Exandu shook himself. He whispered, and he thought he whispered only to himself; but we heard, Seg and I, we heard.
“To Opaz the Nine times Exalted, who has the mastery over all men, be the praise!”
Under my blade comrade’s arm Shanli erupted into a violent squirming bundle of womanliness. “And, Pantor Seg the Horkandur! If you would put me down, I shall be about my work!” Her voice was loud, strong, not shrill but overpowering. I understood she spoke and acted thus to cover up the words spoken by Exandu.
Seg stood her up. She did, in that moment, look magnificent. Instantly, she was ministering to Exandu, fiddling with his straps and clothes to put him to rights, soothing his brow, producing a bottle of a honey-gold liquid, which gave him something to stop his querulous complaints.
Seg smiled.
Fregeff joined us, still remote, wrapped in the aura of power. We did not shrink away as we had every right to do; but we were conscious of the dark authority of the man. In the normal course of events I give wizards a wide berth. I count some sorcerers as good friends. Fregeff, a Fristle, a cat-man, might yet number among those. That lay with the gods.
“We give you thanks, San Fregeff.”
He inclined that cat head, and with the links of the flail brushed his whiskers. Before replying he whispered to the volschrin perched on his shoulder. The reptile flicked his wings. Fregeff addressed the volschrin as Rik Razortooth. Spreading his membranous wings, the reptile flapped away and sailed toward the nearest severed flower head, trailing his thin bronze chain. He settled and began to rip at the hard carapace of the flower head.
Fregeff said, “I was right when I said there was no evil in the water. The evil in the other lakes had killed the plants. Whoever placed that evil there knew what he or she was doing.”
Skort the Clawsang marched back over the mud toward us.
Fregeff went on: “But I own I was slow. We have lost porters and guards. I shall abase myself to San Destinakon this night, and chastise myself in expiation.”
“Nonsense, San,” said Skort. His ghastly face leered upon us, the ruby eyes slits of smoldering anger. “The fault was ours. You have saved us all.”
I said, “You have met these plants before?”
“Aye. Slaptras. They grow in Chem, along with syatras and tenchlas.”
“Everything happened very quickly after the plants attacked,” pointed out Seg in his superior and endearing way, knowing exactly what he was doing. “I think Skort is right and San Destinakon has no need of a scourged back this night.”
“As to that, Horkandur, I can only say my business is my business. I have no need of sermons from others.”
I felt the chill.
Exandu, blustering, blowing, sneezing, moaning pitifully and bellowing angrily, broke in. He did not relish, as I saw it, the loss of the limelight. I was wrong in that...
“Let us leave this infernal place and schtump! The spell may not last long enough for my poor aching feet to carry me into that terrible jungle away from the slaptras.”
Fregeff gave the bronze chain a single jerk, and the volschrin flew back to his shoulder. Ruby eyes regarded us. “It was hardly a spell,” said the sorcerer. “More a distortion of reality — well, my business is my business.”
We all made our way across the mud to the trees. The bodies and the bundles would be taken care of. We made camp and more than one of us wondered if the future held more horrors. Most of us were faithfully convinced that the future
did
hold more horrors...
Our faith was justified.
I Receive a Personal Invitation
On Earth, I am informed, the tropical rain forests occupy less than ten percent of the land surface of the planet, yet they contain half of the species of the world. Whether this be so or not, in view of the claims of the sea, is beside the point; the truth remains, tropical rain forests are wonderful, mysterious secret worlds of their own, romantic, pulsating with drama, hot and sticky and uncomfortable and downright dangerous.
Seg and I had no retainers, and we hadn’t bothered with a tent or beds or tables and chairs, as the others had. We camped as we had camped on many a night and many a place of Kregen. We were old campaigners.
From the canopy above where the leaves spread out into jigsaw patterns between branch and branch and tree to tree, down to the soft ground where the detritus piled up, and was consumed and carried away, each level contained its own slice of life. We did not venture into climbing. We toiled along the floor, wending a way between massive vine-covered trunks. When we camped at night we formed the tents into a circle and set fires and watches. More often than not we were disturbed; but we had some handy fighters with us, and we were more than a match for the denizens of the jungle.
At least, for some of them...
On the last night before the map told us we would reach the upper lake and the waterfall and the rocky cliff, Seg and I passed a few words about our companions. What those words boiled down to, essentially, was: We didn’t know.
