Voices in the Night
Limnar made running repairs to
Gnorri II
, whose damage was only superficial. She had been holed but her flotation engine was undamaged; one of her bags had exploded but had now been replaced; and as a safety measure, a temporary rail had been rigged in the stern. Now the seven ships sped north and somewhat west, as they had for ten days and nine nights, on that same high-blown current which had driven the crudely constructed Leng craft.
And it seemed the elements understood both the urgency of the questers and the nature of the threat against the dreamlands, and that they were sympathetic; for the wind had blown strong and steady and the nights had been unseasonably cold and cloudy. The mad moon had sent its beam Earthward once and once only (and then far to the south and gropingly, as if unsure of the target) and for the rest of the time had shown only as an ever-swelling yellow blotch or massive saffron blur behind the mercifully veiling clouds.
Always the way had led over ocean, but at midday on the tenth day they had sailed over a jagged granite rock that loomed up from the gray sea, when certain of Limnar's older sailors had shuddered and said that this was the shunned sentinel rock which guarded the shores of Inquanok. Inquanok was not their destination, however, and since Sarkomand was
rumored to lie to the east of that cold gray land, Limnar now inclined to a course more nearly northward.
All through the tenth afternoon jagged mountains were visible in the north, later to become obscured by dense distant mists and dark low clouds, and as night came on the flotilla crossed a cold shoreline glimpsed through swirling fog and drifting cloudbanks. Here Limnar ordered the ships down to an anchorage above a bleak region of huge and tumbled black boulders like broken slabs of monolithic masonry, as if the entire land were remnant of some aeon-dead metropolis of strange gods. The whole area for miles around was dim, misty and darkening now with the fall of night; very little had been visible from the air.
Because he suspected that Sarkomand must now be close indeed, Limnar decided to wait out the nightâand hopefully the mistâright here, moving on in the morning or as soon as the weather permitted. And knowing that if he was correct in his suspicions, then that action was equally imminent, he called for a meeting with his Captains. While the meeting was taking place, Gytherik went off for a long flight with his restless gaunts (ostensibly to spy out the ground, though in fact the gaunts loved nothing better than a good glide through the mist) and Hero and Eldin were left with nothing to do but bemoan their inactivity.
Now they leaned on the ship's fog-wreathed rail, their hoods up against the dampness of the air, and gloomed together into the chilly night. All around, the dim ghosts of sky-ships lolled gently at anchor, sails furled, their rigging creaking a little but muffled by the mist and seeming strangely distant.
“Somewhere up there,” said Eldin after a while, inclining his leonine head toward lowering clouds, “the mad moon grows larger, closer, just waiting for a break in this weather.”
“So are we,” Hero reminded. “These clouds may be good news for the dreamlandsâfor by now the message must be well and truly out and about, and even the smallest hamlet
must know. of the dangerâbut they're damn bad news for Ula and Una. I
itch
to do something, to get into action, toâ”
“âTo rescue those poor lasses,” Eldin growled. “I know, me too. And it's worst knowing that they may be somewhere close by, in the foul paws of those horned horrors from Leng.”
“How close, I wonder?” Hero answered. “Westward lies Inquanok, and way beyond that Isharra. And here, somewhere, perhaps no more than a mile or two awayâ”
“Shh!” Eldin suddenly hissed, startling his younger friend and making him jump. He thrust his head forward, eyes wide and staring into the mist. “Did you hear that, or was it only my imagination? That cry in the nightâthat voice calling âEldin, Eldin?'”
“Eh?” said Hero. “I heard not a thing. It must have been the creaking ofâ” Abruptly, his eyes too went wide. “But I heard it that time!” he gasped. âHero, Hero,' it cried. A girl's voiceâmy Ula's voice! But how?”
“Again!” Eldin pointed a shaking hand. “Out there!”
“It is Ula!” Hero whispered.
“Both of 'em, then,” said Eldin. “They”ve escaped from the horned ones. Perhaps they saw our ships in the sky, through a break in the cloudsâsaw us as we sank down into the mist.”
“Aye!” Hero agreed, Eldin's imagination spurring his own. “And so they broke loose and headed this way. And they're out there in the dark and the mist, searching for us.”
“Pursued by horned ones.”
“And the lecherous, loathsome Dukes of Isharra!”
“And Zura.”
“And Lathi.”
“Damn me!” roared Eldin, shaking his fist at the night.
“
Shh!
” Hero grabbed the Wanderer's brawny arm, at the same time casting about through half-shuttered eyes at the crewmen where they went about their tasks on the deck. Wreathed by swirling mist, the sailors seemed unaware of the
sudden tension in the waking-worlders, were deaf to the faint cries constantly ringing through the night.
“Listen,” said Hero urgently, “we don't need this lot clattering about, attracting horned ones and such. There are two girls out there and there are two of us. I vote we do this job ourselves. They were our girls, after all.”
“Agreed,” said Eldin. “And there's not a one of these lads stealthy as you or I.” He gripped the rail and peered again into the bank of mist where it swirled all about. “There,” he said after a moment. “Did you hear it? From over there.” And again he pointed.
Hero listened, frowned, then grimly nodded. “Right,” he said, swinging himself over the rail. Ignoring a handy rope ladder, he grabbed an anchor rope and went sliding down into the mist. Eldin followed, and a moment later they landed like cats on the broken, slippery stone surface below. There they paused, listening intently for a moment, then set off silently and at speed in a generally northerly direction.
Keeping low, they automatically adopted the crouching lope of expert thieves and nighthawksâwhich indeed had been their trade before they became questersâand soon they had merged with the mist and the darkness to such an extent that no one would ever have known they were there. And the cries came echoing through the nightâplaintive, seeming sometimes distant, sometimes quite close at handâand yet somehow getting no closer, if anything retreating.
