Elysia (11 page)

Again de Marigny turned a little sour. 'It has always been the same story,' he said. 'Like father, like son. I'm what I am because of Etienne-Laurent de Marigny. His love of mysteries rubbed off on me, and now I'm a searcher, too.
The
Searcher!'

'Aye, your destiny,' Atal sighed.

It was late now and the people were coming forward in small groups, politely nodding their farewells and goodnights as they went off to their homes. The moon had risen and the lanthorns were burning low, and even the cats were stirring now and their ranks thinning as they went off to seek the shadows. For delightful as Moreen was, there were more important things for cats to be about when the moon hung full and high in the night skies of dreamland. Which was just as well; for at that juncture there came a soft flapping of wings, and down out of scented darkness fluttered a bird of Ulthar's Temple of the Elder
^-
Ones, a pink pigeon, to alight on Atil's shoulder.

A few departing cats looked back, their almond, slant-eyes yellow in the night, and two or three lean toms might just have considered the possibility of a little fun and flying feathers; but Moreen was wise to their ways now and tut-tutted, which was chastisement enough. So off they went as Atal tremblingly took the tiny cylinder from the bird's leg and unwrapped the scrap of paper tucked inside it.

`A message,' he husked, screwing up his eyes and drawing a lanthorn closer. `But from where, and about what?' Then
—

'MP
the old man sighed as finally his eyes focussed. `And indeed this arrives at an opportune moment. For if you really wish, to meet the two men I've mentioned - the questers from the waking world - it would seem it's now or never. Here, read it for yourself, for unless I'm much mistaken it's couched in runes you'll know - English, I believe.'

De Marigny took the note, smoothed it out on the table, read its short, sharp legend.

`HELP!' it said in black, jagged lines, `AND MAKE IT FAST - FOR TOMORROW AT FIRST LIGHT GUDGE SENDS US TO HELL!' And it bore the signatures of David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer ...

Playing
Pass The Time Before—,
David Allenby Hero, late of the waking world, where he'd been a sensitive painter of matters ethereal, and Professor Leonard E. Dingle (Psychology and Anthropology), ex-lecturer on the subconscious mind of man, had almost inevitably ended up in the doldrums of the game yet again. Hero, or more formally Hero of Dreams, as he was now known, and Eldin the Wanderer, had most recently been enumerating 'Things Ridden Upon'.

Before that they'd recalled 'Inimical Creatures, Beings or Persons Slain or Otherwise Subdued', had listed alphabetically 'Ladies Lusted After', chronologically 'Fantastic Feats', and somewhat morbidly in light of their current circumstances 'Deaths Defied'. The first of these had included a certain black wizard, species of man-eating flora and fauna, night-gaunts, dholes, zombies, termen, moon-beasts and Lengites and so on, all leading eventually to Gudge, whom they merely wished dead but who, ironically and in all likelihood, bar a large miracle, would shortly gain some notoriety in the dreamlands as
their
executioner!

The second series in
Pass the Time Before—,
'Ladies Lusted After', had been a bad choice of subject; Eldin had led off with 'Aminza Ariz', immediately breaking down in tears before the game could go any further. For Aminza, may the Lords of Dream bless her memory, had woken up on the very day she and Eldin were to have been wed, which had brought about an abrupt termination of that romance.

`Fantastic Feats' had been a good one, for both of the questers were given to boasting a bit and vied with each other in respect of frequently recounted acts of heroism. What thief in all the dreamlands (for example) could match Hero's feat in 'cracking' a great keep of the First Ones? And who but that magnificent arsonist Eldin the Wanderer would ever have dreamed of burning down an entire city (the hive Thalarion) with his firestones? (Of that last: Hero was wont to point out that it had been done before by someone called Nero, a waking-worlder, he thought.). And so on. Alas, their most recent 'feat' had been to come spying for Kuranes in the Badlands back of Zura the land, where Gudge the pirate had discovered, recognized, 'captured and would now kill them.

Which had led them to 'Deaths Defied'. This list had been longest of all, involving not only all of the Creatures, Beings or Persons in the first series but sundry menaces such as: freezing in the upper atmosphere; drowning in a Whirlpool; walking-the-plank two and a half miles over the Southern Sea; a moonbeast spell of petrifaction; being devoured by Oorn the Gastropod Goddess in primal Sarkomand; seduced to a soggy pulp by Lathi and romanced to rottenness by Zura of Zura; and so on, etc.,
ad infinitum.
Except, quite naturally, this had only brought them to the current Death Defied, which being unavoidable couldn't be so much defied as simply waited upon; hence the game of
Pass the Time Before—in
the first place. For of course that pair of indefatigable dreamers were only passing the time before their mutual demise