“Kalu the Pachak will, like Pachaks, be an honorable man. I am surprised he is mixed up with a rogue like Ornol, or that shuddery fellow, Skort—”
“I,” I said, “have Exandu picked for a villain.”
“We-ell, you could be right. He is reticent about his trade. And he did pray to Opaz the Nine Times Exalted.”
“Which marks him as not being a Pandaheem.”
“Unless he’s been converted.” And Seg laughed.
Usually new lands are visited by the Four M’s. The Military, the Merchants, the Mercenaries, and the Missionaries.
“We had some sprightly dealings with the missionaries of the Black Feathers of the Great Chyyan,” I said, “and it is sure Skort the Clawsang worships dark gods. But Exandu?”
“Tomorrow we fetch up with the drikingers’ lair. We’ll find out more then.” Seg rolled over in his bag. “G’night.”
And, all in good time, on the morrow we marched up to the edge of the forest and looked out across the lake toward the sheer face of rock.
Everyone, instinctively, checked the water first for signs of slaptras. We saw no velvety blue-green lily pads.
Strom Ornol said, “I march around to the right.”
Exandu puffed and said. “The way to the left seems shorter.”
Skort the Clawsang half drew and then thrust back his sword into the scabbard. This sword was a lynxter, which is a Lohvian sword, something like the Havilfarese thraxter. Skort knew about the jungles of Chem, which is in Loh. But he had not vouchsafed any information of his origins. Like the rest of them, he was reticent on the point, and we were happy to take them all, like us, as plain adventurers.
“I think I will go with Strom Ornol,” said Skort.
The lake shimmered in the mingled radiance of the Suns of Scorpio. The jungle pressed in around the perimeter. Directly opposite us the wall of rock towered, smothered in vines, brilliant with flowers. Many birds swooped and called one to the other, cavorting in midair. There seemed, at first glance, little to choose which way we went. The heat shimmered off the lake, and the rock face wavered in heat distortions.
Among the birds flying and disporting I saw — suddenly and quick — a magnificent golden and scarlet bird. He flew up out of the entangling vines, and circled around the edge of the lake. I watched him narrowly, my companions forgotten.
He swerved. In headlong flight he soared straight above my head, wide winged, glorious, the light of the suns incandescent upon his feathers. He was the Gdoinye, the spy and messenger of the Everoinye, the Star Lords.
Among the people clustered at the edge of the forest, I knew only I, of them all, could see the Gdoinye.
He cawed, arrogantly, and banked, wide-winged, magnificent of plumage, and soared away around the right-hand side of the water.
I said, “Master Exandu, I think the right-hand way will be easier on your fragile bones.”
His flushed face jerked up, and sweat dropped off the end of his roseate nose.
“You think so?”
“Aye.”
“Well, perhaps — you, San Fregeff. What do you think?”
“I will go with Strom Ornol.”
The Pachak, Kalu, answered the unspoken question by starting off. He turned to his side where he had one arm only.
Everybody followed.
The distant roar of the waterfall indicated its presence; we could not see it yet. The powerful scent of flowers stung my nostrils. I cocked a wary eye at Seg.
“Yes. Spiny Ribcrushers.”
“I fancy Skort will know of them.”
We picked our way with great caution around the edge of the lake. Roots of trees snaked into the water. We watched everything with the care of men who have marched through a jungle.
On the brown mudspit the birds quarreled. The brown water shimmered with heat. We kept our weapons in our fists, and we plodded on until we circumnavigated the right half of the lake and so stood before the first of the rocky buttresses.
The lianas twined away above, looping and jumbled, coiling into massy knots and protuberances. The rock dripped with moisture, grey and leprous. The weather-beaten appearance was occasioned by an intricate and enormously extended series of carvings. Faces, birds, fish, animals, risslacas, insects, grotesque and beautiful, the carvings swarmed upon the rock and in the heat shimmer appeared to move and breathe with a pseudo life, at once fascinating and disturbing.
Exandu stopped and wiped his face. Skort moved on, around the end of the buttress. Strom Ornol, at the Clawsang’s side, half-turned back and motioned us on.
“There is an opening, a portal.”
