Hard, trained fighting men, theseâtrained indeed by Tellis Gan in better daysâand now a knot of them formed a protective ring about the questers and their ladies as the
tide of battle swept by them. Hero glanced at Eldin, said: “Difficult to know whose side we're on, isn't it? But we can't fight 'em all.” And to the senior Regulator, a sergeant: “You, thereâwe surrender!”
“You'll be Hero,” that worthy replied, accepting his sword. “And Eldin the Wanderer, and Ula and Una Gidduf, right? Damn me, all four of you alive! That's a turnup!” He grinned a tight grin. “Well, surrender all you likeâbut actually we're here to rescue you!”
“What?” Hero's jaw dropped. “You're not Gan's men?”
“Raffis Gan, you mean?” the other scowled. “Don't shame us more than we're shamed already, quester! The dog didn't fool all of us, you know.”
As he spoke, more ropes came dangling from on high, empty ones this time. And: “Can you climb, all of you?” said the sergeant. “Right, thenâup you go!”
Hero and Ula got aloft, climbing rapidly; but before Eldin and Una could follow the merchantman gave a lurch and rolled under the impact of a fusillade from its Kledan adversary. The ropes and ladders were all set swishing and jerking; the two ships straightened up, backed off; all on the ground were momentarily cut off. But on board the rescue ship:
“Ula!” cried Ham Gidduf, tears of relief in his eyes, lifting his daughter gently over the railâthen reaching down great arms for Hero. “And you!” he scowled into Hero's face as he dragged him unceremoniously on board.
“NOW
I
COMMAND!” came a newly familiar voice in Hero's head, Ula's too. “ALL HEARâALL OBEY! BE STILL, AND HEED THE WORDS OF YATH-LHI!”
Gunners aboard Ham Gidduf's ship had just loosed half a dozen balls from hastily rigged cannons into the
Kledan a moment before Yath-Lhi's mind-command. One shot at least must have hit the slaver's magazine, for with a tremendous roar and gout of fire she reeled and almost broke asunder in the sky, then slowly began to settle earthward.
“BE
STILL,
I SAID, AND LOOK AT ME!”
The Black Princess had cast her monstrous hypnotic mind-spell, and none could deny it. All aboard the merchantman looked; Hero and Ula out of morbid fascination, everyone else because they had to. On the ground all fighting had stopped; in the air, the cannons no longer roared; Kledans, slaves and Regulators alike all gazed now upon Yath-Lhi and her men-at-arms where they stood on the elevated ground before the entrance to the excavated barrow. A few rocket-flares were still settling to earth. They'd been fired aloft by slavers and Regulators both, each to illumine the other, but now they shed light on the unnatural, frozen tableau before the moundâfrozen except for Yath-Lhi and her reborn retainers.
“NOW I SPREAD MY VAMPIRE INFLUENCE ABROAD,” the primal princess announced. “AND ALL OF YOU SHALL BE MY DISCIPLES AND CARRY MY WORDâAND MY POWERâWITH YOU. I SHALL TOUCH YOU, AND YOU SHALL BE ONE WITH ME. AND WHOSOEVER
YOU
TOUCH, HE TOO SHALL BE MINE. THUS YOU GO FORTHâINTO THE MOUNTAINS, THE OCEANS, THE WARM PLACES AND THE COLD, THE JUNGLES AND THE CITIESâAND MULTIPLY.”
“The beginning of a monstrous plague,” Hero groaned under his breath.
And Ula, horrified, answered: “Only look at my father!”
Ham Gidduf gazed down on Yath-Lhi, his eyes glazed, his whole countenance and being rapt upon her.
“They're all the same,” said Hero. “All except us ⦔ He ducked down behind the gunnel, moved toward a small cannon slung in a makeshift cradle between capstans. The cannoneer, a gray-clad, stood there like a statue, robbed entirely of his will, cannon loaded and taper smoldering in his hand.
“Hero!” gasped Ula. “Oh, Davidâlook!”
“BUT YOUR PRINCESS HAS FASTED THROUGH ALL THE AGES AND KNOWS A GREAT HUNGER,” Yath-Lhi spoke again. “AND IT WOULD SEEM ONLY RIGHT THAT THOSE WHO SPRUNG HER TRAP SHOULD NOW SUSTAIN HER FOR THE GREAT WORK AHEAD. I WHO HAVE MERELY SIPPED WOULD NOW SUP. AYE, AND IT SHALL BE A FEAST!”
