By this time the horned ones on the perimeter had done with their uncovering of glowing piles of moon-gold, so that their torches now struck yellow fire from a vast circle of the stuff. Even where they lay, the questers could see its shimmer beyond the thronging forms of their captors; and now Hero whispered: “So that's how old Mnomquah will find his way here, eh? A golden bullseye, with Oorn's pit at its center!”
Before Eldin could answer they were roughly hoisted aloft once moreâthe sobbing, fearful girls, tooâand borne into Oorn's temple through the worn and pitted archway. At one side of that entrance as they passed stood Zura, with a retinue of zombies; at the other lay Lathi upon a large platform, surrounded by termen and -maids, her lower body silk-draped and fitfully pulsating. Vile females that they were and utterly different, still their faces shared the same expression: fury and dark hatred, for Hero had spurned and made fools of both of them.
“No hope from that quarter, lad,” said Eldin.
“No hope from any quarter, questers!” chuckled the horned-one acolyte as he stuffed greasy gags in their mouths. “There! That's to ensure that you lie there nice and quiet throughout the ceremonyâuntil the rising moon calls Oorn up from her pit to claim you. After that we must leaveâbut at least the Goddess shall have feasted before her Great Mating!”
Now they were placed at the four cardinal points of the pit, face down with their heads just over the rim, so that they might gaze into the very throat of Oorn's lair; and now too there commenced the sounds of an ancient, evil ritual as demon flutes piped and bone-dry crotala clacked and rattled. And the questers and their ladies knew that indeed this must be the beginning of the end, and that there was nothing at all they could do about it.
Minutes lengthened into an hour, two, as the moon rose higher and the hideous music grew more frenzied and alien yet; and as that sick yellow light flooded the land so the four bound humans found the dark shaft of the pit dimly illumined,
and Eldin in particular began to find a special loathsomeness in the shiny smoothness of its perfectly circular wall. It was not unlike the pearly mouth of a conch, this pit, except of course that it was not coiled but fell straight into the bowels of the very earth. Or did it?
No, for down there, at the limits of vision, a vast nacreous slab plugged the shaft like a cork in the neck of a bottle. And this huge disc of stone persisted in attracting the Wanderer's attention; persisted too in reminding him of ⦠of what? Staring again at that great plug in the bottom of the pit, suddenly Eldin fancied he saw it moving, inching
up
the shaft, slowly but surely shortening the distance from bottom to top. And with this creeping, insidious movement there came such a rush of foul gases that, had he not been gagged, the Wanderer was sure he should be violently ill. Hero and the girls also smelled this awful fetor and felt the nausea it brought, but as yet they had not guessed its source.
Eldin, however, no longer had any doubt. He now
knew
what he was seeing. Knew that the vast slab which continued to inch its way upward was no slab at all but something far more monstrous. Monstrous beyond words â¦
It was a gigantic operculum, the protective plate or lid which secures a snail inside its shellâ
or, in this case, that most ghastly of all gastropods, Oorn in her lair!
Moonfleet
Other things were happening in the night, things perhaps divinely provided by beneficent gods of dreams to keep the Wanderer's mind from dwelling too deeply upon the imagined nature of the inhabitant of the pit. The sky was ablaze with hissing meteorites and the ground trembled now and then with seismic convulsions. A rumbling growl was plainly discernible, as of far distant mountains on the move; and as the moon rose higher so the rumbling increased, becoming an almost continual tremor in the foul night air.
Turning their headsâwhich was about as much freedom as they hadâthe questers and their women were able to see the moon's rim where it climbed steadily above the jagged wall of the temple. Bloated beyond belief, the thing seemed no longer a satellite but a sister planet suspended magically in the sky just beyond dreamland's edge. Its needle-toothed mountains, oily oceans and sinister valleys looked no more distant than, say, the coastline of the Southern Sea as viewed from Serannian on a clear day, and its great evil “face” seemed to leer with an expression at once human and yet unutterably alien. Seen so close, the questers could well understand the madness which the moon had brought immemorially to sensitive minds in the waking worldâand which now it was visiting upon the lands of Earth's dreams.
Then, abruptly, the monstrous music of the horned ones
rose to a screeching crescendo and faded out in a final clash of brazen cymbals. Mnomquah's propitiation was complete; His way was made plain; His mate prepared to partake of her bridal feast!
Eldin's bound body jerked violently as a cloven foot kicked him in the side. “Goodbye, questers,” came the guttural, nasal tones of the silk-clad horned one. “Oorn's High Priest bids you a fond farewell, and so do I.”
Now the High Priest himself came to the pit's rim, slumping forward and wriggling beneath his robes as he peered through his wide-spaced eyeholes and down into the throat of that nameless shaft. He saw how close the pearly door had climbed toward pit's rim; and if he could smell at all he doubtless smelled the hideous effluvium of the Thing beyond that door. His robe shivered fitfully and Eldin was aware of a pink writhing beneath its momentarily parted folds as carven flute was set to unseen lips. The notes this time were high, urgent, filled with a certain gleeâyes, and a certain fear, too.
