Krozair of Kregen

Chapter Ten

From the concealment of a screen of bushes we looked upon a scene at once hideous and horrific. The Renders had extinguished their torches and they did not speak above an awed whisper. The lights illuminating those time-weathered stones were not our lights. The flaring torches wrapped tendrils of golden brilliance about the old columns and arches, lit gray walls and time-toppled cornices. Shattered domes like eggshells smashed wantonly glittered starkly in the pink moons-light. We crouched silently and we stared upon that pagan scene.

Next to me crouched the trembling form of Fazmarl the Beak. I could feel his body shaking against my shoulder.

“I warned them, the fools,” he whispered to himself, and I could feel the tenseness in the words he scarcely knew he uttered aloud. “It is Oidrictzhn himself! The Abomination!”

I nudged him. “Silence, you fambly. Is this all you know?”

He glared mutely at me and shook his head.

I drew him down farther into the shadows.

‘Tell me. And speak low.”

“Oidrictzhn!”

I clapped a hand across his mouth and shot a glance over the bushes. The figures prancing in the torchlights were concerned over their own pursuits and we did not appear to be observed; but I fancied they’d have someone on the lookout. I shook Fazmarl the Beak.

“You bear an honored name. These Abominations. Is that what they’re up to out there?” I released his mouth.

He drew in a whooping gulp of air. “Yes. It is old, older than anyone knows. Long before Zair and Grodno, whose name be cursed, separated out of-”

“Yes, yes. I know that. Will they slay the girl?”

“Assuredly. They have come from many little villages inland and they would travel to the west of us. I know, for I lived in one of those small villages, like a vosk in swill — and all knew the old stories of Oidrictzhn and his Abominations.”

“You do not mind saying his name now.”

He did not laugh; but he emitted a sour grunting kind of cough. “No — for it is too late. The evil one has arisen from his sleep. He has been conjured. Do you not see his gross form, there, where the shadows cluster, although the torches shine the brightest?”

There was a puzzling splotch of shadow against an ancient gray monolith where the torches shone, where one would expect light and the reflections brilliant against the masonry.

“How?”

“Who knows? No one owns to knowledge. Yet all know there are those who possess the secret powers. The Abominable One has risen and he will not return until he is sated.”

I was not prepared to dismiss all this as fear-induced madness.

On Kregen as on Earth there are the darker myths, hideous stories of hideous beings from out of time and space. Normally one gives no credence to them. But to hear of them among tumbled and time-shattered ruins, ancient before ordinary man ventured to tame fire and crouch at his cave-mouth brandishing a stone hand-ax, with the shifting light of the moons streaming across a scene of naked savages — for rhapsodic belief had turned these people savage — screaming and chanting, circling a stake whereon hung the bloody corpse of a ponsho, closing nearer and nearer to a raised stone slab on which lay a young girl, ripe for the sacrifice. . as I say, to hear these horrendous myths of demons and devils in circumstances like those is to make belief all too easy.

The Abominable One had been driven away when the true light of Zair had risen in the land. But he was not dead. He slept and awaited his call. He could be raised up and he would not be satisfied until he had drunk of the blood of a virgin. That it must be a female virgin was not specified; but it seemed appropriate. I had to hold on to the levity that wanted me to rush out there and lay about with the Ghittawrer blade. I do not totally condemn these feeble-minded stories; a little care for one’s ib is as proper as care for one’s flesh-and-blood hide.

“The Zair-forsaken cramphs of Grodnims advance from the west. They destroy all who oppose them. King Genod’s army is invincible. Soon they will be here. All the little villages to the south will be enslaved

— aye! — and the great cities also.”

“You may be right, Fazmarl. But I think you wrong. And these deluded fools seek to raise up a long-dead god of evil to protect them? They are mad.”

“Yes, they are mad. But madness is easy in these times.”

Rukker crawled over. He looked as fierce as ever; but I sensed he was unsure. Why else did he crawl?

“What is this onker chattering about, Dak?”

I told him that out of fear of the Grodnims the locals were raising from his long-sealed vault a monster of evil, out of time and space, a being who might sweep us all away with the power of his breath. Rukker grunted and stilled the impatient swish of his tail.

“If the ancient god is in the likeness of an apim-”

Fazmarl let rip a hysterical giggle at this, a tiny sound of horror in a greater scene of horror.

“His shape is more awful than anyone-”

“Yes,” I said. Fazmarl quieted. “It is not of our business, Rukker. Do you agree?”

“I agree. I think I shall not speak of this later.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yet the girl. .”

“She is apim,” said the Kataki.

“Oh, assuredly. Had she been a Fristle, or a numim, a sylvie, or a girl from Balintol, I do not think it would make overmuch difference.”

Fazmarl, quaking, said, “They would mean nothing.”