Hero gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing. “Gan's turn,” he said.
“Narrow-eyes and Egg-head, too,” said Ula in a very small voice.
“I had plans for all three, I admit,” Hero added, “but nothing so terrible as this.”
Unprotesting, Gan and his bullies, as well as one Kledan and two Pargan slaves, went to their makers, flopping and fluttering as the sucking hands of Yath-Lhi and her soldiers drained the life and soul out of them. And in a very little while, six shuddering sacks crumpled to the packed earth of the barrow's entrance.
“MORE!” said Yath-Lhiâher telepathic voice a drooling croak, her appetite now raveningâas she and her soldiers turned toward the closest knot of people. Which just happened to be composed of Regulators, Eldin the Wanderer, and Una Gidduf. And with a deal
more animation now, the ex-mummies stepped menacingly toward that group, their deadly hands reaching.
“Hero!” cried Ula, white-faced as she stared down on all of this. “Heroâ
what now
?”
Hero snatched the taper from the hypnotized Regulator gunner, realigned the cannon. “It took ten seconds' sleep and a headache to shake the Wanderer out of it last time,” he said through gritted teeth. “So let's give 'em
all
a headache, and see what effect that has, eh?” And he lowered the taper to the touchhole.
Then, because he was no cannoneer and chary of loud bangs, Hero stepped backâwhich was as well. The cannon made a noise like frying bacon, then went off with a deafening roar and bounced about in its cradle. Smoke poured from its muzzle, and the night sky thrilled to a
wh-eee
of displaced air. The cannon had been charged with twin balls fastened together by a length of chain: a deadly whirling device which now slammed into the almost vertical face of the barrow, directly over the mouth of the excavation.
Great slabs of rock thundered down on to the staging area, were buried in a landslide of smaller rocks, soil and sand. Yath-Lhi and her party staggered this way and that under the shuddering and roaring of the avalanche; likewise the others in her vicinity, gradually unfreezing as the sudden assault upon their senses began to subside. Several Kledan overseers had disappeared under the fallen mass; the rest had been safely forward of the danger area.
“All of that from a small cannon?” Ula's jaw hung open.
“That rock face must have been very brittle,” Hero answered. “It was like taking a hammer to a slab of slate!”
Ham Gidduf had given himself a shake, was now
leaning over the rail shouting: “Una, grab a ladder. And you, great thugâgive the girl a hand!”
On the ground Eldin came to life. He grabbed up Una, thrust her aloft to where rope ladders dangled.
“Oh-oh!” Hero's eyes stood out like marbles. He'd suddenly noticed that the crippled Kledan ship, its hull and sails gouting great sheets of flame, was foundering directly toward the trench of piled gunpowder kegs. “Ham!” he yelled, jabbing his forefinger down toward the danger.
The barrel-like, rock-hard merchant gave a gasp, then roared: “Engineerâlet's have some elevation! Full-throttle on the pumps and fill those flotation bags brim-full, d'you hear?”
Below decks, the thumping of the ship's flotation engines became a rumble of thunder; slowly, the merchantman lifted, agonizingly slowly. On the ground Eldin made a desperate flying leapâcaught hold of a rope and held on for dear life as he was whisked aloft.
“WHAT?” Yath-Lhi was still confused. Someone had ignored her mind-command, had slipped the telepathic leash? Someone had actually threatened her? She turned this way and that, gazed here and there. Regulators, Kledans and slaves, all had now seen the danger, were scurrying to put distance between themselves, the death-filled trench and the tunnel entrance to the labyrinth.
“WHAT?”
the Black Princess repeated, her mental fury lashing outward. “WHO DARES DEFY THEâ?”
At which point, the blazing slaver's keel crashed down into the trench, and shattered masts hurled fire everywhere.
Night became day as the trench dug itself that much deeper. First one keg exploded, then another; five together, then ten. A mighty chain reaction of an explosion! Even on high, Ham Gidduf's ship reeled, and
reeled again from a succession of concussions. Yath-Lhi and her party, isolated now on the elevated ramp in front of the half-blocked entrance to the labyrinth, staggered to and fro, fell, got up and fell again.