“The time is nigh,” the acolyte translated. “We go!” And he gave Eldin a final kick with sharp, cloven hoof. Then they were gone, leaving the four bound humans to wait out their final nightmare.
Eldin, knowing (or at least having very strong suspicions) just what the nightmare would be, now worked feverishly to release the bandage which held his gag in place; and seeing their friend so urgently at work, Hero and the girls did likewise. Finally, hooking the rag over a sharp knob of rock where it projected at the pit's rim, and tearing his face a little in the process, the Wanderer was first to free his mouth.
For a few seconds he paused to draw air deep into his lungsâbut only until he began to taste upon his tongue the musk of the horror which crept ever closerâand then he choked back his nausea to call out across the pit, “Hero, have you guessed yet what this she-monster is?”
Spitting out his own gag, Hero called back, “Man, I don't dare guess! But if she looks half as bad as she smells ⦔
“Oh, she'll look worse than that,” Eldin promised. “You see the great slab which creeps ever closer up the shaft toward us? That's part of her, attached to her like the lid on an oyster's cup. She's beneath itâimmediately beneath itâand once that lid begins to openâ”
“Are you deaf, man?” Hero snarled. “I said I don't want to knowâand I'm damned sure the girls don't! What Oorn is isn't important. How to get the hell away from her is. If only these ropes weren't so damned,
uh
!âtight ⦔
“Can you roll?” Eldin asked.
“Eh?”
“Can you rock your body until it rolls?” Eldin repeated. “At least that might get us away from the rim.”
“Damn me,” answered the other after a moment's thought, “I'm not sure I want to try it. We're so close to the edge that if we roll the wrong wayâ”
“Well, we're going to have to try it sooner or later,” said Eldin. “Another few minutes and she'll be here.” So saying he began to rock his trussed body to and fro until he rolled once, twice, three times away from the pit. Seeing his success, Hero and the girls did likewise.
Both Ula and Una had their mouths free by now, and as the latter rolled once in the wrong direction she gave a shrill little cry. The others held their collective breath until she corrected the motion and began to roll away from Oorn's monstrous shaft, after which they breathed out a single, concerted sigh. Then, for long minutes, all that was heard was a great grunting and pantingâand the occasional curseâas all four strained to put distance between themselves and the reeking horror which crept upon them.
And it was as Hero rolled onto his back for the fourth or fifth time that he noticed the strange thing taking place in the sky. Where before the clouds had seemed to churn and tumble mindlessly, now they moved with a peculiar, an almost sinister purpose. They were forming a coil, like some impossible languid tornado, whose tenuous funnel spiralled visibly toward the ever-rising moon. And down from the looming
face of that mad golden monster, as if to greet the funnel of clouds, sick moonbeams crept to form a yellow path or river in the sky.
Then, climbing the spiral of clouds, the quester saw the enemy's squat black ships; saw them drawn steadily around the whorl and away across the heavens toward the moon ⦠and never a breath of air to fill a single sail!
Soon the entire enemy fleet was airborne and adrift on the great aerial whirlpool, climbing ever higher, ever moonward. And all across that demon-painted sky the meteorites blazed and hissed, and the effect of this spectacular sight upon the four humans (for by now all were watching) was near-hypnotic. Until, as if to break the spell, there came a vast grating and shuddering, and in the center of the temple Oorn's mighty, softly shining operculum appeared like the pearly eye of some creature of the deep.
“Here she câ” Eldin commenced a growled warning, only to choke on the last word as the great lid cracked open to expel the foulest stench any dreamer ever dreamed. Zura and all her zombies together in the fathomless sewers of Baharna could not have equalled such a stench; but mercifully it lasted no more than a second or two before the worst of it hissed visibly upward and dissipated into the chill night air. And after the release of these pent-up gases, this condensed essence of Oornâ
Then came Oorn Herself!
⦠But slowly, cautiously (perhaps savoring the moment?), else the questers and their women were certainly driven mad in the merest moment. And if ever they had seen
all
of Oornâ
First there were the eyes.
Beneath the part-raised, yard-thick hatchâeyes! A dozen, circular, burning and unblinking, big as plates, staring out in all directions from a dark, as yet only half-seen, half-suspected bulk. Thenâtentacles! Tentacles like nests of fat pink worms ⦠Or were they merely cilia?
Cilia, yesâtiny feet to carry the larger, heavier, true tentacles
wherever Oorn directed themâlike the myriad feet of starfish. And out from the pit, out from beneath the luminous eyes, out from the darkness under the vast and pearly slab those true tentacles now uncoiled, pink and translucent but pulsing with a green fluid that made mobile veins on their slick, viscous surfaces. Thicker than a man's body, one, two, threeâten of them in all. Like the suckered arms of some sentient squid, but huge beyond belief!
