More details about the author, and current links to other sources of information, can be found at www.mushroom-ebooks.com, and at wikipedia.org.

The Dray Prescot Series

The Delian Cycle:

1. Transit to Scorpio

2. The Suns of Scorpio

3. Warrior of Scorpio

4. Swordships of Scorpio

5. Prince of Scorpio

Havilfar Cycle:

6. Manhounds of Antares

7. Arena of Antares

8. Fliers of Antares

9. Bladesman of Antares

10. Avenger of Antares

11. Armada of Antares

The Krozair Cycle:

12. The Tides of Kregen

13. Renegade of Kregen

14. Krozair of Kregen

Vallian cycle:

15. Secret Scorpio

16. Savage Scorpio

17. Captive Scorpio

18. Golden Scorpio

Jikaida cycle:

19. A Life for Kregen

20. A Sword for Kregen

21. A Fortune for Kregen

22. A Victory for Kregen

Spikatur cycle:

23. Beasts of Antares

24. Rebel of Antares

25. Legions of Antares

26. Allies of Antares

Pandahem cycle:

27. Mazes of Scorpio

28. Delia of Vallia

29. Fires of Scorpio

30. Talons of Scorpio

31. Masks of Scorpio

32. Seg the Bowman

Witch War cycle:

33. Werewolves of Kregen

34. Witches of Kregen

35. Storm over Vallia

36. Omens of Kregen

37. Warlord of Antares

Lohvian cycle:

38. Scorpio Reborn

39. Scorpio Assassin

40. Scorpio Invasion

41. Scorpio Ablaze

42. Scorpio Drums

43. Scorpio Triumph

Balintol cycle:

44. Intrigue of Antares

45. Gangs of Antares

46. Demons of Antares

47. Scourge of Antares

48. Challenge of Antares

49. Wrath of Antares

50. Shadows over Kregen

Phantom cycle:

51. Murder on Kregen

52. Turmoil on Kregen

Contents

A Note on Dray Prescot

1 – On a Roof in Jikaida City

2 – Gray Mask Vanishes

3 – I Hear of Moderdrin

4 – I Refuse to Fight in Kazz-Jikaida

5 – We Meet Drogo the Kildoi in the Jolly Vosk

6 – Concerning a Shortcut

7 – Execution Jikaida

8 – Hunch, Nodgen and I Are Auctioned Off

9 – Into the Humped Land

10 – Down the Moder

11 – Prince Tyfar

12 – The Illusion of a Krozair Longsword

13 – How an Undead Chulik Kept Vigil

14 – Kov Loriman Mentions the Hunting Sword

15 – Of a Descent Through Monsters

16 – In the Hall of Specters

17 – Out from the Jaws of Death

18 – The Mausoleum of the Flame

19 – Of a Gate — and Honor

20 – The Fight over Vaol-Paol

21 – Of the Powers of a Wizard of Loh

Notes

About the author

The Dray Prescot Series