The sight of the gorgeous bird sent by the Star Lords had, as so often in the past it had not, reassured me. Oh, yes, the Everoinye liked to keep an eye on me from time to time; perhaps in this instance that was all they were doing. Very probably that was the true answer. But, was it not a human weakness to try to see the Gdoinye’s actions, flying around the right hand side of the lake, as some kind of assistance?
We all shuffled around the buttress and saw the opening in the rock, square, hard, forbidding.
Seg whispered, “If there are bandits around, are we to go strolling in like players at feast time?”
“I gather Exandu and Ornol believe they will encounter only dead men, and can help themselves to the treasures.”
“That’s as may be.”
The square opening was twice man height, and three times man wide, and the architrave was surrounded by grotesque gargoylish carvings, obscene monstrosities sculpted by a depraved master hand. Inscriptions, etched into the rock, proclaimed the standard curses. Because many of the artisans employed on masonry work were unable to read or write, either the literate master mason would chalk out the words, and the hammer and chisel men would faithfully follow his outlines, or a stencil would be placed on the stone and fuming acid poured on to etch out the words. We all stared at the ritual curses.
Not one of these hardy adventurers would be affected by the blastings and ib-destructions and diseases promised for anyone who entered here. They were accustomed, in the adventurer’s trade, to weightier obstacles than mere carven words.
Then Exandu let out a quick, chopped-off cry of alarm. Kalu said, “That is indeed strange.” Skort said nothing and Ornol shouted for his people to prepare torches.
Fregeff the wizard pulled his hood up over his head, and he covered his volschrin, Rik Razortooth, with the hood.
I turned back from examining a marvelously carved head of a Medusa to hear Seg say, “By the Veiled Froyvil! I don’t believe it!”
So I turned around and saw Seg standing, mouth open, finger pointing, staring in horror at the blasphemous inscriptions.
Three lines of writing in the flowing Kregish script, all beauty and curve and free-flowing line, had been blasted into the rock. They looked black, as though some instrument dispensing enormous heat had simply burned the stone away.
Three lines of writing, and the center line was a mere nothing, a repetition of the rote curses:
ENTER TO YOUR DOOM
Well, one ignored that. But I looked, standing beside Seg, and I saw... I saw! The first line of writing said:
DRAY PRESCOT, EMPEROR OF VALLIA
And the last line of writing said:
PHU-SI-YANTONG
The heavens did not open and darkness did not descend on my senses. But it was a near thing, by Vox!
All manner of impossible thoughts clashed and collided in my brain. Phu-Si-Yantong, that arch-devil, the Wizard of Loh who had brought great misery to the people of many lands, and particularly to those of Vallia and Pandahem, was dead. He was dead. He had been blown away in a supernal gout of fire in the Quern of Gramarye, in the Jikhorkdun in Ruathytu. He was dead. How could he have known, so long ago, that I would visit here? Could he have sent his ib in lupu into the future?
Seg took my arm.
“He’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“Horkandur?” said Shanli’s gentle voice. “Pantor Seg — you are feeling ill?”
Seg swallowed.
“I am all right, thank you, mistress Shanli. Perhaps the smell of the Spiny Ribcrushers affects me.”
We smiled at Shanli. We made ourselves smile for her. She did not flinch back.
“They do have an — an overpowering smell, true. The strom insists on going first. Would you — may I ask — pantors...”
I said, “We will stay with you and Exandu, Shanli.”
“My thanks, my lord.”
The macabre message, weird, eerie, of another time, had to be pushed away. Yantong was dead and burned to pieces. We were here, chasing the remnants of the followers of Spikatur Hunting Sword. Our task was not finished. Useless to fret over the hows of the message blasted into the rock. Its black-burned letters remained; no one commented on them. Once you’ve read one ceremonial curse you’ve read them all. Perhaps the others couldn’t see the message, as though it had been blasted out for Seg’s and my eyes alone. I hesitated no longer. Shouldering my bundle, my sword in my right hand, I followed on as Exandu’s people, carrying torches, plunged into the darkness beyond the portal.
They did not make a great deal of noise; but the sound of moccasins shuffled hushed on the ancient stones, the clink of armored men rang with a subdued tone, the harsh breathing stifled. We walked on, into a chamber cut from the rock. Our lights revealed two doors at the far end, both closed, and I surmised we were in for more argument over choosing the way.