I did not hit him. I must come to terms with this detestation of diffs that was so widespread among the apims of Zairia.I had hardly remarked it during my previous sojourn on the inner sea. I had changed, not the Zairians, that was all. And, anyway, Fazmarl and Rukker would have no idea where Balintol was. I lifted a trifle and peered over the bushes. The blasphemous ceremony drew to its gruesome climax. Couples were dancing out there in the streaming torchlight, going widdershins, letting abandon carry them away in frenzy. The dread weight of evil bore us down. The sense of evil among the stones shivered through the torchlight, and a coiling mist melted the gold and pink moonbeams. Fazmarl shivered. He began to crawl back, away, shaking his head, his lips slobbering.

I let him go.

I said to Rukker, “It seems to me a little Jikai might be created here, Kataki.”

“You may. By the Triple Tails of Targ the Untouchable! This is no business of mine.”

“You would not trust your Targ against this Oidrictzhn the Abominable?”

“There is nothing supernatural there. It is a man, dressed in a skin, with a chimera for a head.”

“So why hang back?”

His tail started to twitch. I drew my sword. He saw it. He said, “You may get yourself killed if you wish. Do you not see the archers?”

“Aye. That proves they fear physical as well as occult powers.”

“Then, by Takroti, you may test them yourself.”

He would have left then, calling his people about him. I could feel the evil in that place. It is a difficult thing to say. There was some suppurating spirit of demonology flaunting itself against the gray stone wall, drinking the light of the torches. I held Rukker. The people out there, abandoned, most half gone on dopa probably, clustered close to the stone slab.

“Would it not be a Jikai to go out there and deprive them of their enjoyment? Would not depriving other people appeal to you, a Kataki?”

Under my hand his arm quivered. I could feel the bunch of muscle below the mail. He hissed the words as a Kataki can hiss. His face was demonic as any devil’s, almost as devilish as my own. “Take your hand off me! I shall spit you for this, apim!”

“Then you will have to catch me, Kataki,” I said, and stood up, and ran forward into the torchlight toward the stone slab of sacrifice and the girl bound helplessly upon its scarred surface. Hideous yells burst from the corded throats of the people dancing and clustering about the slab of sacrifice. They were possessed. Drugged on dopa or any one of a variety of narcotics, or on sheer fear-driven hysteria, they capered and screeched and sought to drag me down with clawed raking fingers. I pushed them aside. There was no time to feel either anger or pity for them. I got in among them with vicious speed and the archers perched on the crumbling lichenous walls shafted two poor devils instead of me.

The aura of horror swelled nearer that splotch of utter darkness on the gray wall. In a tangle of naked arms and legs I pushed forward toward the slab. I did not use the edge of my sword; the flat sufficed. The girl was not unconscious. She lay on her back, strained over by thongs from wrists and ankles that were knotted to iron rings stapled into the stone. She wore stockings that reached to mid-thigh and were banded by red-glinting gems. The stockings were black, a fitting counterpoint to the darkness that hovered over her. Her body gleamed pink and golden in the moons-light, looped with gems, strings of jewels chaining her breast-cups of gold and twining around her stomach and legs, linking her ankles and wrists. Her hair of that midnight black of the Zairians of the inner sea glistered with gems and silverdust. Her face seemed only a pale flower, her mouth and eyes mere dark bruises. A man leaped on my back and I bent and hurled him away. The sword slashed the thongs of her ankles, sliced the right wrist-thong. I moved to reach the left thong and someone grabbed my ankles. I kicked. A screech like a lost soul in torment cheered me. The sword licked out. I put my left arm under the girl’s head, lifted her, slid my arm down to her neck, her back, and took her up as one might hoist a sack of cereal.

She felt light and soft and warm, and she trembled all the time with a fine shivering that tingled against my hand.

Now I would use the edge, if I must.

An arrow splintered against the slab. The scarred surface showed ancient evil stains. Just beyond the slab a pit in the ground covered by an iron grating drew my alert attention. People were dragging the grating up, screaming in ecstasy and fear, throwing the iron grille down and then running, running. . Anything could squirm out of that dank pit. .

“Slay him! Strike him down! Immolate him!”

The shouts grew in frenzy. With the girl caught up to me and dangling her strings of jewels and chains of gold, I began to run back. I looked over my shoulder, just to check my rear, as was my custom — and I saw the dread shadow against the stone move.

At that moment of impending horror an entanglement at my feet brought me pitching to earth. I held on to the girl and as we both slammed into the ground she did not cry out. Her eyes were wide and brilliant and fixed on me hypnotically.

I looked up.

A Thing moved among the shadows.

A Shadow moved among the things.

The screeching and shouting died to a whimper and faded. The breeze stilled. Mists coiled before the moons and the light changed with dread subtlety from gold and pink to a drenching shower of blood-rubied radiance.

I looked up.

Something ancient and evil slithered against the stones. Something. . There was only one name that could be given this bestial monstrosity from out of the dead ages of time — Oidrictzhn — Oidrictzhn the Abominable!

The Shadow rose and lifted and became monstrous, huge, blotting out vision and reason. A chilling slithering, a hissing, a feral, hateful mind-numbing hissing whispered from the shadows clustered about the Shadow.

The Beast from Time slithered out from the shadows to devour me.