Except that demise was not upon them yet, and there were other lists to be considered, most recent of which had been Things Ridden Upon'. And boastful or not it seems highly unlikely that any dreamers anywhere could summon up a list of conveyances half so fabulous (and yet so thoroughly authentic) as that of Hero and Eldin. They had sailed reed-tree raft across the blue like beyond the Great Bleak Mountains, and down a whirlpool to a swamp
beyond Thalarion. They'd ridden (flown) on a Great Tree's life-leaf from Thalarion's hinterland to the gardens of Nyrass the Mage in Theelys. They'd been transported 'magically' from Theelys to a mighty mountain keep, all in the blink of an eye. They'd been aboard Kuranes' ships of dream, Zura's ship of death, the eidolon Lathi's ship of paper. They'd been flown by night-gaunts across all the gulfs of dream, and vented in ethereal essence from Serannian's huge flotation system, and bustled on the back of a many-legged Running Thing through the Caves of Night in Pnoth and across the Stickistuff Sea. And that wasn't all, far from it:

They'd slid down a beam of light from Curator's curious eyes to a sky-ship in the aerial Bay of Serannian; and rushed up into higher space on a broken mast and a bag of air; and flown to dreamland's moon on a spiral moonbeam! Last but not least they'd been borne by Eeth, a moon-moth maid, to the feet (or roots) of a magical moontree; absorbed by him and transferred to seedlings, which had then twirled them back down to the dreamlands; and finally, as grotesque gourds, they'd fallen to earth on the banks of the Skai near Ulthar, where both. had been 'reborn' full grown.

'And now,' Eldin morosely concluded, 'it seems we're to careen on these damned great crosses to dreamland's very core - perhaps to the pits of nightmare themselves!'

Hero could only nod (literally) and agree: 'Aye, this is another hell of a crucifix you've got me onto.'

'Is that a joke or an accusation?' Eldin asked suspiciously.

'Hue
Hero snorted.

'I accept your apology!' said Eldin; and: 'You know, lad; there's a list far more important than all these others we've played with. One which we haven't considered at all as yet.

'Oh?'

'Indeed! It's called "Narrow Squeaks Squeezed Through", and it might just provide a clue as to a way out of this current mess.'

Hero carefully moved his head (about the only part of his person he
could
move) to peer at the other in the gloom of their predicament. Lashed to a great wooden cross and suspended over the rim of a pit that went down almost (but unfortunately not) without limit; the Wanderer was not a pretty sight. He never had been, but now he looked particularly ugly.

Eldin was older than Hero's maybe thirty years by at least a dozen; he had a scarred, bearded, quite unhandsome face which yet housed surprisingly clear blue eyes - for all that one of them was now black. Stocky and heavy, but somehow gangly to boot, there was something almost apish about him; yet his every move and gesture (when he was able) hinted of a sensitivity and keen intelligence behind his massive physical strength. Alas, half beaten to death by Gudge's freebooters, that giant strength wasn't much in evidence now, else Eldin's bonds were long since torn asunder. Instead the Wanderer had his time cut out simply forcing words past his broken lips; so that Hero's niggling words and manner were deliberately designed to keep him on his mettle and chipper, as it were. Eldin knew this, knew too that Hero himself had seen better nights. He gloomed back at the younger dreamer, said 'Well, what about it? Is there a way out of this, or - ?'

'Most likely or,' Hero glumly answered, and when helaid his head back winced from the spasm of pain in the spft spot behind his left ear, where his hair was matted with clotted blood.

Hero was tall, rangily muscled and blond in dreams as he'd once been in the waking world. His eyes were bluelike Eldin's, but lighter; they could redden very quickly,however, in a fury, or go a thoughtful,
^-
dangerous yellow in a tight spot. They'd been yellow a while now, though nothing had come of it. His nature in fact was usually
easy-going: he loved songs a good bit and girls a great deal, but he was also wizard-master of any sword in a fight, and the knuckles of his fists were like crusty knobs of rock. He was very different from Eldin, yes, but they did have several things in common. They shared the same wanderlust, for one, and the same sometimes acid sense of humour for another. The lands of Earth's dreams occasionally make for strange travelling companions.

`Are you saying we should just hang here and wait for the new day?' Eldin seemed surprised. 'Our last day, as it may well turn out to be?'

‘Hell
no!' Hero grunted. 'By all means, let's be up and on our way!' He sighed. 'Look, old lad, I don't know about you but I can't hardly move a muscle. I can blink, talk, wriggle my backside, nod my head and wag it too, but that's all. Ergo: knackered! Physically, emotionally, mentally knackered. I haven't completely given up hope, not yet, but at the same time I have to admit that I can't see much future for us. Not if I'm to be truthful about it.'

'Hmm!' said Eldin, gruffly. 'Just as I suspected: you expect me to get us out of it, right? What David Hero can get you into, Eldin the Wanderer can get you out of just like that!'

However weakly, Hero had to grin. Now Eldin was needling him - deliberately, of course. In fact, neither one of them had been to blame for their untenable situation; their task had been impossible right from square one. And now Hero looked back on how they came to be here ...

... At that same moment but many miles away (the actual distance is conjectural; spans of time and space are deceptive in the land of Earth's dreams) in the resplendent city of Celephais, King Kuranes was echoing Hero's thoughts; except that he did it out loud, for the benefit of friends and visitors from the waking world. For upon reading that brief SOS borne on the leg of a pink temple pigeon, de Marigny had said farewell to Atal, bundled Moreen into the time-clock, travelled at once to the valley of Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills. Since the questers Hero and Eldin were agents of Kuranes, who better to ask of their likely whereabouts and something perhaps of this Gudge who apparently threatened their lives - than Kuranes himself?