They coiled, those arms, winding about the great slab where it now tilted more steeply, and as they wound so they spread outward from the pit toward the questers and the girls where they now lay backed up against the temple's wall.
“Gods!” Hero gasped. “But this is no way to go.” And the girls, brave lasses though they had proved to be, now began to sob and shiver in the shadow of the wall as the tips of the tentacles, swaying like the heads of blind snakes, moved ever closer.
A loathsome slobbering sound commenced, and a hissing and gasping as blood-red siphons appeared from the shaft to sway and writhe and suck convulsively at the still, dank air. And the tips of the hovering tentacles opened like mouths as they began to descend upon the terrified forms of Oorn's living sacrifice.
“Lad,” called Eldin gruffly but with no trace of the old bluster, “I don't think I can stand much more of this. Forgive the prattle, David,” (rare day when the Wanderer used Hero's first name!) “but if I don't talk I'm sure I'll start to scream.”
“Talk away, old son,” Hero croaked in return. “As for meâI'm already screaming! Inside!” And as if encouraged by his words, an open tentacle-tip descended upon his thigh.
Hero did scream thenâbut more in agony than in horror, and more an outraged cry than a scream proper. Green juices flowed from the open mouth of the pseudo-pod and dissolved away a patch of his tough leather trousers in a secondâdissolved, too, the skin of the thigh beneath. And now that mouth became a sucker, slurping back the
solution
which the green juice had become. Seeing and feeling this, Hero cried
out againâthis time in true horrorâfor now he knew how Oorn fed!
For the merest fraction of a second then, time seemed to stand stillâa moment's pause in the rhythm of the dreamtime universeâbefore the green juices flowed more copiously in the veins of the tentacles and their snake-head tips descended with more purpose â¦
Somewhere, at some indeterminate distance in the night, a mighty explosion sounded as a dull rumble, and a second later the earth gave itself a small shakeâand Oorn froze! The monster ⦠listened! Yes, she listened, her every molecule tuned ⦠to what? Then, a rapid retraction, a frenzied scurrying of a million tiny limbs and a slithering of tentacles withdrawnâand the vast bulk of Oorn, still mainly and mercifully unseen, drew back down into her centuried pit. In another moment the siphons were withdrawn, the eyes lowered themselves into darkness, the lid sighed shut with one last great exhalation of poisonous gases, and the monster was gone. There came again that grating and shivering as the massive operculum began to descend the shaft.
“What the hellâ?” Eldin croaked, and the others began to breathe again as his voice broke the stillness.
“Something frightened herâ
it
âoff!” Hero tried to say, but only succeeded at the third attempt and after many a gulp.
“The explosion,” came Ula's shivery voice.
“The shaking of the earth,” said Una.
“Did she harm any of you?” Hero asked, strength fast returning. “No? Sheâtasted me!” He shuddered. “Just a taste, but I'll never forget it. Damn her loathsome eyes!”
“You know, lad,” rumbled Eldin, his voice ringing in a barely controlled hysteria, “sometimes I've envied you this fatal fascination you seem to have for certain females. But there are other times when I'm not soâ”
“Shh!”
cried Ula and Una together. “Listen!”
From somewhere to the south there came a foaming, rushing sound that rapidly built to a roar whose tremor could be felt as a vibration in the earth itself. “What now?” growled
Eldinâand gave a massive start as night-black shapes fell from the sky and gray paws grabbed him where he lay.
The others were similarly snatched upânot without shrieks of renewed terror from the girls, despite Gytherik's young voice crying out that it was only him and his gauntsâand all four were borne aloft in the last moment before the released fury of the sea smashed through Oorn's temple and raced in a deep tidal surge through the now deserted streets of Sarkomand.
Above that curling, hissing wall of water, which inundated all in its path, the questers felt spray on their faces and a gaunt-wing wind that dried cold sweat on their bodies and left them shivering uncontrollably. Perhaps Ula and Una had fainted (better for them if they had, thought Hero) for they were now silent; but Eldin had already begun to roar his delight in a manner well remembered of old. And as for Hero himselfâthough later he would not admit itâhe was baying like some great crazed hound, laughing until the tears flowed down his face and dripped into space â¦
Â
In a very little while Gytherik eased his grim down onto
Gnorri's
deck and the swooning girls were carried away to be cossetted and comforted. Hero and Eldin were their own men again and more than sober. They had good reason to be, for during the gaunt-flight many things had changed. The sea lay flat once more and relatively calm, except for a certain bubbling and frothing and choppiness of the waters where they lay deep in the one-time Vale of Sarkomand. The meteorite shower had petered out and the expectant thrumming of the ether had been replaced by a clammy stillness, as if the very elements were shocked. And most important of all, it seemed that Mnomquah's devastating leap to earth had been averted or at least postponed.