But Inquanok's merchants were human, certainly, and its taverners and quarriers, and for a long time now a secret circle of responsible citizens had questionedâhowever privately and in whispersâthe autocracy of the Veiled King and his priestlings, always working indirectly but purposefully toward their overthrow. All the dreamlands wanted Inquanok onyx; increased commerce might bring prosperity to many, pave the way for strong alliances, dispel mystery, open up all the lands of dream to the onyx city's sailors and merchantmen ⦠were it not for the Veiled King's policy of insularity, the fact that Inquanok must be a land kept ever apart.
The Veiled King had not been interested in tales of terror and monstrous abductions and murders from Inquanok's hinterland; indeed, it seemed doubtful that such tales had even reached his ears, for in his vast palace and forbidden temple he had little to do with common men and their problems. But as for the common men themselves â¦
When the daughter of a well-to-do merchant was taken from her father's rich house on Inquanok's very outskirts, and left some miles away in the desert for the drear dawn to discover dead and drained of marrow ⦠that has been the turning point. Local help was nowhere available: police or other custodians of the law there
were none, for all miscreants were left to the justice of the Veiled King's priests and palace officials. Petitions to the palace were productive of nothing, were not even answered. Privately organized parties of four or five good men would go out into the deserts or other wild places and return days later with nothing to reportâor, worse, with one of their number missing. The terror did not restrict itself to children.
But with this last atrocity fresh in the minds of Inquanok's peopleâthe death of this innocent little girl, her body and bones all drilled through and juices sucked outâfinally it was time to seek assistance from outside. Kuranes' long-term attempts at liaison and trans-Cerenerian alliance were remembered: a message of entreaty was sent in secret to Celephais, addressed to the Lord of Ooth-Nargai, Celephais, and the Sky Around Serannian himself. In other words, to Kuranes.
And who better? Hadn't he been mainly responsible for dreamland's victory in the War of the Mad Moon? Wasn't it Kuranes who'd successfully defended sky-floating Serannian against Zura of Zura's plot to topple that aerial island to its doom? And didn't he from time to time employ certain sellswords, questers who'd tackle any job at a price? If Kuranes couldn't help, then who could?
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“Can you remember,” asked Hero now, “what Kuranes told us of this Augeren?”
“He told us several things,” Eldin grunted. “None of them pleasant. A young man walking his girl near Urg was buffeted on the head. He came to almost at once, heard his young lady's faint cry of horror from a misty copse, stumbled to her rescue. This, of course, is assumption, for he did not live to tell it himself. But while
he ran he yelled for help; several cotters were startled up, came out with lanthorns; there followed something of a hue and cry. The girl was found almost at once, unharmed but shocked witless by something she'd seen, the closeness of her shave. Her young manâhe was finished, all bones intact except for one, which alas was his skull. It had been drilled right through, his brain pierced. Doubtless the monster would have sucked his marrow, except for the cotters charging about with their lanthorns. As for the girl ⦔
“Go on,” said Hero quietly, his face ruddy in the firelight.
“She had a bruise or two, was otherwise unharmedâphysically. But in her pretty head ⦠whatever she saw, it robbed her of her senses. And they haven't been returned to her. Afterward she spokeâor drooled and dribbledâof âeyes' and a âmouth like a corkscrew,' and of something âchalk white' and âpowerful'âsomething that sobbed as it sank a shining proboscis deep in her lover's brain. And it sobbed: âMy name is Augeren. Augeren, aye, and I hate you all!'”
“Lord!” said Hero, barely containing a
brrr
. “How you can lay it on when you're in the mood! But you're right: the things that girl said, however delirious or crazed she was/is, are very, very nasty ⦔ He stood up straighter, squared his shoulders. “Hah! But back there in Celephais, in Kuranes' manor-house, what did ânasty' mean to us, eh? What did we care for ânasty'? What, after some of the things we've been up against?” He slumped. “Except we're no longer in Celephais. Two or three miles thataway”âhe pointed roughly southâ“lies Inquanok the city. Thataway, Urg. And a good day's march thataway”â(due north)â
“The gaunt gray peaks,” Eldin cut in. “Home to
Shantaks and their mortal enemies the gaunts, barrier 'twixt sanity and Leng.”
“Or once-barner?” suggested Hero. And quickly continued: “But here's us anyway, outsiders in these parts, paid for in golden tonds and pointed in the right directionâthe most dangerous direction, obviouslyâthen turned loose and forgotten. Questers, sellswords, mercenaries: riff-raff, by the lofty standards of these god-descended flint-faced Inquanokkies. And if we succeed, rid the land of this Augeren, what then? Fêted, applauded, even clapped on the back and thanked most sincerely? Not a bit of it! Done our job, that's all. And if we fail?”
“We haven't failed yet,” said Eldin. “Our reputations are safe so far.”
“Reputations? What makes you think I'm worried about our reps?” Hero narrowed his eyes, cocked his head on one side. “I meant what if we fail in the worst possible way?”
“You mean if he outsmarts us, this Augeren?” Eldin scowled. “Unthinkable! We don't get beaten. Besides, we're two and he's only one.”
“How do we know he's only one?” Hero questioned. “He could be an entire damned flock or pack for all we know! He
could
be something out of Leng, grown tired of a diet of horned-ones and now comes to try humans instead.”
“Leng-thing? Flock? Pack?
Pah!
And what do we care for overwhelming odds?” Eldin puffed himself up, thumped his chest once. “Why we've laughed in the faces of armies of zombies, almost-humans, termen, the lot!”
“But this,” Hero insisted, “is an Unknown Thing or Things that can drill into you and suck you bone dryâliterally!”
Eldin puffed himself up more yet ⦠and let it all out in a huge
“Pheeew!”