On board the merchantman, Ham Gidduf gave a cry of joy and hauled his second daughter to safety, hugged her almost to breaking point. Eldin, smoldering a bit round the hem of his jacket and looking like a chimneysweep, was left to fend for himself. He came sprawling over the rail, choking on upward-sweeping sulphur belches from the inferno below, singed and coughing, and cursing for all he was worth. Hero had meanwhile got hold of a spyglass, and now commenced a running commentary on the scene below:
“That trench isn't just a trench!” he breathlessly reported. “This seems to have been the one area in which Gan planned well. Where the ground rises toward the barrow, the trench becomes a tunnel. Right now it's blasting away like a great cannon, hurling out ball after ball of fire!”
Eldin joined the younger quester. “There it goes!” he rumbled. “The level area in front of the barrow is falling into the tunnel. The channel to the lake is almost complete.”
“And there go Yath-Lhi and her lot, clambering up the sides away from the hot stuff!” said Hero. “They're not very good at itâstill very stiff from their sleep of ages.”
“They're also too late,” Eldin pointed out. There came a final mighty blast and tons of earth were tossed skyward right at the water's edge. Yath lake boiled down the fire-fashioned channel, lapped at Yath-Lhi's heels where she and her five soldiers scrambled desperately in raining rocks and smoking earth.
“Too late?” Hero repeated his friend. “What do you mean, tooâ?” By which time he could see for himself.
“Vampires, of a sort,” said Eldin. “And you know what running water means to a vampire. For Yath-Lhi it has to be even worse. What is she, after all, but a bag of century-old dust? A good torrent will cleanse a fouled gutter every time, Hero my lad!”
“NO!” Yath-Lhi's mind-shriek echoed up to them. “NO-
Ooooo
!” They watched her melt down into the swirling, gurgling waters. She and her five guards crumbled and sloughed away like snowmen in a great furnace. And a moment later:
“Gone!” said Ula with a shudder, hugging Hero's arm.
“The Black Princess, all gone,” Una agreed, sighing her relief against Eldin's great chest.
“Aye,” said their father, gruffly, “and the renegade Raffis Gan gone with her. And these accursed ruins swamped forever. Well, we've all a bit of explaining to do, I think. So now you four had better come along with me to my cabin.”
Down below, Yath continued to send a surging brown stream gurgling into what would soon become a weedy, watery labyrinth of aeons â¦
Â
Â
As for explanations: there weren't so many after all.
Glibly, the questers had started to tell how they'd come to Oriab to see Ula and Unaâ
“Only to âsee' them?” Ham scowled dangerously.
“Well, actually, er, to make plans,” Eldin engaged in some mental scrambling, searching for a way out.
“Marriage plans!” Ula gleefully seized the main chance; and, “Soon!” Una clinched the thing.
Hero had then cast murderous side glances at Eldin;
the Wanderer had choked up and reddened a bit; Ham Gidduf had positively beamed!
“How soon?” he'd wanted to know.
“In the, er, futureâ” Hero had answered. And guided by Ham's rapidly changing expression: “The farâer, not-so-far, er, would you believe near?âfuture.” With Eldin hurriedly adding: “But just plans at this stage, of course ⦔
And then the questers (smiling fixed, frozen smiles) and the girls (joyously hugging their arms) had listened to Ham's side of the adventure.
He'd had business in Baharna and decided to look up his daughters at their tiny house in an upper-class hillside suburb. They'd not been at home, but a busybody neighbor had heard that just last night they'd been arrested “with a pair of gentlemen friends, loutish fellows, apparently” by the city's Regulatorsâarrested and “taken in”! Ham had exploded, gone to see a friend of his on the Council of Elders who lived in the vicinity; together they'd stormed Regulating HQ, and there â¦
Two young ladies? And their men-friends? Yes, Chief Regulator Gan had brought them inâfor questioning, presumably. Odd, for there was no written record of charges ⦠Er, but they had spent the night here, yes. And less than an hour ago Gan had taken them away with him in the official launch. Something about discreet investigations ⦠? This information from the Duty Sergeant. But Ham had wanted to know: “Did Gan take all of them with himâall four?”