Now, in the King's palace (in fact an ivied manor-house, the very replica of his loftier seat in Serannian), The Searcher and Moreen of Numinos sat at a great table with the king, while whiskered, liveried servants stood in attendance. In his long nightshirt and still not fully awake, Kuranes had put on square-framed spectacles, read the scrap of paper they brought him, turned pale in the steady glow of a pair of antique oil lamps.

`Gudge has them!' he'd gasped then. `Gudge the pirate, scourge of the Southern Sea and the skies around Zura and Thalarion!'

Kuranes was slightly built but regal in his bearing, grey-bearded yet sprightly and bright-eyed, with nothing of the occasional fuzziness of natural-born dreamlanders (
Homo ephernerans,
as Eldin the Wanderer had long since dubbed the peoples of dream) about him. Quite obviously a man late of the waking world, still he was a powerful force for good in the dreamlands and a long-time enemy of all agencies of horror and nightmare. On reading the note he'd come wide awake in a moment and grasped de Marigny's arm.

'And you came here in your time-clock, that awesome vehicle and weapon I remember so well from your last visit?'

'Oh. yes,' The Searcher had nodded. 'It's out there in the gardens, where your pikemen have placed it under guard.'

'Good!' Kuranes had uttered a huge sigh of relief. 'So perhaps there's a
chance
for that pair of great-hearted
rogues even now.' And then he'd told his visitors all he knew:

`Since the war of the Mad Moon things have been allowed to get a bit lax here in the dreamlands. Our victory was so massive, so decisive, that we've done precious little since but celebrate! A grave, grave error. Atal will have told you of the incidence of unorthodox eclipses? Just so. And did he also read an omen into your presence here at this time?'

'Expertly,' said de Marigny, 'even though Atal had not foreseen just how serious our business here.' And he'd quickly sketched in what he knew of matters: the imminent uprising of the Great Old Ones, as evidenced in the alignment or re-alignment of certain stars; his own presence as a positive necessity now in Elysia, into which place there was still no royal road; Titus Crow's hint that certain clues as to Elysia's whereabouts might be obtained in Earth's dreamlands. Finally: 'And I believe that with the help of Hero and Eldin, I may be able to narrow down my search.'

'Which makes their rescue that much more urgent, indeed entirely imperative!' said Kuranes, slamming down : his palms flat upon the table. 'Once more it seems the dreamlands are at risk, and not only the dreamlands but the sanity of the
entire universe!
Now listen carefully:

'Some six months gone, the Southern Sea and the skies. over dreamland were safe and free as never before; With Lathi and Zura defeated in the Mad Moon's war and banished out of the sane lands of dream back to their own dark demesnes - and the Lengites crushed and sorely. depleted; and the surly Isharrans subdued, what few of them remained in Sarkomand and points west - honest folk were able at last to go about their businesses and pursuits as is their right, unhindered and unafraid.

'The sky-trade between Serannian, Celephais, Ilek-Vad and Ulthar prospered; sea-trade and -farings between all the ports of the Southern Sea flourished; the Isle of Oriab lost much of its previous insularity and pleasure-seekers docked to Bahama as
,
before, to enjoy its wonders. Merchantmen had never sailed so close to the shores of infamous Thalarion, or with such small concern past Zura the land - not with guaranteed impunity, anyway and sightings of black Leng galleys, in both sea and sky, became so few and far between that Captains soon lost the habit of reporting them. It seemed that in the main the horned almost-humans stuck to their forbidden plateau, Lathi to Thalarion, rebuilding her twice-ruined hive, and Zura to her moon-ravaged Charnel Gardens.

'Serannian's guardian sky-armada was expensive to man and maintain; patrols were long and boring for the crews; Men were better employed putting to rights the damage rained on the dreamlands in the time of the Mad Moon. All in all, the lands of Earth's dreams were peaceful and prosperous once more, and the memories of dreamlanders are extremely short. Peace, aye, but it was only the lull before the storm ...

'And so the stage was set for mischief, which came all too quickly in the shape of Gudge and his pirates. Ships began to disappear on
,
the sea between Oriab and the continental dreamlands, along the coasts of Zura, Thalarion and Dylath-Leen, even in the skies. That's right: even the occasional warship, patrolling out of Serannian, disappearing without trace.
.
And what small pockets of intelligence and information I controlled all pointedin the same direction, arrived at the same conclusion: piracy! Sea-pirates, sky-pirates, probably one and the same! But from where, and under whose black-hearted command and control?

'Oh, I had my suspicions. Zura had built herself a new ship,
Shroud II,
and crewed it with zombies - a "skeleton crew"- hah! Lathi was rumoured to have repaired and fortified her previously flimsy
Chrysalis,
and brooded aboard while her ter-men and -maids fashioned a new