Following those distressed and distressing calls, the pair gradually grew suspicious. With the ships far behind them and swallowed up by distance, darkness and mist, they became aware of their own vulnerability in the night. They were good in the foggy gloom, certainly, but were they better than horned ones from Leng's perpetually nighted plateau? Better than Zura's zombies, creatures of darkness? Better than Lathi's termen, with their insect instincts?
“But I can hear Una calling!” Eldin protested in a low growl.
“I said nothing,” Hero answered, his voice hushed.
“No, but you were thinking it, I could almost feel your lip twitching. It always does when you start to have doubts.”
They found themselves in the depths of a steep-sided ravine whose walls pressed in on both sides. Now their pace slowed, they became cautious and stuck to the blackest shadows.
“That's just it,” said Hero at last. “You can hear Una but I can't. In fact, I haven't heard Una once, only Ula.”
The ravine widened out into a place of reeking vapors, silent except for the distant drip of nameless moisture. “And I haven't heard Ula,” said Eldin. “Not once!”
The shadows closed in on the pair and the reek grew stronger. Now they knew that smell. It was the odor of decaying flesh, the stench of corruption!
“They're not calling now,” Eldin breathed, his great hand reaching for his sword.
“I've a feeling,” Hero answered, “that they never were!”
“Trap!” they both hissed together, and their swords sang in unison as they sprang from scabbards and sliced through a circle of hideous shadows. Shadows which were not shadows butâdeath!
Death fell on them in the night, in that terrible opening at the end of the ravine, in the mist and the reeking darkness. Suffocating death, rotting death. And hack and slash as they mightâas they did, with all strength and in an utter frenzy of nightmare dreadâstill they could not turn the veritable tide of death which washed over them and bore them down.
Death in the shape of Zura's walking dead â¦
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After leaving the deck of
Gnorri II,
Gytherik and his grim had headed north. Well wrapped against the night, against the rushing damp air and the natural chill of these northern regions, the gaunt-master had been happy to let his beasts fly where they would, secure in the knowledge that they would find their way unerringly back to the seven ships when they were done with exercising and enjoying themselves.
Actually, it was difficult to say for certain whether or not
gaunts ever did truly enjoy themselves. They never showed emotion, or very nearly never (how could they without faces?) and unless directed their flying invariably seemed purposeless and gave them no visible pleasure. But Gytherik suspected that they enjoyed it anyway, and so did he.
They had briefly penetrated the cloud ceiling to fly in moonlight, but so yellow, hideous and dazzling had been that lightâand so monstrously vast and close its throbbing sourceâthat the gaunt-master had ordered the grim down again and back into the clean (by comparison) clouds and mists. Once, too, he had thought he spied a flight of shantaks, several of which had seemed to carry riders, but this latter effect might have been merely phenomena of the mist. Whichever, the hippocephalic creatures had been visible for no more than a second or so, nor had they caused Gytherik more than a moment's concern. Shantaks, despite their great size and strength, are utterly afraid of gaunts; even a flock of them would rather flee than face one lone gaunt in the night skies of Earth's dreamland.
On the other hand, it was known that Leng's horned ones had mastered and occasionally rode shantaks; which on second thought did give Gytherik a little more room for conjecture. And so for over an hour he had searched the misty skies and the needle peaks of clouded mountainsâto no avail. He saw nothing more of either shantaks or horned ones, and so decided to return to the ships. In doing so he urged the grim to greater speed, for a nagging voice in the back of his mind was now becoming more and more insistent that all was not well; so that he hardly surprised himself by sighing out loud when at last the grim circled down to a landing on the mist-slick deck of
Gnorri II
.
Limnar Dass was there to meet him, and the look on the sky-Captain's face confirmed beyond a doubt Gytherik's own feelings of impending disaster. As the gaunt-master dismounted, so Limnar apprised him of the latest development. “Hero and Eldin,” he said. “They're gone.”
“Gone?” Gytherik ushered his grim below decks. “Where have they gone?”
“They went while I was in conference,” Limnar answered. “Don't ask me where or why.”
“But someone must have seen them go?”
“Indeed, several of my crewmen. I'm told that they appeared excited, then furtiveâand that they slid down a rope into the nightâsince when they have not returned. They've been gone for some two hours, since shortly after you yourself went off with your gaunts. I was hoping that perhaps you had seen something of them?”
Gytherik shook his head. “Do you think they're in trouble?”
“Not necessarily. They're like cats in the night, those two, and fierce fighters to boot. But you know all that. It's just that I have this feeling ⦔
“Me too,” Gytherik shivered. “Very well, let's wait until dawn. If they're not back by then I'll send out the gaunts to search for them.”
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Below decks, Sniffer shuffled uncomfortably and facelessly in the gloom of a cargo hold. Most of the other gaunts were already asleep (at least, they were in that huddled, wing-hooded state which serves for sleep in night-gaunts) but Sniffer was wide awake. He gave Biffer a nudge and they both inclined their monstrous heads upward, as if engaged in some sort of earless listening. In fact they were “listening” to Gytherik and Limnar's conversation: or more exactly, to the concern which radiated from that pair in very tangible waves, at least waves which were tangible to night-gaunts.
Having listened, they stared eyelessly at each other for a moment or two, and finally they each gave a single, simultaneous nod, as if in agreement to some mutual, unspoken suggestion. And half an hour later, when the ships were very much quieter and only the watch patrolled the decks, then they crept silently topside and launched themselves into the swirling mist â¦