He scratched his beard and sat down close to the fire. “All right, you've convinced me,” he said. “Which way's home?”
Hero kicked more dead wood on the blaze, walked round the leaping flames in a wide circle with his hands behind his back, and: “What else did Kuranes say?” he asked the other.
Eldin sighed. “Anyone'd think you weren't there!”
“Ah, but you tell it so wellâand I can listen to you and think at the same time.”
“Posses can't get near it,” said Eldin. “Or rather, they get too near! The minute a posse sets up camp for the nightâas soon as they set a watchâ
zzzt!
” he made a slicing motion mid-beard. “One gone watchman ⦔
Hero slowly nodded, “All-seeing, aye,” he said. “The thing
knows
when folk go out after it. It
knows
what they're up to. All-seeing and yet unseen, except by its marrowless victims and that one poor loony lass it spoke to and drove mad. And then there's one last thing we know about it.”
“Oh?” Eldin watched Hero circle the fire and disappear out of the corner of his eye as he stepped round behind him. In the next moment Hero's hand fell like a grapple on Eldin's shoulder, hard as iron, gripping the cords of muscle between neck and shoulder proper. It was so sudden that Eldin gave a violent start.
“Darkness!” Hero whispered hoarsely in Eldin's ear. “It doesn't like the light, strikes only at night.”
“Damn me, lad!” Eldin shook himself loose. “Haven't I enough gray hairs?” He stood up, looked all about in the fire's glow. Beyond the firelight was pitch black, made blacker by the very fire itself. Black, silent night, and a thin leprous mist crawling on the ground. Eldin stooped, fed the flames liberally with wood gathered
earlier, said: “So what are you leading up to? You said you'd been playing with its name, Augeren. So what did that get you?”
Hero continued to prowl in a circle. “Things linger,” he said, “in mind. I suppose hung over from the waking world.”
“Déjà vu,” said Eldin.
“Eh?”
“Never mind, another hangover. I'm saying I know what you're talking about, that's all.”
“I mean,” said Hero, almost to himself, “I don't really know if it applies, but âAugeren' does things to me. Even the first time I heard it, my mind sort of shied away from it. In one tongue, Augen means eyes, I think. And Augeren comes pretty close. So is that what this thing really calls itself: The Eyes?”
Eldin sat down again, pulled at an earlobe. “I begin to see what you're getting at. That girl mentioned eyes, too ⦔ He. nodded, added: “A seeing eye, gifted with night-vision, seeing in the darkness as clearly as in daylight.”
“More clearly!” said Hero. “Light hurts itâfrightens it, anyway. It fled the cotters' lanthorns still unfed.”
“A fly-the-light then,” Eldin was deeply involved with the puzzle now. “A vampireâbut a very specialized vampire.”
“No taste for blood,” Hero supplied, “but bone marrow.”
“And ⦠equipped to get it!” Eldin snapped his fingers. “âAuger'!”
“Bravo!” said Hero, but grimly, quietly.
“An auger's a wood-boring tool, isn't it? A borer, anyway. It makes holes to prepare the woodâ”
“âor boneâ”
“âfor nails or screwsâ”
“âor for a proboscis.”
“An auger, yes!” said Eldin. “You turn it this way and thatâleft and right, left and rightâapplying pressure, driving the point deep. Boring without splitting the wood.”
“Or without spilling the marrow.”
“Weird!” Eldin gave a little shiver.
“And that's not all.”
“Oh?”
“What about âaugury'?”
“Ah! Yes! Of course! A prognostication, a portent, vision of a rune-caster or soothsayer. From âaugur,' someone who reads the future.” He frowned. “Of course, the spelling's up the creek.”
“But the meaning applies,” said Hero. “No wonder they've never seen him, can't catch him. Not if he can read the future.”
“How much of the future?”
“The immediate future, anyway,” Hero answered. “Which gave him the edge over the cotters, allowed him to make a narrow escape.”
“Ah, yes! He ran from them.”
“Or flew, or flopped. From their lanthorns.”
“Hmm,”
Eldin mused. “A far-sighted marrow-sucking chalk-white ESP-endowed
wampir
with a bad case of photophobia.”
Hero sat down, found a nice straight piece of dry branch and made to toss it on the fireâthen paused. Instead, he took out his knife, began whittling one end into a long sharp point.
“Stake?” Eldin inquired.
Hero said nothing, continued to work.
Eldin took out his own knife, seated himself, followed the other's example with another piece of wood. After a while he said, “I wish
I
could.”
“Eh?”
“See the future. Just a little bit of it. Say, through the night to morning. That would be enoughâfor now, anyway.”
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In the utter darkness of an old, worked-out quarry, in a cave not two miles away, Augeren sat and communed with the night. One of his eyes was skinned-over, blind, like the vestigial orb of some queer cave-dwelling frog, the other glittered with many facets, seemed almost metallic, insect-like.
Augeren was hungry. In his mouth, his great wedge of a tongue turned this way and that, oscillating the rasps along its sides; saliva dripped from its hollow needle-tip.
In the facets of his glittering eye, myriad mirror-images showed a near-distant scene: a pair of questers, huddled beside their fire. They whittled away and their shavings went into the fire, which in any case would burn all night. Augeren blinked and the picture disappeared, his eye grew dull; he blinked again and a new picture was framed in myriad reflections. Three miles away, toward Urg, a quarrier and his son sat over their small fire in the lee of a mighty boulder and talked in whispers. The father swigged liberally from a bottle of muth-dew, his voice was already slurred. Nearby, a small stock of damp sticks would not last out the night.
Augeren blinked again and the picture was wiped from his eye. He was hungry. He stirred himself. Something ghastly white moved in the darkness. The cave echoed a single sob â¦
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